Prerelease 3.026 (Improvements to formation movement, arc move, plane nerf)

[x4000]

The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.000 or greater of the game.  Just open the game and you can quickly download the prerelease through the updates tab.  If you don't yet have 3.000 or greater, you can download 3.000 here.  This prerelease version is compatible with any vendor's version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.

Note:  If you have bug reports related to this release, please log them in the bug reports subforum with one bug per topic.  It makes things infinitely easier for us.  Thanks!

Looking for a Patch That Can Be Manually-Installed?
Because of the time involved in creating multiple versions of each patch, we only create manually-installable patches for official versions of the game, not each beta prerelease.  But, if you're running version 3.022 of the game or higher, you can easily crete your own manually-installable beta patch!  If you don't yet have 3.022, but do have 3.000 or greater, you can download a simple zip containing the files of 3.022 here.  Simply unpack those on top of your existing files in your AI War folder, and voila -- you're on 3.022.

To create your own manual beta patch, you'll want to go here.  This folder contains all of the beta updates.  You just need whatever the most recent one is at the time (probably the same version number as this post).  Download that zip file, which if you try to open will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file.  Next download the updated Director.Xml file from that folder.  Finally create a new zip file on your computer, and put both the director and the fake-zip-file inside it.  Call your outer zip file something that starts with Beta and ends with an extension of .zip.  Beta.zip will work just fine, or you can name it after the specific version number if you want to hang onto it.  And that's it!  Now you have your very own manually-installable package of the AI War beta version of your choice, which you can install by simply selecting via your Updates window in the game.

What's new since 3.024:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-Many internal improvements to the formation movement mode, so that they now work through wormholes, have a border color when in that mode, and in general do a better job of retaining their formations.

-Tripled energy cost of all space planes.

-Doubled metal/crystal cost of space planes.

-Space plane cap multiplier changed from 2.5 to 1.75.

-Added "Sticky Formations" control node that makes move orders honor formation offsets if they exist.

-Stop order (End key) clears formation offsets.

-Added ;+right-click as basic "arc move" function: select ships, ;+right-click-and-hold the center of the desired circle, continue holding ; and right-mouse-button while moving the cursor to a point the desired radius away (it will show a line), then release to give the selected ships the order to position themselves in the designated circle.

-Added another tweak to the music playback code.

Updates in 3.026:

-Changed J+right-click to not clear formation offsets if they're already set (to clear use stop command).

[keith.lamothe]

How to use formation-move:
- arrange a group of your ships in the formation you desire
- with those ships selected, hold J and right click a place you want them to move to (doesn't have to be far)
- they are now in formation-mode and will maintain their relative positioning
- by default, issuing another move order will reset them to non-formation-mode (like FRD-mode or Group-mode)
- if you would prefer that move orders NOT reset ships to non-formation-mode, you can build a Sticky Formations Control Node (available from the start, global effect across all player ships in all systems).  Please note that you may be very surprised by what happens if you take small subselections of those groups and give them individual move orders (they will maintain the offset from the new destination), but there is a highlight outline around ships in formation-mode so you can probably figure out why it's doing that.
- if you are using the control node and would like to set some formation-mode ships to non-formation-mode, select them and issue a stop command (End key).

Hoe to use arc-move:
- select a group of ships
- hold ; and right click-and-hold the center of the desired circle
- while continuing to hold ; and right-mouse-button, drag the mouse cursor to a point the desired radius-distance from the center (it will show a red line)
- when happy with the center and radius, release the right-mouse-button
- your ships should move to form a circle
- once they are in position you may want to set formation mode so that they stay in those positions


Edit:
Example:
- build 50 fighters and 20 missile frigates
- select the frigates
- ;+right-click a point in space
- continuing to hold ; and right-mouse-button, move the mouse cursor a short distance and release
- select the fighters
- ;+right-click the same center as the frigates (doesn't have to be exact)
- continuing to hold ; and right-mouse-button, move the mouse cursor a medium-long distance and release
- wait for the ships to reach their destinations, you should now have a small ring of frigates with a much larger ring of fighters providing screen against bombers
- select the frigates and fighters
- J+right-click a nearby point in space
- the double-circle formation will move as a whole and maintain relative position
- build the "sticky formations" control node
- select the frigates and fighters again
- right-click anywhere in the system
- it should maintain formation-mode thanks to the control node (without it they would revert to normal mode and bunch up at the destination.

Another example use is an inversion of this (fighters forming inner ring) around a wormhole so both frigates and fighters are in weapons range of any emerging enemy ships but the frigates are defended both by screening fighters and a consistent distance (hopefully out of range of bombers that are being tractored and torn up by fighters).

[x4000]

Added to the wiki!  http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Formation_Movement

[Kjara]

Hmm, the arc stuff sound useful.

Any way/plans to add a way to do arc like things with turrets? (aka put an circle of mlrs turrets around my cs, and an circle of basics around that).  

[keith.lamothe]

-Many internal improvements to the formation movement mode, so that they now work through wormholes...

Just to clarify, they will not pop out the other side of the wormhole in formation (move-through-wormhole is a very different order than move-to-destination), but as soon as you give them a move order (just right click on the wormhole when they've all come through) they will re-assume the formation if you've got the sticky formations node built (if not you'll need to use J+right-click).

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, the arc stuff sound useful.

It seemed like it would be, particularly with the ability to maintain formations to some degree, so here it is.  We have some plans for making it more sophisticated, but wanted to get a basic version out for people to play with and give feedback.

Any way/plans to add a way to do arc like things with turrets? (aka put an circle of mlrs turrets around my cs, and an circle of basics around that).

Feedback like that   Yes, the idea occurred to me as I was writing the arc-move code that you'd want to do this with ship placement.  It's a different area of code but a lot of the basics are already worked out and it wouldn't be too hard.  The tricky part is how does the user specify how many turrets/whatever to place?  With arc-move it's pretty easy: however many ships are selected are moved.  With ship placement it's more difficult.  I've got some ideas that go with an "advanced arc-move" feature where basically you press ; or whatever to enter "arc mode" to set the center, the radius, the center of the arc, the number of degrees of arc, and the "depth" of the arc (and it can get even crazier than that, though honestly I think that's pushing it already); if we went that direction with the advanced version it wouldn't be too hard to interpret some keypresses in that mode as "increase number of ships to place" and "decrease...", etc.

Anyway, thoughts/feedback welcome as always

[x4000]

I've got some ideas that go with an "advanced arc-move" feature where basically you press ; or whatever to enter "arc mode" to set the center, the radius, the center of the arc, the number of degrees of arc, and the "depth" of the arc (and it can get even crazier than that, though honestly I think that's pushing it already); if we went that direction with the advanced version it wouldn't be too hard to interpret some keypresses in that mode as "increase number of ships to place" and "decrease...", etc.

I think an "arc-placement mode would be appropriate.  Once you are in ship placement mode, hitting ; toggles you into that, for instance.  Then right-clicking increases the count-to-build by 1, or by 5 if control is held.  Or by negative amounts if alt is also held, or something like that.  Then the real trick is also to have it show the outlines of the to-be-placed mines/turrets/whatever while in that same mode.  It's a nontrivial exercise, to be sure, but a pretty cool mode and something players have been asking for for a while.  If this is done, we'd probably also want to do some similar stuff for boxes and lines, as those have also been asked for.  Players like their shapes.

Possibly we could do this with less mysterious keystrokes, and make this more of a UI thing.  When in ship placement mode, ; takes you into "shapes mode."  Then there is a little menu that lets you choose a shape by clicking the relevant button, and which lets you add/remove the number of items to be built in a manner very similar to how adding/removing ships to a build queue works.  Then you click to make a center point and radius, both of which can be re-done if need be, with a final OK button click setting them to be actually built.

Something like that would be extensible without actually using up a ton of keyboard space, and would be more intuitive for players who wouldn't have to remember a bunch of complicated keypresses and mouse clicks like what I described in my first paragraph.

[Lyrae]

I'm almost getting tired of hearing myself say it, but Arcen has the best developer support in the industry.  Thank you.

[x4000]

Many thanks, Lyrae -- it's our pleasure.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks, Lyrae.  As Chris said, it is a pleasure.  I'm new to it, but it's fun

[keith.lamothe]

Then the real trick is also to have it show the outlines of the to-be-placed mines/turrets/whatever while in that same mode.  It's a nontrivial exercise, to be sure, but a pretty cool mode and something players have been asking for for a while.

Yes, I was planning to do previews for the moves too, it's already having to compute the discrete movement points so it's not difficult to have it render those points.  It will probably take a bit of juggling to keep it from hurting the render performance if it's recalculating a few thousand points on a circle (or set of concentric circles) every frame if the mouse cursor is moving, but I'm confident a good middle ground of update speed and render speed could be found

Players like their shapes.

Yep, I was anticipating requests for other geometries, and it should fit fine into the model of having a method that computes and populates a list of points so that the actual movement/placement code doesn't have to care how that list came to be.  Ironically (depending on how you look at it), the line case would already be taken care of by the filled-arc case; just have 0 degrees of arc (assuming that the edge is valid for placement, which currently it is), but it would be more complicated than necessary.

Anyway, glad to hear you think the "arc mode" idea has its place (no pun intended).  I guess "shape mode" is a better term for the general case.

[Ozymandiaz]

Seems to be some new interesting stuff here! Looking forward to test the formation and arc movements. If I am right this might help me kill off the evil el shuttles in one of my single player games.


Was there any changes made to the variable type in the construction of the more expencive buildings? Just wondering


I am somewhat worried by the changes to the advanced factory tho. Mecahnically I can understand it, but I think it do seem a bit off that new ones just spawn (It might just be me, but I have this thing about consistency like this . I-KP's idea seemed good tho, same mecahnically, but does not seem as off, tho needs more time to implement I guess) (I like the somewhat realistic flavour of things not just spawning, as I think AI War has been great on).

But I am not 100% sure I like that all players get a factory each, my expereince is based on discussions with my friends on who should get what factory where, and since we bascially need to capture one planet for one player to get the factory it leads to more strategic planning since sometimes we may decide takeing a new factory might just not be worth it (not often, but has happend). when all players need only capture one planet, I for one, would at least combine my defences with my friends and just use that one system mosty not really regarding the other advanced factory planets as much. However, it might prove to be vastly better for multiplayer games as you can somewhat up the difficulty or actually take another planet then just the factory ones, like a Golem world. It is interesting indeed, kind of seems like a big change, but might not be .

Now, this is just initial speculation from my point of view, as I have not tested it yet. I will however test it soon so I can try and give more proper feedback.


Other then that one thing I think it looks pretty nice.


And as for the discussion in the other thread about the AI and emergence, I agree with x4000. The awesome AI is bascially why I play AI War in the first place. I can never really figure out 100% what the AI will do and its pretty neat!

[HitmanN]

Wow, thanks for the arc movement! I just recently posted a topic about a similar feature I named 'scatter', and the arc movement is nearly identical, save for the fact that I was thinking of the ships still being spread out a bit more, like in blob, and not a tightly populated thin circle, mainly for additional AOE evasion. Perhaps there could eventually be a way to define how thick the circle is? Then it would be exactly what I had in mind.

Also, I'm sure it'll be cool to create defensive circles for wormholes with this, placing smaller circles of fighters and other cannon-fodder closer to the center, and longer range things like frigates in larger circles behind the fighters, etc. This should be fun.

[Shardz]

Yay! I'm really thrilled to see this update of amazing stuff! The planes got a bit of a nerf and I'm very happy about that as the AI loves sending swarms to fly through my defenses with ease - this should make the AI a bit more poor now. LOL

I love this new formation stuff and the arc feature is really fantastic; I'll have to try this later on!  I do agree with the Shapes Mode thing and would be really useful for building turret defenses around wormholes. I do this by default on just about every wormhole and would cut down on a lot of time. Really great work on this update, guys!

[Ozymandiaz]

One note on the arc movement:

" ; " is a very poor choise of a command button for non-english keyboards, as it has come to my attention when I tried to use it.

On my norwegian keyboard I must hold shift inn to use that button, and that messes up my commands in game.

As an alternative, how about: c+right click?