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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.093 "Apply MkIII Sanding Machine" Released!
« on: October 14, 2012, 03:35:05 PM »
Can the cookie monster trigger the vengeance gens?
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AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions
« on: October 09, 2012, 09:40:22 AM »Could you add some kind of indicator for the wormhole going to the nebula? The color of the wormhole is good, but it can still be a pain to find. I think, if you get a scout in an adjacent system, that should, at least, reveal the nebula in the galaxy map, without revealing the world itself.
You can filter the galaxy map by Unexplored Wormholes: search for that item in the first of the two drop-downs at the bottom. If you use default settings and have unexplored planets displayed (as opposed to only having explored planets visible and having to go through a womrhole to see where it leads), that'll show you where all the blue wormholes on the map are.
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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!
« on: October 08, 2012, 10:09:14 PM »
Not specifically related to this version, but... well, I started a game with Heroic and Crafty Spire, because I wanted a bunch of chaotic things flying around. I got exactly what I asked for. Man is it scary to see 5 spirecraft shield bearers of various marks protecting with 5-6 ion blasters of various marks, along with 5-6 implosion artillery as icing on the cake. Even scarier is seeing them running around as (apparently) part of the new special forces at the 30 minute mark on diff 8/8, which means they will quite reliably follow me around.
I'm scuttling that game for other reasons (thought you only needed 1 planet between spire cities when apparently it's 2?) but I didn't come up with a single way to handle that, I just ran away. Well... thinking about it now, I guess I could make a beachhead with a mobile builder and just drop full caps of turrets. That might do it.
Or nukes, but that's a pretty bad solution when the problem would likely just keep recurring...
And then every so often a spire ram comes in and snipes my champion. Joke's on the ram, i think.
I'm scuttling that game for other reasons (thought you only needed 1 planet between spire cities when apparently it's 2?) but I didn't come up with a single way to handle that, I just ran away. Well... thinking about it now, I guess I could make a beachhead with a mobile builder and just drop full caps of turrets. That might do it.
Or nukes, but that's a pretty bad solution when the problem would likely just keep recurring...
And then every so often a spire ram comes in and snipes my champion. Joke's on the ram, i think.
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AI War / Re: Request for details on "Balance: Another pass on champion modules"
« on: October 04, 2012, 05:09:00 PM »
Idea: if shields fall to 0, put them on a 1-2 min cooldown before recharging instead of having them break entirely.
I would have more feedback on the balance of the modules themselves, but you don't get enough exp to experiment with taking a bunch of things up to a high level. Especially since I don't know what IRE/doom accelerator/etc damage works out to be. Are there any new cheats implemented, to unlock modules and give exp and stuff?
Also: minor faction warp gate
I would have more feedback on the balance of the modules themselves, but you don't get enough exp to experiment with taking a bunch of things up to a high level. Especially since I don't know what IRE/doom accelerator/etc damage works out to be. Are there any new cheats implemented, to unlock modules and give exp and stuff?
Also: minor faction warp gate
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AI War / Re: Engineer priorities
« on: October 03, 2012, 01:01:38 PM »
My most recent engineer frustration is that, if they're assisting at the docks or some longer project and my champion dies, I have to manually break one of them off to rebuild its modules.
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AI War / Re: Wave Size and Timing based on Points of Ingress
« on: October 02, 2012, 05:12:18 PM »
I really don't think balancing the game around 10/10 is a good idea. That's why I asked if this was considered a problem on normal difficulties. I can't see how a solution that would be considered effective on 10/10 would be anything but gamebreaking on normal difficulties.
after all, if it were possible to beat 10/10 without being extremely judicious and risk-averse, you would consider it a bug report and up the difficulty, right? =p
after all, if it were possible to beat 10/10 without being extremely judicious and risk-averse, you would consider it a bug report and up the difficulty, right? =p
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AI War / Re: Wave Size and Timing based on Points of Ingress
« on: October 02, 2012, 04:24:12 PM »
Per-planet caps seems to me to have the undesirable side effect of reducing (the effect of) player choice and/or homogenizing everything, depending on the method used. I think a better line of inquiry would be to add incentive for capturing more planets. That, and there already exists a kludge in the engine to encourage expansionism - energy.
But if you're playing on high difficulties (which I assume you are, from recent AAPs and the comment about pushing your limits), and dealing with recent changes like the data centers only reducing 10 AIP at 10/10 instead of 20, I don't see a shift to expansionism. I see the opposite. iirc, people complained that they could take planets without consequence, and a spate of people have been completing it recently (to which the reaction has been to make it harder), so here we are.
Question: is this a problem that you see in moderate-difficulty (let's go with 7-8) games, or just higher difficulty ones?
But if you're playing on high difficulties (which I assume you are, from recent AAPs and the comment about pushing your limits), and dealing with recent changes like the data centers only reducing 10 AIP at 10/10 instead of 20, I don't see a shift to expansionism. I see the opposite. iirc, people complained that they could take planets without consequence, and a spate of people have been completing it recently (to which the reaction has been to make it harder), so here we are.
Question: is this a problem that you see in moderate-difficulty (let's go with 7-8) games, or just higher difficulty ones?
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AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions
« on: October 01, 2012, 08:54:53 PM »
I started up a sandbox game because I wanted to see how far the nebula questlines go. Some more impressions.
-I can't decide what unlocks to get. I ended up getting a bunch of level 2 unlocks (because only 1 point, natch) and after the 9th mission I finally got HBCs modules and sighed. They seem to be balanced like knowledge costs; you can get a small number of things all the way through but nowhere near everything. That's great, except I also really get the impression you're supposed to swap champions often and mix and match modules for each nebula encounter. And then the character of the missions changes near the end, from mobile ship suppression to base killing.
-The balance... I'm not really sure how to say what I mean, but it feels like you're intended to have to cheese things and/or used advanced micro to clear the later ones. I still have no clue how I'm supposed to clear the colony ship one if it spawns near the end. 60 exploding colony ships every 10-20 seconds? Not a single ship had a chance. I ended up doing it after 2 hours of savescumming by loading a zenith champ up with 2 bomber bays (for distractions), 2 missiles (for dps), and then running through and killing the bases as fast as I could. Won with 1% health left after too much pain. Your ship is way too slow to even try engaging the regular enemy ships in that fight, let alone the colony ships.
-I hate how the large enemy bases decide to spawn more things once you clear the small bases out. It's like, you think you made progress, but NOPE. Especially hate how large starbases end up spawning 6+ advanced command cruisers at a time, because they take forever and a day to kill and poison the well by murdering bombers so efficiently that your allies are useless for the rest of the fight, and you basically have to clear the large starbase by yourself. With very long & tedious needle pricks.
-Yeah uh, I ended up recharging shadow, running up to a large starbase, spamming the shield, and running away after 20s to begin the long recharge (and exit the nebula to repair shield modules). If there's a better way to do it, I didn't find it.
-The shadow regen thing isn't very good. You can't use it in a firefight, and while it's nice that you can heal a starbase, it doesn't actually help you achieve victory.
-Shield modules being able to die, but not other modules, feels wrong (although I can see why it turned out this way).
-Speaking of which, is something broken with the Neinzul champion's radar damping? Some tooltip might be lying to me, but I'm not sure which one. Missiles get something like 6k more range than the radar damping (16k vs 10k iirc), meaning you should be able to sit outside a starbase's radius and ping it to death. But that, uh, doesn't work; the starbases are ignoring it or something, and firing at me from max missile range. The tooltip doesn't mention that as one of their immunities though...
-Does vampirism only apply if the main gun deals the final blow to an enemy?
I kept trying after eventually getting 9 clears and my battleship. 10 looped back to the beginning of the rotation and gave me grey spire. ~45 gatlings spawned at the start. gg.
Overall: I much prefer the variety here to the fallen spire stuff. There are many more ways to play it, and many more missions that aren't boring. With some time this is going to turn out really well, I think.
re: new fallen spire: the shard moves too fast. My fleetball can't keep up.
zen siege engine: could use longer range. I can't see a way to use them without suiciding them, aside from an elaborate whipping boy setup.
possibly broken (have not tried): shield bearer + med frigate
-I can't decide what unlocks to get. I ended up getting a bunch of level 2 unlocks (because only 1 point, natch) and after the 9th mission I finally got HBCs modules and sighed. They seem to be balanced like knowledge costs; you can get a small number of things all the way through but nowhere near everything. That's great, except I also really get the impression you're supposed to swap champions often and mix and match modules for each nebula encounter. And then the character of the missions changes near the end, from mobile ship suppression to base killing.
-The balance... I'm not really sure how to say what I mean, but it feels like you're intended to have to cheese things and/or used advanced micro to clear the later ones. I still have no clue how I'm supposed to clear the colony ship one if it spawns near the end. 60 exploding colony ships every 10-20 seconds? Not a single ship had a chance. I ended up doing it after 2 hours of savescumming by loading a zenith champ up with 2 bomber bays (for distractions), 2 missiles (for dps), and then running through and killing the bases as fast as I could. Won with 1% health left after too much pain. Your ship is way too slow to even try engaging the regular enemy ships in that fight, let alone the colony ships.
-I hate how the large enemy bases decide to spawn more things once you clear the small bases out. It's like, you think you made progress, but NOPE. Especially hate how large starbases end up spawning 6+ advanced command cruisers at a time, because they take forever and a day to kill and poison the well by murdering bombers so efficiently that your allies are useless for the rest of the fight, and you basically have to clear the large starbase by yourself. With very long & tedious needle pricks.
-Yeah uh, I ended up recharging shadow, running up to a large starbase, spamming the shield, and running away after 20s to begin the long recharge (and exit the nebula to repair shield modules). If there's a better way to do it, I didn't find it.
-The shadow regen thing isn't very good. You can't use it in a firefight, and while it's nice that you can heal a starbase, it doesn't actually help you achieve victory.
-Shield modules being able to die, but not other modules, feels wrong (although I can see why it turned out this way).
-Speaking of which, is something broken with the Neinzul champion's radar damping? Some tooltip might be lying to me, but I'm not sure which one. Missiles get something like 6k more range than the radar damping (16k vs 10k iirc), meaning you should be able to sit outside a starbase's radius and ping it to death. But that, uh, doesn't work; the starbases are ignoring it or something, and firing at me from max missile range. The tooltip doesn't mention that as one of their immunities though...
-Does vampirism only apply if the main gun deals the final blow to an enemy?
I kept trying after eventually getting 9 clears and my battleship. 10 looped back to the beginning of the rotation and gave me grey spire. ~45 gatlings spawned at the start. gg.
Overall: I much prefer the variety here to the fallen spire stuff. There are many more ways to play it, and many more missions that aren't boring. With some time this is going to turn out really well, I think.
re: new fallen spire: the shard moves too fast. My fleetball can't keep up.
zen siege engine: could use longer range. I can't see a way to use them without suiciding them, aside from an elaborate whipping boy setup.
possibly broken (have not tried): shield bearer + med frigate
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AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions
« on: October 01, 2012, 11:44:13 AM »
I tried a 10/10 game with Heroic and Fortress King.
24 minutes in, the AI force-fed me 5 spire destroyer champions with plasma lance/siege cannon modules. I had a full cap of basic turrets mk. 1/2, which I had specifically built to gank the champions the AI sends with waves. The turrets didn't exactly help when a single plasma siege cannon would one-shot several turrets at a time, heh. And their overlapping shields sealed the deal.
These weren't from a wave either; as far as I can tell, they just decided to show up with 0 warning. Speaking of zeroes, that's also how many chances I had.
I guess Heroic is supposed to do stuff with their champions the same way crafty spire sometimes sends spirecraft around? That's cool, although I have to note that it's arbitrarily deciding to send things with orders of magnitude more firepower than the waves I was getting. =p
24 minutes in, the AI force-fed me 5 spire destroyer champions with plasma lance/siege cannon modules. I had a full cap of basic turrets mk. 1/2, which I had specifically built to gank the champions the AI sends with waves. The turrets didn't exactly help when a single plasma siege cannon would one-shot several turrets at a time, heh. And their overlapping shields sealed the deal.
These weren't from a wave either; as far as I can tell, they just decided to show up with 0 warning. Speaking of zeroes, that's also how many chances I had.
I guess Heroic is supposed to do stuff with their champions the same way crafty spire sometimes sends spirecraft around? That's cool, although I have to note that it's arbitrarily deciding to send things with orders of magnitude more firepower than the waves I was getting. =p
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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.032, "Then The Pendulum Swung Back," Released!
« on: April 04, 2012, 06:48:52 PM »
I know the raid engine description doesn't outright say that it uses the alert mechanic, but the mechanics are so similar if not otherwise identical that I assumed they were one and the same.
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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.032, "Then The Pendulum Swung Back," Released!
« on: April 03, 2012, 03:09:18 AM »
I've had a chance to try the new warp jammer stations. They, uh, didn't stop a raid engine inconveniently placed 2 hops away from my homeworld from derailing my attempt to colonize the system in between. >_>
public safety announcement, etc.
public safety announcement, etc.
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After Action Reports / Re: Disposable Heroes
« on: March 30, 2012, 11:17:22 PM »
Actually, I can't do math.
160 is the baseline for econ III planets? Nah. Forgot to factor in the 20 income from baseline harvesters.
Actual values are 73*numHarv + 60 vs 20*numHarv + 320. At 4 harvesters it's 352 with harvester upgrades vs 400 with econ IIIs. At 5 it's 405 vs 420.... so it takes 6 harvesters to 'break even' vs econ IIIs with the upgrade.
Except that (almost?) every ARS planet and a number of others have 6 harvesters, you still get a slot to do something different with the command station, you can sustain your income over more than 6 planets, and even if you're stuck with a bunch of one- or two- or three-harvester planets it doesn't come anywhere close to balancing out the free 600 you've been getting from the start of the game. So it's still very superior, just not quite as much.
But mostly, it's just amusing that even though econ IIIs are no longer the obvious beginning opening, you're still stuck spending 9K knowledge on income at the start of the game. =p
playing a disposable heroes game now, and it's entrancing to watch 2000 ships roil over 50 AI ships on low caps while your resource meter is constantly pegging 999,999. would've done this earlier if I'd known the seed also had autobombs. =p
Quote
3. If a planet has 4 harvesters, it's automatically better. Assuming 2/2 for simplicity, you get 146/146 m/c per sec. How is that better than 160? Because you haven't factored in the additional resources from the command station that you have to place. Econ Is give 30/30, bringing you up to 176/176. Mils and Log Is are slightly worse, but bring other benefits. And if you unlock higher-level command stations, the margin just goes up.
160 is the baseline for econ III planets? Nah. Forgot to factor in the 20 income from baseline harvesters.
Actual values are 73*numHarv + 60 vs 20*numHarv + 320. At 4 harvesters it's 352 with harvester upgrades vs 400 with econ IIIs. At 5 it's 405 vs 420.... so it takes 6 harvesters to 'break even' vs econ IIIs with the upgrade.
Except that (almost?) every ARS planet and a number of others have 6 harvesters, you still get a slot to do something different with the command station, you can sustain your income over more than 6 planets, and even if you're stuck with a bunch of one- or two- or three-harvester planets it doesn't come anywhere close to balancing out the free 600 you've been getting from the start of the game. So it's still very superior, just not quite as much.
But mostly, it's just amusing that even though econ IIIs are no longer the obvious beginning opening, you're still stuck spending 9K knowledge on income at the start of the game. =p
playing a disposable heroes game now, and it's entrancing to watch 2000 ships roil over 50 AI ships on low caps while your resource meter is constantly pegging 999,999. would've done this earlier if I'd known the seed also had autobombs. =p
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After Action Reports / Re: Disposable Heroes
« on: March 30, 2012, 05:09:55 PM »only on multi homeworld actually. I don't think the new harvesters are extremely overpowered in a regular 1 homeworld game. they just feel good.
I'm playing a game with them right now, and yeah, they feel really good. They feel so good I decided to work some things out myself. I know this was discussed elsewhere, but I played some, went back and reread the numbers, added some assumptions of my own...
1. The aforementioned homeworld. Homeworlds have either 12 or 13 harvesters. Going from 20 to 73 each is a 53 res/sec increase. Multiply by 12 in the worst case and you have a free 636 res/s additional income that you can unlock as soon as the game starts.
2. Did I mention you can unlock it as soon as the game starts? At least with econ IIIs you have to cap a planet first.
3. If a planet has 4 harvesters, it's automatically better. Assuming 2/2 for simplicity, you get 146/146 m/c per sec. How is that better than 160? Because you haven't factored in the additional resources from the command station that you have to place. Econ Is give 30/30, bringing you up to 176/176. Mils and Log Is are slightly worse, but bring other benefits. And if you unlock higher-level command stations, the margin just goes up.
4. You know planets with ARSs? Those tend to have 5-6 harvesters, and you have to take them. Even if core shield gens didn't exist, they'd still be well worth the AIP for the ship and the resources. That's an extra 70 or 140 res/s per ARS planet, of which there are usually... 5 or 6 across the game?
5. Advanced Fac planets spawn with additional harvesters too, iirc? Or maybe I'm just getting lucky.
6. Previous discussion talked more about the average number of harvesters per planet, not counting homeworlds. I think it was 3? Well, you can skip 99% of the 1-2 harvester worlds, but you're predisposed to capture worlds with lots of harvesters.
So basically, the new harvesters are almost strictly better than econ IIIs even in a single-homeworld game. They give you 600 income completely free from the start of the game and still outperform econ IIIs on average in the rest of the game. And you don't use up a command station slot. That last bit alone should be cause to make them a good deal worse than Econ IIIs (you can still get lots of income from your chokepoint world that has a Mil III), but they're still better. It's just... wow.
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AI War / Try beachheads + cross-planet waves
« on: March 29, 2012, 02:05:11 AM »
Go on, just try it.
(and since I'm making a topic, a question: is there a cap on how many ships the zenith/spire starships attack boost? Everything in the tooltip is described in range, but I always see lots of ships next to the starships that aren't affected.)
(and since I'm making a topic, a question: is there a cap on how many ships the zenith/spire starships attack boost? Everything in the tooltip is described in range, but I always see lots of ships next to the starships that aren't affected.)
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AI War / Re: Defense Supply Mechanic
« on: March 29, 2012, 01:04:35 AM »
I asked because I vaguely remember there being a clan tag like that in a game I used to play. Guess either I misremembered or it's coincidence, heh.