Wiki is outdated a bit and i want pointers how to fix it

[Singrana]

This is going to be a messy and free flowing post with spelling errors and lack of formatting.

i just made an account on this forum to type this (but i have been trawling thru it for a while using google and site:arcengames.com to find information that is not on the wiki, and recently to read some AARs) and firstly there is the obligatory praise for probably my favorite non scripted, non PVP game so far in my life, its impossible for me to really explain to my friends the love i have for this game for the same reason it is hard to talk about how sad the plight of north Korean life is: one simply ends up using the same adjectives over and over and the audience gets de-sensitized.

(i stream my attempts vs this beast on twitch under the AI war section if anyone is interested)

with that out of the way i will just dive straight into the reason i made this post, namely the wiki: 
https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Tackle_Drone_Launcher

this serves as an example of 2 of my complaints with it, firstly the numbers here are WRONG, in the sense that a lot of them are roughly 200 times their in game value (i got this game before vengance of the machine so after the numbers all got rescaled down 200 times) now this is not a HUGE problem, but it does reduce the ability to just have multiple tabs open and do side by side comparisons of ships ( with the ones that are up to date), i would like this updated (i could do this work myself if i just knew how to edit the tables on that site (i have 0 web page or wiki experience, but in a fast learner in most things)).

secondly, and far more personal taste: i feel like the tabs of the tables could use some expansion, for example cap dps vs each hull type it has multipliers against (for easier side by side comparison vs other ships without multipliers and such) (and for ships that spawn drones like the tackle drone launcher the max possible DPS from the drones per mark level as well (also the carrier starships proboably))

thirdly (and i cannot really help here as i have no way to open / understand the games files in any kind of comprehensive way, if i could i would presumably know how to program by now) there are many outdated / bare-bones explanations of many mechanics ( say ai reinforcement cycles ) on the wiki that is basically WHY i had to use google with site:arcengames as the "real" wiki here hoping to find a credible sounding forum member or keith/chris explaining my particular question, it would probably be nice if the keepers of any such knowledge could make / update a wiki entry on any mechanics that are not covered in detail, its ok to have a brief "essentials only" introduction to say reinforcements, but its also nice to know the nitty gritty details of for example if blowing up the guardposts of a planet receiving reinforcement events does actually impact the total number of ai strength it gets per unit time (apparently it does).

Another good example is detailed explanations of say special forces behavior, hybrid behavior, HARD NUMBERS for difficulty, handicap, minor faction / plot scalars (for example what if i want the brains of difficulty 8 but overall the unit production of 6? what handicap should i use then? can i even meaningfully accomplish this with handicaps? does handicaps affect minor factions? hybrids?
full list of any plot threshold for say hybrids, trains and so on

^^ and i KNOW that the answer to the above is "experiment and get what feels right" but I'm talking about making more data available to players of the games inner workings here, even with this knowledge life is ultimately a matter of personal perception 

this last third category i ultimately cannot really help with, since all my knowledge of this game is essentially second hand and not based any any kind of peeking at the inner workings of the game, so this one is more of a spotlighting for those who do really KNOW

so to recap the first 2 parts, basically I'm willing to do the grunt work of updating the out of date shipstats on the wiki if somone can explain to me how to change those tables to reflect updated ingame values, and assuming others want it; expanding some of those tables with ship cap dps * multipliers it has and listing the sustained drone dps of drone spawners as well (any multi target ships should also have their theoretical maximum per cap per marklevel listed as well)

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah the wiki is actually super strange

Just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out where those tables sit, and I drew blank... doesn't seem like they are actually part of the wiki and it isn't explained anywhere how to update those values or their source....... if the source is the debug output of all unit stats from the game menu then how would we ever update it? Uploading files and overwriting files isn't something wiki users can do. Admin only....

And as for the rest of your post. Indeed. Tons of the more complex functions are kinda opaque ;/

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

Okay, I'm going to try to respond on my phone real quick.

To edit the tables you see on the wiki, but can't edit normally, you need to navigate to the table's page directly. For the example you gave, that table's page would be Template:AIWarTableTackleDrone (You can get the name by finding the text in two curly braces {{AIWarTableTackleDrone}}). On that page, you can edit everything.

Note that templates are very complicated for some stuff, so reading Wikipedia's guides on templates may be helpful.

You should be able to upload images and all that without a problem. I can look into why that isnt working soon.

[eRe4s3r]

Nah when I talked about uploading I thought the table is generated dynamically from the actual game data or debug output file of some sort (since the data is something keith or x4000 have) .. I checked the template and yeah, that's not something I am gonna mess around with ever.... since there is no way to sync any of these values easily with the up-to-date data if each unit has own template that needs manual editing.

This problem literally screams for a script.. but it doesn't seem like any of the debug options we have actually gives a proper unit-by-unit statistics output that you could script up and sort somehow...

[BadgerBadger]

According to the wiki https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Minimizing_Micromanagement#For_More_Information_About_Ship_Stats you can generate excel files with the relevant data. I have not tested this though

[eRe4s3r]

You can even create a html file with that data, the problem is that you gotta manually group the data and recreate the template syntax... , the latter is probably easy with regex, but the former is a lot of work.. 2100 entries to group and sort to fit the existing template syntax....

Well at least that's something to do for someone who is REALLY bored
Basically the table is already there, it just needs a ton of cleaning, and syntax changes.. and sorting.

Code: [Select]



<tr>
<td height="20" align="left" valign=top>ObjectType</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>ShortName</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Attack Ammo</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Attack Power</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Attack Range</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Reload Speed</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Speed</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Health</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Armor Rating</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Armor Type</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Engine Health</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Metal Cost</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Energy Cost</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Ship Cap</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Time To Build</td>
</tr>


Code: [Select]


<tr>
<td height="17" align="left" valign=top>AIGuardPost_DisassemblerIII</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Post (Disassembler III)</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Dark Matter</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>5,250</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>10,000</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>3</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>0</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>90,000</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>0</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Ultra-Heavy</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>Inf</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>48,000</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>1,500</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>1</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>00:00:45</td>
</tr>

Just example on how it looks after freeing it from the clutches of the horrible xsl format.

If you look here
https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Tackle_Drone_Launcher
You can see we are missing data

The 2nd set of data is research cost, and it's another XLS file.. so you have 2 databases that you can't correlate properly (well, I can't)

The 2nd set looks like this

Code: [Select]


<tr>
<td height="17" align="left" valign=top>Unlock Armor Booster Mark II</td>
<td align="left" valign=top>2,500</td>
<td align="left" valign=top><br></td>
</tr>
So this requires merging the tables in Calc or Excel somehow, pruning anything you don't want in the template, exporting to HTML, pruning all html you don't need and replacing it with whatever you need in the template syntax of the wiki....

Eh yeah, well that's how to do it at least.. however I am not gonna do it ;P

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

I believe Diazo had a solution to that, which is also how he got most of the info in there to start. (Based off what I've been told, which may be inaccurate)

You can also nest templates, so A calls B and C and merges them. That might help with some stuff, but makes it more complicated.

The problem I see here is we have a bunch of information that may or may not be accurate, and some templates poorly named and poorly set up. Fixing the naming of stuff is pretty easy, but time consuming. We really need a consensus on naming schemes and how to set everything up, then work on fixing it all slowly but surely. The more people who edit, the faster we can fix stuff.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah... honestly I have not enough skills in Excel or DB's in general to do anything with this convolute

We shall engage in summoning rituals for Diazo to beseech the chaotic forces that may bring us his knowledge ;P

[jax211]

Bit late but I figured I'd go ahead and bite this off.

Example: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Armor_Ship

I added a ship cap HP since I figured it should be there.

Relevant code:

Code: [Select]

=CONCATENATE("{| {{AlgTop}}",CHAR(10),"! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]",CHAR(10),"|-",CHAR(10),"| {{AlgCtr}} | ",N2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",C2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",J2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",IF(LEN(S2),RIGHT(S2, LEN(S2)-15),"")," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",V2,CHAR(10),"|}")
Generates your line for table #1.

Code: [Select]

=CONCATENATE("| {{AlgCtr}} |",IF(CONCATENATE(IFERROR(IF(FIND("III",B2),"III"),IFERROR(IF(FIND("II",B2),"II"),"")),IFERROR(IF(FIND("IV",B2),"IV"),IFERROR(IF(FIND("V",B2),"V"),"")))="","I",CONCATENATE(IFERROR(IF(FIND("III",B2),"III"),IFERROR(IF(FIND("II",B2),"II"),"")),IFERROR(IF(FIND("IV",B2),"IV"),IFERROR(IF(FIND("V",B2),"V"),""))))," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",TEXT(D2,"#,##0")," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",E2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",F2," sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",H2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",I2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",G2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",K2," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",TEXT(D2/F2,"#,##0")," dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",TEXT(D2/F2*N2,"#,##0")," dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",TEXT(H2*N2,"#,##0")," ||{{AlgCtr}} | ",R2)
Generates your lines for table #2.

Don't really feel like doing this for table #3, not all that important information IMO.

Just paste these awful monsters into the excel file that is generated by the game through the link previously mentioned and copy the resulting lines to fit in the wiki tables. There any way to do this automatically or is it all just manual? I guess if manual is the only option I can do the player craft (all that I really care about, for comparing unlockables and such).

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

You could make a bot that would automatically do that, but I don't know of any that currently work with Mediawiki. There used to be one that was awesome for stuff like that, but I can't seem to find it for the life of me.