Private alpha of Vengeance expansion has started

[Tridus]

Great, thanks.

I was playing around with a Sniper V turret controller, and I've kind of gone backwards on my previous belief that there was too many turrets per controller. For the snipers (and spiders) at least, while they're very nice to have and do make a difference, they're not overpowering. To my not terribly experienced eyes, the balance on that controller feels good (desirable but not game breaking).

I've got a game going now with a needler controller, if I can grab that I'll do some more experiments.

[keith.lamothe]

I was playing around with a Sniper V turret controller, and I've kind of gone backwards on my previous belief that there was too many turrets per controller. For the snipers (and spiders) at least, while they're very nice to have and do make a difference, they're not overpowering. To my not terribly experienced eyes, the balance on that controller feels good (desirable but not game breaking).

I've got a game going now with a needler controller, if I can grab that I'll do some more experiments.

Good to know.  Yea, I'm figuring that the core turret controllers enable various new forms of cheese, but that it's mostly of the mild variety that doesn't really short-circuit challenge except perhaps in a few cases where the player really takes the ball and runs with it (taking a few outpost planets and plopping down 3 or 4 controllers worth of mkV turrets on every planet in supply including a ton of AI planets, taking a massive bite out of any roaming AI force... even that wouldn't really be a problem, per se).

More importantly, I think they're fun

[Vyndicu]

Is it even intend that homeworld AI HAVE an ARS? You can see it in the info card as the first item listed.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=146619111

Is it also intend that TWO ARS exist in a single solar system? How do hack for that even work? heh.

[Coppermantis]

Stuff like that happens on tiny maps. I dunno how the hack works, though.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, on the tiny maps mapgen can get... interesting.

[Toranth]

Speaking of mapgen, I've a question about the new maps.
I'm going to show three maps I generated: a Wheel 120, a Honeycomb 60, and a Honeycomb 120.






In each of these, I see a very well defined pattern to the assignment of stars to the two AI players.
In the Honeycomb maps, it looks like each horizontal row is assigned alternating AI 1/AI 2, skipping over gaps, the AI HWs, and the Player HWs.
On the Wheel map, it looks similar, with each spoke being assigned 50/50 (left half/right half) and the rims being all of one color, swapping at the HWs.
Going back to previous maps, I see this alternating pattern appear in the Clusters - Microcosm maps, but not in any of the maps that make up the Microcosm, nor in any previous map types.

Is this deliberate?  If so, why?  Right now, by scouting just a few planets, I can instantly know who owns each system in the galaxy with a high degree of accuracy.  If there's not a specific reason, I'd request more random allocation, like in the older map types.

[keith.lamothe]

Is this deliberate?

Completely accidental, actually   I had no idea, but apparently the planets are assigned simply by going "one for me, one for you" on down the list by order of generation.

Will make it more random, thanks for pointing that out.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I actually played with seeds until I got an awesome honeycomb map with loads of really weird holes, and you can create quite an interesting effect with the holes and the patterned layout... but this probably shouldn't be happening.
For the record I've kept playing the same game (6/6) and I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary aside from a turtle main AI dualed with bouncer sending waves, getting extra reinforcements, and also having all the wormhole guardposts being something more nasty. I think that's supposed to happen because the secondary AI is one that can send waves, but I certainly was not expecting it. I also have noticed that I'm not dead yet, which is also pretty wild. I'll play the game out a bit more to see if this is actually a problem, but mine enthusiasts aren't supposed to ONLY protect their command stations with mines are they? I haven't noticed any mines around like 8 mine enthusiast wormholes so far.

[ZaneWolfe]

I think I found a bug, but I am not sure. I found a map I wanted but didn't get the ships I wanted, so I tried disabling things to get different results without a new map. I disabled Tractors, and this is the map I got.



That is a Tackle drone launcher, on a map that has Tractors DISABLED. 99% sure that is NOT supposed to happen.

On a related note, anyone know the map codes well enough to tweak them without changing the map entirely? I like the displayed map, I like the positions of the homeworlds, but I DO NOT like the ships being offered in those positions. Anyway to tweak things that doesn't involve disabling ships? Or are the only options disable ships or roll a new map.

And final bit. I like the new Honeycomb maps, but I like the "broken" ones more than the complete ones. Can we get those split? This image is an example of what I am calling a "broken honeycomb". There are points you can use for great chokepoints, and there are places where making a choke does not exist.

[Wingflier]

Well, congratulations Keith, your new AI changes have presented me with a challenge that has killed me over and over again: Hunter Killers + Mass Starship Disassembler Guardians. They eat all my Starships, then the HKs just kill anything that's left, and there goes my army.

I'm having more fun with this half-finished expansion than I ever have before

[keith.lamothe]

I actually played with seeds until I got an awesome honeycomb map with loads of really weird holes, and you can create quite an interesting effect with the holes and the patterned layout... but this probably shouldn't be happening.

You mean the "broken honeycomb" effect ZaneWolfe was talking about?  Quite intentional, actually, on a certain portion of the seeds for each planet-count.  The pattern of which AI gets which planet is going away in the next release, though.

On the mine enthusiast, I don't know why it'd be placing the mines that way, but I don't think it's necessarily a bug.  I just checked to make sure its special logic works right with dual-AI and I don't see where it wouldn't.


@ZaneWolfe: No-Tractors not disabling TDLs is a bug, yea.  I just checked the code and it's got the normal preventative measures for that, so something else could be going on.  Do you have the seed and settings?

On the map seeds and "tweaking", there's really no way to predict what a change in the seed number will do; that's kind of one of the design goals with an RNG

Well, congratulations Keith, your new AI changes have presented me with a challenge that has killed me over and over again: Hunter Killers + Mass Starship Disassembler Guardians. They eat all my Starships, then the HKs just kill anything that's left, and there goes my army.

I'm having more fun with this half-finished expansion than I ever have before

Haha, glad to hear it   Yea, those disassemblers are a case of malice-aforethought on my part.  The H/Ks are just brutal overwhelming firepower, and are the bulk of why if you're playing Hunter the proper response to the SF is to "hit them where they ain't"   The recent AI changes make said SF go from "idle" to "heading to target" much faster than they would have a few weeks ago.

[Hearteater]

Since I was playing with map gens last night, and I see this here, let me toss in my two cents:

Wheel Map: I think I'd rather the center be a small group of systems linked.  Just a small number, say 3 (except on tiny maps, where it would just be one).  It could even be a determined by the seed (some have a single center, some have a cluster).

Honeycomb comments: You can see in some of the screenshots above, but sometimes a system is 2+ "hops" away and gets linked with a line that doesn't land on the normal honeycomb layout.  Also, sometimes you get honeycombs with very few holes (1 or 2), or way too many holes (doesn't even look anything like a honeycomb).  Playing around with it, 3 holes minimum feels like a good floor.  The ceiling seems like around 50-60% holes.  Since each honeycomb has 3n^2+3n+1 positions, where n is the number of horizontal triangle rows in the top half (so n=1 is the smallest honeycomb containing six triangle and seven planet positions)...you'd get ranges for n like:

The light purple are the range I'd recommend, but I left all the numbers in so you could see the complete picture.  The percentages displayed indicate the percentage of free spots in the honeycomb.

Also, for small honeycombs, maybe the smaller ones could be scaled up in size so they fit the galaxy map better.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Oh yeah the holes are super cool, I do really like the broken honeycomb maps.
I'll keep investigating my game when I get the chance and we'll see if there are any trapped wormholes. I honestly really like dealing with those rather than using my zombards to snipe mines around the command stations.

[keith.lamothe]

I'll keep investigating my game when I get the chance and we'll see if there are any trapped wormholes. I honestly really like dealing with those rather than using my zombards to snipe mines around the command stations.

Why would you do that?  Just send in your mkI fighters to facecheck for mines

[LaughingThesaurus]

Hehe
Maybe this is why I'm not so great at strategy games, but I do like to solve problems that aren't even problems sometimes. Sure, I have expendable little paper balls I can toss at the mines to detonate them, but I honestly consider actually doing tachyon sweeps and blowing up the mines or finding paths around or disarming them just for fun. Also man, think of the engineers that are working hard to build those fighters only for them to be ordered to fly face-first into explosives. It probably hurts their feelings.
Anyway... I don't know that it's honestly that big a deal but it's Bouncer/Mine Enthusiast. All I can really think of is that the game's like 'hey, let's replace the stuff around the wormhole with bouncer's stuff' and doesn't consider the mine enthusiast's feelings so the mine enthusiast just shoves mines around the command station because that's the only place it's allowed to do that. I wouldn't know where to look to find anything else. I feel obligated to find broken combinations of AI types to help make sure it's all in working order as well so I could just be making stuff up on accident.