Prerelease 3.177 (Knowledge Changes, Civilians, 3 Home Planet Outposts)

[x4000]

To some extent, it may actually make things easier depending on what the AI is doing.  You can still turtle up on the home planet, but now there are three areas at which the AI might have a high priority of striking, rather than just one.  That is both bad and good: bad in that you can't just blob all your defenses at one location; but good in that if the AI is distracted with those other new buildings that are around (and the new force fields take time, etc), then you have a higher likelihood of being able to survive a surprise attack, or an attack that is otherwise stronger than you could normally defend against.

The goal is definitely not to just make the start of the game harder, per se, so we'll see how this evolves.  Thanks for the thoughts!


Regarding the new outposts, they aren't optional or expansion-only.  Partly these represent a coming major shift in planet construction for all planets, but we just started with the home planets first.  Should make things more interesting, and it should avoid some of the stalemate situations that crop up, that cause a lot of players to just give up on some of the games.  Not that stalemates won't be possible, and siege-breaking has always been a major focus for the game, but what I'd really like to get rid of is the occasional grindy feeling that players can get into during a really long siege.  A lot of that comes down to making sure that ships aren't quite so concentrated always on both sides, in terms of both the human players and the AI players.

Feedback is welcome on that, but there is an important reason it won't be optional: the entire game is being rebalanced around these new concepts, so if you take away the multi-vulnerability-spots for the human players, then it will be just incredibly too easy.  Rest assured that this isn't going to just morph into an entirely unfamiliar game or anything, but it comes down to making the battlefields a lot more robust and interesting, hopefully -- that was a big focus of mine pre-1.0, but it hasn't been something that has come up very much since then, and my feeling is that it's long overdue!

[Sizzle]

So,

With the extra command station types (econonomic / military / logistic / other-new-stations-to-be-added-later) this represents de-facto a net reduction in income if players take advantage of them.  Are you feeling that the income levels players are getting now are too inflated?   Is the intent that players would only use a non-economic station under certain (read: very uncommon) circumstances?

In order to make use of the logistic stations for example to create a "highway" for reinforcements to travel from a production facility to the front lines, you're potentially giving up say 3-5 system's (or more) worth of metal / crystal.   To me this would only be viable near the end game, and even then it might be questionable unless you're getting metal / crystal much faster than you can spend it -- even then the trade off between buying mercenaries or using that income to get reinforcements to the 'front' faster seems like it could go one way or the other, and isn't one I can 'theorycraft' in my head at this time

Especially as you provide more and more stations, we're making more and more decisions as to whether losing the economic benefit of a system is worth 'functionality x' -- if you're going to encourage experimentation with the new systems, either you're comfortable with people losing the income (I'm not sure all players would be), or there will have to be some way of maintaining the income at a higher level when we explore these options.

I think this has the potential to be like the problem with the Golems,  the barrier to entry -  if only in players minds - might be too high to really play with these.

Thoughts?

[keith.lamothe]

Well, I have seen players mention/complain that they reach a point with mkII/III stations (now "economic" stations) where they couldn't realistically use the amount of resources they had coming in, and in those cases the military/logistic stations would be worth investigating.

But I imagine it will take a bit of playing for folks to figure out the best time to use them.

[Ozymandiaz]

I got an application exception and the game quit on me:

Code: [Select]

11.08.2010 17:42:30 (3.1.7.7)
-----------------------------------Application_ThreadException-----------------------------------System.NullReferenceException: Objektreferanse er ikke satt til en objektforekomst.
   ved AIWar.AutoExploration.CheckForNewAutoExplorationCommandsSimOnly(ForegroundObject ship) i C:\vcprojs\AIWar\Framework\AutoExploration.cs:linje 98
   ved AIWar.Game.RunNextCycle(Boolean DoRendering, Boolean DoScrollingAndInput) i C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\GameLoop.cs:linje 1565
   ved AIWar.Game.gameLoop() i C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\GameLoop.cs:linje 301
   ved AIWar.Game.GameForm_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) i C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\Startup.cs:linje 286
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl()
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   ved System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


[keith.lamothe]

Yes, that's from a bug I accidentally introduced into the auto-gather-knowledge code, it's already fixed for 3.178.  If you can load the game and stop any auto-gathering science ships before it crashes, that would get around it for now.

[Ozymandiaz]

Yes, that's from a bug I accidentally introduced into the auto-gather-knowledge code, it's already fixed for 3.178.  If you can load the game and stop any auto-gathering science ships before it crashes, that would get around it for now.

Cool

It was very early in the game, so no loss really, but I might have an auto save of it

[Vinraith]

I like basically everything here, and particularly like the changes to the home system. "Deblobbing" and forcing the player to do more than simply turtle up in the center of the system appeals to me, as a turtle. I like being forced out of my bad habits. It also makes narrative sense that there would be a significant civilian presence in the home system that would need defending, and lends a little extra narrative weight to fights over that system (and a little extra panic at the prospect of further AIP increases!)

[x4000]

I like basically everything here, and particularly like the changes to the home system. "Deblobbing" and forcing the player to do more than simply turtle up in the center of the system appeals to me, as a turtle. I like being forced out of my bad habits. It also makes narrative sense that there would be a significant civilian presence in the home system that would need defending, and lends a little extra narrative weight to fights over that system (and a little extra panic at the prospect of further AIP increases!)

That basically sums up my own personal feelings and motivations: I'm a turtle, too, and always have to force myself out of my own bad habits.

[keith.lamothe]

Heh, speaking of turtling... several years ago when my friends and I were playing co-op Empire Earth quite frequently, we basically wanted to play a two-phase game:
1) Sim City, until built up.
2) Destroy the computer players.

Obviously the computer players weren't content to let us do the first phase, so we would build a massive wall covering our entire side of the map.  And then we would build another wall behind it.  Typically we had at least three layers.  And then we had trebuchets.  Lots of trebuchets.  Basically the idea was that if a computer unit would dare disturb our city building, we would just drop a rock on it.

[x4000]

That's exactly how my group played EE, heh.

We had incredibly intricate wall mazes and such that sometimes the AI would go through, and sometimes it would just try to smash right past.  We had a lot of fun with that.

[keith.lamothe]

We found that the computer would initially attack the wall and squeeze through little holes, but as it entered the eras of greater firepower it would bring huuuuuuge groups of siege and demolish wide swaths of wall.  One time it almost breached a 4-layer setup and our army only just made it in time to stop them.

Sadly for the AI, it wasn't long after that we developed the Intercontinental Ballistic Trebuchet, and the AI tended to lose more lopsidedly after that

[x4000]

Yeah, we had similar troubles.  Playing "team islands" was one way around that, with light towers near the shore where the AI had to land its transports.  Since the seige weapons were really weak to the light towers, that meant they got killed right on disembarkment.  Then the other guys would go running and mostly go into the maze.  Some would stop to attack the wall, but swordsmen or whatever hacking at a wall does very little.  Meanwhile, our own stuff would be blasting away at them, and our villagers would be repairing. 

We usually managed to avoid losing more than a row or two out of 4+ rows with that.  The bigger problem was nuclear bombers when those would start coming around.  But in EE, the AI would always take the same path in, so that would get very predictable and we'd just cluster our towers.  Sometimes 2-3 bombers would come at once and they'd get a shot off, which would be annoying and something we'd have to rebuild, but it wasn't too bad.  We had one EE game on team islands that was a stalemate lasting 12 hours, which we eventually managed to turn into a win.  Another one with my group lasted 16 hours, but I wasn't part of that one.

That sort of gameplay experience was such a big influence on AI War's design in general.

[Rustayne]

Well, I have seen players mention/complain that they reach a point with mkII/III stations (now "economic" stations) where they couldn't realistically use the amount of resources they had coming in, and in those cases the military/logistic stations would be worth investigating.

But I imagine it will take a bit of playing for folks to figure out the best time to use them.

/raises hand.  The games I tend to play, the resources get silly high.  My idea for the new station types will be to use a military one at our bottleneck/holding area, use the speed ones to link up the IV factories and any fab's to said bottleneck/holding area, and the rest be econ.  I really like that we now have this ability.  I think overall, even those who play very tight AI Progress games will find some use for them.

[snrub_guy]

Well I played a bit last night, and I have to say, I love the new homeworld set up. It just feels more like a homeworld. All the different constructors, residential areas etc. Also the initial boost to the economy is very nice, as it means I can actually use the starship constructor AND the dock together. Maybe even an engie. It feels like the production powerhouse a homeworld (in my opinion) should be.

Only met one hybrid hive so far on invading an AI world, and he got away awfully fast, but didn't do much damage to me, so I wasn't bothered. I'll see what happens when I meet more.

On the neizul ships- which don't seem to be getting a lot of talk- I'm playing with the youngling commandos as my special, and they have gone up into my group of favorites already. Your tooltip wasn't lying about them vs. starships and turrets. I decided to test your description so went against a starfleet commander a.i. Popping a command centre, I can set up a defence around the wormhole for the influx of revenge seeking troops, and when starships appear, I can crank out a whole ship cap of commandos in about a minute. They tear through starships like tissue paper! Then they go in and clear the ai planet of turrets and guard posts. The only thing I need to do after that is send in someone to get the spec. forces GP. And they are soooo fast. On the other hand, I don't think they are OP, they get slaughtered by most other things, and can's damage command centres worth jack.

Good job!

[triggerman602]

The deblobing is a step in the right direction but i'm not sure it will help me. I tend to cap out spider turrets on my homeworld which effectively covers the entire system from attacks of all sizes.