Prerelease 3.087 (Bugfixs and balance tweaks)

[x4000]

The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.060 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 3.060 or greater, you can download 3.060 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 you can easily create your own manually-installable beta patch!  Please note that current betas can only be successfully applied to version 3.060 of the game or later (if you later wish to revert to the official version for any reason, you can download the full raw files from the above link to do so).

To create your own manual beta patch, simply download these two files:
1. Current Beta Director Xml File.
2. Current Beta Zip File.

If you try to open that zip file, it will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file.  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.  Please note that "Beta" in the filename is case-sensitive.

What's new since 3.086:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.060 are attached at the bottom)

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-Dyson gatlings now cannot be repaired, to prevent the auto-attrition from clogging up all allied MRS's in the system.

-Fixed some line wrapping issues with riot control starship modules.

CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
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-in previous version disabling "Show Unexplored Planets" was not preventing planet names from showing on the galaxy map in some cases, fixed to only show names of explored planets when that option is disabled.

-fixed null pointer exception in effective build point computation in previous versions.

-fixed error in Transport tooltip (now carries 200, tooltip said 100).

-in previous version hovering over a planet on the galaxy map would draw an extraneous line directly connecting the current planet and hover planet, regardless of wormhole connections, fixed to not do this.

[Minty]

Fantastic stuff. I was going to throw something into the bug reporting forum regarding the extraneos line and MRS-clogging, but no need now. 

Keep up the good work, fellers!

[keith.lamothe]

I wanted there to be more in this one, just had time problems last few days, but I'm glad you like the fixes

Please do check on the MRS-clogging thing, I might have been overly optimistic about the tugs/MRS realizing that they shouldn't bother with a non-repairable gatling.

[eRe4s3r]

Ah i was just coming back from my hiatus and what do i have (to) see! The balance is completely different and theres so many new features ~.~  

(was in hospital with spine issue and am on reduced pc times for now...)

Silly question = Whats this about AI "Avenger" Plots? What do they do?

[keith.lamothe]

I was wondering where you were   Sorry to hear about the spine issues, I hope everything mends up well.

The Avenger is basically a large mobile space station that spawns on the death of the AI's core command station (if the plot is enabled) and makes a beeline for your homeworld while firing massive beam cannons to vaporize anything you throw at it.  I think you two will get along

[vonduus]

Since introducing the heavy turrets I have had a really good time killing enemies. In one experimental setup I had all twelve mkIs on the same planet, zap zap zap, poor ai!

Unfortunately the ai seems to have got the same idea. In the game I am playing right now it has taken me 9 hours to conquer three planets and nerf four others, one of those four I didn't even nerf completely, I had to leave the train station intact, it was simply too costly to continue due to the heavies. I admit that I am a slow player, but not that slow. The problem is that those heavies in the wrong hands are no less than a wunderwaffe.

My complaint is that the ai is overdoing the heavy turrets. I am playing on seed 980468750, grid map. On a few nearby planets there are no heavies, on most others there are two, three, four or five. Worst of all, the ai is concentrating its heavies in pairs, on one occasion I have seen three clustered together, and another one within range. So you cannot really take them out one by one. The result is that my fleet is destroyed every now and then. In the beginning I made a lot of mistakes, getting caught in crossfire and such, but now I make sure that I know the location of every single turret in advance. But still I loose most of my fleet. I leave the Light Starships outside, they get killed right away, two double-zaps and they are gone. Repair tugs are useless in this kind of fight, in one instance I lost 25 tugs in under two minutes when I tried to rush a turret ball with two heavies. They rushed to the rescue, just to get zapped.

At first I rushed the turrets with my combined fleet, as usual, but that was way too costly in casualties: After clearing a guard post or two I had to leave with the remains of my fleet (typically my Dreadnoughts and less than 100 assorted ships, sometimes only my Dreadnoughts), then rebuild, then go back in and repeat. But I don't have the resources for this kind of warfare, owning only three planets.

So I thought out another tactic: I smash my way in with my fleet as usual, clear some working space, and then order the Dreadnoughts to take out the heavy turrets one by one, while the main fleet makes sure that the enemy doesn't take out the Dreadnoughts. In this way I can clear a planet almost without taking casualties. But this tactic is slooooooow. And it only works if I bring plenty of cleanup drones and/or at the same time manages to kill all his engineers and rr's.  Nothing is more frustrating than spending half your fleet on taking out a single heavy turret, just to see it immediately being rebuilt because your cleanup drones have all been killed.

It may be that this particular seed is especially troublesome, but I doubt it. On most maps there are a few no-mark planets near your homeworld, and then you have to face the mkIIIs. Before the heavy turrets it was a challenge to take out a mkIII planet with a mkI fleet reinforced with a few mkII ship types. Now it is almost impossible, unless you use the slow stand-off tactic. Or cheat. Or use another tactic that I don't know of.

So please make the ai NOT use so many heavies. For a few hours I found them challenging, now they are only frustrating.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, for next prerelease I'm planning to cap them to 2 MkIIs for a III-planet, 2 MkIIIs for a IV planet, and 3 MkIIIs for a Core/Home planet.  Still need to make the mechanic for that to happen, though.

[vonduus]

Ah, this is great news, thanks. What at first seemed to me to be just an incremental expansion of the turret line actually was a qualitatively new wonder weapon, kudos for that.

Please note that the problem is not the number of heavy turrets taken in isolation, rather it is the way the ai groups them together. Three heavy turrets placed far apart is only a minor nuisance. Three heavies in the same ball is a major obstacle.

In my misery I thought of inventing a turret ball buster, like the German wwii Goliath: A slow moving armoured demolition charge with a special bonus against heavy turrets. With three mkIIIs on a Core planet such a device might come in useful anyway.

[keith.lamothe]

Alternately I could try to add a type of rule saying "AI does not place with x range units of another of the same type" but then you run into problems of what it should do if it can't find any legal positions among reinforceable locations in a planet.. probably just downgrade to a laser turret in this case, as said planet would certainly not be hurting for defenses in such a case.

[vonduus]

Alternately I could try to add a type of rule saying "AI does not place with x range units of another of the same type" but then you run into problems of what it should do if it can't find any legal positions among reinforceable locations in a planet.. probably just downgrade to a laser turret in this case, as said planet would certainly not be hurting for defenses in such a case.

Something like this rule would do it I guess.

Is it too much work to make several combined rules? Like the one you mention for perhaps 90% of the planets, to prevent that there are heavy turret balls everywhere. But then allow the ai to make a heavy ball on the remaining planets? In this way you get the best of two worlds, so to speak: The main rule hinders the ai from spoiling the game, and the exception rule provides an extra challenge for the player.

It is not that I cannot make up my mind, rather I hate having to ask the devs to make things easier for me. I definitely do not want to have to take out a cluster of heavies on every single planet so equipped, but I wouldn't mind a few "impossible" planets here and there. We already got such planets, after all, like the one with the Dyson Sphere. And as has been proved, not even the Dyson Sphere is impossible to kill for a dedicated player (Lancefighter) who puts all his skills into the project. I for my part wouldn't mind having to waste my fleet on a heavy turret ball (or spend a couple of hours waiting for the Dreadnoughts to finish them off) if I knew that this was the exception - my complaint was that it seemed to be the rule.

But if this is too cumbersome, I would be happy with your suggestion: "AI does not place with x range units of another of the same type"

[RCIX]

Ah i was just coming back from my hiatus and what do i have (to) see! The balance is completely different and theres so many new features ~.~  

(was in hospital with spine issue and am on reduced pc times for now...)

Silly question = Whats this about AI "Avenger" Plots? What do they do?

Hey he's back! glad to see you! sorry to hear about your spine, hope it feels better soon...

[Doddler]

So after trying the avenger scenario, I've decided its 100% unbeatable under normal circumstances!  That thing is just brutal.

[keith.lamothe]

What did you try?  You're probably right about it being unbeatable, but I thought it could be made less utterly lethal by using swarms of immune-to-forcefield units to focus-fire the heavy beam cannon IV modules themselves (and then the IIis, and then the shotguns).  Or did it just take too much firepower to do that?  Or did you not have any significant number of immune-to-forcefield units?

Once it's down to its main gun (which is just a superfortress cannon, essentially), it could be blocked from its next wormhole by a web of forcefield generators backed up by repairing engineers while you wore it down with some heavy beam cannons and swarms of bombers and maybe some golems.  Of course, whatever system you actually stop it in is a lost cause due to its death-nuke.

... and can the avenger forcefields be EMP'd?  I forget.

Of course, this is pretty brutal to be throwing so much resources and attention while the AI is still sending waves and stuff at you elsewhere.

By the way, some folks might be interested in playing the actual avenger scenario in "normal" play if you have a save from not long before destroying the AI home station.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear its bashing players

[akronia]

How would I enable the scenario for an old savegame? Is there a string I could copy into the save?

[keith.lamothe]

Actually I added a couple of chat commands for the purpose:

(just copy-pasting the release note from earlier)
-added two commands for enabling the new AI plot in existing games, "cmd:add plot ai1 avenger" for ai player 1, and "cmd:add plot ai2 avenger"  for ai player 2.  These are not cheats and will work on cheats-not-enabled games; the chat message will say "CHEAT" but it doesn't actually flag your game as a cheat game.  Note that the command will not appear to do anything, the plot doesn't trigger until the respective ai core command station is destroyed.  If the core command station has already been destroyed, the plot cannot be triggered for that ai player.