Some noob questions

[Junuxx]

Some gameplay questions, some more about conceptual/cosmetic issues..

1. About supply. Should I be aiming to create continuous supply lines from my home world to the AI home worlds? Or can I skip over more than one AI world at a time and create a new 'supply island'?

2. Where are the stars? Couldn't/shouldn't they play a larger role?

3. Why are the planet killer weapons called 'nukes'/'nuclear warheads'? These are weapons that can destroy the whole frigging galaxy! I'd say that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than nuclear weaponry, and it would be cooler if they had a fancy Sci-Fi name.

4. Why am I fighting 2 AIs? What's the major difference/added gameplay value benefit compared to a single opponent?

Thanks for sharing your insights

[LaughingThesaurus]

1. Supply is either on a planet or not. You basically just have to have control of a planet and supply reaches it. it doesn't matter if it's an 'island' in an ocean of AI planets. The command station provides supply, it's not chained across multiple planets.

2. There are stars all over the place in space! ...I don't really know what you mean. Do you mean say, instead of a planet being a place you build on, there would also be suns you could build around and such?

3. It is an extremely nuclear weapon. It's not just a nuke. It's a really really really really really big nuke.

4. I believe it has to do with the fact that all the planets are divided between the two AIs, so you can end up having a more variable fighting sort of opponent. If the game had 1 AI or 8, it would function the same-- All non-player planets are AI planets. Only difference would be more things to kill in the grand ending of the game. That's probably the second reason for why there are two AIs. When you kill one, the other gets really mad. If there were only one AI, it'd be as simple as kill one and end game. 
Either way the game would be stacked against you the same way either way, no matter how many AIs there are.

[Diazo]

Hey there, welcome to the forums. 

1) Supply: No, continuous lines are not necessary. Every Command Station provides supply to the planet it is on and all adjacent planets. As a rule of thumb, mobile military ships do not require supply, all stationary structures do and mobile non-military ships are the odds ones out and may or may not require it.

Note that Supply does not prevent mobile ships that 'Require Supply' from moving into a system that lacks supply, but all they will be able to do in that system is move.

2) Stars are pretty much background only. Thematically you are fighting in the part of the system that has the warp points, not near the star for that system. Add in a whole bunch of game-engine reasons and I don't think this is something we will ever see.

3) Carry over I'm guessing? If you call something a nuke you know it blows things up. If you call it 'Sciency Fictiony Weapon of Doomy-Doom' you don't get what it does right away and have to read the description. Same reason 'Scouts' and 'Fighters' carried over, they could have been called 'drones' and 'snub-ships' but those don't have that immediate role recognition.

4) 2 AIs are to give variety. The AI type has a huge impact on how the game goes and the two AI types mix things up a bit in any given game. Fighting against a Fortress Baron/Tank is pretty much a totally different game then fighting a Speed Racer/Stealth Master pairing.

D.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Diazo gotta show me up on the question answering front.

Well, better an expert's answers than mine!

[Junuxx]

Thanks for the answers both of you!

I see I misunderstood supply: in my current game (snake map) I have been expanding by taking every other planet (HW - neutered - taken - AI - taken - AI - taken etc) because I thought I needed a continuous supply line.

Do you mean say, instead of a planet being a place you build on, there would also be suns you could build around and such?

Yeah, sort of.  Or it could just be far off in the distance of the planet. The distance between star and planet, and the star's size, could influence energy production and needs on that planet. They could also influence ship speed and direction, etc.

Hey there, welcome to the forums. 

Thanks! I've posted before though. Just still consider myself a beginner :p

3) Carry over I'm guessing? If you call something a nuke you know it blows things up. If you call it 'Sciency Fictiony Weapon of Doomy-Doom' you don't get what it does right away and have to read the description. Same reason 'Scouts' and 'Fighters' carried over, they could have been called 'drones' and 'snub-ships' but those don't have that immediate role recognition.

Doomy-doom sounds pretty clear to me!  'Nuke' on the other hands sounds  to me like a very ancient, outdated and probably not so powerful weapon in a setting that also features antimatter, tachyons, wormholes, warp and the like.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, you don't want to attack planets that are too far away from any planet you own. That'll provoke a deep strike response to attack you right back. I think every 3 planets you'll want to take the fourth one to prevent that deep strike response.

[doctorfrog]

I'd say the things that stumped me most as a noob were supply, reinforcements, and how warp gates/incoming waves worked. These are all things that AI War does differently from other games, or makes up out of whole cloth. Any trouble understanding these?

[Junuxx]

I'd say the things that stumped me most as a noob were supply, reinforcements, and how warp gates/incoming waves worked. These are all things that AI War does differently from other games, or makes up out of whole cloth. Any trouble understanding these?

I think I have a basic understanding of those, yeah. What about the fractions I see people mention in loads of other threads though, like 9/9, 7/7, what setting does that refer to? 

Edit: Oh wait, difficulty for both AIs of course. Heh.

[Fluffiest]

I'd be in favour of renaming "nuke" to "doomsday device", but you can't easily make a verb out of that (you can nuke a planet, but you can't very well doomsday-device a planet).

[keith.lamothe]

"Nuke" doesn't mean it's like modern nukes.  Compared to the amount of energy actually in all those atoms, modern bombs are pretty inefficient.  Something that totally liberated the energy stored in the nucleus's of all those atoms... Not enough to flash-boil the milky way, but a lot nastier than what we have today.  Also, each planetary area is actually really small compared to a solar system, and the wormhole network just passes the love along for the bigger ones.

Edit: didn't touch the other questions since they've been quite capably handled, thanks

[Hearteater]

Just wanted to touch on why there are 2 AIs from the Lore side, because I thought it was really cool:

So humanity was fighting a war against itself.  And there were two sides.  They built massive AIs to run their armies.  Apparently no one had seen Terminator.  Surprise, surprise, the two AIs decided to join forces and just remove the pesky humans.  Hence, there are two AIs that are often different because they were built by two different groups of humans.

[keith.lamothe]

So humanity was fighting a war against itself.  And there were two sides.  They built massive AIs to run their armies.  Apparently no one had seen Terminator.  Surprise, surprise, the two AIs decided to join forces and just remove the pesky humans.  Hence, there are two AIs that are often different because they were built by two different groups of humans.

I wonder which side built the "Turtle AI".  They probably didn't understand that's what they were doing, and when they realized it they named the AI "F.A.C.E.P.A.L.M.".

[Winge]

So humanity was fighting a war against itself.  And there were two sides.  They built massive AIs to run their armies.  Apparently no one had seen Terminator.  Surprise, surprise, the two AIs decided to join forces and just remove the pesky humans.  Hence, there are two AIs that are often different because they were built by two different groups of humans.

I wonder which side built the "Turtle AI".  They probably didn't understand that's what they were doing, and when they realized it they named the AI "F.A.C.E.P.A.L.M.".

Actually, a fully defensive strategy can be quite powerful, depending on who you are fighting.  You basically have home team advantage all the time:  a lot more guards, along with the defense posts.  The carrier mechanic would cover enough for attacks; at least against someone more aggressive.  Many of the best chess players, not to mention sports teams, focus on defense as the key to their success.  A better question would be:  which side built the "Support Corps"? 

One explanation I've ponered could be that the AIs were actually hacking each other.  Meet a threat on all fronts, right?  The end result was that both AIs destabilized/merged, creating an entirely new AI that was comprised of two parts.  The AIs work together, but their hardware is still independent (gives Schizophrenic AI a whole new meaning...).  That would be why both AIs must be defeated.

Of course, theorizing about the details of the AI doesn't solve the very real problem of the AIs trying to kill us.  That's what Raid Starships are for!

[Diazo]

Of course, theorizing about the details of the AI doesn't solve the very real problem of the AIs trying to kill us.  That's what Raid Starships are for!

Yes, Raid Starships are for dying.

*grumblegrumbleStupidDataCentersInHeavilyDefendedSystemsgrumblegrumblegrumble*

I'm getting a lot of attempted use of out them at the moment.

 

D.

[zoutzakje]

I'd be in favour of renaming "nuke" to "doomsday device", but you can't easily make a verb out of that (you can nuke a planet, but you can't very well doomsday-device a planet).

call it DDing the planet then ^^ I like doomsday device lol