AI War 2 v0.886 Released! "Zombie Homebodies"

[x4000]

Release notes here.

Lots of fixes! For most people, the defensive zombies aren't the most important new thing, but it made for a funny release title so here we are.

Defensive Zombies

So, the behavior of zombies -- enemy ships that your own ships have taken over -- is a matter of some contention at the moment (and really, always has been).

When the zombies are too defensive, then they wind up making planets really powerful because you accrue so many zombies just sitting around waiting for an enemy to be dumb enough to come and attack that horde. But then again, since you can't directly order around zombies (by design), you can't exactly go taking them on excursions or something when you want to use them offensively.

Zombies also have a shelf life after which they die, so if they sit around for too long defensively, fighting nothing, then they wind up also accomplishing nothing, which can be very frustrating as a player.

So we made the default behavior for zombies to be aggressive, and actually go out and fight. They'll go fight nearby worlds and deal some damage, which you are getting "for free," essentially. Obviously if there are enemies on the local planet they'll fight those first -- in either scenario -- but this is referring to what happens when the local planet has been cleared of hostiles.

The problem with zombies that strike out against neighbors is that this can cause unwanted aggro. Aka, it can feed the threatfleet or otherwise free guards that come attack you. That in itself can be useful in some cases, where enemies come crashing into your turrets and you get yet even MORE kills thanks to your short-lived zombie friends.

But what if the neighboring planet is very high-mark? What if you're playing on a razor-edge very-high difficulty level? In certain circumstances, having some trigger-happy allies that you can't control and who cause unwanted aggro can be game-ending.

So we added, somewhat buried, a "Defensive Zombies" option in the galaxy options menu. This changes the behavior for all of the player-allied zombies in the game, but also shortens their lifespans. Basically it means that you can't super-stack a planet with defensive zombies (hey, that's not fair), but you can make it so that if you've got a Botnet Golem next to an AI Homeworld, you won't accidentally aggro the AI Homeworld based on cleaning up the planet next to them.

As noted, these two modes work identically when there are local enemies to fight, anyway. So the need to toggle this mode back and forth should be... very limited. Assumedly it should only be for some players, in the very late game, with certain types of units under their control. They'd turn on defensive zombies in those last stages... or potentially leave on defensive zombies all the time if they're the difficulty 9 or 10 type of player.

For everyone else, the aggressive zombie style is probably for the best, if you even wind up with any zombie ships on your team anyway.

Revisions to the Low-Cap Cap Increases

Previously, ships with a cap of 1 were not allowed to have their cap increase based on things like leveling up. So you couldn't get additional frigates or forcefield generators in most cases. I personally had mixed feelings on that, and it bugged a lot of people.

We've adjusted that so that they get cap increases now, although if that leads to too many forcefields then we may need to implement something that rate-limits them further or something.

But at any rate, for the time being this is a solid buff for you, and doesn't affect other factions or the AI.

More New Stuff!

• All of the quick starts now include the Praetorian Guard in them. Thanks, Puffin!
• Those "audio mixer" errors that people were getting in the prior build are fixed. There was some extra data that was throwing things off, in a place it shouldn't have been. We've put in triple-redundant fixes for this.
• If you're playing super-heavy games that like to melt your CPU (200 planets where you capture everything and have a ton of factions on), then the game should no longer periodically give you error messages about it stopping thinking about certain background tasks prematurely because it assumes that it was hung since things were taking so long. This affects very few people, but should be welcome for those edge cases.
• The "galaxy map going black" bug should be fixed, and was probably related to the hexagon visual effect on just certain linux machines (and possibly hardware combinations with that). It should no longer obscure the map in any case, but you can also turn off the hexagons now, as well.
• Several other bugfixes and balance tweaks, plus new intel indicators and a performance boost to intel and warning generation have been put in.

More to come soon. Enjoy!

Problem With The Latest Build?

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.

The Usual Reminders

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

[BadgerBadger]

Re: Low-Cap cap stuff. The case I really wanted to fix was the "Spending science on ship lines with frigates that had a cap of 1 didn't cause the cap to go up". I think people really like the extra forcefields you get for levelling up command stations though, so I think it would be good to keep them. Perhaps the energy cost for forcefields should be increased to compensate?

Overall I've been putting in a number of things that are buffs to the player recently, especially ARSs, so it's possible that nerfs may be required to the player. I saw Uncle Yar on steam was talking about how he had so much energy. Perhaps energy costs should be increased (or energy production decreased). I'm pretty sure the cap change will allow for even more energy collectors....

[x4000]

I'm in favor of most of the buffs we've been seeing lately.  If anything, I'm just inclined to make the AI scarier.

Having certain things like energy collectors have an "absolute maximum cap no matter what" of 1 (or whatever number we please) would be useful, probably, though.   We'll see what happens.

In general I had been worried about an abundance of energy a while back, but then all the new stuff with GCAs made it so that energy requirements went up a lot by virtue of there being more ships.  I wonder if stacking is not properly charging the right amount of energy now?  Maybe that's what recently changed, I dunno.


Oh, dang -- I also meant to give a shout-out directly in the release notes, but forgot. This mark's Badger's 500th completed ticket from mantis. Holy smokes that's a huge number of bugs and requests and so forth fixed from a freaking VOLUNTEER. I'm incredibly grateful to him, and the other fans who have opted to help out in a more direct fashion beyond "just" feedback. Feedback has also been super duper valuable as well, but talk about the extra (ten thousand) miles, here.

Thanks, Badger!!

[BadgerBadger]

There's a bool field for "Not allowed to increase cap" on a Fleet.Membership, NotAllowedToIncreaseCap, that should make it easy to limit energy collectors.

It does feel like there's a lot of energy in the game right now...

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Stacking does not seem to interfere with energy use. 76,200 energy with Classic Fleet fully constructed and unstacked, 76,200 with stacking at maximum.

I think it's just a combination really of Economic Stations giving 450,000 energy, and Logistics 300,000 through their Collectors alone. You even start with over 550,000 from the Homeworld. A Mark 1 Economic Station gives 100,000!

So maybe just snipping a single Collector off Economic and Logistics Stations? I have definitely noticed a single Economic removes almost all energy concerns. It has felt a bit better with GCAs like I mentioned in the past, but I primarily use Military, so naturally I would have a huge energy consumption which would explain that.

EDIT: Checked - upgrading Energy tech does give you more Energy Collectors.

I wonder if it should be a single Collector per Station again, and throw the extra amounts more onto the Station itself, like Classic did. Dunno. It'd give another reason to try and level up the Fleets. Economic Stations already seem to have a pretty sizeable amount on themselves.

[x4000]

Thanks, guys!

For now I've done this, but now we can tune to tweak:

* Added a new "absolute_max_cap_when_in_fleets" field on ships, which allows us to set it to some value above zero if we want to limit how many of a ship type can be granted at maximum.
** Note that this only affects player fleets, by definition, EXCEPT it would affect drone fleets of the AI and other factions.  If other factions start using fleets more, this would be available in those cases, too.

* An absolute max cap when in fleets has been added to the following structures:
** Matter Converters: 10.
** Factories: 3
** Forcefield generators: 4.
** Tractor Array: 20.
** Tachyon arrays: 6.
** Focused gravity generators: 10.
** Minefields (all sorts): 200.
** Sentry Frigates: 9.

* Added a new is_disallowed_from_getting_any_ship_cap_bonuses_when_in_fleets, which, when true, will prevent ships from getting bonuses of any sorts beyond whatever their base fleet cap counts are.
** Note that this only affects player fleets, by definition, EXCEPT it would affect drone fleets of the AI and other factions.  If other factions start using fleets more, this would be available in those cases, too.

* The energy collector now has is_disallowed_from_getting_any_ship_cap_bonuses_when_in_fleets as true, to avoid us having runaway amounts of energy available to players.  But also, we're lowering the caps of these in general:
** The base one that is used for the home command station has a max cap yof 2 now, instead of the old 3.
** The military station no longer has one at all, rather than having a single one.
** The economic one now has 2 instead of 3.
** The logistical one now has 1 instead of 2.
** Energy was just plain too plentiful even at base, and with fleet upgrades able to affect these structures it was even more out of whack.
** Old savegames may still have the old allowed numbers until a command station is rebuilt or built for the first time.

This is all untested at the moment -- testing would be welcome...

[RockyBst]

Another game, another set of feedback.

The Thief AI type is extremely aggravating, just for the sheer time it takes to decloak and kill waves. And those waves acting like cowards constantly. Also they manage to magically pass through forcefields some times (see attached save, where they're going from volt past three forcefields and appearing on my homeworld somehow). I suspect when they're unloaded from the stack they're unloaded inside the forcefield. Far as I can see the info doesn't mention an ignores forcefields flag.

The AI definitely seems far more willing to retreat waves and threat assaults in general. Is that due to the recent optimisations?

Human marauders taking out the AI command station so I get a free planet without the AIP cost? Legendary.

I got the devourer respawning message in a game earlier, about 15 minutes after loading the game. Did something actually manage to kill the cookie monster, or is this just a weird quirk?

When rebuilding ships inside a transport, often the total count of ships doesn't update until you unload the transport. See screenshot.

Why would I choose to turn on negative factions in the lobby if I can get a bonus for turning them on in-game? Might be worth giving the science bonus on game start if they're on all the time

In the interest of science I decided to try out astrotrains in a homage to my old 10/10 astrotrains game (https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-classic-after-action-reports/all-creatures-great-and-small/). Looks like trains are now a loot pinata rather than a threat (I shudder at remembering widow astrotrains). Is that why you can kill the stations without +3AIP? Far better to have them routing through your worlds as easy targets now I guess.

Fleets, including the devourer golem and astro trains, are always shown on the galaxy map when they're on a planet you have scouted but don't have visibility of. In the case of the train this also leaks the destination. Intentional?

Intel window leaks astro-train locations in the same way.

If you haven't found the Dyson sphere yet, killing a dyson antagoniser leaks the planet name

[BadgerBadger]

The question of what information should be shown for planets that are Explored but not Watched isn't one that's really been dealt with. You also can still see Threat numbers for those planets. Chris, what are your feelings on this? The logic of what gets shown predates the exploration change. I could see a good argument for not showing as much information.

I really don't like the notion of giving the player bonuses for enabling certain minor factions in the game lobby. Why would you enable hostile minor factions in the lobby? Well, why would you ever want hostile minor factions? For a challenge and different gameplay. You get different gameplay with marauders on from minute 1 than from enabling them 4 hours into the game, after all.

I have no objection to making Astro Trains scarier units.

I think the "willingness to retreat" is coming from the game running LongRangePlanning more frequently, a recent change made by Chris. LongRangePlanning is where the AI figures out where it wants to move its units, or whether it should attack or retreat. The AI should be more responsive to what's happening as a result. I'd seen instances where it was taking 45 seconds between running LongRangePlanning, but it should have been running every 2-5 seconds.

Edit: You can't get free planets if the marauders take out the command station. If you capture the planet then you'll get the AIP then. If you have a counter example then I'd love a save game so I can fix it.

Edit Edit: I've improved some of the places where the game was leaking information to you. Keep the reports coming!

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Astro Trains haven't really had any attention. I can barely remember any times where someone mentioned them. I have some thoughts on what to do, but it'd take a bit.

Regarding the Dyson Sphere - you can just look through all the planets, even if they're unexplored and find it, since you can actually see the model of it.

Thief AI...guessing the units are all stacked?

[Draco18s]

Oh, dang -- I also meant to give a shout-out directly in the release notes, but forgot. This mark's Badger's 500th completed ticket from mantis. Holy smokes that's a huge number of bugs and requests and so forth fixed from a freaking VOLUNTEER. I'm incredibly grateful to him, and the other fans who have opted to help out in a more direct fashion beyond "just" feedback. Feedback has also been super duper valuable as well, but talk about the extra (ten thousand) miles, here.

Thanks, Badger!!

Give that man a cake.
Dang!