Prerelease 3.189 (Balance Changes And Bugfixes)

[Lancefighter]

haha

Yeah yeah i hear you, and a bit of it is me being over-dramatic.... <.<

And well, I really do love what you guys do, its just that my biggest problem is when I literally cant do anything to fix what is annoying me.. and well, thats the case here

[RCIX]

But i would guess that compiling the game is a nontrivial task? Putting the data in scripts or XML would speed up your balance testing considerably then.

[WarpSprite]

But i would guess that compiling the game is a nontrivial task? Putting the data in scripts or XML would speed up your balance testing considerably then.

Sounds like a perfect time for someone in the community to step up and do this then!!!

*as in not me I'm to lazy

[keith.lamothe]

And well, I really do love what you guys do, its just that my biggest problem is when I literally cant do anything to fix what is annoying me.. and well, thats the case here

Is the problem that the game you've been playing has the ff-bearers?  If you start a new game, chances are they won't be in it.

But i would guess that compiling the game is a nontrivial task? Putting the data in scripts or XML would speed up your balance testing considerably then.

No, compiling AI War only takes me about 3 seconds on this machine.  Honestly, re-starting the game is the slow part of iterative testing (and it doesn't take all that long).  But it's not really reasonable to base modding support on someone having the appropriate compilation environment; in that case we would need to switch to an external resource file (i.e. XML or something).  But having stuff in an external resource file greatly slows down the process of making changes due to "round-trip programming" and also removes tons of flexibility that we currently are using in terms of the complexity of the unit data and the logic by which it is initialized.

[Lancefighter]

And well, I really do love what you guys do, its just that my biggest problem is when I literally cant do anything to fix what is annoying me.. and well, thats the case here

Is the problem that the game you've been playing has the ff-bearers?  If you start a new game, chances are they won't be in it.

youd think that, wouldnt you  2 of the last 3 games had ff bearers.. i think the AI just hates me.

[WarpSprite]

Really what would be the reason to have modding support for a niche of a niche game?

[Lancefighter]

because I'm a huge modding activist. Thus, I want modding support EVERYWHERE MUHAHAHAH....er.....


Really, because I feel that the longevity of any game is related to how easily it can be modded:
Point: egosoft realized this long ago, and they offer HUGE support to modders, and encourage it a good deal.
Point: An open-source engine, Spring, thrives off the many mods made for it, yet TA (what Spring was based off of) died out long ago.
Point: Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3. All of which will live for a good deal longer due to modding.
Point: Mount and blade, from another indie dev, I believe will also live for a long time due to the intense amount of modding that is possible (there are people making modern warfare mods for it.. hell, theres a STAR WARS mod!)

Would you disagree when I say any of these are niche as well? x3tc, while it has gone more mainstream, never really is 'the game' like an fps is (mw2, halo 3, etc). Yet i suspect it will outlive all of them.
Spring has been around for years, slowly growing in numbers as time goes on, because new stuff comes out fairly often.
Morrowind was released in 02.. man that was a long time ago in gaming terms! yet when you look at the modding forum, it is still ablaze with activity.
Mount and blade might be fairly recent, but for an indie release it has a good deal going in its favor..

Anyway, I've digressed somewhere. I think that engines are the future of gaming, not content. The engine is, from what I understand, considerably harder to make than the content that goes into a game.....

There are certainly some things id love to see in AI war, (pvp, for example.. I want to see how intense it might be to go 1v1 against someone from opposite sides of a size 10 snake map), however I realize that thats not what AI war is! Ai war is a game of comp stomping. And by all means, it does this magnificently. I can certainly understand the reasons behind NOT making it easy to mod, and by all means I support that, because without it, you would see a good deal of 'tweaking' just to make the game easier for the player (say, changing around some stats, like harvester gather rate or something.. yeah I'm not that imaginative for the moment), and in the end that just becomes counterproductive. AI war isnt about making it easy, its about making your life an absolute hell for the duration of the game, with quite the release of satisfaction at the end when if you win.

But again - there comes times when something just annoys you to no end, and you would do whatever you can to fix it. This has happened in the case of ff bearers.

/* now that I've written this giant wall of text that means more or less nothing, I shall postface it by saying again, that I do not really feel as if modding has a place in AI war, and the comment that i made the comment about modding in the first place was largely meant to be a joke... */

[Spikey00]

(Command and Conquer too!)

[Fleet]

I think the developers have made it clear their position on openness and modding, and are more or less happy with the current level.

I'm sure that in the future, if circumstances were to change (with the company, finances, etc) they will reconsider the level of access players should have. At that time we can petition them for modding support, but until then I think their position should be respected.

That being said...I can't figure out who was actually arguing for modding here...Lance was apparently joking  

[Spikey00]

Well, it was the original intention that AI War's community be more unified, and that makes sense because 1) the base game would receive accurate feedback, 2) we wouldn't have to worry about technical problems players may experience using these mods, 3) all the frequent updates may break a lot of the mods, resulting in waiting times for a new mod version, 4) increases the complexity of organizing games ("what mods do you have?" "what are mods?") and probably a few more problems that would emerge.

For sure, if AI War becomes very stable, I'm sure the devs will allow some modifications, but I don't see that happening soon.

[HellishFiend]

Chris made a post early this year, I think, where he discussed that he wont consider making the game moddable until he stops supporting it with content and updates himself, which probably wont be until many years from now. Maybe someone can find that post?

[Spikey00]

That usually is what happens, but I find solace in that.  Long live AI War!

[superking]

@ the stealth gaurd post, it might make sense for these to have cloaking superbooster like the cloaking starship, so they can hide some of their garrison turrets/ships too

I was also thinking it would spice things up a bit for the AI to be able to use cloaking starships, both in waves (which could be an unpleasant suprise if, seeing no cloaking ships on the AI planets, you neglect to make tachyon drones) and garrisoned on its planets (I would imagine stationary rather than roaming, and placed around gaurdposts/special gaurdposts)

@ the arachnid gaurd post: these are bit dull at the moment, I was pretty concerned by how evil the name sounded but in person it crumpled under my two zenith starships rapidly & without doing any significant damage. There is no shortage of ways these could be made more interesting, but it would be pretty cool if these kinds of gaurd post were restricted to only spawning anti-starship arachnids for reinforcement, making raiding them with starship types... unwise. (plus, I dont see enough arachnids aound nowadays, and they look so cool...)

FF bearers could probably use some love... they are the only FF that dosnt have some kind of regeneration  

@ blocking seige starships: I imagine that will be adressed in some way in the future, and it does not really affect the difficulty of using them well as a player (the annoyance of needing to keep a MRS around)

@ attrition emitter & interplanetary munitions booster, any chance we can get these at the trader? also the neinzul clusters, though I think that has been covered

@ zenith polarisers:  still think these are frankly ridiculous, the more I use them the more dirty I feel... they defeat almost every fleetship for cost, gut all gaurdposts but spire shields, dominate special forces gaurdposts, starships, hybrids, all turrets...

@ snipers: these are still hugely underwelming... to be worthwhile imo they could do with higher dps or significant bonus against somthing

@ microfighters: these are probably still one of the weakest specials, need love despretly 

[Sigma7]

I'm not sure if this is already reported, but I think the AI is a little heavy on Mobile Repair Stations.  These ships may be useful to the AI, but not to the point of having ~5+ at every guard post.   I have a saved game, but I'm not sure which AI type is doing it since it's masked from view. 

Also, Mobile Repair Stations can't be hit by Siege Starships. 

[Lancefighter]

o.0 odd, I've only ever seen on at a planet.

stealth guard posts dont even seem to be useful. The most problems I've seen with them is that they stop me from building a resource on that spot if i dont blow them up first..


Also cool story - none of these guard posts are immune to instakill. If you capture a planet with the right level ion canon, the cannon will blow up all the turrets/guard posts for you