Messages

1

Off Topic / Re: StarDrive: Invasion of the Space Bears.

« on: May 04, 2013, 11:28:02 PM »

Pretty much nobody but Arcen does this. That's why Arcen is so unique and incredible =)

That's why I mentioned it.  It's easy to get spoiled by Arcen and have unrealistic expectations.

And as for StarDrive, I've just officially given up on my current game.  I had seen a few complaints about game performance getting bad on larger maps, after around date 1300 or so, but performance had been good for me (on smaller maps), and I have a fairly beastly PC so I thought I'd be OK.  But I just hit a wall late in my current game that made the game unplayable: it alternates locking up for ~8 seconds, then running for less than a second before locking up again.  Looking at the in-game date?  1315.

It took me 5 minutes of attempts before I could get the save menu to open so I could save out and quit.  Even in the largest most epic AI War games I've played, with 8K-10K ships performed much better than that, and never froze up the GUI.  I'm going to stay away from the game now until it gets some hefty patching done.

2

Off Topic / Re: StarDrive: Invasion of the Space Bears.

« on: May 04, 2013, 04:23:01 PM »

I've been playing StarDrive for the last week, and it is indeed in rough shape.  Pretty much all of Wingflier's issues remain as of the latest released patch, but I have a whole host of different issues that I find a real drag.  Such as:

- Wonky diplomacy, and limited diplomatic options.  The AI will threaten you if you go to colonize systems it is interested in (even if it has no presence there), but you have no way of doing the same to the AI.  The AI will colonize a planet in your homeworld system and then complain about your presence there.  Also, making a basic trade offer it doesn't like can switch a race from a high trust relationship to an angry one, and there's no way to tell pre-offer if the AI will like it or not.
- The UI is EXTREMELY rough.  This game is going to burn out my mouse scroll wheel: to zoom out from system view to max galaxy view , you have to roll, roll, roll that wheel.  On the ship list, there is little filtering options, and the scrollbar is basically busted if you have too many ships.  So again, you're rollin' that wheel to find the ship you are looking for.  And since you can't issue ship orders from the ship list, you have to double click on the ship to go to it, then select it there, give the order, and then go back to the list to find the next ship.
- And then, since the ship and planet lists automatically reset all your filtering and sorting choices EVERY time you enter those screens, you need to re-filter and re-sort, and then scroll-scroll-scroll to find the next item you're looking for.
- Unit selection is kinda wonky.  It has an interesting fleet-manager system that can automatically replenish your designed fleet from reserves or new construction, but it is rather terrible at just the basic group management where you just want to select a certain bunch of units, group them up and go.   You have to select a unit to identify it - mouse hovering doesn't work.
- The planetary ship construction list has no design filtering, so it always shows every ship type you can build - all the myriad pre-designed ones, plus all your own designs old and new.   There is no way to make it hide old obsolete designs.  Also, while you can upgrade older ships to a new design, there is no way to automatically upgrade your fleet designs to use the new upgraded ship, so you have to go back and manually edit every fleet removing all the old ships and adding new ones.
- The auto-queuing of constructor ships when you want to build platforms is a neat idea, but it often queues them up on obscure planets with barely any production capacity, so they take forever to get built.

To be fair, once you get past the steep learning curve, the game is pretty fun.  It's just that all the myriad rough spots are so wearing.  It's a one programmer studio, and he seems responsive to player requests and complaints, but he doesn't seem to have the update frequency the guys at Arcen do when they're actively working on AI War.  I have hopes he will fix the game up nice, but it really does seem 6-12 months out for that to happen.

3

AI War / Re: Super fortresses on/near core systems

« on: February 28, 2013, 02:05:27 PM »

Might this work:
Spire Rams are FF immune and I believe just 4 Mk1's will kill a Superfortress.  You just need to get them close.  You get 2 per asteroid so it's fairly easy to build up a full cap of them.  So then maybe first send in a big clound of cheap fighters, neinzul or whatever to occupy the SF and then quickly follow with the Rams.

4

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

« on: February 26, 2013, 01:03:49 AM »

*Nomination: Hardened Force Field Generator

OK, everything non-armour piercing only does 20% damage to the hardened FF, but the hardened FF only has 25% of the health of a regular FF.  This works out to a 20% bonus for the hardened FF against all non-AP weapons.  BUT... against AP enemies, it effectively takes a 400% damage penalty.  Given that risk, and the extra 1K cost to unlock the Mk 1 version, it seems hardly worth it.


*Nomination: Tachyon Drone (seconded)

Planets have such a large area, but these have such a tiny radius thet they're not really worth building.  Given a choice of just 1, I'd prefer seeing them get a larger detection radius over a larger cap size.


*Nomination: Spirecraft Siege Tower (seconded)

I like these in theory, but I've found them less useful in practice, mainly because they're so darn slow and/or short-ranged (compared to the implosion artillery, ion blaster, or penetrator).  They always feel late to the party: Their immunity to speed boosts makes them the slowpokes of the fleet when on your own planets or if you have speed boosters.  I'd like to see them either powered up enough to make their punch and staying power worth waiting for them to arrive, or to have them sped up to ion blaster or at least implosion artillery speed.

*Nomination: Decoy Drones

Decoy Drones: do I even have to explain?

I recall playing against an Experimentalist AI and getting attacked with fleets with dozens of those things mixed in, and it was nightmarish.  I think this ship is a lot more powerful in the AI hands, so buff with caution.

5

AI War / Re: Balancing Champions

« on: February 24, 2013, 04:15:07 PM »

It needs to be kept in mind that not every player might have a champion.  Sending typical exo-waves against planets places the burden of defense mainly on command-station players rather than the champion players.  The champion players are what we're trying to balance here, so that's where the focus should be.

In other words, whatever the counter-balance is, it should place the responsibility primarily on the champion players to deal with it, or at least somehow require the champions to be involved.

Some ideas:
* Champion raids:  After each nebula mission, the AI creates 1-4 special exo-raid-spawner structures PER CHAMPION PLAYER scattered on AI planets at most 3-5 hops from the player worlds.  Each of these threat spawners produces an escalating set of small exo/raid waves that beeline to player planets and then cause havoc there.  They start small and weak, but are scaled by the number of spawner structures remaining and by how long they have been in operation.  Leaving these spawners active will eventually result in devastating large scale core-level fleet-ship attacks.   The spawner structures have extremely high health, but are especially vulnerable to the Champion's weapons

* Mega-beachhead exo/CPA wave: Pre-announced well in advance of the actual attack, the AI generates a fleet of mixed ships plus a mega-beachhead on one of its planets 4-5 hops from the player worlds.  The mega-beachhead blocks player supply but also generates a constant EMP-effect, disabling all non-EMP resistant ships on the planet.  It has very hight health, but is again especially vulnerable to the Champions.  This wave waits 10-15 minutes and then launches its attack, making its way to the player territory.  The player can wait and deal with it once it arrives on thier planets, or they can be proactive and try hunt it down and  take it out before it gets there.

* Champion Slayer: The AI creates one of these PER CHAMPION PLAYER after the 3rd, 6th and 9th nebula missions, entirely focused on making life hell for any champions that venture into AI territory.  It is extremely fast, with high health and devasting attack damage against champions.  The Slayer partly exists in the Shadow realm and so is invulnerable to non-champions, but it also is unable to damage non-Champions.  The Slayer is non-repairable, so a Champion can eventually take one down.   They also spread out, avoinding having more than one Slayer on any planet at any time (to avoid ganging up too badly).  Whenever the AI spots a Champion in its territory, it will send immediately send the nearest Slayer after it, which will track down and destroy the Champion wherever it goes (even back into player territory).  When the targetted Champion is killed, the Slayer retreats back to AI space until a Champion is again spotted.  This repeats until the Slayers are all dead.

In general, the counter-balancing for Champions needs to be based on the number of Champions and the number of nebulas done (and possibly even the success of them).  It should not be based on AIP.

6

AI War / Re: Need Help Dont see a help section

« on: February 13, 2013, 12:13:40 AM »

darn so it dont matter what ai type i pick darn was hopping to play a game with two AI that would have more so i could have a huge fleet of ships lol

If you just want extra bonus ships and not the extra attack waves of a multi-home start, and you don't care about score or achievements, there is a cheat code you can use to deposit an ARS on a given planet: "like dynamiting fish in a bucket".  When you capture the added ARS(s), you get added bonus ship(s) as usual.

7

AI War / Re: First game questions

« on: February 08, 2013, 05:03:41 PM »

Some further scouting tips:
- I'll usually unlock the Mk II and Mk III scout fleet ships and Mk II scout starship by mid-game.  The Mk III fleet scout research will also let you build the Mk IV scout which is slow but undetectable and can scout the entire map single-handed once you get one.
- I don't generally bother with group-move for my scouting expeditions so the faster ones blaze ahead.  This seems to often work out better for me than keeping them slowed together.
- When planning a scouting mission, I use the brute force method.  I build a full cap of all the scout types I have available (all fleet marks and all starships), select them all, and pause the game.  Then, I go to the galaxy map and use shift-right click to queue the path for the scouts to follow.  (Queueing is imprtant so that your scouts never stop moving.  You PAUSE here because otherwize the scouts start moving and might exit their system while you are still queueing the orders up).  I generally set up a long enough list of planets to explore that I have no expectation any scouts will return.
- When they are all dead, I rebuild thew scout fleet and send it in a different direction or towards any remaining unexplored planets.  Sometimes all it takes to get past a tricky planet is a fresh batch sent directly there first.  Other times, you might need to approach it from a different wormhole or send out some ships to help clean a path (or just provide a distraction).
- If a planet seems to just be a black hole for your scouts, WATCH them as your scouts enter and see what is taking them out.

As for Special Forces Guard Posts - I kill 'em all, 1 AIP  be damned.  I don't like 'em sittin there lookin at me in my systems.  Actually, I thought the SF guard posts could warp in units to the planet even if you controlled it, but it sounds like I am wrong on that.

On tractor beam units: As LordSloth mentions you can use 'em for "fishing", to pull enemy ships parked at an enemy wormhole through into your defenses.  (Or just to gloriously grab them and blow them up with a Martyr).  They are also good at interdiction if you park them at a wormhole a wave is about to come through.

8

AI War / Re: View other player's UI?

« on: January 31, 2013, 08:33:38 PM »

That's where it is.  Thanks, Oralordos!

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AI War / Re: View other player's UI?

« on: January 30, 2013, 10:17:21 PM »

OK, We started up the MP game, and I started in my Champion UI at load time, repeatedly.  I have no idea how to switch to another player's UI.  The Ctrl-L "revert to local UI" command I had found had no effect.

It seems like this ability to see another player's UI is intentional, but I can't find any way to initiate it.

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AI War / Re: View other player's UI?

« on: January 30, 2013, 02:15:02 PM »

I didn't get a chance to experiment at the time.   I'll see what happens when we continue the game tonight.

The only thing I can think of is that when the game started, we immediately paused the game.  Player 2's homeworld base (and his champion - he was actually set to Normal + champion) were visible, but my champion was not.  Already at that point I was seeing the standard resource UI, unless I selected his champion.  I was quite puzzled, but after we unpaused, my champion showed up a few seconds later. 

The UI stayed like this for quite some time before mysteriously switching to my local UI.

11

AI War / Re: Ancient Shadows questions

« on: January 30, 2013, 02:02:36 PM »

Awesome - thanks TechSY730!  I never thought to look there.   Some stuff for me to play around with tonight!

12

AI War / View other player's UI?

« on: January 29, 2013, 11:21:20 PM »

I started a MP game playing as a champion, with the other player as normal (with shared unit control).  At first, I was able to see his resource stats and use B and S hotkeys to select the build menu and research menu, etc.  And on the galaxy map, there was a message saying "viewing <player>'s UI".

Then somehow it reverted and now I only see the champion UI, and have to manually select his command center, science lab, etc to get the menus because the hotkeys no longer work.  I'm not sure how or why it switched.  Is there any way to control this?

Thanks!

Edit: I did look through the controls screen and saw a "switch back to local player's UI" command, but not one to switch to the not-local player's UI.  And I'm certain in any case that I did not ever press that key combo in the game, when the UI switched.

13

AI War / Re: Ancient Shadows questions

« on: January 29, 2013, 11:09:57 PM »

Thanks for the info, Diazo and Bognor.

One thing: I looked through the AI War patch notes and couldn't find any mention of any AS-specific cheat codes.  There were two added to remove AI eyes and counterstrike posts, but that's it.  There's also nothing on the cheats page of the wiki.

14

AI War / Ancient Shadows questions

« on: January 28, 2013, 05:46:17 PM »

After an extended break from AI War (blame Skyrim, BL2, TL2, XCOM), I'm playing my first Ancient Shadows expansion game.  I've got a bunch of questions about it:

1 - If playing SP (reg game + champion) multiple homeworlds, you only get one champion?  Is the nebula scenario difficulty scaled by number of homeworlds? 

2 - It seems that the champion gets XP for things killed by his other units (ie: guard posts).  How close does it have to be to get this?  (ie: same planet, only within 30K range, etc)  Does that also count in MP if your ally makes the kill?  What about if your nebula ally makes the kill?  (ie: it kills a starbase or ship in a nebula, which you were also attacking)

3 - How many nebulas are typically on an 80 planet map?  Do more open up as your champion levels up or gets better hulls?  (It seems like some of the game text implies that).

4 - Is there any way to quickly identify which planets have nebulas without actually going into the planet screen and looking for one?  I couldn't find any mention of it in the planet details on the galaxy map screen.

5 - I've seen some indication here that nebula scenarios give better rewards for being finished quickly.  Does that mean from initial entry to the nebula or from the start of the game?  If you wait to mid-late game to do some the nebulas, are you losing out on rewards?

6 - I see the nebulas have the standard 3K knowledge.  Is there any way to collect it?

7 - After I completed each of my first 2 nebulas, my allies sent a bunch of ships - seemingly to patrol around my planets, or are they just moving randomly and will enter AI worlds also?   But then I haven't seen any in a while now - is that a one-time deal?  Or will they send more?

8 - Is there any new cheat codes for Ancient Shadows?  I'd love to see ones to respec the champion, add upgrade points, and give all items.  Also one to add the Dark Spire faction to a planet.

15

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Bummer

« on: October 02, 2012, 08:33:55 PM »

I don't like playing with gamepads and never really liked castlevania or those sorts of games.  (In general, I dislike console games)  So the move towards making AVWW2 more focused on console-like retro gameplay is really really disappointing.  Neither does keyboard-only aiming appeal to me, which I gather is intended to just make the aiming/targeting harder.

.....but the first game was based on Metroid-vania and console platformer concepts to begin with, wasnt it?   That's how it felt to me.   Run around, explore big areas, get the items that you need in order to continue (in this case, crafting items usually), and then go through areas that you couldnt before.    Not to mention the gameplay was about as console-tastic as you could get.  Pure platforming, run and jump and shoot and dodge.

Well, I played AVWW on the "I don't want to be the second cousin of the nephew of The Guy" platforming difficulty setting, and if there was a setting that let you hover around instead of jump and fall, I probably would have used that.  I generally hate console-style platforming, especially "jumping and timing puzzles", but between the easiest setting and the triple jump, rocket jump, teleport, and speed booster all boosting the freedom of movement, AVWW generally managed to make its platform aspects mostly acceptable or sometimes even fun for me.

I've never played Metroid - only Castlevania and some arcade equivalents, and my biggest mental associations with that game genre are:
- frustrating jumping and timing platforming puzzles
- awkward control scheme
- very limited ability to take damage or recover from it
all of which are big negatives for me, and all of which were not an issue for me in AVWW.

But for AVWW2, the platform difficulty adjustment setting is gone, the controls are trying to emulate those console games, and health is being lowered.  So ironically, the things that made AVWW less like a Metroidvania game were things that let me enjoy it more.