Author Topic: Prerelease/Expans 2.001L (4 new ship class, major attack rewrite, performance+)  (Read 6445 times)

Offline Vaos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 107

Troop Accelerators were DLC from I think June, but they are definitely the most rare of all the AI special ships.  They will be a tad more common now, but still quite unusual.

Oh, I didn't knew that! Do they actually give the AI additional units from nowhere(and so giving the AI an advantage), or do they suck reinforcements that could be used elsewhere?

Yes, that just takes time for compiling them, and so it tends to lag a bit.  Rev has been doing that for me so that I don't have to spend an hour or more of CPU time on my own computer to get them there, but eventually I'm going to be running those simulations a lot more in order to get the new ships better balanced than they currently are.  At the moment, the new stuff is all very much "rough draft best guess." :)

I wasn't speaking of simulations, but just somewhere to see the current multiplicators of the new units (for instance, bombers have x80 against fighters), so we can know witch units are resistant to the unit attack, and witch ones can kill it in one shot. Something like we can see in this page, but with the expansion units. I have mixed feelings against the simulation myself. Does it truly represent the capabilities of each units? I'd rather see a general "strong vs and weak vs" help in the tooltips and see the simulations elsewhere. But it's just my opinion.

Offline quickstix

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 297
  • Buy Now
BEAM FRIGATES!!!!!  :o :D ;D

Awesome work as usual, beam frigates made my day.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2009, 04:09:50 am by quickstix »

Offline Snowman

  • Newbie Mark III
  • *
  • Posts: 28
Is anyone taking bets, when is X-ness will ship 2.001 Z ? This speed in development is astounding. And rather cool ...



Old and mean ....

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651

Troop Accelerators were DLC from I think June, but they are definitely the most rare of all the AI special ships.  They will be a tad more common now, but still quite unusual.

Oh, I didn't knew that! Do they actually give the AI additional units from nowhere(and so giving the AI an advantage), or do they suck reinforcements that could be used elsewhere?

They give them additional units "from nowhere" -- they are quite nasty, and hence part of there rarity!

Yes, that just takes time for compiling them, and so it tends to lag a bit.  Rev has been doing that for me so that I don't have to spend an hour or more of CPU time on my own computer to get them there, but eventually I'm going to be running those simulations a lot more in order to get the new ships better balanced than they currently are.  At the moment, the new stuff is all very much "rough draft best guess." :)

I wasn't speaking of simulations, but just somewhere to see the current multiplicators of the new units (for instance, bombers have x80 against fighters), so we can know witch units are resistant to the unit attack, and witch ones can kill it in one shot. Something like we can see in this page, but with the expansion units. I have mixed feelings against the simulation myself. Does it truly represent the capabilities of each units? I'd rather see a general "strong vs and weak vs" help in the tooltips and see the simulations elsewhere. But it's just my opinion.

I've written at length before on why the simulations are valuable, even if the entire concept of a simulation is flawed.  But the short version is that the internal bonuses are extremely misleading.  For example, many of the new ships have bonuses against nothing.  So then what?  The simulations give you data about all the various factors that create a natural rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock-AI-War interrelationship between the dozens of ship classes, whereas the specific bonuses will only tell you where that relationship has been explicitly augmented.

Basically, the simulation puts some guys of one type against some guys of the other type and makes them fight, and records who won, how fast, and how much health the winner had remaining at the end.  It's not perfect in that it doesn't account for fleet mix, range overly well (ships start out close together), or clever tactics (ships just attack each other on autopilot).  But, I've experimented with a variety of things in the past, including just showing people the raw bonuses during alpha, and those always were super misleading because there are so many variables that go into the combat, and no human can quickly calculate them all (shields, attack range, attack power, health, various special abilities, various bonuses or penalties, etc).

Anyway -- if you want to see the bonuses, however, you can always get that data by starting a new game, hitting F3, and then hitting Ctrl+Shift+F8.  That will export a variety of data files into your Data folder under the game directory, and is what is used by Revenantus to create the wiki pages you're referring to. You don't ever have to wait on us to have that info at your fingertips! :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
BEAM FRIGATES!!!!!  :o :D ;D

Awesome work as usual, beam frigates made my day.

My pleasure!  I think those will be a new favorite for many, yes. :)

Is anyone taking bets, when is X-ness will ship 2.001 Z ? This speed in development is astounding. And rather cool ...

Many thanks. :)  My goal is to basically have the expansion "done" by the first week or two of December, as far as initial code and all art goes.  The music will be following by the end of December, and during that time I'll be working on bugfixes, balance tweaks, and so forth.  Then we'll officially release in the first couple of weeks of January, and then we're on to our puzzle game (with free DLC for AI War still coming for the end of January or so, of course)!
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Updated to version L, with a single fix: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001L.zip

-Fixed a crash bug that could occur when Beam Frigates were fighting melee ships at incredibly close range.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline keith.lamothe

  • Arcen Games Staff
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 19,505
Beam Frigates... thank you :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
My pleasure. :)  Those certainly do appear to be the biggest hit of the expansion so far!
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Vaos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 107
Awesome, I'll use these data files then. I do not deny the usefulness of the simulations however, but I'd rather see something more clear in the tooltips in game. I admit I have made much use of these simulation stats on units I never used before, and to found some counters when you see waves of 1000+ of some unknown unit incoming!

Offline Minty

  • Jr. Member Mark II
  • **
  • Posts: 69
-The blue force fields used by players are no longer damaged by shots being fired out from under them.  Instead, outgoing shots from under the force field are now reduced by 75% in power.

There seems to be an error, either in the wording in the above changelog, or in the game itself. Enemy incoming fire now passes through forcefields to strike targets within the forcefield. I've yet to double-check the figures, but it does seem to be at 75% strength.

Whether this is intended or not is unclear from the above changelog.

That being said, cracking game, that's stolen WAY too many days of my life since I installed a month or so ago!

 :D

Edit: I'll throw this into the Bug Reporting subforum too, just to be on the safe side.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2009, 11:00:10 pm by Minty »

Offline keith.lamothe

  • Arcen Games Staff
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 19,505
Incoming fire should be stopped completely, unless it's immune to forcefields (like ion cannon shots) in which case it is 100% effective.

The penalty on *friendly outgoing* fire is designed to make putting your ships under forcefields more of a tradeoff, and is less annoying than the previous system of having friendly outgoing fire damage the forcefield.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Minty

  • Jr. Member Mark II
  • **
  • Posts: 69
Hence my throwing it into the Bug Reports subforum also, Keith. :)

Enemy bombers should NOT be able to damage Tractor turrets protected by a forcefield, but instead damage the FF itself..

Offline etgfrogs

  • Newbie Mark II
  • *
  • Posts: 24
While i like the beam frigate(but they are overpowered atm) there seems to be an issue where they will hit things that are behind them, so it looks like atm they are a super electric shuttle. also atm they wipe out everything, i just used 250 to clear an ai's homeworld and i had no problem getting to it with 1000 ai progress, ended the game with 1300% kill to death efficiency and i wasn't even trying that hard. 250 of them is enough to kill any starship that gets in range AND it can be sent at any number of enemies and win, the only time i lose them was either enough sniper fire takes one down or when i first enter a system, but even then i only lost 10 of them when entering a system that had 5000 ships.

Oh...yea...one more thing, the beam frigate cannot hit anything that is required to be targeted like command centers, warp gates, raid engines.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2009, 01:44:22 pm by etgfrogs »

Offline Revenantus

  • Arcen Games Staff
  • Hero Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,063
2.001L simulation data attached.

Offline Spikey00

  • Lord of just 5 Colony Ships
  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,704
  • And he sayeth to sea worm, thou shalt wriggle
I am glad to see that more progress is being made [without me due to life and wretched computer]!  I can see that this game will soon become a Pocket Tanks type of game--tons of units diversities.

Hope the developing is going relatively smoothly.
I'd take a sea worm any time over a hundred emotionless spinning carriers.
irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
AI War Facebook
AI War Steam Group