AI War Beta 5.024, "Carrier Rules Of Engagement," Released!

[keith.lamothe]

This is impressive, you guys are really keeping on top of the ai war updates. Things are happening again.

Glad you're enjoying it   I've also found working on AIW inbetween AVWW work very refreshing. 

When you get a chance to take a look, I'd appreciate more feedback on the dread-of-many-names and carrier rules.  The former is probably OP now, but I've been wrong before, and the latter is at least simpler in the sense that they're never invincible anymore.

Sometimes it has seemed as if Chris really wants to get away from AI, and maybe it's because things get tough around here when the rules change, but it's your best product.

Not to speak for him, but the main thing for Chris has been a desire to focus on AVWW so that turns out well and in a timely fashion.  For both of us, and a lot of you, there was definitely a heavy "change fatigue" that built up across the unity-port, CoN, 4.0, LotS, and 5.0.  So we saw that we couldn't simply keep that up on AIW forever without a lot of people (and quite possibly us) burning out.  Not from the work, just the stress of change.  If AVWW does well we'll be able to alternate which game is getting the really intense attention and let the players of the other game actually play the same game for more than a week

I know you as a company want to diversify your product line and keep yourselves interested, but your AI players haven't moved on yet. I think there is still more potential yet with this game.

Definitely!  We've never once thought it was out of potential

A lot of people play this thing and dissect everything about it to the nth degree, and I hope you agree that it's a whole lot better than if nobody cared whether or not dreadnoughts suck.

Absolutely; just about anything is better than apathy.

Anyway, onward

[zoutzakje]

love the changes. Good to hear that the new hybrid plot is somewhat less nasty than it was before. I believe I was one of the first people to find out how lethal it really was lol.
dysons being able to shoot at ALL Mk V targets might be a bit overpowered (I only wanted them to be able to shoot at other dysons ), but I'll do some testing on that. If you guys forgot to put some immunities here and there, we'll see how long it will take a bunch of dysons to kill an enemy golem

[keith.lamothe]

Good to hear that the new hybrid plot is somewhat less nasty than it was before. I believe I was one of the first people to find out how lethal it really was lol.

Iirc, you have the honor of being the antagonizer's first confirmed kill

dysons being able to shoot at ALL Mk V targets might be a bit overpowered (I only wanted them to be able to shoot at other dysons ), but I'll do some testing on that. If you guys forgot to put some immunities here and there, we'll see how long it will take a bunch of dysons to kill an enemy golem

Yea, potentially it'll have balance issues, but I think I'd rather balance them by some other means than "cannot shoot at X".  We'll see if that's possible   The cannot-shoot rule made sense back when they were freeing all kinds of AI threat from across the galaxy, but I don't think they wind up on AI planets much anymore.  And the neutral ones that do still have the can't-shoot-core thing.

[zoutzakje]

yeah the only time I see my dysons attacking another world is when I moved my troops in first. Glad the patch is out, now I can finally try to beat that antagonizer game again Hope I can claim victory this time

[TechSY730]

dysons being able to shoot at ALL Mk V targets might be a bit overpowered (I only wanted them to be able to shoot at other dysons ), but I'll do some testing on that. If you guys forgot to put some immunities here and there, we'll see how long it will take a bunch of dysons to kill an enemy golem

Yea, potentially it'll have balance issues, but I think I'd rather balance them by some other means than "cannot shoot at X".  We'll see if that's possible   The cannot-shoot rule made sense back when they were freeing all kinds of AI threat from across the galaxy, but I don't think they wind up on AI planets much anymore.  And the neutral ones that do still have the can't-shoot-core thing.

Even if they do wind up on AI core planets and AI home planets, there is some things to keep them from winning the game for you.
1. Friendly Dysons are not allowed to shoot things that can increase AIP, with one sole exception of the special forces guard post. This stops them from shooting Core guard posts (as opposed to mere Mk. V guard posts) and any command station, including the AI home command station.
2. Dysons are not allowed to shoot at capturables, so those ion cannons, OMDs, black hole generators, gravity drills, etc, cannot be taken out for you.
3. Friendly Dysons are not allow to shoot warheads, which IIRC, includes the avenger (it nukes on death)
4. I think that Dysons (friendly or enemy to both) will also refuse to shoot at guard posts, with the exception of the special forces guard post mentioned above.
5. Friendly Dysons will not shoot at things that are not auto-targetable

So these existing restrictions should keep them under control.

Just FYI, human resistance fighters are under similar restrictions. The only one that doesn't apply for them is the guard posts; human resistance fighters are happy to pop guard posts.

[NickAragua]

dysons being able to shoot at ALL Mk V targets might be a bit overpowered (I only wanted them to be able to shoot at other dysons ), but I'll do some testing on that. If you guys forgot to put some immunities here and there, we'll see how long it will take a bunch of dysons to kill an enemy golem

Yea, potentially it'll have balance issues, but I think I'd rather balance them by some other means than "cannot shoot at X".  We'll see if that's possible   The cannot-shoot rule made sense back when they were freeing all kinds of AI threat from across the galaxy, but I don't think they wind up on AI planets much anymore.  And the neutral ones that do still have the can't-shoot-core thing.

I played a couple of hours of this last night, and I'm "happy" to report that I was able to use an AI superterminal to the point where the guys it spawned actually overpowered the Dyson Gatlings that were hanging out in the system (reinforcing Gatlings and all). It was spawning groups of 30-40 MK V ships, and I think I got three or four planets' worth of AIP reduction out of it.

The gatlings are now powered just fine, IMO.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9836.0.html