What happens if you don't get the (AIP) memo?

[keith.lamothe]

Come to think of it, there is one energy income effect that is begging for change, now that I think of it: You've got quadratic scaling in homeworlds where economic stations are concerned!

A probably unintentional effect of the recent change to make economic stations generate energy is that currently n homeworlds give n times the number of Economic II/III stations that one homeworld does (in lines with the cap-multiplication of everything else) and additionally each individual economic station gives n times the energy each individual stations would give with one homeworld.

The result, for n=3 as in this game, was that once I built all the mark II and mark III stations I got 9 times the energy from unlocking economic stations than I would have gotten from unlocking them with one homeworld.

I suggest treating economic stations as ZPGs are treated and not multiplying their energy output by the number of homeworlds, since the number of stations available has already been thus multiplied. This ignores the issue of mark 1 economic stations, but it seems unlikely that anybody would build those in a multiple homeworld game anyhow.

Alternatively, don't multiple the station caps when going to multiple homeworlds, which also resolves the quadratic issue, but leaves the player with few stations to deploy (and it was fun to deploy numerous upgraded stations given that huge territorial control - I was able to create a highway of Logistic III stations boosted by spacetime manipulators).

I just tested with a 1HW and a multi-HW start, and it didn't seem to increase the amount of energy produced by a command station.  Do you have a save where a mkII is producing more than 75k, or a mkIII is producing more than 150k?

[Peter Ebbesen]

I just tested with a 1HW and a multi-HW start, and it didn't seem to increase the amount of energy produced by a command station.  Do you have a save where a mkII is producing more than 75k, or a mkIII is producing more than 150k?

Hmm, no. I just tested and I cannot reproduce it, which suggests an error in my methodology when testing it.

The most reasonable explanation that springs to mind is that I may have forgotten to destroy the energy collectors first and hence have conflated the effects. So as a going assumption, let's assume that that's what happened unless somebody ever sees something like that again.

[Niwantaw]

I'm pretty sure that without FS ships 900AIP is the point where practically any defensive line crumbles. I've got every turret mk1-4 bar lightning and flak, 4 sets of Mk V turrets, 1k fleetships on low caps, five modular fortresses, eight champions, HRFs, roaming enclaves, radar jammer mk2 and (briefly) a botnet golem.

AI can roll through it. Last waves were ~26k ships or so half armour half anti armour. This wave was just 33k anti armour. three mk3 lightning warheads didn't even make a dent. :L


Still. It's fun seeing how many ships you can get a defense line to hold against. It's a shame most of the golems are on the wrong side of the map, and that I did a stupid and forgot to do the FS campaign which pretty much doomed the enterprise from the start.


Thinking about it. If you could get a gravity drill on that planet somewhere far from the AI's entry point...
That or roll a "string" of planets that you can use as a 2-3 planet thick whipping boy with full caps of turrets on each.


Edit: http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/585783733674279341/9DC0D6DD75BACD5BB846BFE7987B9671230972E0/

One last stand.

Edit 2: The pricks popped the nuke before it jumped out of the system >.>

[Draco18s]

Post a save just prior to that final wave (one of) over here.

[Peter Ebbesen]

I'm pretty sure that without FS ships 900AIP is the point where practically any defensive line crumbles. I've got every turret mk1-4 bar lightning and flak, 4 sets of Mk V turrets, 1k fleetships on low caps, five modular fortresses, eight champions, HRFs, roaming enclaves, radar jammer mk2 and (briefly) a botnet golem.

AI can roll through it. Last waves were ~26k ships or so half armour half anti armour. This wave was just 33k anti armour. three mk3 lightning warheads didn't even make a dent. :L

We seem to be lacking pertinent information.  Specifically, which difficulty level are you talking about? 26k or 33k ships in a wave on low caps doesn't sound like 7.6/7.6. >D

...unless, of course, the huge waves are caused by having eight freaking champions? Does having multiple champions increase wavesizes?

[keith.lamothe]

...unless, of course, the huge waves are caused by having eight freaking champions? Does having multiple champions increase wavesizes?

They used to, but no longer

[Niwantaw]

We seem to be lacking pertinent information.  Specifically, which difficulty level are you talking about? 26k or 33k ships in a wave on low caps doesn't sound like 7.6/7.6. >D

...unless, of course, the huge waves are caused by having eight freaking champions? Does having multiple champions increase wavesizes?

7/7 It may be the buff to chivalric AI but I though that was a CPA boost not a normal wave boost. (nor did I expect it to boost it quite so much O.o)

[Nodor]

@Keith,

Did you get the data you needed for this?  Or should I see if I can get to 110+ planets again?

[keith.lamothe]

@Keith,

Did you get the data you needed for this?  Or should I see if I can get to 110+ planets again?

That was enough data for the time, but since then I've made significant adjustments that I think will make a no-memo game impossible (or at least improbable) even on 7/7.  Though some of those changes were later ratcheted down to not be so painful.

So if you would find it entertaining to attempt another galactic rampage, that would be helpful.  Though don't feel that you need to go all the way to 110 planets to prove the point

[Nodor]

I still need to get my head around the whipping boy firepower tolerances now that we have more turrets.   If life allows, I'll take a stab at it.

[Cynical_Lurker]

I was playing a game like this in the previous version where I was playing a 7/7 X map where I was just slowly but surely capturing every branch of the map with no nukes and a super whipping boy. The game was pretty trivial with the huge amounts of knowledge allowing me to make literally every defensive turret and fortress on my whipping boy so all the waves were easily dispatched. I got to about 6 planets away from finishing before I stopped playing for unrelated reasons.  At the point I left the AIP was 1.1k

Once I patched my game I came back and decided to quickly take those planets just to get the achievement but to my surprise it was not that easy. Has there been a change to how the number of ships per wave is calculated when the AIP gets ridiculous? When I started up I had two counter attack guard posts counting down but my when the countdown reached zero they both fizzled and no ships spawned. After that I realised that the wormhole locations in my systems had changed to I set out updating all the defences in my whipping boy, placing all the new turrets that are now available in the rework. Then suddenly I got my first wave. It was a double wave from both the AI each sending 50K ships. I was like WTF! 100k mark 4 ships! I never remember something like that happening before so I recalled all my fleet and got ready to defend. After two hours of my computer slowly slugging through the game the wave was finally cleaned up with my whipping boy military command dying and all my ion cannons down. I still think the game is finish able but it would take a long time. None of my fortresses fell and the salvage from the 100K ships is making rebuilding much less painful.

So my question is was there a change in the recent patches that would cause the waves to be several times larger than before? or is it just a bug caused by a save made on an older version?

[Lord Of Nothing]

If the version was old enough, it might be that it predated reinforcement redirection- which is basically the AI saying:
Okay, defending more isn't working, let's KILL THEM ALL WITH FIRE.
Mechanically, AIP over 200 stops increasing reinforcements, as it did before, but it now puts that strength towards increased wave sizes instead of being wasted.