Prerelease 3.028 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, munitions adjustments)

[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 3.027:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Fixed "Cloaked Enemey Ship" typo.

-Added shift+middle-mouse-click-and-move to simulate the moving the cursor to the current point on the minimap, clicking left-mouse, and moving around.

-Previously ships that were self-built that could unload passengers could not have their construction paused because the Unload button was being drawn on top of the pause button, fixed.

-Zenith mirrors are now immune to snipers.

-Bulletproof fighters now have the exact same stats as fighters except that they are bulletproof and (new) immune to insta-kill.

-Previously shots reflected by Zenith mirrors were damaging ships immune to their own damage types, fixed (the shots will no longer reflect).

-Since ships immune to their own damage types are now effectively immune to reflected shots, their autotargetting will now not be prejudiced towards saving mirrors for last (same with ships otherwise immune to reflected shots).

-Dyson Gatlings are now immune to shot reflection.

-The "I" (incoming waves) overlay for the galaxy map now shows a timer on each planet with an incoming wave. representing time-to-arrival for the earliest wave that will hit that planet.

-Dyson Gatlings now have infinite engine health to avoid a huge parking lot of them on AI planets with ion cannons killing the CPU with repeated failed pathfinding.

-All munitions boosting ships now have a cap on the number of ships they can simultaneously boost:
Light Starship: 10 (range still 2000)
Flagship: 20 (range still 2000)
Zenith Starship: 40 (range 1000 -> 2000)
Spire Starship: 80 (range still 2000)
Core Starship: 100 (range still 2000)
Munitions Booster I: 200 (range 600 -> 2000)
Munitions Booster II: 350 (range 800 -> 2000)
Munitions Booster III: 500 (range 1000 -> 2000)
Munitions Booster IV: 600 (range 1200 -> 3000)

-Zenith Viral Shredder replication is now more complex:
-- replication requires that the shredder have at least a certain health percent (20% for MkI)
-- replication results in the shredder and the new shredder having a certain percent of the old shredder's health (75% for MkI)
-- replication cost scales up with the number of that ship type on the planet in excess of the normal ship cap for that type.

-Zenith Viral Shredder base replication cost slightly (by 1/9) reduced.

-Anti-starship arachnids were spawning in response to minor human player starship presence, now the chance of the spawns is proportional to the intensity of the starship presence.

-Anti-starship arachnid attack power doubled.

-Missile frigates bonus against anti-starship arachnids (and other spider types) increased from 3x to 6x (for reference, their bonus against fighters is 10x).

-Large ships (radius >= 256) are now immune to translocation.

CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
--------------

-Changed arc move key combination from ;+right-click to shift+Q+right-click.

-Mobile Repair Stations *real* range changed from 500 -> 1000 (previously the wrong number had been changed).

-Mobile Repair Station simultaneous repair cap changed from 50 to 250 to make them better than marginally useful while other rebalancing is explored.

-Previously if a mobile unit was built by a space dock with a non-frd gather point set in a system with a auto-frd-mobile-military control node, the unit would frd-base on the space dock instead of the gather point, fixed.

-Changed middle-mouse click-and-drag pan to be less like Internet Explorer (now more like a pdf reader, etc).

-With Icon Grouping on it was possible to see that a cloaked enemy was present by mousing over the location (even though it didn't show anything), fixed.

-Previously if Icon Grouping was enabled and the player lost visibility on a planet the icons would remain displayed (but "stuck" to their screen coordinates), fixed to immediately disappear as with normal rendering.

-Electric Shuttles had been made immune to munitions boosting but can now be boosted once (to 2x).

-Previously if Icon Grouping was enabled and the "top" ship in a group was destroyed the entire group became invisible, fixed to now recalculate groups for each of the ships remaining in the group.

[Kjara]

I like the munitions boosting change as a step in the right direction, but how smart is it?  If I have say 42 resistance frigates that really benefit from boosting, will my light starship waste its 10 boosts on the 10 fighters in the back that might never fire a shot unless I micro?

Here's an alternate suggestion(that runs into the problem of precision I guess), but keeps the same spirit.

Rather than having it boost a max of 10 units, have it have a max of 10 boosting power, and a max boost of 1.  Aka if there are 10 units(or less) around it, have it boost each of them by 1, if there are 20 units in range, each unit gets a boost of .5, 100 units, boost of .1,etc.

So in the case where we have 5 light starships and 100 units, each unit will have 1.5x attack power(.1 boost from each starships).

[Buttons840]

-Since ships immune to their own damage types are now effectively immune to reflected shots, their autotargetting will now not be prejudiced towards saving mirrors for last (same with ships otherwise immune to reflected shots).

So they will or will not attack the mirrors?

-Dyson Gatlings now have infinite engine health to avoid a huge parking lot of them on AI planets with ion cannons killing the CPU with repeated failed pathfinding.

Doesn't explain the 200+ gatlings hanging out at an empty sector in my last game.  No ion cannons there, no enemies there, 200+ gatlings, having a party.

Oh, and thanks for yet another great update.

[HellishFiend]

-Dyson Gatlings now have infinite engine health to avoid a huge parking lot of them on AI planets with ion cannons killing the CPU with repeated failed pathfinding.

Doesn't explain the 200+ gatlings hanging out at an empty sector in my last game.  No ion cannons there, no enemies there, 200+ gatlings, having a party.

Oh, and thanks for yet another great update.

Gatlings do seem to occasionally get stuck sometimes. One time I had a dozen of them sitting at a wormhole when they could have been making themselves useful by pushing forward.

[MaxAstro]

-All munitions boosting ships now have a cap on the number of ships they can simultaneously boost:
Light Starship: 10 (range still 2000)
Flagship: 20 (range still 2000)
Zenith Starship: 40 (range 1000 -> 2000)
Spire Starship: 80 (range still 2000)
Core Starship: 100 (range still 2000)

Admittedly I haven't tried this in game yet, but that seems a little extreme.  Considering fleet sizes in this game, boosting 10 ships isn't even worth mentioning.  Also, this seems like it would tend to add micro - if your fleet of five light starships can only boost ten ships, you want them all boosting the same 10 ships generally.  Unless they automatically prefer to do that...

Also this seems like it makes munitions booster horribly overpowered - relatively speaking.  They are cheaper and with a much higher cap than starships - not to mention faster, I believe - but now they have the same range and a high enough cap that you can still easily x5 your entire fleet with them.  This actually seems backwards - starships should be the backbone of fleets and boost hundreds of ships, and munitions boosters should be the small support ships that boost a couple dozen at a time.

A freaking Spire Starship having half the max boost number of a tech I munitions booster is silly.  Attack boosting needed a nerf, but Starships did not, and this change heavily nerfs starships, to the point that attack boosting no longer even seems viable unless you are lucky enough to get munitions boosters (why would I slow my fleet down to 18 just to get a petty x2 on 50 ships?)

[HellishFiend]

-All munitions boosting ships now have a cap on the number of ships they can simultaneously boost:
Light Starship: 10 (range still 2000)
Flagship: 20 (range still 2000)
Zenith Starship: 40 (range 1000 -> 2000)
Spire Starship: 80 (range still 2000)
Core Starship: 100 (range still 2000)

Admittedly I haven't tried this in game yet, but that seems a little extreme.  Considering fleet sizes in this game, boosting 10 ships isn't even worth mentioning.  Also, this seems like it would tend to add micro - if your fleet of five light starships can only boost ten ships, you want them all boosting the same 10 ships generally.  Unless they automatically prefer to do that...

Also this seems like it makes munitions booster horribly overpowered - relatively speaking.  They are cheaper and with a much higher cap than starships - not to mention faster, I believe - but now they have the same range and a high enough cap that you can still easily x5 your entire fleet with them.  This actually seems backwards - starships should be the backbone of fleets and boost hundreds of ships, and munitions boosters should be the small support ships that boost a couple dozen at a time.

A freaking Spire Starship having half the max boost number of a tech I munitions booster is silly.  Attack boosting needed a nerf, but Starships did not, and this change heavily nerfs starships, to the point that attack boosting no longer even seems viable unless you are lucky enough to get munitions boosters (why would I slow my fleet down to 18 just to get a petty x2 on 50 ships?)

Chris has stated previously that attack boosting was never meant to be the primary function of starships. They were always meant to be primarily just individually powerful units. Nerfing their ability to boost the attack of other ships simply brings them more in line with how he intended them to be.

[Fiskbit]

Personally, I'm really in favor of the munitions mechanic where ships can only be boosted once to 2x, or can only be boosted once where the booster supplies the boost amount (see this thread: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3341.0.html), but with smaller boost values because boosting supplies a HUGE gain for your fleet. 5x boosting seems crazy-overpowered to me. Firepower-wise, you've essentially quintupled your fleet. That's a big boost.

This new implementation worries me because it's likely to not boost the ship in range with the highest DPS. Also, considering the number of munitions boosters you can have and that they're usually randomly awarded, I think that giving them the ability to boost that many ships is over-powered. Only people with munitions boosters can get that, and it's a huge gain (think about how much more power that supplies. We've considered other things overpowered for way less).

The one I'd go with is the first method I posted, where munitions boosters are better than starships for boosting because of how many you have and their lower price, and perhaps because of their boost range. I worry a lot about how overpowered boosting up to 5x is.

[TheWordWillSetYouFree]

How about this:

1 light starship => 2x shields, 2x munitions     (range 1000)
2 light starships => 2x shields, 2x munitions    (range 1000)

and so forth for light starships.

Then flagship => 2x shields, 3x munitions      (range 2000)
2 flagships => 2x shields, 3x munitions          (range 2000)

so forth..........


Or maybe light starships have no shield boosting and that comes into play once you unlock the flagship?
Or no shield boosting at all if that would be OP.

This would kind of system would give a nice fleet boosting option to people that actually invested in the fleet starship line.

[jordot42]

-All munitions boosting ships now have a cap on the number of ships they can simultaneously boost:
Light Starship: 10 (range still 2000)
Flagship: 20 (range still 2000)
Zenith Starship: 40 (range 1000 -> 2000)
Spire Starship: 80 (range still 2000)
Core Starship: 100 (range still 2000)

Admittedly I haven't tried this in game yet, but that seems a little extreme.  Considering fleet sizes in this game, boosting 10 ships isn't even worth mentioning.  Also, this seems like it would tend to add micro - if your fleet of five light starships can only boost ten ships, you want them all boosting the same 10 ships generally.  Unless they automatically prefer to do that...

Also this seems like it makes munitions booster horribly overpowered - relatively speaking.  They are cheaper and with a much higher cap than starships - not to mention faster, I believe - but now they have the same range and a high enough cap that you can still easily x5 your entire fleet with them.  This actually seems backwards - starships should be the backbone of fleets and boost hundreds of ships, and munitions boosters should be the small support ships that boost a couple dozen at a time.

A freaking Spire Starship having half the max boost number of a tech I munitions booster is silly.  Attack boosting needed a nerf, but Starships did not, and this change heavily nerfs starships, to the point that attack boosting no longer even seems viable unless you are lucky enough to get munitions boosters (why would I slow my fleet down to 18 just to get a petty x2 on 50 ships?)

     I agree with this.  In my present game, I'm running around with a 1400 ship fleet with 5 light starships (the max) at the moment.  Having a grand total of 3.5% of my fleet boosted is laughable (50 out of 1400 ships). 
     Maybe X-4000 wants us to max out starship usage to get the most out of boosting.  If so, then we can boost a maximum of 550 ships (assuming 2 core ship limit) which would be 39% of my 1400 ship fleet and assuming that each starship boosts a different eligible ship (no overlapping boosts).
     Since we're throwing ideas around, how about starships improving chance-to-hit instead of improving damage if the shot hits.  The starships enhance their boosted ships' targeting computers to degrade the effectiveness of the enemy's shielding (using some technical jargon) . 
     As an example, consider the following boosting chart:

                          # of the starship type

1        2        3        4        5 starship type: light                    +5%,  7%,     11%    17%    25% flag                     10%,  20%,    35% zen                     20%,  50% spire                   40%,  100% core                    80%, 190%      So if I have 3 light, 2 flag, and 2 zenith ships boosting 1 ship, the ship would have a 11% + 20% + 50% = +81% chance-to-hit.  Now if the boosted ship originally had a 20% chance-to-hit, with the boost it has either a gauranteed hit (if you add 20% and 81%) or a 36% hit chance (if you multiply 20% by 181%).  Another:  you have only 1 spire boosting a ship.  That ship will only receive a 40% bonus.  One more:  A lucky ship is boosted by everything.  That ship gets a total of 400% bonus to hit!  Gauranteed hit whether you add or multiply!      One good thing about multiplying is that if the boosted ship has a base 0% chance to hit, even with boosts it still won't hit the target, so ships will still have to close with their target, same as is done presently.      One thing the above table does is promote a greater use of all starship types since the more starships you use, the better bonuses you get.

[HitmanN]

I don't like the boosting changes to starships either, if they're what I understand them to be now. If there's a limit as to how many ships can be boosted, then who decides what ships get the boost? The starships themselves? So the starships now effectively decide the strategy of where to apply extra force, for you?

I don't like having huge gaps in my fleet just to make sure the starships don't decide to boost stuff I don't want them to boost, etc. It does reduce blobbing, but not because it'd be a tactic I want to apply, but because it's necessary to prevent me from being able to make my own decisions.

I'm in favor of simply limiting the total boost to 2x or 3x, depending on starship, but still allow everything to be boosted in a short range. Starship boosting has been overpowered, true, but limiting the number of ships boosted is not the way to go, IMO.

[orzelek]

In short - with this patch you made interplanetary munitions booster most powerful structure around maybe next to raid engine.

[I-KP]

Personally, I'm really in favor of the munitions mechanic where ships can only be boosted once to 2x, or can only be boosted once where the booster supplies the boost amount (see this thread: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3341.0.html), but with smaller boost values because boosting supplies a HUGE gain for your fleet. 5x boosting seems crazy-overpowered to me. Firepower-wise, you've essentially quintupled your fleet. That's a big boost.

^ This.

Don't get me wrong, the move to pull Starships back from the position of being the primary source of munitions boosting is a step in the right direction.  Limiting boost degree by technology level, i.e., pretty much as the above linked (and sub-linked) topics discuss, does seem to gel well.  (With this approach x5 boosting will only be seen with the very best Starships and top grade Munitions Boosting, which makes sense considering these same bonuses will be most likely applied to near top grade Fleet ships by that point anyway.)

Instances of x5 boosting will be much rarer with the current nerf, granted, and I applaud the approach of giving the munitions boosting love back to the Munitions Boosters themselves.  It helps make them worth using.

[orzelek]

Currently it seems that there is a fixed priority of munition boosting.

For example:

With 5 light starships you will get 10 5x boosted fighters if the are in area of effect of all light's.

Is that a simple coincidence or planned action?

[Fiskbit]

I suspect that's unintended. I'd guess the game is just looking through ships based on ID or somesuch, which would find certain IDs consistently before others. Other ways would likely be less efficient.

[x4000]

Keith -- I agree that the munitions caps are not a good idea in practice because they introduce more randomness. Rather, lower the number of ships that can provide more boosting, etc, along the lines of fiskbits suggestion will probably be better.