Suggestions

[eRe4s3r]

You can also invest Knowledge in the turret, forcefield, and minelaying technologies, which will raise the strength of your defenses.

Ah, but that i did already, the problem is all those "traveling merchants" who want to trade their weapon fire with my armor without ringing the door bell ;p Those traveling ships seem to like traveling through wiped clean sectors always finding my isolated adv. factory - And the other half of my defense (i purchase a LOT of turret tech, i know its value ,p) is in my home sector - protecting a single wormhole which leads to a hub with 3 IV worlds around it. lots of traffic heh

Ability to Link factories together to a megafactory with X amount of manufaturing slots for the size of 1-3 factories but if destroyed HEAVY progression penalty, with modular upgrade possibility per each mega complex

Ability to Link Crystal and Metal Fabs together (gathering all the fabs in one complex) if destroyed, heavy progression penalty and massive explosion + Random amount of metal and crystal lost from storage - and have upgrade ability IN the complex for even more fab goodness ;p (And more penalty if destroyed)

Could you elaborate on these? I'm not sure precisely what you're aiming to achieve with them. Bear in mind it's already impossible to gather resources at a greater rate than it's possible to utilize them.

No, with fabs i mean the crystal to metal conversion things - I always have about 12 of each because i *always* have not enough of one kind of resource ;p These things are immensely imbalanced too if one micros them, i just wondered if one could just make it 1 large building instead of 12 (and widely spaced) small ones, it looks so.. dis-orderly ;p Sadly they are too vital to the economy to pass them up

Thanks for those ideas, feel free to have a browse through the Future DLC section and add your thoughts to any topics in there.

Thanks for reading my random erratic ideas

I am really happy to have found Ai war... the only game that really challenges one constantly and more and more the more one advances. Great game concept ! ;p Anyhow - i hope i didn't loose while writing this (alt tabbed)

Edit: Mhh i forgot to mention that with the complex thing i mean instead of having 12 single docks with 12 singular cues i wondered if one couldn't have a Dock MK2 which has 12 slots (for example) and can produce 12 ships at once (or something like that ;p) But i guess that would be too imbalanced as well

[Revenantus]

Ah, but that i did already, the problem is all those "traveling merchants" who want to trade their weapon fire with my armor without ringing the door bell ;p Those traveling ships seem to like traveling through wiped clean sectors always finding my isolated adv. factory - And the other half of my defense (i purchase a LOT of turret tech, i know its value ,p) is in my home sector - protecting a single wormhole which leads to a hub with 3 IV worlds around it. lots of traffic heh

Ah, that sounds like you may have started in a particularly tough location. Traveling ships are often routing between Special Forces Command Posts, so if you can destroy any of those in nearby systems that might improve your situation. Be prepared though, those tech IV planets may launch large scale attacks against you later on!

Ability to Link factories together to a megafactory with X amount of manufaturing slots for the size of 1-3 factories but if destroyed HEAVY progression penalty, with modular upgrade possibility per each mega complex

Ability to Link Crystal and Metal Fabs together (gathering all the fabs in one complex) if destroyed, heavy progression penalty and massive explosion + Random amount of metal and crystal lost from storage - and have upgrade ability IN the complex for even more fab goodness ;p (And more penalty if destroyed)

Could you elaborate on these? I'm not sure precisely what you're aiming to achieve with them. Bear in mind it's already impossible to gather resources at a greater rate than it's possible to utilize them.

No, with fabs i mean the crystal to metal conversion things - I always have about 12 of each because i *always* have not enough of one kind of resource ;p These things are immensely imbalanced too if one micros them, i just wondered if one could just make it 1 large building instead of 12 (and widely spaced) small ones, it looks so.. dis-orderly ;p Sadly they are too vital to the economy to pass them up

I would suggest that while you may require a lot of them, they can be switched on and off en masse. Having each converting a smaller amount is useful for resource management, for example, if I have 5 Metal Manufactories then I can have any number of them switched on at once, with a single larger Manufactory it would presumably be all or nothing.

Thanks for reading my random erratic ideas  

No problem.

I am really happy to have found Ai war... the only game that really challenges one constantly and more and more the more one advances. Great game concept ! ;p Anyhow - i hope i didn't loose while writing this (alt tabbed)

That's great news, I hope you continue to enjoy the game. Good luck in your campaign against the AI!

EDIT:

Edit: Mhh i forgot to mention that with the complex thing i mean instead of having 12 single docks with 12 singular cues i wondered if one couldn't have a Dock MK2 which has 12 slots (for example) and can produce 12 ships at once (or something like that ;p) But i guess that would be too imbalanced as well

Possibly, but again it's possible to manage twelve space docks as if they were one by selecting them all at once. You can double-click on a unit type to select all units of that type on the screen at once, or you could assign those constructors to a control group and select them all using the shortcut 'X+<Control Group Number>'.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah I know ^^ Double click ftw Still it DOES look really cluttered having 12 docks and 24 converters - ok it also makes the home sector much less boring ;p (and yes, i manage them according to demand)

Is there any way to find out which AI types i am playing against? You say special ops positions but i have found none in a 3 hop radius (a lot of IV planets with fortresses though. But i do have a LOT of incoming traffic through wormholes especially when i attack a world (i get CONSTANT streams of ships coming at me when i invade to research raid a planet for example (coming at me from wormholes, not from command points)

And a captive human settlement is in one of those IV worlds near my homeworld as well........

I am nearly surpassing AI 1 in score already - technically i don't *need* any more tech or stuff, i just need to find the homeworld ;/ (Counter Spy as enemy is a huge bother)

[x4000]

Yeah I know ^^ Double click ftw Still it DOES look really cluttered having 12 docks and 24 converters - ok it also makes the home sector much less boring ;p (and yes, i manage them according to demand)

This is a game with a LOT of ships.  It definitely does get cluttered, but I don't see myself adding more compound ships in response to that.  New ships that I add need to add some sort of new gameplay or something to the game, is the main thing.  You can always make cool shapes out of all those little manufactories and docks.

Is there any way to find out which AI types i am playing against? You say special ops positions but i have found none in a 3 hop radius (a lot of IV planets with fortresses though. But i do have a LOT of incoming traffic through wormholes especially when i attack a world (i get CONSTANT streams of ships coming at me when i invade to research raid a planet for example (coming at me from wormholes, not from command points)

The only way to find that out at present is to win or to lose.  It's on the list to have the AI home planet command stations also reveal that, though.  Also there's another one on the list to have an option at the start that would show the chosen type from the start.

I am nearly surpassing AI 1 in score already - technically i don't *need* any more tech or stuff, i just need to find the homeworld ;/ (Counter Spy as enemy is a huge bother)

The scores can be misleading -- those are based on ships built and ships killed.  It all depends on where they were building their ships, and so forth.  Positioning doesn't show up very well in the score, and that can have a huge effect on the win or loss.

[Haagenti]

Counter Spy as enemy is a huge bother

I'm playing against one right now (together with a Vicious Raider). It is an amazing pain: I need to raid additional systems just to remove the Spy-Killer Thingie so I can look "deeper". I can imagine that on certain, more linear, maps, it will be even worse.

[Kalzarius]

See, that's exactly the situation I don't want to be over-easy.   Calling in reinforcements from a star system half a galaxy away isn't meant to be quite that simple.

I'm not trying to fight for this or anything, but I'm not too sure where you're coming from.  Is it a concern over accidentally moving the wrong group or is this an intended UI restriction to make the game more difficult?

And for the record, we were calling in reinforcements from right next door.

I see.  Well, often there are other advanced factories closer in that you can capture for a more speedy construction.  But that's part of the thing with the Mark IV ships -- they are limited in number, they are expensive and rare (based on only being built at advanced factories), and they are inconvenient to replace.  That makes them powerful, but something to be conserved and not idly thrown away.  Most situations can be overcome with primarily Mark III and below ships, so it shouldn't be the case that you have to sit around waiting for the Mark IV ones.  They are scarce on purpose.

41 planets down, we've only found two advanced factories. They're probably all on the other side of the galaxy.  We just like to go in full force, since it takes 2-3 real hours to take out any given planet (3500+ enemy ships), with constant reinforcements.  I just wish we could find more data centers.  This 1000 AI Progress is killing us, and we've only found one.  Since we had to take the system down with missiles, it wasn't too useful (missiles allow us to eliminate enough ships to play at a tolerable speed).

Ah well.

[x4000]

See, that's exactly the situation I don't want to be over-easy.   Calling in reinforcements from a star system half a galaxy away isn't meant to be quite that simple.

I'm not trying to fight for this or anything, but I'm not too sure where you're coming from.  Is it a concern over accidentally moving the wrong group or is this an intended UI restriction to make the game more difficult?

And for the record, we were calling in reinforcements from right next door.

I gotcha.  Well, for one thing the game was designed around the idea of separate battlefields, and the lines have started to blur with that since release, but at the same time it is still a core assumption in the engine that causes certain limitations.  Limitations that, overall, I like -- I designed it that way from the start for a reason -- because it really makes the planets feel more separate.

See, for the first three or four months of the development of this game, there were no wormholes at all.  Players and AI warped their ships between planets, and depending on how distant the planets were from one another was how long it would take to get to the other side.  Warping all the way across the galaxy could take around 5 minutes, during which the warping ships were completely unavailable to you

Anyway, that was problematic for a lot of reasons as you might imagine, so wormholes were added.  But the basic idea was that planets are separate and isolated to a certain degree, and that each one should be planned out and defended as well as possible individually.  That there should be some cost, albeit a less severe one, to reinforcing from even adjacent planets.  That's similar to, for instance, Star Wars: Empire At War, which had a similar mechanic in their turn-based galaxies.

So that's where I'm coming from with this, if that helps.  It was originally a conscious design decision, which has since turned into something of a design limitation, which is okay because I still believe in the original design decision.  Another example from other games that I like to think of is getting reinforcements from your home city in AoEIII, or calling in reinforcements in the original Red Alert game.  In both cases, you would have to wait a bit for them to arrive, and you would also not be able to control too well where they arrived (in Red Alert, they would come to a predefined reinforcement point on the map, if I recall, and in AoEIII they always come to one of your town centers or forts).

In all of the above cases, it adds to the strategy to a minor degree by causing there to be a bit more of a cost (in terms of time and thus also potential casualties) for poor planning or unexpected enemy shifts.  Hopefully that makes sense, anyway.

41 planets down, we've only found two advanced factories. They're probably all on the other side of the galaxy.  We just like to go in full force, since it takes 2-3 real hours to take out any given planet (3500+ enemy ships), with constant reinforcements.  I just wish we could find more data centers.  This 1000 AI Progress is killing us, and we've only found one.  Since we had to take the system down with missiles, it wasn't too useful (missiles allow us to eliminate enough ships to play at a tolerable speed).

Wow, that is just super, super unlucky.  There should be at least 2 advanced factories per human player.  And there should be usually 10-20 data centers or so.  If you hover over the mission summary on the right of your screen, it will tell you how many of each are still remaining, if that helps.

That 1000 AI Progress is super high, I have not actually heard of a game with more than 800 before, or played with that myself.  The game has logic in there for all the way up to around 1800 AI Progress, but I've never gotten near there at all.  You might try using transports, or some other mechanism, to do some planet-hopping.  Trying to be a completionist in AI War, trying to take all the planets, is generally a recipe for a loss; the AI Progress gets too high and kills you or stalemates you by design, which forces you to make tougher decision on actually what planets to take, etc.  It sounds like you have a salvageable situation, but a difficult one. :/

[Admiral]

The more the game is played the better the AI gets, if you keep improving it, at some point 10 will be unbeatable to any human, then the AI will take over the Internet and enslave us.

I think many of us have nightmares about this event.

I just hope that AI War doesn't become the next V'ger!

[x4000]

The more the game is played the better the AI gets, if you keep improving it, at some point 10 will be unbeatable to any human, then the AI will take over the Internet and enslave us.

I think many of us have nightmares about this event.

I just hope that AI War doesn't become the next V'ger!

I'll make sure it has the three laws of robotics in there.  Oh wait, nevermind, that would make it a pretty pathetic opponent, wouldn't it?  Well, oh well...

[eRe4s3r]

Suggestions 

Energy Generators boosting efficiency of nearby buildings (Small and Large gen with different %) - especially shield generators (where it increases the regen rate and strength) the Trade Off - Once they are explosive, that tactic will be dangerous - also only 1 gen can boost at a time (so if you have small and large, it will only apply the bonus of large gen) - They would also need to be very close to the shield gen. But if you put 2 shield gens next to 1 reactor, that should boost both gens (twice the risk, twice the gain)

With this goes - Radioactive fallout when reactor is destroyed, preventing building anything at that location for a time, and damaging buildings that survived the reactor blow

The AI Aware bracket around planets on the galmap should be much much brighter - and "Is AI aware" filter might be useful as well.

[Revenantus]

Energy Generators boosting efficiency of nearby buildings (Small and Large gen with different %) - especially shield generators (where it increases the regen rate and strength) the Trade Off - Once they are explosive, that tactic will be dangerous - also only 1 gen can boost at a time (so if you have small and large, it will only apply the bonus of large gen) - They would also need to be very close to the shield gen. But if you put 2 shield gens next to 1 reactor, that should boost both gens (twice the risk, twice the gain)

Cool idea! Added to the suggestions section.

With this goes - Radioactive fallout when reactor is destroyed, preventing building anything at that location for a time, and damaging buildings that survived the reactor blow

This is already under consideration here - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,382.0.html

The AI Aware bracket around planets on the galmap should be much much brighter - and "Is AI aware" filter might be useful as well.

Personally I haven't had a problem with this, but perhaps others have. Does anyone else have trouble determining which planets the AI is aware of the player's presence at?

Added to the suggestions section for further discussion - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,542.0.html

[eRe4s3r]

Should mention i am partially color blind, the dark red of the bracket is nearly invisible to me, especially when the AI is green (i have green/red color blindness) (and no, that doesn't mean one can't see green or red) its the very dark saturated colors that are the problem - the easiest way to this is to shift colors always a bit so they are never one color only (slight orange / slight blue green etc.,)

And one more

Color Blind Mode for UI/Player Colors (Green/Red and the other color blindness ;p)

This is actually something thats a bit of a problem for everyone who is color blind ^^
Which is more people than you'd think... - This also goes with the Minimap which is REALLY hard to read now that it has an green BG (see Green/red color blindness ;p)

If its possible to mod the minimap BG myself i'd just need to know which file it is. I'd go for a light blue/greyish BG with bright Orange Blips for Enemies and Bright light blue blips for wormholes..

Basically anything that is not green or red

[Haagenti]

(i have green/red color blindness)

That would explain the hair color of your avatar  

[Revenantus]

Should mention i am partially color blind, the dark red of the bracket is nearly invisible to me, especially when the AI is green (i have green/red color blindness) (and no, that doesn't mean one can't see green or red) its the very dark saturated colors that are the problem - the easiest way to this is to shift colors always a bit so they are never one color only (slight orange / slight blue green etc.,)

Ah, I understand. Would you mind if we conducted any continued discussion of this topic in the associated suggestions thread? It's just to make it easier to keep track of where we are with particular topics - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,542.0.html

Color Blind Mode for UI/Player Colors (Green/Red and the other color blindness ;p)

This is actually something thats a bit of a problem for everyone who is color blind ^^
Which is more people than you'd think... - This also goes with the Minimap which is REALLY hard to read now that it has an green BG (see Green/red color blindness ;p)

If its possible to mod the minimap BG myself i'd just need to know which file it is. I'd go for a light blue/greyish BG with bright Orange Blips for Enemies and Bright light blue blips for wormholes..

Basically anything that is not green or red

This is a very good point. When playing single player it would be possible to select the most visible colours for the AI, however in multiplayer, especially with a high number of players, this might not be possible.

So the suggestion would be to have a UI option to use specific high visibility colours for all objects on the minimap rather than the actual team colours?

Would it be acceptable for me to ask you to make a note of all the areas of the game in which the use of colour to relay information is causing difficulties? This might help X if he decides to implement some new UI options to help with this.

Suggestions thread for further discussion of this can be found here - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,543.0.html

[eRe4s3r]

Actually - i think this is the first mod for AI WAR

- Better readable different Minimap, Sadly the icons are still too dark. I dunno how or if fixing that in the png files really solves anything - The thing is, the icon colors are too dark so i made the minimap bright to have some more contrast (besides bright BG is better for lcd's ,p) But this green and this red and even that blue (of the icons) will always be a problem for colorblind



(direct link to preview) http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/8743/minimapchange.jpg

AI War\Images\minimap.png is the original to replace (make BACKUP!)

( i was typing this while you created the post in suggestions, i might be able to find this or that thats annoying to color weakness people but i only cover 30% of the color blind range.)

I will detail what could be changed for better visibility in th suggestion topic