Topics

1

AI War / Oh no! This exo-wave's got an artillery golem!

« on: May 31, 2012, 10:20:16 AM »

It's going to take out a hard-won botnet or armoured golems! I'd better do someth-... Oh, it just overkilled an MLRS turrent instead. And then another one. And another. Then I killed it.

What's the target selection algorithm for these? I'm playing an all-out head-to-head LoTS slugfest at the moment, and artillery golems in exo waves are basically a big fat yawn, because (a) they shoot turrets first if any are around, and (b) if not, they'll shoot at Spirecraft, but at a different one every time. It takes out the shield module, but that's all, so I don't care.

These *ought* to be scary, especially given how effective they are in player's hands. It would be nice to have a special target priority list for them: kill the most expensive ship you have. Every shot should be >250K resources down the drain, to give the desired "KILL IT! KILL IT NOW!" response.

2

AI War / Reclamation gone mad

« on: May 04, 2012, 03:24:17 AM »

Is it just me, or has the reclamation gone slightly weird in the last couple of betas? In a game I had recently, nearish the start of the game, I faced a wave of 600 raiders with my fleet comprised of the triangle ships, vampire claws, and a smattering of starships including 3 leech I starships. At the end of the battle I had ~250 raider mk Is in my fleet, which seems a trifle unlikely. Are leech starships now doing reclamation splash damage or something?

3

AI War / Advanced hybrids and hidden maps - not a good combo

« on: February 19, 2012, 05:23:39 PM »

I recently started a new game - 90 planets, 8/8 "random harder" AIs, LotS, advanced hybrids, no spirecraft/golems, and my usual "map is hidden" settings.

This was a mistake.

The super hybrid spawned. I'd found the dyson world (but only just), but only had ~50% of the galaxy scouted. By the time it had built the antagoniser, I had ~75% of the galaxy scouted. I only had 6 or 7 planets at this stage - not enough to fend off the gatlings and the hybrids for long. I threw my entire resource base into frantically scouting for the &$£%^"& hybrid, and finally found it (4 hops away from any friendly planet, all of those mkIII or mkIV) just before the gatlings overwhelmed my defenses.

Argh.

Memo to self: with lots of planets and advanced hybrids on, scouting just became *really* important. I'd been trying a game without spirecraft to avoid the cheats option of building a pair of spire scouts and covering the entire galaxy with them . Well, I was right: it *is* more difficult!

4

AI War / OK, so how does reclamation work, then?

« on: December 09, 2011, 06:47:18 AM »

I have to confess that I'm somewhat puzzled by the reclamation mechanic. The description for Parasites, for example, says that they fire shots that do reclamation damage. Once the reclamation damage exceeds the health of the target, the target is reclaimed. Going by that description, if a parasite whittles away 99% of the health of a target, which is then finished off by something else, the target should not be reclaimed (as the reclamation damage was only 99% of its health). That's not what actually happens, as far as I can tell, which is just as well, as otherwise parasites would be completely useless.

So, what's the actual mechanism?