Prerelease 3.175 (Bugfixes, Neinzul Regeneration Chambers)

[keith.lamothe]

My initial though is to drastically reduce the "Attacker" hybrids health in return for faster speed and a raiding mentality.

Yea, for 3.176 I've already:
- Reduced their speed from 50 to 30.  Gives you a bit more time to do damage, also generally slows down.
- Hull strength from 2mil to 1.5mil.  Makes it easier to cut down on repeat offenders (they aren't intended to have ultra-survivability individually, just reasonably so).
- Cut their attack power against forcefields to 20% of what it was. They can still chew through ff's but it's more of a lunch than a quick snack and you have a chance to scare them away in time.  Note that later-tier attacker types will have more siege-oriented modules available to them, but the basic attacker class doesn't need to slice through ff like butter.
- In response to your suggestion just now, made the base attacker type only able to get a MkI forcefield (same as a neophyte) instead of MkII, so 0.5mil hp instead of 1.0mil.  That may be a bit too low now, we'll see.  Also, if the new-to-3.176 "Advanced Hybrids" plot is enabled then the attacker type can get MkII forcefields like before.
- Slightly increased how long it takes a Hybrid to spawn from nothing, and how long it takes them to mature from one stage to the next.  Generally slows down the pacing of the hammer-blows

Anyway, all this together may wind up being too much nerf, but I don't think so (indeed, may still be too hard, with the defender types shutting down offensives and such).  We'll see how it goes.

edit: Or some sort of cluster penalty for the attacker type hybrids, or something based on AI progress so the attacker type is more dangerous the later in the game it is? But that's connecting it back to the core AI's again.

The attackers get stronger as they mature and get better modules and drones, so a number of the steps taken thus far are intended to reduce the brute-force-power of the base attacker class.  If I try a cluster penalty they'll kill me (it also wouldn't really work as most of the firepower is in the modules which would only cluster with other modules of the exact same type and mark level)

In a real game, I would be expanding before they could choke me off

Yea, that's the idea, just gotta get the attackers to the point where the player CAN reasonably do some expansion and get adequate defenses up, rather than one or the other.

Thanks very much for the testing, the feedback helps a lot

[mlaskus]

I can't wait for that update. I just got wiped out by an assault of 18 Hybrids which hit me at the same time as 2 strong waves, 1.5 hours into the campaign. I capped my starting ship types, heavy beam cannons and tier 2 bombers , I also had a lot of other turrets and 4 overlapping force fields. That was with only one AI having Hybrids enabled. 

The Hybrids are a great idea, I love them, but right now I'm too much of a wuss to enable them again.

[keith.lamothe]

The Hybrids are a great idea, I love them, but right now I'm too much of a wuss to enable them again.

Yea, now that they've established who's boss, they can move towards playing "fair"

[x4000]

LIFE IS GOOD

would it be possible to make mines less valuable for kill/death/score also? (if not already? I raised this a while ago but dont recall if it was tweaked).

Glad you like it.

As far as the mines go, since pre-1.0 versions they have always had a lower kill/death score.  They are worth 4 for building, 12 for killing, and that's it.  Very low.

[mlaskus]

Oh, they certainly showed me who's boss. My ego has been crushed and now I will dig up a copy of Sims and drown a few of them buggers to compensate. 

I noticed on the wiki that the maximum number of Hybrids depends on "roughly planet_count/3 + hive_spawner_count*4".
Now, I have no idea how do you scale it to the number of players(AI's ordinary forces scale brilliantly) but it looks like smaller numbers of players would have to deal with relatively higher numbers of Hybrids.

Off topic:
I just reflected that it was quite rude of me to make my first post here without even saying hello.
So... uh, hello.

I've been playing AI War since a while before Zenith Remnant got released and I absolutely love it, even though I have yet to finish a campaign.
I also bought Tidalis just to support you and I was very pleasantly surprised when I realized just how rich and enjoyable game it is.

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, they certainly showed me who's boss. My ego has been crushed and now I will dig up a copy of Sims and drown a few of them buggers to compensate. 

Uh oh, I wound up causing other misery.  Well, at least you didn't resort to Dwarf Fortress, that would have been really tragic

I noticed on the wiki that the maximum number of Hybrids depends on "roughly planet_count/3 + hive_spawner_count*4".
Now, I have no idea how do you scale it to the number of players(AI's ordinary forces scale brilliantly) but it looks like smaller numbers of players would have to deal with relatively higher numbers of Hybrids.

Yea, right now it pays no attention to player/homeworld count, but I need to change that.

Off topic:
I just reflected that it was quite rude of me to make my first post here without even saying hello.
So... uh, hello.

Hello, and welcome to the forums

I also bought Tidalis just to support you and I was very pleasantly surprised when I realized just how rich and enjoyable game it is.

Yea, there's actually a pretty large number of people who bought Tidalis just to support Arcen rather than actually caring the slightest bit about the puzzle genre, and find themselves sucked into one really good puzzle game

[Diazo]

Well, for some reason I've continued bashing my head against the wall that is Hybrids in 3.175.

So far, gravitational turrets and heavy beam cannon seem to be the way to go, but you have to turtle 100% until after the first hybrid wave still.

You just can't gather enough resources to build a defense strong enough and have resources left over to build an offensive fleet.

Yes, I know there's a serious nerf incoming in 3.176, but I will survive the hybrids!  

D.

edit: This is rather gratifying actually, solo hybrids coming in are lasting about 5 seconds and a full wave doesn't even reach my command post any more.
However, seeing as how I'm building my defense around 16 Heavy Beam Cannon turrets, half of them Mk II, I've sunk enough resources into my defense to do this....

edit2: Making progress, took out my first AI command station! 
At 2:45 gametime, vs Diff 7 AI's. 

[x4000]

New version, and it's a doozy: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,6604.0.html

[keith.lamothe]

Yes, I know there's a serious nerf incoming in 3.176, but I will survive the hybrids!  

D.

edit: This is rather gratifying actually, solo hybrids coming in are lasting about 5 seconds and a full wave doesn't even reach my command post any more.
However, seeing as how I'm building my defense around 16 Heavy Beam Cannon turrets, half of them Mk II, I've sunk enough resources into my defense to do this....

edit2: Making progress, took out my first AI command station! 
At 2:45 gametime, vs Diff 7 AI's. 

I admire your tenacity, I also tend to enjoy gameplay like that   Once we figure out a good normal balance I'm hoping to add an extra "bonus" AI plot that basically returns them to something like the current balance (just more nuanced with the extra stuff they'll have by then).  Maybe call it "Survival Mode"

[Vinraith]

I admire your tenacity, I also tend to enjoy gameplay like that   Once we figure out a good normal balance I'm hoping to add an extra "bonus" AI plot that basically returns them to something like the current balance (just more nuanced with the extra stuff they'll have by then).  Maybe call it "Survival Mode"

That kind of feature is always very, very welcome.  Just make sure it's labeled clearly.

[keith.lamothe]

Just make sure it's labeled clearly.

It's been suggested in the past that, due to occasional inadvertent mouse-wheelings that change Auto AI Progress to +75 every 5 minutes or something like that, the game should check for a scenario like that on "Start Game" and display a warning similar to the multi-homeworld-start warning.  Basically "You do realize you are going to die, right?"

[Vinraith]

Just make sure it's labeled clearly.

It's been suggested in the past that, due to occasional inadvertent mouse-wheelings that change Auto AI Progress to +75 every 5 minutes or something like that, the game should check for a scenario like that on "Start Game" and display a warning similar to the multi-homeworld-start warning.  Basically "You do realize you are going to die, right?"

It's not a bad idea.

Actually, on that sort of note, it might be interesting to have a few preconfigured start options. Sort of an "easy, moderate, hard, insane" set on the first page of options that would randomly select an appropriate set of things to turn on. Not knowing exactly what you're going to get is always fun.  It also might make it a little easier, considering the diversity of variables, for players to compare games.