Testing AI War 2 -
againAIW2 has changed a lot since I tried it last time and it's looking pretty good. And most importantly so far it seems enjoyable to actually play!
Here's a list of first impressions, problems, bugs or strange behaviors, nuisances and/or differences compared to AIWC and other first impressions:
For reference here are the settings I used for this game (in case it matters to any of these points). I'll keep adding points as I play:
SETTINGSSeed: 889627501
80 planets, realistic, original, rectangular
Home planet: Eden
Human remnant
Ark: Thanatos
Bonus ship: Raptor
AI Sentinels - Brawler
Varied waves
Medium wave warning
Hunter waves enabled
Cross planet waves enabled
Direct waves enabled
Reconquest enabled
Both sharks disabled
Difficulty: 10
AI Warden fleet - Base oriented: 7
AI Hunter fleet - Kamikaze: 7
Special factions:
Human resistance fighters: 5
Marauders: 5
Astro Trains: 5
Nanocaust: 5
...On to the list:
LIST#1. Units and shots keep moving for a few seconds after the game is paused.
#2. Units' hitboxes feel some times a bit small when trying to select them by clicking. Same when trying to mouse over to get the tooltip. Same when clicking on planets on the galaxy map. This combined with the long "double click delay" (or whatever you'd call it) results in accidental double clicking on ships.
#3. The icons in the side bar are not in order. For example ships and defensive structures are not all next to each others. This combined with issue #10 is sligthly tedious.
#4. Projectile effects have a bit too much glare for my taste and some times they start mid air and fly past the target. So when my ships are being attacked it's some times hard to tell which AI ship is attacking which of my ships.
#5. Can't see the game speed when the game is paused. The "PAUSED" text replaces the game speed modifier.
#6. Holding Shift shows all orders you have given to your ships instead of only orders given to selected ships. In AIW Classic holding Alt in addition to Shift showed orders for all ships.
#7. I Wish the selected ship types were highlighted on the side bar.
#8. It should be possible to rally ships from space docks to other planets.
#9. Not sure if bug but Metabolizing Gangsaws (Melee ships) are almost useless on FRD mode because they mostly just bounche between targets without actually attacking them. Once in a while they attack the target once and then start going towards another target which makes them almost uselss unless manually controlled. On attack move vast majority of them just stands still and doesn't do anything.
#10. Clicking a ship in the list of selected units in bottom right corner doesn't immediately select the ships that I clicked. Instead it deselects some portion of the other ships on every click. If I want to select the ships that are on bottom of the list I can just click spam it so it's not a big deal. But if I want to select a ships that's in the middle of the list, I have to click and wait to have time to react if the list shrinks as it unselects the other ships and thus the ship I want to click on changes place on the list. Because if the ship cap of the ships I want select is small and I accidentaly click on another ship, it will deselect the ships I wanted to select. In addition it's not possible to deselect ships from this list by clicking while holding Alt. No need to thank me for this complicated explanation.
Reported on Mantis by Dominus Arbitrationis: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=20876#11. Auto kite behavior is very unoptimal. Kiting ships fly in a circle around the target and they only utilize half of their range. So they don't stay at full range nor in the position or direction I ordered them into. Instead they start fly in circles and thus into range of the enemy ships. On the other hand if I disable auto kiting and kite (move) them manually it seems to me that move order interferes with ships' ability to shoot.
#12. AI War 2 doesn't have the zoom shotcuts to predefined zoom levels (Q, W, E and R for full, 1/3, 2/3 and zero zoom).
#13. In AI War 2 the icons for turrets are mostly very similar and difficult to tell apart. However the icons for ships are great. As we can see in these screenshots the icons for ships correspond to the shape of the ship. Bomber's icon looks like a bomber, Raptor's icons look like a Raptor etc etc. However this isn't the case for turrets. For turrets the only difference is the minuscule "subicon" in bottom left corner of the "main icon". Nothing serious and more of an aesthetics and quality of life issue.
Ship icons
Turret icons
Turrets are much harder to tell apart if not zoomed in
#14. Giving multiple consecutive move orders very fast and then holding the mouse button makes the game to spam move order as long as the right mouse button is pressed. This results in ships moving in a choppy and slow manner. If this happens near the edge of planet area the movement path makes all sorts of weird curves and corners which makes the ships go even slower. This movement order spam can happen accidentaly if pressing the right mouse button a bit longer than needed. This does not happen if you simply press and hold the right mouse button.
#15. So far the game seems quite easy with AIP at 95.
