21
AI War II / Re: Beta 2.813 Golem Relations
« Last post by carldong on April 30, 2021, 01:14:08 am »Is it reinventing the Scout mechanic from AIWC?
Recent Posts
22
AI War II / Beta 2.813 Golem Relations
« Last post by x4000 on April 29, 2021, 09:13:49 pm »New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_2.813_Golem_Relations
You need to use the current_beta build on Steam or GOG to see it. Assuming that all seems sane with this build, this is the end of the current beta period.
What's new in this one? There are a few bugfixes and QoL improvements (thanks to donblas for several of those). There's a new anti-spy system and some improved spy balance, courtesy of CRCGamer.
The Arks and Golems have all been made cheaper in AIP to capture, cost WAY more energy to run (they were stupidly undercosted in energy), and no longer come with any ships when you capture them. You just get them for themselves, not for the fleet they're toting along. Thanks to Strategic Sage for the suggestion about the energy costs, as well as a raft of related items.
Existing savegames that would be thrown into negative energy by balance changes now automatically get a free energy handicap that keeps that from happening, which gives us a freer hand to make large energy usage changes like this without breaking anyone's campaign.
You get one more choice again from the TSS, bringing that back into middle-balance. The Reprocessors by CRZgatecrusher has been updated to the latest code standard, and Civilian Industry has been updated to have better late game performance by ArnaudB.
I put in a ton of fixes to multiplayer, and this time I think all the last of the ghosts are gone. Thanks to Bummeri, greyhoundgames, KaleR, and Jusa for the great reports in that area.
There's some new stuff I'm planning for post-DLC2 with alternative game modes, but it will have to wait a few weeks at the moment. You can read the current iteration of that design here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PkSQoFIYZDN42jaYvjQ_pLGGWYJrYq4mfhFZvfJjNyk/ It's open for public comment.
For the next couple of weeks, I intend to focus just on bugfixing, MP, and DLC2 icons and art. Then on to game modes, etc, after DLC2.
You need to use the current_beta build on Steam or GOG to see it. Assuming that all seems sane with this build, this is the end of the current beta period.
What's new in this one? There are a few bugfixes and QoL improvements (thanks to donblas for several of those). There's a new anti-spy system and some improved spy balance, courtesy of CRCGamer.
The Arks and Golems have all been made cheaper in AIP to capture, cost WAY more energy to run (they were stupidly undercosted in energy), and no longer come with any ships when you capture them. You just get them for themselves, not for the fleet they're toting along. Thanks to Strategic Sage for the suggestion about the energy costs, as well as a raft of related items.
Existing savegames that would be thrown into negative energy by balance changes now automatically get a free energy handicap that keeps that from happening, which gives us a freer hand to make large energy usage changes like this without breaking anyone's campaign.
You get one more choice again from the TSS, bringing that back into middle-balance. The Reprocessors by CRZgatecrusher has been updated to the latest code standard, and Civilian Industry has been updated to have better late game performance by ArnaudB.
I put in a ton of fixes to multiplayer, and this time I think all the last of the ghosts are gone. Thanks to Bummeri, greyhoundgames, KaleR, and Jusa for the great reports in that area.
There's some new stuff I'm planning for post-DLC2 with alternative game modes, but it will have to wait a few weeks at the moment. You can read the current iteration of that design here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PkSQoFIYZDN42jaYvjQ_pLGGWYJrYq4mfhFZvfJjNyk/ It's open for public comment.
For the next couple of weeks, I intend to focus just on bugfixing, MP, and DLC2 icons and art. Then on to game modes, etc, after DLC2.
23
AI War II- After Action Reports / Re: A Diff 6 win after a lot of updates
« Last post by carldong on April 29, 2021, 01:20:01 pm »Also, Hacking is more fun right now. I used it most on sabotaging Eyes, and sometimes to capture AI Fortresses. I also hacked for a few ship lines, and experimental ships.
I don't know if this was intentional, but the AI really likes to put Eyes or other nasty things on chokepoint planets.
I don't know if this was intentional, but the AI really likes to put Eyes or other nasty things on chokepoint planets.
24
AI War II- After Action Reports / Re: A Diff 6 win after a lot of updates
« Last post by carldong on April 29, 2021, 12:16:47 pm »Attached is the save of my pre-homeworld-assault state (I think).
25
AI War II- After Action Reports / A Diff 6 win after a lot of updates
« Last post by carldong on April 29, 2021, 12:14:47 pm »I haven't played AIW2 for a long time. Last time I played, fleets were still upgraded by experience (I am curious why the current fleets are upgraded using Science). I had some trouble at the beginning because the AI was heavily using Zombification, though that became less of a problem once I slowly drained the AI's Warden fleet.
Near end game, I summoned the Human Resistance Fighters. They are really strong, but they don't always come to the right battlefield... Sometimes they warp into planets alerted by my forces just passing through.
Well, I won after about 10h, and proceeded to capture every planet, then went on a 100 second Super Terminal madness. I could have done longer by getting everything from the galaxy, but my computer was lagging at 25%.
=== Unit Reviews ===
The Cloaked Transport was awesome. I used it extensively, despite only having about 50 strength all the way to endgame. This was my workhorse fleet.
The Agile Transport was awesome in a different way. I used it extensively for defensive purpose, using Zombification units, melee units, and "factory artillery" like Railpods. I could reinforce half of the galaxy with just that one transport.
The Ark with knockback and door kicking fleet was also good. Combined with the Cloaked Transport and any factory, I could launch some good deep strikes in a 1-2-3 configuration (one fleet attacks, factory on adjacent planet, guarded by another fleet).
The Backdoor Combat Factory was awesome. I spent hacking points to transform one of my factory into this, and it was so much more survivable. Its Tackle Drones were also helpful.
Metabolic units including metabolic fleet and the Hive Golem are very useful, as salvage does not exist in AIW2. These effectively cut down half of my metal usage during the final assault.
The "classic triangle" of V-Wing, Bomber, Pike Corvette are quite niche here. I couldn't really find any use of them except to FRD on my defenses. I rather like ships that can act as force multipliers.
Also, I found the Cursed Golem to be disappointing, but that was probably because I didn't upgrade it. It got killed extremely easily, and cost me millions of metal to repair. Throughout the homeworld assault, this golem was at least half of the time crippled.
Compared to my previous experience, the AI Overlord Phase 2 is much more approachable. Although I had to read through a huge tooltip just to understand why I couldn't target it on the AI homeworld.
Instigator base seems to be... different? The AI often spawned them when I was performing deep strikes, and no longer put them deep into AI territory. Good news for me!
=== What I wished I have ===
Number 1: the ability to select only the fleet ships of a fleet. I just couldn't find a way to easily select all ships, excluding the flagship itself. Setting flagship to stationary doesn't work either, because doing so causes all new ships to follow previous orders. I usually want this to pop disposable units into a wormhole without risking my flagship, but selecting them was so much trouble. The only way I found was to move the flagship aside and box select, but I might be missing something.
Number 2: better documentation of all those unit types. The wiki is incomplete, and in-game tooltips are so dense (that said, an in-game encyclopedia would be awesome). While the icons are super helpful, at the end I just throw blobs of fleet into the battles with strength at least 2:1 because it was too much work to check on each unit. All I remember is: if there is OMD or Ion Cannon, kill it first; if there are Neucleophillic or Sabot, kill it first; if there is anything that looks like a Parasite, KILL IT FIRST.
Personally I find the AIWC's hull system is easier to remember than AIW2's number system, because the science tree does refer to hull types. I am no going to remember Armor > 90mm or Albedo < 0.3 but I will remember Polycrystal and Ultra Light. That is just me, and you don't have to agree.
Number 3: salvage. I really miss it from AIWC, because there are quite a few times I used up all metal reconstructing a planet's defense and fleets after fighting threat on one of my planets. I had to wait for some ten minutes just to get my fleet going. This was most apparent during a Fallen Spire campaign, though I was not doing FS in this game.
Near end game, I summoned the Human Resistance Fighters. They are really strong, but they don't always come to the right battlefield... Sometimes they warp into planets alerted by my forces just passing through.
Well, I won after about 10h, and proceeded to capture every planet, then went on a 100 second Super Terminal madness. I could have done longer by getting everything from the galaxy, but my computer was lagging at 25%.
=== Unit Reviews ===
The Cloaked Transport was awesome. I used it extensively, despite only having about 50 strength all the way to endgame. This was my workhorse fleet.
The Agile Transport was awesome in a different way. I used it extensively for defensive purpose, using Zombification units, melee units, and "factory artillery" like Railpods. I could reinforce half of the galaxy with just that one transport.
The Ark with knockback and door kicking fleet was also good. Combined with the Cloaked Transport and any factory, I could launch some good deep strikes in a 1-2-3 configuration (one fleet attacks, factory on adjacent planet, guarded by another fleet).
The Backdoor Combat Factory was awesome. I spent hacking points to transform one of my factory into this, and it was so much more survivable. Its Tackle Drones were also helpful.
Metabolic units including metabolic fleet and the Hive Golem are very useful, as salvage does not exist in AIW2. These effectively cut down half of my metal usage during the final assault.
The "classic triangle" of V-Wing, Bomber, Pike Corvette are quite niche here. I couldn't really find any use of them except to FRD on my defenses. I rather like ships that can act as force multipliers.
Also, I found the Cursed Golem to be disappointing, but that was probably because I didn't upgrade it. It got killed extremely easily, and cost me millions of metal to repair. Throughout the homeworld assault, this golem was at least half of the time crippled.
Compared to my previous experience, the AI Overlord Phase 2 is much more approachable. Although I had to read through a huge tooltip just to understand why I couldn't target it on the AI homeworld.
Instigator base seems to be... different? The AI often spawned them when I was performing deep strikes, and no longer put them deep into AI territory. Good news for me!
=== What I wished I have ===
Number 1: the ability to select only the fleet ships of a fleet. I just couldn't find a way to easily select all ships, excluding the flagship itself. Setting flagship to stationary doesn't work either, because doing so causes all new ships to follow previous orders. I usually want this to pop disposable units into a wormhole without risking my flagship, but selecting them was so much trouble. The only way I found was to move the flagship aside and box select, but I might be missing something.
Number 2: better documentation of all those unit types. The wiki is incomplete, and in-game tooltips are so dense (that said, an in-game encyclopedia would be awesome). While the icons are super helpful, at the end I just throw blobs of fleet into the battles with strength at least 2:1 because it was too much work to check on each unit. All I remember is: if there is OMD or Ion Cannon, kill it first; if there are Neucleophillic or Sabot, kill it first; if there is anything that looks like a Parasite, KILL IT FIRST.
Personally I find the AIWC's hull system is easier to remember than AIW2's number system, because the science tree does refer to hull types. I am no going to remember Armor > 90mm or Albedo < 0.3 but I will remember Polycrystal and Ultra Light. That is just me, and you don't have to agree.
Number 3: salvage. I really miss it from AIWC, because there are quite a few times I used up all metal reconstructing a planet's defense and fleets after fighting threat on one of my planets. I had to wait for some ten minutes just to get my fleet going. This was most apparent during a Fallen Spire campaign, though I was not doing FS in this game.
26
AI War II / 2.809 Self Optimization
« Last post by x4000 on April 27, 2021, 09:51:35 pm »New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.809_Self_Optimization
This one is mostly multiplayer-focused, but it has some core speed improvements to the singleplayer simulation as well as some bugfixes that also benefit everyone (particularly those with really fast AMD processors).
This also sees a number of improvements and updates to the SirLimbo suite of mods, and Space Planes and Expatriates have gotten some solid balance adjustments from CRCGamer.
So, what of multiplayer? This release is a pretty big deal! First off, major thanks to Bummeri and abuchris and their MP groups, because this would not have been possible without them.
1. There were STILL some ghosts possible on MP clients, but those seem to be well and truly dead now from several angles.
2. There was a major amount of ship "rubber banding" happening in combat with the AI sentinels in the last couple of weeks, due to a bug I accidentally put in when optimizing bandwidth a couple of weeks ago. That's now fixed.
3. The sync and ship-check data now uses vastly less bandwidth, and is structured so that it won't ever flood the client with too much information. There's now a call and response (ack, in network terms) going on, and this helps the network self-regulate to whatever its environment is. In other words, for this part of the network data, if the connection is slow and flaky, it will slow itself to compensate. If it's a speedy lan, it will up itself to match that. Overall in most cases this results in a lot of bandwidth reduction, and even more importantly it removes cases where potentially the client could get message-logged and get a lot of command lag from that.
MP is looking a lot more reliable now, knock on wood, which is really exciting. This has been quite a journey for it.
Enjoy!
This one is mostly multiplayer-focused, but it has some core speed improvements to the singleplayer simulation as well as some bugfixes that also benefit everyone (particularly those with really fast AMD processors).
This also sees a number of improvements and updates to the SirLimbo suite of mods, and Space Planes and Expatriates have gotten some solid balance adjustments from CRCGamer.
So, what of multiplayer? This release is a pretty big deal! First off, major thanks to Bummeri and abuchris and their MP groups, because this would not have been possible without them.
1. There were STILL some ghosts possible on MP clients, but those seem to be well and truly dead now from several angles.
2. There was a major amount of ship "rubber banding" happening in combat with the AI sentinels in the last couple of weeks, due to a bug I accidentally put in when optimizing bandwidth a couple of weeks ago. That's now fixed.
3. The sync and ship-check data now uses vastly less bandwidth, and is structured so that it won't ever flood the client with too much information. There's now a call and response (ack, in network terms) going on, and this helps the network self-regulate to whatever its environment is. In other words, for this part of the network data, if the connection is slow and flaky, it will slow itself to compensate. If it's a speedy lan, it will up itself to match that. Overall in most cases this results in a lot of bandwidth reduction, and even more importantly it removes cases where potentially the client could get message-logged and get a lot of command lag from that.
MP is looking a lot more reliable now, knock on wood, which is really exciting. This has been quite a journey for it.
Enjoy!
27
AI War II / Re: AI fleet parking on my planets
« Last post by kasnavada on April 26, 2021, 06:16:46 pm »And some last feedback as I finally won that game.
About the train part, I destroyed another train (well it suicided on one of my world) and it generated "only" 3k. Even when moving the relic. Not sure why the difference. But that pushed me into a winnable situation with a 9th city, so... yay !
Fallen Spire isn't fallen anymore ! And it goes to the thoat! And it targets the AI homeworld ! And since dire guards ports are not at the home world, I had to manually destroy one and attempt to destroy the other three. I would humbly suggest having the fallen spire AI target all bastion & AI homeworld instead of just the homeworld. That's not a big issue but given the lag at end game with all spire ships, it's a bit annoying.
Last, there is apparently no achievement for winning with fallen spire enabled ?
Again, not a big issue, but, is there a reason for that ?
About the train part, I destroyed another train (well it suicided on one of my world) and it generated "only" 3k. Even when moving the relic. Not sure why the difference. But that pushed me into a winnable situation with a 9th city, so... yay !
Fallen Spire isn't fallen anymore ! And it goes to the thoat! And it targets the AI homeworld ! And since dire guards ports are not at the home world, I had to manually destroy one and attempt to destroy the other three. I would humbly suggest having the fallen spire AI target all bastion & AI homeworld instead of just the homeworld. That's not a big issue but given the lag at end game with all spire ships, it's a bit annoying.
Last, there is apparently no achievement for winning with fallen spire enabled ?
Again, not a big issue, but, is there a reason for that ?
28
AI War II / Re: AI fleet parking on my planets
« Last post by kasnavada on April 26, 2021, 01:39:49 am »Ummmm. Yes. I'm not sure about if moving relics is a good idea, but as it is it doesn't seem so.
In my latest game I beat up a train, move the relic via 5 planets, and that generates 7k of threat, bringing total to around 9k.
Here are the saves.
I was at 2.17k threat (most of them were in the galaxy, wherever that is, I'd like to know how to reduce that BTW).
After moving the relic from warwick to Carna I was around 9k...
Am I doing something wrong here ?
In my latest game I beat up a train, move the relic via 5 planets, and that generates 7k of threat, bringing total to around 9k.
Here are the saves.
I was at 2.17k threat (most of them were in the galaxy, wherever that is, I'd like to know how to reduce that BTW).
After moving the relic from warwick to Carna I was around 9k...
Am I doing something wrong here ?
29
AI War II / Re: AI fleet parking on my planets
« Last post by kasnavada on April 25, 2021, 08:08:50 am »Ok, so... just so I get a bit a feedback here.
It's MUCH MUCH funnier now that they don't park there.
I have somewhat of a new learning curve/wall to register given how hard fallen spire is compared to, for example, macrophage or nano... but... a lot of the complexity comes with the fact that low API style doesn't really work with fallen spire.
Now, I have a couple of suggestions / remarks...
- default game name could be the name of the planet you're starting on if you don't choose a name manually.
"late? game" it's next to impossible to actually move a relic from a planet to the next, the AI will eventually spawn an artillery golem that will OS the relic. I'm supposed to clean all warp gates on the path of the relic to where I want to place it or did I miss something else ? I think the game should make a bit clearer how to escort the relic reliably.
Trains suiciding into my defenses causing an insta exo-wave with 3k or more power, at spire fallen 5, AI diff 7, and city level 4 ? Train dying to dyson sphere and triggering exo ? Not to mention trains moving into battlegrounds and instantly dying ? Are they supposed to do that ?
I'm fine with either leaving the train response as it is or nerfing it, don't care, but... I would suggest that either trains aren't attacked by default... and / or some warning if for some reason it's on the very planet I'm on. I don't really want to change the gameplay here, but a bit more of warning could be cool at least.
Anyhow, I did make it to 30 seconds before dying in 5-6 hours of play instead of getting stuck and blocked at 12-15, so... I'm improving, so there's that.
About the dyson sphere, sigh. I seem to have noticed Chris asking for "if hacking it 3 times didn't break the sphere". Well. it doesn't break ! Good news ! But that goes with a bad news: it doesn't break after 20 attempts either ! Or more ! After each hack, the sphere can't be hacked during the whole "antagonized" part, which enables the AI to retake the planet (as it stops defending itself) and once the dyson sphere "resets", hacking attempt quantity against it also resets, and you can hack an infinite amount of ship lines. Also, raising the Dyson sphere level does work (and level is kept), but costs don't raise (no idea if it should however, 20 hacking is pretty steep given the minor effect this boost has).
I'm not sure what is intended here, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. Although having 20 dyson ship lines is really fun.
Oh yeah and we get a nice "A wyrm has spawned message", I could be cool if we got "We destroyed a wyrm" message too.
It's MUCH MUCH funnier now that they don't park there.
I have somewhat of a new learning curve/wall to register given how hard fallen spire is compared to, for example, macrophage or nano... but... a lot of the complexity comes with the fact that low API style doesn't really work with fallen spire.
Now, I have a couple of suggestions / remarks...
- default game name could be the name of the planet you're starting on if you don't choose a name manually.
"late? game" it's next to impossible to actually move a relic from a planet to the next, the AI will eventually spawn an artillery golem that will OS the relic. I'm supposed to clean all warp gates on the path of the relic to where I want to place it or did I miss something else ? I think the game should make a bit clearer how to escort the relic reliably.
Trains suiciding into my defenses causing an insta exo-wave with 3k or more power, at spire fallen 5, AI diff 7, and city level 4 ? Train dying to dyson sphere and triggering exo ? Not to mention trains moving into battlegrounds and instantly dying ? Are they supposed to do that ?
I'm fine with either leaving the train response as it is or nerfing it, don't care, but... I would suggest that either trains aren't attacked by default... and / or some warning if for some reason it's on the very planet I'm on. I don't really want to change the gameplay here, but a bit more of warning could be cool at least.
Anyhow, I did make it to 30 seconds before dying in 5-6 hours of play instead of getting stuck and blocked at 12-15, so... I'm improving, so there's that.
About the dyson sphere, sigh. I seem to have noticed Chris asking for "if hacking it 3 times didn't break the sphere". Well. it doesn't break ! Good news ! But that goes with a bad news: it doesn't break after 20 attempts either ! Or more ! After each hack, the sphere can't be hacked during the whole "antagonized" part, which enables the AI to retake the planet (as it stops defending itself) and once the dyson sphere "resets", hacking attempt quantity against it also resets, and you can hack an infinite amount of ship lines. Also, raising the Dyson sphere level does work (and level is kept), but costs don't raise (no idea if it should however, 20 hacking is pretty steep given the minor effect this boost has).
I'm not sure what is intended here, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. Although having 20 dyson ship lines is really fun.
Oh yeah and we get a nice "A wyrm has spawned message", I could be cool if we got "We destroyed a wyrm" message too.
30
AI War II / Re: AI fleet parking on my planets
« Last post by kasnavada on April 23, 2021, 01:55:27 am »
Ahah well. It went as expected.
My remaining planets around my homeworld make a T shape, they merged on the top right part of the T, then moved to the middle top part, then to the left top part...
After that they waited for some of the stragglers in the hunter fleet to join the fun, and I was outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1. They just ran through me.
It's not a problem really, I'll just restart a new game.