Messages

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Unlocking more modules in each of the nebula systems?

« on: January 13, 2013, 11:29:15 AM »

In each of the nebula scenarios, is there anyway to manage to unlock more modules for your champion?  I know for the mourners you can destroy extra prisons to get more goodies (total prisons destroyed early or amount destroyed simultaneously?).  Does saving small stations in all of the battle scenarios help at all?

 The AI war wiki is a little sparse on the issue.

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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.070 "The Once And Fortress King" Released!

« on: August 26, 2012, 10:23:43 PM »

How is the amount of unlocks decided for the Mourners Scenario?  Ive killed roughly the same amount in advance for two run-throughs and the first resulted in 2 unlocks with the other resulting in 4.

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AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 25, 2012, 05:00:39 PM »

On scenario order: the order is mostly random.  One of the four defined scenarios (the mourners one) doesn't seed in the first nebula you enter, because it's the most champion-dependent of the four.  Other than that it just tries to avoid duplicates until it's run out of unique ones (the idea being that come official-release it will not do duplicates at all).

It was a 3% chance to happen which is still possible.  Just checking if it was intended behavior or not because earlier in the thread you refer to the nebula scenarios refer to them as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and thats the same order i've been seeing them in.

Thanks for the quick reply

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AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 25, 2012, 02:09:30 PM »

I dont know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I really don't like how all the nebula missions are going to be in a certain order ...  (If not then all 3 matches Ive played have had the missions in the same order) 

For a game that prides itself on being procedurally generated having a differing experience every time, doing the exact same thing in the exact same order for every game seems like a step in the wrong direction.

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AI War / Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (V)

« on: April 11, 2012, 12:36:33 AM »

I think the metal/crystal manufactorums (The ones that convert one resource to another) need a boost.  I understand having each individual one only convert a small amount in order to allow for optimization, but in order to be able to convert large amounts of resources you tend to need 50+.  I think a reduction in their build time and cost are in order to simply let players be able to build large amounts in order to more quickly react to economy overflows.

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AI War / Re: Quick ? on multiple-shot ships

« on: April 01, 2012, 12:28:15 PM »

Actually, on warheads, if anything needs some changes it is the armored warhead.

I don't think I've ever actually used one of these.

At twice the AIP and almost 30x the resource cost for the same damage and slower missile that has 30x the health?

If anything, I'd like to see the armored warhead become a single target guaranteed kill (against the appropriate Mark level).

There is an Eye in the system and the last guard post is under an FF and surrounded by all the ships left in the system so I can't attacked it without taking massive losses or triggering the eye?

Armored Missile time! (Well, probably not in a real game, eye's are not that threatning but it gets my point across.)

The damage and the AIP cost would need tweaking, but this would give it a different purpose then the lighting missile.

D.

Wasn't the armored missle designed for that purpose some number of versions ago?  I remember sending it in to handle tricky raid engine situations.

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AI War / Re: Poll: Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (IV)

« on: March 19, 2012, 01:39:57 PM »

The harvesters seem over the top. I believe that this is what parity looks like, but like you say, Econ stations take up the "slot" of the command station which really is a big deal and they should therefore be a bit better. So harvesters should probably be a bit under parity with Econs,  for example 36/90.

Anybody object to 36/90?

Im alright to the lower value.  It looks to be about right if you consider the resource gains of the command stations you do get (military/logistical)

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AI War / Re: Thoughts on Spirecraft

« on: March 17, 2012, 01:49:19 AM »

No love for rams? 

I would like to know how the mechanics of how much damage a self-destructing unit (Ram, Minefield, Cutlass) takes so we can get a better idea for their ability to hit multiple targets.  Ive been using a couple of MkI Rams to take the bite out of some exo-waves.  (Feels like I get better bang for my reptite asteroid than with siege towers, plus im always out of crystal for some reason) Im wondering if upgrading to MkII wil have any real effect on cutting down exo-waves.  Ive tried emperical testing but the few moments when a wave flys through a wormhole with rams hitting them is a little to chaotic for emperical data.

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AI War / Re: Thoughts on Spirecraft

« on: March 16, 2012, 03:10:51 AM »

6) Attritioner: well, it IS good for creating threat, but just like with the Artillery, you can't usually see the results of its work with your own eyes. Who knows, maybe it's actually insane on defence of in a large battle!
Suggestion: don't know how good it is, but feels like it should stay the way it is for now.

Attritioner: I would agree that their primary effect is not very visible. 500 damage per second that they get at Mk. I is not very much. Heck, even the 2500 damage per second that they get at Mk. V is not very much. The stationary attritioners that the AIs sometimes get suffer a similar weakness.
However, their secondary effect, their ability to "echo" damage to spread it around is actually quite useful.

On Normal caps, the Attritioners can do a total ok 10,500 damage per second.  That's 5 * 300/s + 4 * 600/s + 3 * 900/s + 2 * 1200/s + 1 * 1500/s.  Additionally, they do a 21% "feedback" damage pulse on the death of any enemy ship in system.  That's 5 * 0.5% + 4 * 1% + 3 * 1.5% + 2 * 2.5% + 1 * 5%.
Recently, as part of my Hacking experiments, I did a SuperTerminal raid for 10,000 AIP reduction.  There were 500 ships Core spawning every second, and about 500 dying every second, leaving a constant total of about 5,000 ships in the system.  The full cap of Spire Attritioners was therefore doing about 5,000 * 10,500 = 52,500,000 damage per second (!).
Core ships average about 770,000 HP.  500 dying per second resulted in an additional 161,700 damage per ship, or another 80,850,000 damage per second (!!).  Yet because the "feedback" damage is divided equally amongst all ships present, it was doing 16,170 damage per ship.  Combined, that's 26,670 damage per second per ship.
Seems pretty incredible, right?  But this was under some of the most absurd circumstances you're going to find.  500 ships spawning per second, 5,000 total present... And a full cap of everything allied (including a quadruple Spire capital fleet) to keep the 500 kills per second going to keep the "feedback" damage high.

The problem is that, although the "feedback" numbers look high because of the high number of kills, the damage is so distributed amongst the large number of ships that it becaomes insignificant.  What's a one-time shot of 16,170 damage to a Core ship?  Yet, while fewer ships means the damage per ship is higher, it also means the total damage being distributed is significantly lower.  In the minimal case, 2 identical ships, killing one will do an instant one-time shot of 21% damage to the second.  That's 4 shots from a single Mk V Implosion Artillery - yet the Mk V Implosion only requires Adamantite, while the Mk V Attritioner requires Titanite.  Finally, Attritioners lack any sort of initial-strike (alpha) capacity, which means they do little to reduce the amount of damage your fleet takes.

Basically, I think the "feedback" damage is either too little to matter (in the case of large numbers of ships) or unneeded (in the case of small numbers of ships).  Combined with the fact that the Mk V Attritioner require Titanite and provides 15% of the attrition damage and 25% of the "feedback" damage, means that in general I find the Attritioners are lacking in anything but niche cases:  Grav Drill worlds, heavy heavy defenses, drawing threat from an entire system. 
Which is too bad, since I love the Attritioners in concept.

What kinda computer are you running if you dont mind me asking? Running that kinda task is …. intense to say the least.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: What do you do with surplus resources?

« on: March 09, 2012, 09:35:41 PM »

About the Zenith Traders... one should always start building 1*players ZPGs before they capture one.

Most useful amongst others is counterspy if you encounter cloaked unlocks. Blackhole machines next on a fortressed world, followed by armour remover and tripler. Orbital Mass Drivers are so-so, and only significant if you lack serious firepower against lead ships (you won't technically need one, say, if you already have a spire city.)

I find radar jammers IIs to be too expensive, as are Ion-2s.

The Counterspy should be useful in theory, but I've found that the most annoying of the cloakers, the Eyebot, is immune to instakill.  Therefore, the Counterspy, it does nothing.  The armor remover is great for defending against Hybrids and Riots and their ilk, but I almost never bother with the Armor Buff.

Stealth Battleships are also immune to insta-kill as well, which are the only other stealth ships that I fear.

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AI War / Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (IV)

« on: March 09, 2012, 07:05:21 PM »

Id like to 2nd the nominations for Manufactorums and Harvester exo-shields. 

I remember either some mentioning of splitting the Zenith & Spire starships into two seperate lines a while back, I think that separation should happen before spending more time rebalancing the current Alien Starships

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AI War / Re: requesting exo's not being able to spawn from backdoor hacker's wormhole

« on: March 05, 2012, 03:36:15 AM »

Have you posted this on mantis for us to up vote?

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AI War / Re: General Hacking Discussion

« on: March 02, 2012, 12:37:16 PM »

Id like to disagree with the buffing ARS, the major prize of capturing the ARS is the new ship type.  Getting the actual station is nothing mire than icing on the cake IMO.  I tend to capture my ARSs via deep strikes, so having the ARS there lets me get the knowlege out of the system quicker so I can bug out.  I really dont see a need to add any new use.

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AI War / Re: About that warp jammer...

« on: March 02, 2012, 12:25:16 PM »

The real effectiveness of the warp jammer is based upon what map type you've got.  Maps like snake, the mazes, vine, conecentric circles etc.  are really not the place to get them.  But I play on realiistic almost all of the time so there is plenty of opprotunities to make the most of the Warp Jammer

Honestly, on a pretty dense galaxy the warp jammer is a awesome investment.  Say you place your warp jammers in places where each can block 3 warp gates.  That means an AI progress reduction of 15 for each one and an effective 75 AIP progress reduction total.

5000k for reducing AI progress by 75+ (in my current game Ive got 3 in place effectively reducing AI progress effectively by 60) is a faily good investment IMO.  I thnk its fine the way it is, the Warp Jammer is an option with opprotunity costs (can't place another command station & counteracts 2 resource gatherers) that players consider based upon their own preferences and the game they are in.

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AI War / Re: Updating the Wiki

« on: March 02, 2012, 02:46:03 AM »

Just a heads up.  In the huge ship lists on the wiki, you've skipped the Mobile Repair Station