Author Topic: Prerelease 3.181 (New CoN features, AI Ship Counts Down, 45 New Guard Posts)  (Read 27027 times)

Offline x4000

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With the youngster, is the first wave that hits me meant to have 1000 odd ships in it? Just checking, because although he is meant to do bigger waves, 20x bigger seems a little steep. If it's meant to be like this, I'm fine, I'll just change my tactics a bit or something. Thought you should know incase it's a bug.

I'm not 100% positive, but that sounds potentially right with what we were originally designing.  Those Neinzul ships die so incredibly fast.

The second question is about astro trains. I thought we had made it so FRD troops wouldn't go after them, and turrets would prioritize them very low? I just had some laser turrets choose to target one instead of bombers in my tractor beams, and I think my FRDs were targeting one instead of the aforementioned 1000 ship wave, although they *might* have been hitting it on the way to defend against the raid, I'll keep playing and find out.

Turret trains get attacked as normal, so that's presumably what it was.
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Offline snrub_guy

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Yup, it was a turret train. Guess I missed that rule. Fair enough, I guess I'm going to need MOAR LIGHTENING.

Offline x4000

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Also, I don't think there are any "hardcore players who breeze through the AI on any difficulty" with this game, has anyone beaten a level 10 AI without making serious concessions and/or cheating?

A few players claim so, mostly on youtube.  Either they cheated or they found some sort of specialized tactic that works, it's hard to say.  But some of the recent changes have specifically increased the difficulty scaling so that it's harder now on diff 8, 9, and 10 than it once was, while having less of an effect on the 5-7 range (and less of an effect on 8 than on 9 or 10).

Overall my goal is partly making this easier and harder, so that the games are shorter either way.  You either lose or win in fewer hours, and thus have the ability to take more risks and such because the stakes aren't quite so high.  After 25 (or whatever) hours into a game, people tend to get really conservative because they can't stand the thought of losing after all that time.  If the same game could be played in 10ish hours by cutting out the grind, that would be ideal to me.

That sounds good to me. I don't mind longer games, and am perfectly happy to lose them, but less time waiting wouldn't bother me in the slightest. I'm really looking forward to getting started with 3.182. :)

Cool.  I love long games, too, but I consider 10-20 hours to be a sweet spot.  And if a specific campaign is longer, I want it to be because it's just that epic and awesome and that close and exciting of a game... not because someone is just being defensive and slowly slogging through the entire galaxy while holding their own command station behind their unassailable front lines.  Long games are fun, tests of patience are not. ;)
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Offline x4000

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Yup, it was a turret train. Guess I missed that rule. Fair enough, I guess I'm going to need MOAR LIGHTENING.

:)

They can and will kill the turret trains, though, so that's a very valid thing to shoot at.  And none of the trains ever heal, so if it passes through enough you'll soon have fewer trains.
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Offline dumpsterKEEPER

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Overall my goal is partly making this easier and harder, so that the games are shorter either way.  You either lose or win in fewer hours, and thus have the ability to take more risks and such because the stakes aren't quite so high.  After 25 (or whatever) hours into a game, people tend to get really conservative because they can't stand the thought of losing after all that time.  If the same game could be played in 10ish hours by cutting out the grind, that would be ideal to me.

Just wanted to throw in my two cents in, as I really like this emphasis.  I tend to play a fairly slow, methodical style, and there have been number of games that I've effectively abandoned due to analysis paralysis and being hesitant to lose the time I had invested in a particular campaign (yes, yes, losing is fun :) ).  I've only managed to carve out an hour or so with 3.182 today but I really like the direction things are going.  Thanks for all the recent updates!

Offline quickstix

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Stop tempting me, I have so much work due next week.  :P

Offline keith.lamothe

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Stop tempting me, I have so much work due next week.  :P
I hear some of the Neinzul are starting a Schedule Clearing Services division, you might give them a call ;)
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Offline mlaskus

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My goal is for practically nobody to win at 10

Oooh, that's probably why I haven't won a single campaign yet.
Though I don't expect that to change for a while as I want to get First Win and Double Godlike achievements at the same time... Imagine the bragging rights! :)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Quote
With the youngster, is the first wave that hits me meant to have 1000 odd ships in it? Just checking, because although he is meant to do bigger waves, 20x bigger seems a little steep. If it's meant to be like this, I'm fine, I'll just change my tactics a bit or something. Thought you should know incase it's a bug.
Yea, 1000 sounds about right.  I was aiming more at 800 but it depends on difficulty.

They just die. so. fast.

So they're really, really dangerous to your harvesters because they numerically overwhelm tractor beams, kill harvesters before normal defenses can kill them (exo shields help!), and are too fast to "train wreck" with a mobile fleet.  If you manage to hold them down into a proper fleet engagement, though, it will be over very quickly.  There are ways :)  AOE is another solution, though without micro-low-powering your lightning turrets they'll generally be on reload while the majority of the enemy wave runs away.  Electric shuttles, with their auto-staggering, are probably the hands-down hard-counter to a youngling fleet of nearly any size.

But when all's said and done, even 1000 commandos aren't a huge threat to any truly hardened target, and they'll die to a decent defense before they crack an ff.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2010, 08:22:44 pm by keith.lamothe »
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Offline x4000

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My goal is for practically nobody to win at 10

Oooh, that's probably why I haven't won a single campaign yet.
Though I don't expect that to change for a while as I want to get First Win and Double Godlike achievements at the same time... Imagine the bragging rights! :)

Indeed.  ;)
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Offline RCIX

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Stop tempting me, I have so much work due next week.  :P
I hear some of the Neinzul are starting a Schedule Clearing Services division, you might give them a call ;)
I would have, but then i heard they were using... unsavory... methods of doing so. ;)
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Offline Vinraith

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I just loaded up that advanced save under 3.182, after a pile of initial barracks-ing lag it works absolutely fine. Thanks for that.  ;D

Also, I love the art on the new posts. They look properly like non-human architecture, and are genuinely kind of creepy.

Offline x4000

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I just loaded up that advanced save under 3.182, after a pile of initial barracks-ing lag it works absolutely fine. Thanks for that.  ;D

My pleasure!

Also, I love the art on the new posts. They look properly like non-human architecture, and are genuinely kind of creepy.

Thanks for that!  I've not had much chance to use GroBoto for the last few years, so I was pleased to have an opportunity to put some of my semi-rusty 3D skills to work.  Some of my older pieces with GroBoto-created models are here:

http://www.christophermpark.com/gallery/gal/12_Dreams_of_Steel_and_Coal/Blowing_Apocalypse.jpg (definitely a creepy one, featuring the main evil creature from Alden Ridge)
http://www.christophermpark.com/gallery/gal/12_Dreams_of_Steel_and_Coal/Broken_Gravity.jpg (one of my favorites from 2008)
http://www.christophermpark.com/gallery/gal/12_Dreams_of_Steel_and_Coal/Hangar_Scaffolding.jpg (kind of a rough sketch)
http://www.christophermpark.com/gallery/gal/12_Dreams_of_Steel_and_Coal/Power_Substation.jpg (pleasingly atmospheric, but rouch)
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Offline keith.lamothe

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I hear some of the Neinzul are starting a Schedule Clearing Services division, you might give them a call ;)
I would have, but then i heard they were using... unsavory... methods of doing so. ;)
Unsavory?  No, they find it quite tasty!
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Offline Diazo

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As I've threatened in a couple threads, I've gone ahead and started an actual game that I'm intending to finish, not just a quick 'game' that I'm just testing stuff in.

Actual thread here.

For those who don't want to read my wall of text, so far my observations are:

Hybrids seem okay.
Preservation Warden Bombers seem weak. (This a human buildable unit?)
Preservation Warden Commandos did about right.
Preservation warden faction spawn size seems big. I'm only at about 1:40:00 gametime and it threw 1000 Warden Bombers at me, followed by another 500 Commandos a few minutes later.

I haven't gotten two hops away from my home system yet so I haven't run into any of the fun stuff, that's for tomorrow.

D.