AI War 2 v0.503 Released! "Nanocaust + Test And Revise Pass #2"

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Release notes here!

Although, frankly for the details on "The Nanocaust," you need to click through to the forum link where community member BadgerBadger explains his work.  This is the first player-created special faction, and it's something we're building into the game as an option for anyone to use without having to do a special separate download or whatever else.

The other main thing from this build is basically pass #2 of Keith playtesting the game and revising based on his findings.  This is overall a smaller batch of testing and revision work, because Keith was traveling for about a week and I've been doing the same.  But overall it's some solid stuff, and we're marching onward toward where the game needs to be on a number of fronts.

Keith has also done a pair of videos, lately, and you can expect more in the future:

Keith writes: The modding tutorial on xml/code (tool links, etc) is still pending, but this contains a lot of info on modding itself, as many of the changes I'm making are functionally mods.

Keith writes: The initial bit on the dps formula and the overall balance architecture is interesting if you'd like to know more about that, but the addition of Badger's Nanocaust faction is much more interesting, the real testing of that starts around 1:18:15 in the video.

 
Cinth and Blue have also been plugging away on their work, and I'll be putting out a massive batch of their content changes (new shipn visuals, adjusted ship visuals, etc) early next week. :)

Cheers!

Chris

[BadgerBadger]

The Nanocaust faction is mostly in for "testing and feedback". If you try to play a game normally with Nanocaust on then at some point the Nanobots will wander by and enslave your Ark.

I'll have a new round of changes at some point to clean up some of the code quality issues Keith highlighted and to improve the balance.

[keith.lamothe]

The Nanocaust faction is mostly in for "testing and feedback". If you try to play a game normally with Nanocaust on then at some point the Nanobots will wander by and enslave your Ark.

(Keith genuinely does not understand how that is not release-quality)

[WolfWhiteFire]

The Nanocaust faction is mostly in for "testing and feedback". If you try to play a game normally with Nanocaust on then at some point the Nanobots will wander by and enslave your Ark.

Really? The Ark isn't immune to the type of damage that makes a unit destroyed by it respawn on the team the damage came from?

[BadgerBadger]

Keith: Here's a picture of a galaxy after 1 hour. Note that the Nanocaust has taken almost all of the map. I have a couple levers in mind, one of which is to say "The nanobots are unstable, so after X seconds a nanobot ship destroys itself" (thanks to the code you just added for me to track how long a unit has been alive).

WhiteWolfFire: Zombification is a bit different from what you might think. The ark takes damage from generic weapons (Lasers, MLRS, Beams, etc). You can mod one of these weapons to have an additional On-Death effect (as well as doing its normal damage). This means that whenever a unit is killed by my On-Death weapon, the Effect is done. The effect is a particular C# function that takes as arguments the side that killed the unit and the unit. In this case, Zombification is an On-Death effect that says "When this unit dies, spawn a new instance of that unit owned by a different faction", but I could imagine an On-Death effect that did something else.

I could make the Nanocaust not zombify any unit or set of units by having my custom On-Death effect say "Were you a unit from IgnoredClass? Then do nothing", but I think having the Ark being zombified is a feature, not a bug.

[keith.lamothe]

Really? The Ark isn't immune to the type of damage that makes a unit destroyed by it respawn on the team the damage came from?

That wouldn't be any fun

Though some units skip the sort of logic that can result in flip-allegiance-on-death, because they already have special on-death behaviors like flagships reverting to neutral and turrets reverting to remains (without changing sides).

[TheVampire100]

WhiteWolfFire: Zombification is a bit different from what you might think. The ark takes damage from generic weapons (Lasers, MLRS, Beams, etc). You can mod one of these weapons to have an additional On-Death effect (as well as doing its normal damage). This means that whenever a unit is killed by my On-Death weapon, the Effect is done. The effect is a particular C# function that takes as arguments the side that killed the unit and the unit. In this case, Zombification is an On-Death effect that says "When this unit dies, spawn a new instance of that unit owned by a different faction", but I could imagine an On-Death effect that did something else.

I still would like to have some units that are immune to this.

[BadgerBadger]

What other units do you have in mind? Flagships don't get zombified, and I don't think golems get zombified either (I haven't tested this, but they shouldn't be). I'm open to suggestions!

[TheVampire100]

I think Ai guardians shouldn't get zombified.

[keith.lamothe]

I think Ai guardians shouldn't get zombified.

Why, specifically?

Bear in mind that the only things doing zombification damage are:
- The Botnet
- The Dire Teuthida Guardian (its drones, not currently itself, actually)
- Nanocaust units

So this isn't normally something possible for non-AI units (and only one of the AI units has it).

If someone turns on the Nanocaust they're asking for a degree of chaos, though a non-zombifying variant would also be fine to have.

If someone turns on the Botnet, it's supposed to be a game-changer. It has balance issues, and the AIWC version still has balance issues, but I think the way forward there is some kind of limit on how strong of a "zombie swarm" it can create. Either through a hard strength cap of "if you've already got 10,000 strength in botneted zombies flying around, the botnet's further victims don't become zombies", or by some means that reduces the rate at which new zombies can be produced.

That said, if there's some other reason to exclude guardians from this kind of thing, it'd be good to know.

[WolfWhiteFire]

Would it be possible to win via outlasting the AI with this active? Like surviving long enough for the nanocaust to reach the AI homeworld and destroy the controllers or whatever it is in AI War 2? Also if they take a planet over do you gain AIP?

[BadgerBadger]

If you play right now, the Nanocaust will conquer every planet in the galaxy in something like an hour to an hour and a half, and I'm pretty sure it's not beatable by any human. I'm in the process of changing this.

Also at the moment the nanocaust will bump up the AI Progress when it conquers planets, but I believe Keith intends to change the game so that special factions won't increase the progress.

My eventual intent is to have the Nanocaust conquer a slowly expanding portion of the galaxy for itself, but to not really intend to kill the AI (it might decide to kill the humans though). However, I would like to get a hacking mechanic in so that if you hack the nanocaust's starting Constructor then it will assist you in killing the AI as an alternative win condition.

[TheVampire100]

I think Ai guardians shouldn't get zombified.

Why, specifically?

Bear in mind that the only things doing zombification damage are:
- The Botnet
- The Dire Teuthida Guardian (its drones, not currently itself, actually)
- Nanocaust units

So this isn't normally something possible for non-AI units (and only one of the AI units has it).

If someone turns on the Nanocaust they're asking for a degree of chaos, though a non-zombifying variant would also be fine to have.

If someone turns on the Botnet, it's supposed to be a game-changer. It has balance issues, and the AIWC version still has balance issues, but I think the way forward there is some kind of limit on how strong of a "zombie swarm" it can create. Either through a hard strength cap of "if you've already got 10,000 strength in botneted zombies flying around, the botnet's further victims don't become zombies", or by some means that reduces the rate at which new zombies can be produced.

That said, if there's some other reason to exclude guardians from this kind of thing, it'd be good to know.

When I look at Guardians, I see strong AI only units, similiar to Starships but cranked up.
A faction that is hostile to everything and that can get these powerhouses can be a really pain in the... you know where the pain sits.
Anyway, I know the Nanocaust is somewhat intended to do that, to give the game a more chaotic nature and if the player does not keep up, it gets out of control. However, having them conquer the whole galaxy in an hour is insane. Also, in terms of lore, that would mean that there is something that is more powerful/efficient as the Ai which I don't like that much.
If it gets tweaked, as Badger stated, it would be okay (Nanocaust captures some planets and just sits on these planets and protects them).
Also, in many terms, this is similiar to Dark Spire (which I guess it was inspired from), but I don't think Dark Spire got the units it destroyed, destroyed units just were added to its resource pool.

[WolfWhiteFire]

If you play right now, the Nanocaust will conquer every planet in the galaxy in something like an hour to an hour and a half, and I'm pretty sure it's not beatable by any human. I'm in the process of changing this.

Also at the moment the nanocaust will bump up the AI Progress when it conquers planets, but I believe Keith intends to change the game so that special factions won't increase the progress.

My eventual intent is to have the Nanocaust conquer a slowly expanding portion of the galaxy for itself, but to not really intend to kill the AI (it might decide to kill the humans though). However, I would like to get a hacking mechanic in so that if you hack the nanocaust's starting Constructor then it will assist you in killing the AI as an alternative win condition.

The lore you gave doesn't really allow for the nanobots to not finish off the AI, maybe you could add some sort of special building (or buildings) on the AI homeworld that kills any nanobots that go onto the homeworld or wherever the controller or whatever is? That would prevent them killing the AI, give a reasonable explanation for that, and you could decide whether to make it invincible or where the humans can destroy it so the AI has to fend off the nanobots. Also possibly make it where the players have to beat the nanocaust to win also if it is active, since even if they beat the AI the nanocaust would be kind of a big threat also.

[Oralordos]

Is it possible to mod the victory conditions to make it so that the Nanocaust has to be killed as well as the AI?