Prerelease 3.181 (New CoN features, AI Ship Counts Down, 45 New Guard Posts)

[keith.lamothe]

Carlos, do you have a save from before?  If you can post it (or get it to {my username} at gmail) I may be able to be of some assistance.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, I think Chris's intent was that the overflow would largely go into the new barracks structures rather than mass-CPA-PWN the humans, but it's possible that I either misunderstood him or there's some bug inhibiting the intended behavior.

[carlosjuero]

I had read it as the overflow going into the Barracks as well Keith, which was why the er.. 'AI' Slap that was given sorta took me by surprise.

Here is the save game I am talking about - I last played/saved in 3.179 [never updated to .180] yesterday. You should see a very large and ongoing Threat spike right off, followed by a wave warning [nothing spectacular ~150 ships] and then a gradual increase of AI attacks on all of the border systems [one by one - all attacks containing MK IV ships, some with Core]. You may also notice the performance hit I was talking about during threat increase.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the save, we should be able to figure out what's going on and make sure you don't have to abandon those hours of work

[zebramatt]

Also, 24 hours and only 9 planets taken!? My word, that's discipline!

[carlosjuero]

>.>
Yes.. discipline...
<.<
I am not a OCD Turtle by any means O.O

Hehe - I am a bit too slow for this game [I blame age and the years not being too kind on my brain ], I make sure my position is secure before moving on - in the end I make the game harder for me than it needs to be, but it certainly feels like few against the many as I go on .

Also, 24 hours and only 9 planets taken!? My word, that's discipline!

[x4000]

B: make them look like less floating twisted junks of metal and more guard-post-y?

I *really* like the visual style of the guard posts.

Me too. No plans to change that. When it comes to gem not having white borders, I figure that makes them easier to identify or ignore; so for now that's what I'm using.

[x4000]

Just one question btw...you said that posts where changed and used in stead of the old ones. Does that mean that the wormhole guardposts are GONE? As in...not used anymore at all / in game? Also, the new guard posts fill the same function of acting as reinforcement positions, right? So blowing them up hampers reinforcements?

Wormhole guard posts are unaffected except that their graphic has changed, sorry, I should have noted that. But yes to he other part, that guard posts still cause reductions in ship cap on the planet they are on, same as always.

[x4000]

A side affect, by the way, of the crazy threat changing is that every jump in threat stalls the game [as in it hiccups and becomes unresponsive for a few seconds].

Also, a planet that had 1 AI Raid Starship and 1 AI Dreadnought before the update now has ~3 Raid Starships and 2 Dreadnoughts.

Loaded it up to see how the AI threat would climb - at 4,050 and still rising

Edit: Another side effect - MK IV ships have been released into attacks on my systems now. Many of them are appearing at wormholes of systems I have yet to aggravate.

The hiccups of unresponsiveness are actually the barracks getting filled. That's a temporary artifact of upgrading an older savegame with a lot of ships that need to be put into barracks, and it leads to better performance after the fact. You shouldn't see more than about 3k added threat from the new patch in most games, and less in many. We definitely try not to break older savegames, and technically this doesn't, but it can make for a CPA that you might not be prepared to survive. Sorry about that!

[x4000]

I lasted 10 minutes. 25 hours of game play gone in 10 minutes.

The game released Core ships along with MK IV ships - my defenses didn't stand a chance and the AI just mowed through system after system until it finally reached my home system. No matter how many I killed the threat level combined with attacks  underway would stay over 4,000. I could hold off waves huge waves, but this was just too much (and too high MK level) for me to handle. It didn't help that the AI went right after my power generators and put me at negative energy - making all of my protection force fields die.

I am a bit perturbed that I can no longer see that game to a conclusion based on my decisions in it - the radical changes to the game completely broke it [the save, not the game itself - not attacking y'all X, just being factual]. *sigh* guess I just have to try and start a new game and see if I can make it as epic in scope, though I have a feeling that the game changes have already outpaced my meager skills.

By the way, if it bugs you you can just keep two copies of the game on your computer -- one for betas, one for the latest official or a further-back beta. A lot of people do that. Again, we try not to make changes that would cause this sort of breakage often, but sometimes it is needed.often with a CPA like that, you can use lighting warheads or nukes to destroy them.

If you just want to counteract the CPA, you could also temporally cheat and spawn a bunch of core starships of your own, then resume playing. If cheats are not on, I cqn show you how to turn them on or if you post a save we can turn them on for you.

My plot being that there are a multitude of ways of playing your savegame from here on if you'd like, even if the start isn't survivable. Most savegames would not be affected this severely, but even those that are are salvageable in some fashion. Hope that helps!

[x4000]

Speaking of, I will write more in a bit but I bet I could prevent the threat spikes in 3.182. I knew that his would happen with about 3k ships, but that is just too many. And the higher-mark border aggression is a problem in general, potentially.

[mlaskus]

I like this patch, this is the first time since installing the beta that I didn't get immediately chewed up by some cool new enemies. A doomed defence against Hybrids or swarms of younglings has it charms but I'm glad I can survive until after the second hour.

I started a new game about half an hour ago, with a pretty unique starting position as my home planet has only one wormhole which leads to a 10 wormhole hub and I got stuck. That hub is a mark 4 planet with mark 2 Fortress, mark 3 Ion and a mark 4 Ion.
Aren't the higher mark Ions supposed to be further away from the player's home planets? I'm playing two diff 10 AIs, but still, it is pretty insane(but fun!).
http://imgur.com/fmRoF.jpg

Oh, I also bring some good news! Rock Paper Shotgun is going to cover CoN some time soon.

[carlosjuero]

Thanks for the posts X - please don't take my replies to this thread wrong, I am not bashing on y'all for the updates; I just was kinda bummed to see something I had been playing so long end so quickly and so violently :/.

Lightning warheads would work... if I had the power & resources to keep up a steady stream of them to counteract such huge attacks with high MK ships [at one point 2500 MK III, IV, and C ships were streaming through one of my core defense hubs... well, it was a defense hub - but it got neutered by the AI onslaught pretty quick {which was sad as it had held out against everything the AI had thrown at it to date, including multiple waves and CPA incursions}]. I don't cheat in games generally, even for purposes like this (and especially not in games I like so much .

I am not surprised that, once again, my play style has caused unforseen consequences with game updates (I think 3.179 also caused some issues for me because of how I play); It is just hard, as y'all might imagine, to see so much time just go *poof* because my playstyle is incompatible with the game updates [on saved games at least].

I am sure I could figure a way to survive long enough to out-wait the threat & CPA.. though it would take the loss of every non home system I think - I just really don't like the thought of the frustration it will bring though - it took me 25 hours to take 9 planets, it will take a few more to weather the assault and re-build everything (my economy won't truly recover for ages).

I enjoy the changes, I just selfishly wish my save games could be left alone [yes yes I know :p]. I guess I could install a separate copy of the game for testing purposes [I still have my Gamersgate DD copy saved from before I registered the key on Steam], though part of me enjoys seeing how I can break my own game by updating ;-) [that part is much smaller than the part that does a <facepalm> followed by the gripes ]

>>> X replied as I was typing this
The biggest problems for me were, indeed, the threat spike and high MK border aggression caused by the update - I think if that could be toned down then the few players like me would find life much easier to keep going w/ saved games.

[Ozymandiaz]

>.>
Yes.. discipline...
<.<
I am not a OCD Turtle by any means O.O

Hehe - I am a bit too slow for this game [I blame age and the years not being too kind on my brain ], I make sure my position is secure before moving on - in the end I make the game harder for me than it needs to be, but it certainly feels like few against the many as I go on .

Also, 24 hours and only 9 planets taken!? My word, that's discipline!

I got a 120 planet 30 hour game I have been enjoying on an off for some testing and such. Been running since before 3.120 .

I have had to adapt quite often with it, but luckily I got one "Super System" defending some cluster of core system that I gain most of my income from. And the one system is a bottleneck. I have placed a Super Fortress, Radar Jammer Mk II, Shiled Booster, Shield Inhibitor, Balck Hole Machine, 2 Ion Cannon Mk II, 3 Ion Cannon Mk I, Ion Cannon Mk III, Ion Cannon Mk IV, Ion Cannon Mk V, Several Tractor III turrets, some gravity turets, 3 Space Time Manipulators, a Full production facility, 100 Spider turrets, 120 sniper turrets, X number of regular turrets, lots of mines.

Suffice it to say, its rather well defended and even handled the 2000 Bomber wave (2 waves actually) that I did not have any fleet in place to duke it out with . But I am kind of worried about my remote Mk IV factory planet when I update now . I suspect it will be great fun to see the outcome (as I know its beta testing I do not mind at all! )

[x4000]

Keep an eye out for 3.182 sometime this morning, guys.  carlosjuero, you do raise some good points, and in retrospect the way that this particular upgrade can cause collateral damage is not what I was going for.  What you were seeing was the expected side effect (that I forgot to note -- it happens on top of the barracks), but it's just not what I'd want when I think about it more clearly.  The problem is in the intersection of border aggression vs barracks, and I was trying to keep the border aggression at a higher level while also doing the barracks... and there was a bug that had been hampering border aggression in the past but which I now fixed... and the long story short is that all that combined to make a more severe effect than I'd expected.

3.182 will tone it down.

I like this patch, this is the first time since installing the beta that I didn't get immediately chewed up by some cool new enemies. A doomed defence against Hybrids or swarms of younglings has it charms but I'm glad I can survive until after the second hour.

Heh.  I guess it varies by savegame who gets the brutal treatment, eh?

Aren't the higher mark Ions supposed to be further away from the player's home planets? I'm playing two diff 10 AIs, but still, it is pretty insane(but fun!).
http://imgur.com/fmRoF.jpg

I don't think that we put in anything for that, or at least I didn't.  I think Keith may have been planning it, but maybe it didn't make that prerelease.  Not sure.

Oh, I also bring some good news! Rock Paper Shotgun is going to cover CoN some time soon.

Sweeeet!