Prerelease 3.175 (Bugfixes, Neinzul Regeneration Chambers)

[Buttons840]

Wut!?!

This is only 4$?  Surprisingly low price.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, TZR was $10, and had over twice the content that's in this (though we're really trying to make the amount that is in CoN count for a lot), so I'd say it's pretty normal for us

[Burnstreet]

I tested the hybrid hives... scary. Very scary.

I preordered CoN the day it came out without having tested it and I already like it.

You guys rock.

[Diazo]

Add another for both the preorder (Yay!) and the hybrid hives (ow!).

Installed and launch a game and everything is going great, about to launch my attack to capture my 3rd world when my attack counter shoots up.

It's 4 hybrid hives and their associated fleet just warped into my homeworld.

Scramble everything I've got and I actually get one hive to run and another low, but it's not enough and my command station goes boom.

I then go and read the wiki to see what's going on and go 'oh'.

Anyways, I think the hive concept is good, but I think there needs to be more emphasis tracking them somehow, at least in the galaxy map.

I'm not asking for a wave warning for them as that kind of defeats the point of them being different from the AI, but maybe add their own counter to the galaxy map if you have a scout in the system? Or maybe the advanced warp sensors can see Hive ships in adjoining systems?

I just want something I can do to give me some warning, in the game I just played I got 4 ships with 2 million HP warp into my home system with no warning, I can't see anyway of defeating that short of going full turtle. (Due to my map layout it wouldn't be until I captured my 5th system that my homeworld had no hostile warp points and with 100+ turrets and tractors in my homesystem I would have been okay against anything else.)

Overall, a very nice addition to the game, but still needs some tweaking IMO.

D.

Edit: It would help if I read the whole wiki article it seems, you already have plans for something on the galaxy map.

[superking]

my 2cents:

I dont like how neinzul ships dont die after 1hp- on the attack away from regen chambers, you end up with a full shipcap of 1hp ships which is fairly useless.
I would suggest, rather than having them degrading at a steady rate then stopping at 1hp, why not have degrading get exponentially slower as their heath gets low (ie, less than 25%) and have them die when finally reaching 0hp? then they might stick around for a few minutes if not attacked- and have plenty of time to reach a regen chamber- but will eventually expire.

[keith.lamothe]

Edit: It would help if I read the whole wiki article it seems, you already have plans for something on the galaxy map.

Yea, I actually implemented it while offline, one layer for the Hybrids themselves, one layer for the Facility counts.  It will depend on your having scouting in the system, which I think is reasonable.  We'll see

[keith.lamothe]

Overall, a very nice addition to the game, but still needs some tweaking IMO.

Yes, definitely, there are several rebalancing changes in 3.176 for the Hybrids, to help reduce the sheer overwhelmingness of how hard they can hit, particularly early on.  What you were playing was the first attempt at balanced numbers, and if you happen to have been around for the first-balance-attempts for my previous new-things (Riot Control Starships, Heavy Beam Cannons, Flak Turrets), you probably already know that I'm always way off   But in each case thus far we've managed to find a good middle ground, or maybe it's just that people learn to stop complaining, dunno

The general idea is that the hybrids will be an optional extra opponent with far fewer resources than the main AI, but much more determined to eliminate the threat you represent.  As I continue the implementation the general trend is that they will get less brute-force-strong and more intelligent about how to hit you where it hurts.  But if they're allowed to build up their own infrastructure without interference from you they'll probably reach a point where they have plenty of the brute-force, too.  We'll see how it turns out, thanks to everyone who's helped test them thus far

[Epsilon Plus]

Is it possible to spread out the planets on the Concentric Rings type a bit more? At smaller planet numbers they're clustered pretty closely, making them a bit harder to read. I know I can rearrange them myself, but...

[keith.lamothe]

I could try to make it space out the rings more when using a small number of rings, yes.  I had just used a constant ring-gap distance based on the maximum number actually fitting on the map.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, that seems to work well, thanks for the suggestion

[Awod]

Anyone having Neinzul ships show up as red blocks?

http://img541.imageshack.us/f/redblocks.png

If I zoom in enough they seem fine though.

http://img707.imageshack.us/f/redblockszoomedin.png

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, I thought we fixed that, what version are you using?

[Diazo]

I'm seeing the red squares zoomed out and the light starship icon zoomed in for hives at the moment also, I'm running Ver 3.175.

As for the hives themselves, Heavy Beam Cannon turrets destroy them.

I started a game playing full turtle, 5 hives attacked, destroyed 4 and 1 escaped and I only lost a few ships. Admittedly I had 250-300 Mk I ships (Impulse Emitters my special) supporting the beam cannons, but the beam cannons are what did the most damage to the hives by far.

Going to continue here and see if I can handle the second wave of hives while expanding. At 55mins played, haven't even attacked my first system yet.

D.

edit: This is going to be... interesting. Scouting my two adjacent systems, one has 7 hives, the other 15.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm seeing the red squares zoomed out and the light starship icon zoomed in for hives at the moment also, I'm running Ver 3.175.

Ok, I think I know what happened, thanks.

I started a game playing full turtle, 5 hives attacked, destroyed 4 and 1 escaped and I only lost a few ships.

A challenger has appeared!

edit: This is going to be... interesting. Scouting my two adjacent systems, one has 7 hives, the other 15.

Time to figure a way to slap some engines on those Heavy Beam Cannons!

More seriously, if you're in a situation where they only have to cover 2 chokepoints to seal you in, it's going to get ugly, and it's going to get there quick.  We'll be tweaking the severity/rapidity of that down (hybrid spawn rate, etc), but in general that will be true.  On a snake map... let's just say you want to write a will before playing hybrids on snake.

[Diazo]

Ya.

I never even got an attack off.

The 3rd wave of Hybrids attacked at 1:10 game time and got my command station.

On diff seven, with Hybrids enabled on only one AI, first wave of 6 about 0:50, second wave of another 6 at 1:00 and the third wave of 5 more hybrids at 1:10. Note: none of the first wave survived to attack again, but the 3rd wave had some survivors of the 2nd wave in it.

This is me playing total turtle with 2 force fields up, so they destroyed all my turrets before my command station, this was not them rushing past my defences, they took my defences out. I had no resources left at all and I can't see what I would do different to make my defence more powerful either, short of going turrets only and getting no ships at all, but that would leave me no way to expand, ever.

My initial though is to drastically reduce the "Attacker" hybrids health in return for faster speed and a raiding mentality. IE: they dash in, destroy one or two critical structures, dash out. This would make them something that you have to chase down in adjacent systems as a priority but not make them the sledgehammer that they are at the moment. You'd have to make it so they attach to the "Defender" hybrid in that system or something so they just don't always retreat with their faster speed.

No comment on the "Defender" hybrids themselves, I haven't lasted long enough to fight them yet.

D.

edit: Or some sort of cluster penalty for the attacker type hybrids, or something based on AI progress so the attacker type is more dangerous the later in the game it is? But that's connecting it back to the core AI's again.

edit the second:

More seriously, if you're in a situation where they only have to cover 2 chokepoints to seal you in, it's going to get ugly, and it's going to get there quick.  We'll be tweaking the severity/rapidity of that down (hybrid spawn rate, etc), but in general that will be true.  On a snake map... let's just say you want to write a will before playing hybrids on snake.

In a real game, I would be expanding before they could choke me off, I just played turtle to see just how bad hybrids are in 3.175. On this specific map, it would have been 4 or 5 systems adjacent once I took my first couple.