Messages

1

After Action Reports / Re: Advanced Paranoia

« on: Today at 03:20:47 PM »

Yes, I don't think cutlasses are OP because the aren't all that terribly durable nor are they fast (especially by melee unit standards). But yes, if you can actually get them to their destination, they can inflict massive pain.

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AI War / Re: Which role do you play as in AI War: Ancient Shadows?

« on: Today at 11:50:29 AM »

Reposting here as it is also relvant:

I think to "fix" champions, I think adding more nebula missions, possibly new types (like something that requires going out of the nebula at some point in the mission), balancing rewards, (including the module unlocks may not be compatible with hull unlocks that seems to crop up sometimes), and possibly adding someway to unlock stuff outside of nebulae missions, though possibly in a less "time effecient" manner. Nebula missions should remain the primary way to unlock stuff, but some sort of fallback just in case something goes wrong making nebulae too hard with the unlocks you got or something, or you want to reward helping out normal players more directly would be a great idea.



*fix is in quotes, as I'm not sure if there is something broken, just merely something lacking

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AI War / Re: Champion Options

« on: Today at 10:46:29 AM »

I think to "fix" champions, I think adding more nebula missions, possibly new types (like something that requires going out of the nebula at some point in the mission), balancing rewards, (including the module unlocks may not be compatible with hull unlocks that seems to crop up sometimes), and possibly adding someway to unlock stuff outside of nebulae missions, though possibly in a less "time effecient" manner. Nebula missions should remain the primary way to unlock stuff, but some sort of fallback just in case something goes wrong making nebulae too hard with the unlocks you got or something, or you want to reward helping out normal players more directly would be a great idea.



*fix is in quotes, as I'm not sure if there is something broken, just merely something lacking

4

AI War / Re: Dump of galaxy wormholes?

« on: Yesterday at 10:15:51 AM »

The best thing I can think of is to ask the game to not compress it. That way, both the gzip and the base64 steps are skipped, and you can just open it up directly in notepad/wordpad/vim/emacs/gedit/nano/textedit/whatever.

And AFIAK, the game can load up totally uncompressed games as well.

5

AI War / Re: Too many generals, not enought privates

« on: May 20, 2013, 08:52:38 PM »

Ah, oops, I assumed the boost was cumulative

Still, does that look like a reasonable number of flagships?

If they properly sacrificed the opportunity to get additional starships or guardians or fleetships or a golem, then yes, that seems reasonable. (What difficulty are you playing again? And what scaling of the exos?). However, knowing whether it payed for it properly or not is hard to tell without logs.

Now, it could be argued spending most of its points into 59 Mk. I flagships was a rather dumb choice for a unit composition by the AI. Maybe that could be addressed.
Or it could be argued that the exo-cost of the Mk. I flagship is too low for how much it brings. Well, it wouldn't be the only one. Exo-costs are really in a strange place right now TBH.

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AI War / Re: Dump of galaxy wormholes?

« on: May 20, 2013, 08:48:03 PM »

Before anyone asks: yes, we are aware that there are massively more efficient ways to do this, and in fact our later stuff is much more efficient, but this particular bit really doesn't need the optimization and the chance of breaking something outweighs the benefit

Hey, it's more space efficient than XML is.

7

AI War / Re: Poll: Bonus Ship Type ideas for the Vengeance expansion

« on: May 18, 2013, 12:19:37 PM »

Shifted a vote to the laser pods.

However, it would be nice if their self damage wasn't so high that they oneshot themselves. Attack power could go down and/or cost could go up a bit in return.

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AI War / Re: Dump of galaxy wormholes?

« on: May 17, 2013, 07:28:53 PM »

There is a thread somewhere with some info on the save game format, but I can't find it at the moment.  The save format is pretty straight forward if I recall.

You need to turn off savegame compression first, so you can see the plain-text format. But yes, it's pretty easy to figure out.

The things of interest here are the planet list (which has the planet IDs and the planet names) and the adjacency lists of planet connections.

In fact, I could pretty easily write up a program that cross references these and spits them out in a nicer format, or even as a graph for whatever analysis you want to do with it.

9

AI War / Re: A two part question:

« on: May 17, 2013, 05:03:43 PM »

Considering the amount of work this is going to take, I think it is better that the values be lowered by 100, even if superweapons also need to be reduced by a smaller amount.

Keep in mind this whole thing was brought about because we are running out of ceiling for numbers. The advantage of reducing values by 100 over 20 or 25 is it gives 4 to 5 times the wiggle room for relative power.

Since the amount of work of going to 100 compared to 20 or 25, in the big picture, is about the same, better to do that value even if golems need their power reduced as well.

I mean reduce the superweapons by only 20x or 25x. The rest of the non-superweapons would still be reduced by 100x.

Reducing both by 100x would just leave things in almost the same relative place they are now, with superweapons only being "pretty good" instead of, you know, super.

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AI War / Re: A two part question:

« on: May 17, 2013, 04:19:00 PM »

The reason I am advocated chopping "slightly more" than one 0 off of superweapon stats is that a 10x relative shift is a absolutely gigantic shift, much more than I think many people realize. It could easily overcome the bit of cost-effective lacklusterness of them compared to starships, so much so that it could even dominate to the point of being game-breakingly (as in, "I win button" even on difficulty 9) OP even for superweapons. Yes, a 10x shift can easily be that huge, especially if what you shifting wasn't that far behind to begin with.


However, scaling it down by the same amount would not accomplish anything. This is why I suggested dividing the superweapon stats by 20 or 25, so they get only a 5x or 4x relative shift. Yes, that is still huge, but less likely to break the game. If it still isn't enough, then maybe we can try something more. However, I really don't think superweapons are that far behind that they need an order of magnitude (base 10) relative buff.

EDIT: For the mathematically inclined among you, dividing the stats by 20 (5x relative buff) would be a ~1.30 order of magnitude reduction (~.70 orders of magnitude above relatively); dividing the stats by 25 (4x relative buff) would be a ~1.40 order of magnitude reduction (~.60 orders of magnitude above relatively)
As a base, dividing the stats by 10 (10x relative buff) would be a 1 order of magnitude reduction (1 order of magnitude above relatively)

11

AI War / Re: A two part question:

« on: May 17, 2013, 04:08:32 PM »

Would the player be able to survive a superweapon attack if those were buffed relative to the rest of the things?

If this sort of thing happens, the health nerfs for exo-golems may need to be reinstated.

Isn't it still at 10% for golemite? If so, under this new scaling, that would be about right for golemite. 50% for exo-golems? (Which would make armored at 25%)

12

AI War / Re: A two part question:

« on: May 17, 2013, 11:29:28 AM »

I'm putting together a rework using 10,000 health for Fighters, and scaling everything to that.  It's a touch more comprehensive than just a rescale, but hopefully I can have it sometime next week depending on how my weekend turns out.

Isn't it great to have fans willingly do for free what is essentially your job for you.

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AI War / Re: Dump of galaxy wormholes?

« on: May 17, 2013, 11:22:18 AM »

In addition to this, it would be nice to have a way to see/export a mapping of planet ID to planet names.
Come to think of it, wouldn't that be a good thing when debug mode is on? Showing the planet ID next to the planet name in the planet view and galaxy map view or something?
Would really help out trying to figure out what route a ship is going to do, as then we would have a way to cross-reference the numbers the "move to planet" order references.

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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.028-6.029 "So I Rewired It" Released!

« on: May 17, 2013, 09:50:16 AM »

I'm still seeing the occasional, normal threat ship "jumping the gun" and entering a planet of mine when they shouldn't. However, because it is so sporatic, it will be hard to reproduce, much less get a save from before they enter my planet. I'll try though. I may have to bump up my auto-save rate though.

On the upside though, this happens less frequently than it did before, from what I have seen so far.

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After Action Reports / Re: Advanced Negotiation

« on: May 17, 2013, 09:49:02 AM »

For what it is worth, I am still seeing a few, normal threat ships entering when they shouldn't as well. However, it is a lot less frequent than it used to be, which is an improvement to be sure.

Anyways, I'm impressed that even with all the changing up the "guts" of the AI, very few bugs seem to be introduced. Good job Kieth.