Topics

1

AI War Strategy Discussion / Bug stomping

« on: October 03, 2011, 10:37:03 AM »

So, my coop buddy and I tried to start another game last night. Unfortunately, we were wiped out within three waves by swarms of Neinzul combined with Stealth Battleships (and the simultaneous bomber wave didn't help). I've never been able to develop an effective counter to Neinzul swarms, although I've tried the following:

- Fighters (hull bonuses)
- Flak Cannons (area effect)
- Electric Turrets (area effect)
- Heavy Beam Cannons (more or less area effect)

All these things work well against small numbers of the bugs, but I just can't get enough of the stuff out to deal with ~3000 ships. And, obviously, when you're on your first/second wave, you're not going to have the resources for starships of any kind.

So: How do folks deal with large numbers of Neinzul coming in?

2

AI War / Roaming Enclaves can bite me

« on: August 30, 2011, 12:25:21 PM »

That is all.

But seriously, do they ever actually attack the AI? I've never seen it. Probably because the ones that do get wiped out very quickly.

Also, do the Preservation Wardens ever attack the AI? Probably not, since the AI doesn't make use of the resource patches. What are the actual rules for when they show up and how they choose their targets?

Anyway, I'm disabling both of these guys on my next game, along with the devourer golems.

3

AI War Strategy Discussion / How to deal with Spire Blade Spawners

« on: July 29, 2011, 09:41:44 AM »

These things are currently the bane of my existence. Let's see:

- Their blades go directly through force fields.
- They're immune to sniper fire
- They outrange any other turret you have.

So, any time even a single one of them pops into one of my systems, I have to go scramble a defense force to take them out, otherwise they very quickly kill my power generators/command station and it all goes down hill from there. Anyone have any tips on dealing with them?

4

AI War / Devourer Golem seems weak

« on: February 17, 2011, 11:06:47 AM »

I had some scouts on a planet with a devourer golem less than an hour into the game, and the poor thing was getting schooled by the AI's implosion guardians, to the tune of having ~80% health after going through that one system. Since it was headed into AI territory, I get the feeling I won't see it again. Anyone else notice this?

5

AI War / Difficulty level information

« on: November 15, 2010, 07:12:52 PM »

So, as I was complaining on the bug tracker/patch release thread about wave sizes being freaking huge, I had this idea that maybe I was just setting my difficulty too high. However, I also realized that I don't really have anything other than an incredibly vague "certain AI tactics don't get activated until difficulty 7" and "difficulty level may be affects wave size and frequencey" understanding of what difficulty level actually does. I'm thinking that turning the difficulty level down from 7.6 to 7.3 or 7 might deal with my wave problems - but would I notice the AI suddenly becoming completely stupid?

So, as an open question (and maybe something to put up on the wiki), what does difficulty level control exactly? Is this documented somewhere already and I just couldn't find it?

6

AI War / Guardians a little overzealous about counterattacking

« on: November 11, 2010, 04:03:27 PM »

So, I've noticed this behavior occurring quite frequently, to the point where it makes assaulting AI worlds almost trivial:

1) Send some raid starships or another small raiding group to attack a guard post with a guardian.
2) The guardian and its buddies almost immediately run for the nearest wormhole to your systems, leaving the guard post at the mercy of your raiding force, which has taken negligible damage (and even if the damage is significant, who cares, it's a small raiding force)
3) Eliminate the guardian and its buddies on your side of the wormhole using a vastly superior force
4) Rinse and repeat for every guard post in the system, including the command station and warp gate.

Now you've got an almost empty system with maybe a few loose units here and there, which you can mop up with a minimal force. While I appreciate trying to introduce an element of 'counterattack' when attacking an enemy system, when the AI completely abandons its tactical locations to go get killed, that's probably going a little over board.

Anyone else notice this?

7

Tidalis Technical Support / crash in custom game

« on: November 10, 2010, 09:10:54 PM »

So, I created myself a custom puzzle and played it (it was some weird "sun and moon" zen setup with tools and no chains except via dropped blocks). As I cleared the entire board using a rainbow globe item, the game crashed. Attached is the generated "Unhandled Errors" file. No big hurry to fix, as I know you guys are working on AI Wars big time, but just something to be aware of.

8

AI War / escape-key menu not very good for pausing

« on: May 07, 2010, 10:07:04 AM »

Apparently, using the escape-key menu isn't a very good way to pause your game - the menu seems to go away after a short while, leaving the game unpaused (so, I went to eat dinner and when I came back there were AI ships all over my home system).

9

AI War Strategy Discussion / Vampire Claws, Cutlasses and other ships that ignore force fields.

« on: March 24, 2010, 10:26:23 AM »

I started a single player game just to screw around a bit. Ok, not the best starting position, lot of mark IV worlds around, but I can deal. However, the AIs have Cutlasses and Vampire Claws, which seem to be immune to tractors and ignore force fields. I haven't tried gravity turrets, but it's a lot of knowledge at this point in the game.

How do people deal with these?