Messages

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: New AVWW Screenshots and Video Show Off Spells and First Enemy

« on: February 13, 2011, 04:56:35 PM »

leveling doesn't have to be unrealistic in this setting I think. For instance, if all the low level enemies are animals on the surface, then it makes sense that your level 1 gun makes a mess of them. As you venture into more dangerous areas, the higher level enemies are things like mutants with super-tough exoskeletons, zombies (only weak to headshots), robots, armored enemies, etc. So of course your little level 1 pea shooter doesn't phase these higher level enemies, but a level 10 ak-47 might.

I think it makes sense as long as the level of items and creatures are tied into their visible "dangerousness"

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: New AVWW Screenshots and Video Show Off Spells and First Enemy

« on: February 13, 2011, 06:54:10 AM »

I -much- prefer the backrounds and environments now, before they were just not to my taste. I'm not sure about the player character or enemies though, they don't seem to quite have that same lovely painted quality, and they're fairly stiff at the moment.

I absolutely love the concept, and glad to see the graphics improving

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / How will the processing load be handled?

« on: February 01, 2011, 04:28:30 AM »

With the procedurally generated world, how are you thinking of handling the processing load? Is the random generation going to be like minecraft, only with higher graphics, and I guess only loading in the map tile(s) that you're currently on?

(I know that may not have been fully worked out, just wondering what your initial ideas are)

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Is this supposed to happen?

« on: January 25, 2011, 03:53:48 AM »

If a 6 came up 50 times out of 100 on a 6 sided die, you could just run a chi square analysis which would tell you that the probability of those results occuring with an unloaded die is about .5% or some such (I can't be bothered opening SPSS right now ). Yay for 4 years of college stats courses

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Tough planet to crack

« on: January 22, 2011, 04:39:40 PM »

I used mercenary etherjet fighters to tractor out most of the fleet ships and kill them

You went wrong here and cause this little planet of hell for yourself. You should have taken down the shields and stuff first before trying to clear out all the ships/posts. Mercenary ships also have horrible horrible cost efficiency so I imagine this probably took you a very long time as well, which would have been better spent sending cap bombers 1-3 and flagship waves in to blow up the FFs.

Don't blow up everything except guardians by tractoring it out of the system THEN complain that you can't send a ball in. Just don't tractor everything out of the system in the first place.

Basic AI Eye planet method:

1) Clear entry wormhole
2) Send bomber caps + flagships at force fields until those are all dead
3) Blow up fortresses also with bomber caps + flagships
4) Blow up all the posts with cap fighter raids
5) Blob system as usual

You have a point, but at this point the problem wasn't the eye, it was that even a large blob wasn't enough to take the wormhole due to a large number of ships/guardians, so I was desperate. I managed to take the system with a small number of bombers (ended up using a tachyon warhead to reveal the stealth guardpost.

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AI War / Re: Transport Unloading...NOT!

« on: January 22, 2011, 04:36:48 PM »

On a (somewhat) related note, is it intentional that transports continue unloading even if you put more troops in them? for instance I unloaded at a planet which I didn't realise had an ai eye, so I wanted to get my troops quickly back in the transports. unfortunately they won't stop unloading till they reach empty, even if you put a hundred ships back inside. This led to some amusing ship cycling antics.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: What are Impulse Reaction Emitters good for?

« on: January 22, 2011, 04:34:16 PM »

That could be pretty cool - it'd have to be pretty high energy though. I had a bunch of emitters try to take a light starship (10k energy) and while they sloooowly got it down to half health, my other ships came in and pulverised it in seconds lol.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: What are Impulse Reaction Emitters good for?

« on: January 21, 2011, 07:43:03 PM »

Submitted a tweak request, can't hurt: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2590

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: What are Impulse Reaction Emitters good for?

« on: January 21, 2011, 07:33:48 PM »

They're from an ARS, which means you can't really choose to skip them :/ a little dissapointing after going out of your way in the hope of getting something decent.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: What are Impulse Reaction Emitters good for?

« on: January 21, 2011, 05:20:36 PM »

Yeah I just ran through the reference list - the  most obvious thing is golems - however, I don't play with AI golems on, and this is a bit niche to count for much IMO. They're supposedly cap for cap slightly faster at taking out higher energy fortresses than bombers, but I'm pretty sure they're also a lot easier to kill, so not sure how the math works on that.

Thing is, they don't really come into their own until the 8-10k mark. I had a look at the recent(ish) change in the formula from Sqrt(energy) / 10 to 1 + (energy/1024). Basically they do a fair amount less damage under the new formula to anything with less than 7000 energy, which is almost all guardians and starships. At the moment, they're a real niche case, only useful against the odd high energy starship (zenith starship, warbird, core?). I don't think that justifies them - I'd like to see a buff against the 1500-5000 energy range, to make them at least moderately useful against more common guardians and starships, otherwise they just aren't worth my time.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: What are Impulse Reaction Emitters good for?

« on: January 21, 2011, 04:40:46 PM »

I'm going to have a look at the things that use lots of energy in-game, but I think I might post a mantis issue suggesting a rebalance, as a lot of the bonus ships have received balancing lately.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / What are Impulse Reaction Emitters good for?

« on: January 21, 2011, 03:09:31 AM »

So one of the ARS stations in my current 60 planet epic game against a shield ninny and a fortress baron were Impulse Reaction Emitters. Now I know they're supposed to do more damage to higher energy ships, but they seem to be exceedingly weak, even when performing the task they're designed for. An entire cap of mark I and II Emitters seems to take forever to kill a light starship (2000 energy) or most guardians (1000-1500 energy) - both of which are considerably higher in energy use than your average ship. Even against still higher energy using ships these seem to be weaker than simple triangle ships in any engagement. Does anyone have more experience with these than me and know if they have a strong point? Or are these just underpowered?

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Tough planet to crack

« on: January 19, 2011, 01:54:34 AM »

I popped the command center, which made the guardians a lot easier to take out on the other side of the wormhole. Now, however, its just a tedious process of taking out every single guardpost with a small number of bombers (so as not to provoke the eye) while they're armor boosted. There's also a cloaked guardpost (first time at difficulty 7, so I hadn't encountered these) so I guess I'll need a scout starship! Have to say, while the AI eye change seems to have made things more tactical, it's also boosted the tedium level quite a bit, especially with defensive ai types.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: First solo campaign - first questions

« on: January 17, 2011, 08:42:17 PM »

1/ My M/C resources are maxed out at 999,999... so, how do you buy stuff from Zenith trader that costs upwards of millions?

When you buy from the Zenith Trader, you don't pay the entire cost upfront. Rather, you buy, I guess, the blueprints (for free) and then foot the bill while you're building it. So it's basically like paying off a mortgage loan.

2/ Did I understand correctly that I can collect knowledge without capturing a planet by just sending (heavily defended) research labs and try and keep them alive until I gather the 3,000 knowledge? Are they very vulnerable to Guardians and Posts? Can I sneak them in on a transport?

You can collect knowledge without capturing a planet "knowledge raiding" using a mark 3 science station. These can't move, however, so what you need to do is take a mobile builder (preferably in a transport) and probably unload the builder at the edge of the system to build it. You'll draw a lot of aggression, so it's probably best not to do this on a planet with an active AI eye, ion cannons, armor boosters etc, because you'll need a force defending the science lab of a considerable size to hold it for the entire time it takes to build and collect the knowledge. It's normally a lot easier to just take a system.

3/ Even with mark III scouts I really take a beating when I try to recon planets more than 4 hops away... and scout starships (Mk I) seem super weak. Am I missing something? I haven't tried yet to send them on a transport.

The AI probably has a lot of Tachyon guardians around the wormholes you're sending scouts through. If this is the case, it may be worth using raid starships or transports to destroy the tachyon guardians in the closest systems, which should give you a bit more range. Alternatively, you can put your scouts in a transport, which should last about 3 jumps, and then the scouts themselves should go a fair bit further. In general scouting has been rebalanced a lot so it's hard to tell how far you should be getting. It's possible you're up against a counterspy AI.

4/ Given my current position, I'm really tempted to catch my next planet 2 or 3 hops away where the fight is worth the cost (e.g. the next adv research station). But I guess that means that I will not have a supply line if I destroy the AI base there and set up my command station. How penalizing will that be? Very nervous about splitting my forces in two, specially if I need reinforcements.

You'll probably have to get used to planet hopping if you want to win your game, as the progress cost of keeping supply lines everywhere is extremely high. That said, you can still reinforce to locations that you don't have direct lines to, using gates (I forget what they're called exactly). I think they're in the construction tab, but basically you can build gates that will port all the forces produced from a certain type of facility, so anything made from a space dock will appear at one of these gates (they split randomly if you have more than one). Basically, build gates at your outlying planets, and one on your homeworld, and you can power them down and up to direct the flow of ships to various areas of your empire depending on your need. If you're at the ship cap, you can also scrap some ships if you need to quickly port them to a different part of the galaxy (by rebuilding to different gates).

5/ Related to the above, I'm really not clear as to the best sequential way to capture a planet with lots of exotic stuff on it... where should I concentrate my forces? Who should I take out first? Should I always take the command station last? A vast topic I know, but a couple of pointers is all I'm looking for. I often find myself compelled to take down the nasty posts for fear that with all their long range weaponry they will wipe me out.

The first thing I take out is generally the Ion cannons. Raid starships are good for this. Usually it's a good idea to clear out the guard posts and guardians before taking the command station, but if the planet is looking really tough to crack you can raid the command station, which will turn the entire planet aggressive. As long as you have strong defenses, this might be easier. In general, once ion cannons are down, take out sniper and mlrs/artillery guardposts and guardians, special forces guardposts, etc. You need to destroy all the guardposts (except wormhole ones) to take out an AI eye.

Hope that helps a bit.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Tough planet to crack

« on: January 17, 2011, 06:23:14 PM »

I'm up against a Shield Ninny and a Fortress Baron in my current game, and a lot of the planets I'm up against are fairly well defended. But there's one in particular near my home base with an ARS on it, and I'm having difficulty getting any traction.

Basically what the AI had at first was 2 ion cannons (mark I and IV), a shield booster, an AI eye, lots of guard posts, a special forces post, and a craptonne of guardians.

So far I've taken out the ion cannons with raid starships, and I used mercenary etherjet fighters to tractor out most of the fleet ships and kill them. Unfortunately, there's a fair number of artillery, laser, flak, and other guardians near the wormhole. They're all boosted with 3 times armor, and I can't just roll them over with a ball because of the AI eye. I've tried bombers, fighters, and impulse reaction emmitters (in numbers under 150 to avoid triggering the eye) as well as raid and bomber starships. An entire cap of bombers can't take out a single flak guardian before dying.

I'm considering a high level lightning nuke or some other thing, but was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions. (my starting bonus ship was shredders, but they get instaraped by the guardians).