Prerelease 1.202G (Seige breaking AI tactics, bugfixes)

[x4000]

Note:  This doesn't affect players playing solo, but multiplayer players please note that this version contains experimental network code.  Basically, the entire TCP-based networking code from past versions has been ripped out, and a (hopefully faster) UDP-based solution has been put in its place. There may be problems.  However, this has been out for several days with zero reported bugs so far, so it is probably mostly fine.  More testing and feedback is much appreciated, though!

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1202G.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.201, so you have to already have 1.201 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

What's new since 1.202F:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.201 are attached at the bottom)

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-When the AI has overwhelming odds against the human players, it will now attack more vigorously than before.


CHANGES FROM PRIOR PRERELEASES
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-Fixed a rather serious bug in 1.202F that was never calculating the energy, and thus making the game unplayable.

-Fixed an issue with the galaxy map being "Squished" when the scale game for large monitors option was on.

[SoftNum]

Whatever performance tweaks have happened worked really well.  My render MS is down to about 1/10th of what it was before.   Game runs so smoothly now.  (This is coming from 1202D, btw)  Fixed from version.  Oops

Thanks!

[Haagenti]

What's new since 1.202F:
-When the AI has overwhelming odds against the human players, it will now attack more vigorously than before.

I'm kinda afraid to load my savegame now: will I immediately get 10K AI ships at my door? Is it a case of "Dead Man Walking?"

[x4000]

What's new since 1.202F:
-When the AI has overwhelming odds against the human players, it will now attack more vigorously than before.

I'm kinda afraid to load my savegame now: will I immediately get 10K AI ships at my door? Is it a case of "Dead Man Walking?"

No, when I loaded it, you actually won over a long period of time.  That's what I need to fix with later AI updates.

[x4000]

Whatever performance tweaks have happened worked really well.  My render MS is down to about 1/10th of what it was before.   Game runs so smoothly now.  (This is coming from 1202D, btw)  Fixed from version.  Oops

Thanks!

Excellent!  Glad I could help.

[Haagenti]

Some fan-fiction:

By the uneven light of ten thousand burning AI wrecks littering the battlefield, a lone engineer can be seen. It wields a tiny paintbrush: in the battle that butchered the pride of the AI fleet the intolerable happened: some of the Haagenti turrets were scratched, even worse: one was lightly dented. A second engineer slowly hovers into view: some of the flower arrangements that decorate the Haagenti forcefields have gone askew.  
====

In other words: I think that in these fortress cases, the AI should lose some of its emergent intelligence, designate a very large set of ships, move all ships to the same point for 10 minutes or so, and then group move towards the enemy home station.

And the size of this group should double if the previous group was not successful.

EDIT: Oops, I see you already see the problem.
2nd EDIT: And the squish is gone. Thanks.

[etgfrogs]

There seems to be an issue somewhere that i crash after 1 minute of play, using 1.202G, 2 special forces commander AI both difficulty 7, map seed is 195800782 with 100 system, i had the tank as the first choice, what i suspect because its the special forces commander(lots and lots of ships flying between all the guard posts) that it conflicts with the recent siege breaking tactics change...i'll try a previous version and see if it works or not.
edit....nvm, 1.202E also crashes...i think this is a regular bug...
edit2....ok, found out the game causes far too much pathfinding at the start of 100 planet map with special forces commander and crashes.

[Fiskbit]

If you could post the UnhandledErrors.txt file that's in your AI War directory, it'd likely be a big help in fixing this. Thanks!

[x4000]

edit2....ok, found out the game causes far too much pathfinding at the start of 100 planet map with special forces commander and crashes.

I'd be really surprised if this is the issue, most likely it is some sort of internal bug unrelated to that.  A savegame and a copy of the unhandledexceptions.txt file are what I need to be able to diagnose this, though.  Or a map seed / path to duplicate, and that file.  Thanks!

[etgfrogs]

edit2....ok, found out the game causes far too much pathfinding at the start of 100 planet map with special forces commander and crashes.

I'd be really surprised if this is the issue, most likely it is some sort of internal bug unrelated to that.  A savegame and a copy of the unhandledexceptions.txt file are what I need to be able to diagnose this, though.  Or a map seed / path to duplicate, and that file.  Thanks!

2 special forces commander AI both difficulty 7, map seed is 195800782 with 100 system

well...it doesn't truely crash...but vista considers it crashed because it takes longer then 10 seconds for ALL starting ships to path to all the various stuff

[x4000]

edit2....ok, found out the game causes far too much pathfinding at the start of 100 planet map with special forces commander and crashes.

I'd be really surprised if this is the issue, most likely it is some sort of internal bug unrelated to that.  A savegame and a copy of the unhandledexceptions.txt file are what I need to be able to diagnose this, though.  Or a map seed / path to duplicate, and that file.  Thanks!

2 special forces commander AI both difficulty 7, map seed is 195800782 with 100 system

well...it doesn't truely crash...but vista considers it crashed because it takes longer then 10 seconds for ALL starting ships to path to all the various stuff

I have opened an issue for this, I am able to duplicate it:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1259.0.html

As you say, this is not a crash, but the game basically hangs because it is so busy for a few seconds there.  It is essentially issuing 12,000 commands at one, which is way too many.  I used to have a limiter on there but in a prior release I took that off... in general that was a wise move but here is the exception.  I'll have to put a throttle on that again, but in a bit better way than before.  Thanks for the report!

[tals]

Minor issue, on the galaxy map the text message history is being overlaid by the task bar - just needs moving up further now.

Tals

[x4000]

Minor issue, on the galaxy map the text message history is being overlaid by the task bar - just needs moving up further now.

Tals

Thanks, added to my list!

[x4000]

New version:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1272.msg8178.html#msg8178

[Volatar]

I want to know. Do these new siege breaking attacks by the AI consist of cross-planet attacks, or some other mechanism of attack?