Questions from an old player

[Vinraith]

So I was an avid AI War player from versions 2 through somewhere in the late 4.x releases. I've continued to pick up the expansions and such for the game, but have been away from playing for what the calendar tells me is a couple of years (!). So, obviously many things have changed, and I'm trying to get a handle on all the new options, new AI behaviors, and rules changes. The basics are coming back pretty readily, but the AI has become markedly more devious it seems, and I don't know how some of this new stuff works, so I'm hoping the community can help me out here.

First off, is there any resource for someone who's fallen behind like this? Reading 2 years worth of patch notes is... not an option. The wiki's fantastic, but sometimes it's hard to find what you're looking for and in a lot of cases I don't really know what I don't know, if you catch my meaning. Even knowing that there are certain topics I should look at would be a help.

Second, what happened to metal/crystal converters? I've got a rather serious resource balance problem in my current game, what's the current method for dealing with that?

[Aklyon]

Metal/Crystal conversion got automated into a mechanic instead.

[Vinraith]

Metal/Crystal conversion got automated into a mechanic instead.

How does that work? The wiki seems to be out of date on this topic, and still just talks about manufactories.

[Orelius]

I'm not entirely sure about the numbers, but there is an automatic 1.5:1 conversion ratio for whichever resource whenever you need it.  It's instant and converts as quickly as you need it to.

[Vinraith]

Third question: What are the deep strike rules regarding transports these days? They seem to drop from 100% to zero very, very quickly after a mere couple of hops.

[Orelius]

You lose 35% health on a standard transport per hop, and you can't repair them.  You can only hop out twice out of supply without your transports going bust.  The transport mark IIs these days are called military transports, which have cloaking, shoot when you have stuff in them, and only attrition 26% heath per hop.  With military transports, you can go 3 planets deep without supply.  Sometimes I load these up with my mark I ships just for the dps.

[Vinraith]

Thanks, and also thanks for the previous answer.

[Vinraith]

Fourth question (bear with me!): With all the new ways of acquiring ship blueprints to construct, is the old "no more than 10 ship types available to the player" rule still in effect? Do hacked fabs count toward that limit too?

[Orelius]

I'm pretty sure you can get as many fleet ships as you can get your hands on.  If you have a whole lot, the fleet 2 tab in the space dock should hold the overflow from fleet 1.  However, I don't think the same thing has been added for science labs, so you can't research higher marks of some ship types if you have too many as of now.  Hopefully, it'll be changed soon.

[Vinraith]

I'm pretty sure you can get as many fleet ships as you can get your hands on.  If you have a whole lot, the fleet 2 tab in the space dock should hold the overflow from fleet 1.  However, I don't think the same thing has been added for science labs, so you can't research higher marks of some ship types if you have too many as of now.  Hopefully, it'll be changed soon.

Wow, ok. I'm a little surprised that doesn't create a balance problem, since many of those ships can be acquired without a contingent increase in AIP. Good to know regardless, though. Thanks again!

[Shrugging Khan]

Balance is all over the place, and has been there for the past year or two. Don't worry about it, just crank up the Difficulty if it seems to easy 

[Draco18s]

Thanks, and also thanks for the previous answer.

*Waves a paw*
You can thank me for that particular change, too.  Pretty certain it was one of my AAR about a game me and a friend acomplished by throwing an empty transport and seeing how far it would go before being shot and killed, then loaded up our entire military (our chokepoint being neigh indestructible with "autopilot" turned on) and sent it out one-jump-less, blew up that planet, colonized it, let our transports repair, then did another jump out to save a rebelling human colony (completely letting the stopover get neutered, and only re-colonizing the rebelling world once every 2 hours, utilizing a cloaker starship to keep the colonizers hidden*), take a Mk4 factory and assault the homeworlds.

At the time the solo-transport jump distance was 7 planets out (extra "decoy" transports increased that distance).  It's now a hard "3."

*This widely-used tactic sparked some other changes regarding command station rebuilds.  The end result was that you can't rebuild, in any method, for 2 minutes.  One of the (least liked) alternatives was "all colony ships are destroyed upon command station death, even those inside transports."

[Vinraith]

Thanks, and also thanks for the previous answer.

*Waves a paw*
You can thank me for that particular change, too.  Pretty certain it was one of my AAR about a game me and a friend acomplished by throwing an empty transport and seeing how far it would go before being shot and killed, then loaded up our entire military (our chokepoint being neigh indestructible with "autopilot" turned on) and sent it out one-jump-less, blew up that planet, colonized it, let our transports repair, then did another jump out to save a rebelling human colony (completely letting the stopover get neutered, and only re-colonizing the rebelling world once every 2 hours, utilizing a cloaker starship to keep the colonizers hidden*), take a Mk4 factory and assault the homeworlds.

At the time the solo-transport jump distance was 7 planets out (extra "decoy" transports increased that distance).  It's now a hard "3."

*This widely-used tactic sparked some other changes regarding command station rebuilds.  The end result was that you can't rebuild, in any method, for 2 minutes.  One of the (least liked) alternatives was "all colony ships are destroyed upon command station death, even those inside transports."

Well, that thank you was for the information, not about the change itself, but far be it from me to be ungrateful to the resident velociraptor.

And yeah, I remember how folks were playing back in late 4 and early 5, so I can totally understand the changes there. It was a little surprising the first few times all the transports spontaneously exploded, though!

[Draco18s]

Well, that thank you was for the information, not about the change itself, but far be it from me to be ungrateful to the resident velociraptor.

Oh I know it was, just thought I'd put myself up as a target if the change was disliked.

[Arc-3N-4B]

Hey, here's a question from someone who wants to get back into the game:

How in the bloody hell do you deal with a 7/7 One Way Doormaster/Raid Engine Vicious Exotic/Mad Bomber?