Topics

1

AI War / About Troop Accelerators, Interplanetary Munitions Boosters etc

« on: May 13, 2013, 03:15:15 AM »

Troop Accelerators and Interplanetary Munitions Boosters and other special AI structures.. if there are any.. are way too rare. I don't even ecounter these in every game and when I do there's like 1 in the whole 80 planet galaxy. Are these even seeded in every map? How about giving ~5% or ~10% (or even more?) of planets a special structure like Troop Accelerator? I think there are enough Black Hole Machines since they MUST be destroyed and they increase the AIP by 10 on destruction. Sure Interplanetary Munitions Boosters increase AIP by 20 but they can be ignored.

2

AI War / More useless ships... >.<

« on: April 21, 2013, 09:47:37 AM »

Infiltrators used to be good but then they took the dark matter ammo in a knee..... Infiltrators used to have Flare ammo type which was fine.. now they have dark matter.. why?
No but rly.. Infiltrators used to be good but not now they're.. "not so useful" thanks to the Dark Matter Ammo type. Ion Cannons and basically everything being immune to Dark Matter. There goes my good game and the map seed I found down the drain.
-______________- Infiltrators are only good vs Hybrids, Flagships and some guardians. Woppy doo.
EDIT: Core Guard Posts aren't immune to Dark Matter.. so they would still be useful late game.

Also Teleport Raiders are complete garbage thanks to their Minor Electric ammo type. I'd love to use them to pop Data Centers and other stuff but Nnnope.

If anyone cares.. would you(keith)/anyone be interested in a complete list of ships that need buff? I could list all "bad" ships and ways to make them useful. Would be just my opinion ofcourse.

3

Mods & Modding / Massive altplanetnames.txt (polished and updated (52838/34344 names))

« on: April 20, 2013, 05:32:39 AM »

This is an updated version of my old massive altplanetnames. I removed a lot of annoying names. On of the name lists I included in my old altplanetnames had real names and city names. Seeing those once in a while got annoying so I re made this mod.

I'm surprised my old mod has been downloaded more than 1200 times. Probably closer to 1500 since I re uploaded the mod at some point. Thanks for using it.

Anyway here's the mod:
altplanetnames.txt with 52838 names
altplanetnames - no code names.txt 34344 names

Nothing special. Just a polished version of the last one.

4

AI War / Wow.. just wow

« on: April 17, 2013, 07:19:56 AM »

Can you please do something to these planets and backgrounds? http://www.twitch.tv/chthonicone/b/389985906 look at that planet at 1 hour 21 minutes 36 seconds. LOOK at that planet.. oh my GOD it looks Horrible. I don't know what was the point of this downgrade. I've had planets disabled since the planet and star backgrounds update. Also the default nebulae intensity level is way too high. It's WAY too bright. Doesn't look very good on the Steam store page.

5

AI War / 2 Artillery Golems = gg

« on: April 05, 2013, 01:30:30 PM »

How the hell am I supposed to destroy 2 AI Artillery Golems on my home planet before GG? And what's with the 15 Mark => III Heavy Bomber Starships? The cap was reduced to 2 but the AIs don't seem to give a ****. (s word removed)

EDIT: Oh just got another exo fleet. Both of them combined had fkn 20 all starships LOL


Mod edit: specific four-letter string collected for museum exhibit

6

AI War / What's with the new Guard Posts

« on: March 30, 2013, 07:20:57 AM »

So after a long break I started playing AI War again (today).. my quick first impressions: the game is unplayable.
Why did the MarkIV MRLS Guard Post 2 shot all (3) of my MarkI Raid Starships? Why was I unable to destroy 4 MarkIV Needler Guard Posts and their guards (~15 MarkIV Fighters?) with ~240 MarkI ships. I had MarkI Fighters, Bombers, Missile Frigates, Leech Starships supported by Munitions Boosters. This was like 15 minutes into the game and the MarkIV planet was right next to my home world. If neutering a MarkIV planet is half impossible 15 minutes into the game how the hell is anyone supposed to clear one later in the game?

Now that I look at the patch notes it's no wonder the Guard Posts are now insanely overpowered.

That patch basically removed Raid Starships from the game. Actually.. that patch removed the player from the game too because the game is unplayable now. You basically "doubled it". Don't go Jay Wilson on us. If you don't have time to release polished and balanced patches then don't.

See? My account didn't get hacked

Edit: Luckily I have 6.009 version of AI War on one of my USBs. I could play that but after getting owned by the Guard Posts I don't feel like playing AI War right now.

7

AI War / Defending a bad planet

« on: March 29, 2013, 07:16:53 AM »

How would you defend this home planet?

The only way to defend this homeworld is to capture and fortify the 3 adjacent planets. All of them. Leave one out and every single exo and CPA will come from that right to the homeworld.

Actually in this case.. even capturing all 3 adjacent planets might not work.

If the AI attacks from the REM-Z21-63 wormhole you won't be able to stop the attack because it's so close to the homeworld's wormhole. Sure I could neuter REM-Z21-63 but CPAs and Exos could still use that wormhole.
Instead of Gleason I could fortify Imrik which is a good planet.

The 2 wormholes I need to defend in order to keep my homeworld safe (Gleason and REM-Z21-63) are close to each other and far from the hostiles wormholes. However.. if I fortified Imrik I'd have to fortify Vulputate which is a HORRIBLE planet to defend. Impossible. There are 2 hostile wormholes right next to the wormhole I need to defend and I'd have to defend almost 180 degrees.


Defending Flanderin isn't possible either. You can only defend one side of the wormhole effectively. Not 360 degrees. (about 80 - 90 is pretty much the maximum)


Thanks to Gleason, Flanderin and Vulputate it's not possible to defend this homeworld. Not on vs 2 10 diffs. I can already see it without playing.

Defending this homeworld could be possible on a lower difficulty level though.
It could be possible to defend Mardia

and Kathwallace

If I had those fortified I'd not have to defend Project Metacalf.. so I could defend Flanderin vs Jataka wormhole. Then I could dump like.. 30% of my defenses on Gleason and 10% or 5% on REM-Z21-63 as beachhead defenses in case of CPAs and Exos.

There would still be a problem.. capturing Gleason, Flanderin and Katwallace would be a suicide. Gleason has only 3 resource asteroids, Flanderin has 4 and Kathwallace 0. Capturing a planet with less than 5 resource asteroids is basically a suicide.. well at least on 10 diff.. and on a real map (Simple or Realistic).. not some dumbass tunnel map where you can defend your 20 planet empire by blocking 1 wormhole.

Anyway.. capturing and fortifying these 4 horrible planets would cost 113 AIP. 80 from capturing the planets and 33 from neutering the surrounding planets. Now the homeworld would be safe from waves and CPAs.. but all of this hard work would go down the drain when an Exo spawns on Brunowalter or Juliet Xray. So because of that (and because I'd need more energy and resource asteroids) I'd capture Juliet Xray and Ascs J46 for energy and +15 resteroids. This would cost me +55 AIP. All of this would cost 168 AIP and a lot of time.

Again.. this might work on a lower difficulty level (+/- 8 maybe 9). On 10 difficulty 3 whipping boys is max.

Any way to make CPAs and Exos "not so PITA"?

Added the save file.

8

Off Topic / What to do when tired and bored to death?!

« on: December 19, 2012, 02:31:31 PM »

Once again.. I'm insanely tired and bored. Been the last 2 weeks. It comes, stays a while and goes away. (Stay a while and bore me?). I do have time, games to play on Steam, videos to watch on YouTube and music to listen to on iTunes (goa, forest and dark psy, ambient, chillout and some techno and trance). And if you didn't know already.. I hate reading. I'd rather eff a grater. I have never finished a book. Yes you read/heard right I have never read a book entirely. Ok I think I made it sound worse than it really is. I'm quite a patient person and I'll read if I have to.. but not a book.

I've listened to everything on iTunes like hundred times. I've listened to many of them so many times I remember almost every single beat and sound (I'm looking at you Goasia ("Dancing With The Blue Spirit" and "From Other Spaces" albums (listening to Black Kahva as I'm writing this))). I can't seem to find new music I really like. I (almost) only listen to music without singing. Singing almost always ruins the music. Often the singing sounds out of place and thus makes the whole track just a bunch of noise. Sometimes it sounds like the person is trying to sing. And if the singing is good the music is just uninteresting. I'm picky when it comes to music.

I have quite lot of subscriptions on YouTube. I mainly watch ForceSC2Strategy, Kripparrian, ZoominGames, haijiq, shironekoshiro, MediocreFilms, AngryJoeShow, TotalBiscuit, JPLnews, SpaceRip, JustForLaughsTV. Sometimes it seems like there aren't enough videos to watch and some times I'm "too" "tired" or "bored" to watch them.

On Steam there are games I've played hundreds of hours (#1. AI War: 1406 hours, #2. Global Agenda (this game is "dead" now) 1244 hours, #3. Team Fortress 826 hours) and some I've not played at all (Witcher 2 and Skyrim). I know for a fact that Witcher 2 and Skyrim are good games and I LIKE THEM. I've tested them but not really played. Yet I've not been able to get the thumb out of my ass to play them. It's feels hard start learning new challenging or massive games. It's too energy consuming. I bought Natural Selection 2 a while after it's release and I've already played it 164 hours. But it was an easy game to get into. I've got 100% enough of TF2 so aint gonna play that anymore. Still haven't got 100% enough of AI War though but it's a hard and challenging requires energy to play. I often start a game but don't finish it.. 10 diff of course. Mostly because of something simple and stupid.. like AIs' Special Forces massing low cap ships. I recently started a new game and it's going very well. I disabled Ancient Shadows and Light of the Spire to minimize the amount of low cap ships. I also disabled Hybrids for the first time in forever. I have an Advanced Factory and planets in good spots. If I have the energy I will most likely win this game. 10/10 is still possible to win. I will probably return to Dungeons of Dredmor, Terraria and FTL at some point.

9

AI War / Explosions cause lag

« on: December 16, 2012, 02:41:16 AM »

For quite a while now explosions have been causing massive lag. Because of this I have to play with explosions disabled. When was the last time anything graphics related things were changed? Has anyone else noticed this?

10

AI War / Special Forces and Core Reserves need a change or two

« on: December 15, 2012, 05:55:03 AM »

-They respawn way too fast.
-They don't give a shit about ship caps. Every time I encounter Special Forces there's like 50 SSBs, 50 STPs, 100 Snipers or 100 Sentinels. + a couple of hundreds of triangle ships ---> 10*SSBs' cap and 3*Triangles' caps.
-They always more together. They don't patrol anymore. They just camp on 1 planet and move as a 1 big blob. Sometimes they camp next to one of the player's planets.
-Bring back the "Special Forces Highways".
-They're a pain in the ass.
-There's thousands of them. Kill 1k. another 1k respawns in 30 seconds.
-They respawn too fast.
-Diff 8 or 10. Doesn't matter. Still pain in the ass.
-Now I'm forced to unlock MarkIII Riots.

11

AI War / About the new Astro Train AI Plot

« on: December 02, 2012, 05:29:24 AM »

What do Golems and Super Fortresses have to do with Astro Trains? Every time a "major construction thing" completes a new Golem or Super Fortress appears in one of the Core worlds. That combined with the Core Sentry Eye aka Core Reserves it's impossible to destroy the Core worlds.

12

AI War / New Red AIs, changes to the AIs and adjusting the AI types' difficulty levels

« on: November 22, 2012, 11:47:25 AM »

The AI type's difficulty levels could use some changes. The list "AI War - AI Opponent Types" in the Wiki is outdated but I think the "Wave & Reinforce Multipliers" etc are still correct.

AIs at the moment:
Easier (11 AIs)
Entrenched Homeworlder
Fortress Baron
Grav Driller
Mine Enthusiast
Shield Ninny
Sledge Hammer
Support Corps
The Tank
Train Master
Turtle
Vanilla

Moderate (20 AIs)
Assassin
Backdoor Hacker
Bully
Camouflager
Counter Spy
Experimentalist
Feeding Parasite
Mad Bomber
Neinzul Cluster Bomber
Neinzul Youngster
One-Way Doormaster
Peacemaker
Speed Racer
Spireling
Starfleet Commander
Stealth Master
Tag Teamer
Teleporter Turtle
Thief
Vicious Raider
Zenith Descendant

Harder (14 AIs)
Alarmist
Attritioner
Everything
Extreme Raider
Fortress King
Golemite
Neinzul Nester
Radar Jammer
Retaliatory
Scorched Earth
Shadow Master
Special Forces Captain
Spire Hammer
Warp Jumper

Red/Technologist (9 AIs)
Crafty Spire
Heroic
Raid Engine
Technologist Homeworlder
Technologist Parasite
Technologist Raider
Technologist Sledge
Technologist Turtle
The Core


Adjusting the difficulty levels
Changes to Moderate AIs
Camouflager Moderate --> Easier - Poor man's Turtle. Defensive version of Vanilla
Counter-Spy Moderate --> Easier - If a newbie can deal with Gravity Drills.. which are much worse.. he/she can deal with Counter-Spies
Spireling Moderate --> Easier - Just easy
Tag Teamer Moderate --> Easier - Defensive version of Vanilla

Mad Bomber Moderate --> Harder - Half impossible
Neinzul Youngster Moderate --> Harder - Much Harder thank you think. Sends 1800 MarkII and III ship waves @ 50 AIP on 10 diff
One-Way Doormaster Moderate --> Harder - 10 hops from your homeworld to AI's = +100 AIP + planets you capture + BHMs you have to destroy before you can capture the planets you want. BHG on a heavily defended MarkIV planet or a planet with something defended by Special Forces = Doom.
Starfleet Commander Moderate --> Harder - Much harder than Spire Hammer or Attritioner. In addition to having increased Wave Multiplier Starfleet Commander ALSO uses 3 times the normal number of Starships. It really takes forever to destroy all 15 Starships.. by the time you have destroyed half of them the AI Leech Starships have reclaimed 70% of your fleet. If you destroy the Leech Starships first Spire and Zenith Starships will do a lot of damage. Oh.. and there are Heavy Bomber SSs and Raid SSs trying to destroy your stuff too. Like Neinzul Youngster, underrated.
Zenith Descendant Moderate --> Harder - Nuff said


Changes to Harder AIs
Alarmist Harder --> Moderate - Alerts are meh. Sure the Special Forces Alert can kill you but that can happen with other AIs too and the player use it to his/her advantage. Read the Suggestions
Attritioner Harder --> Moderate - Like Thief or Feeding Parasite.. but has less offensive power and a bit more defensive power because of the Attritioner = Moderate. Thief and Feeding Parasite are harder. Read the Suggestions
Golemite Harder --> Moderate - The Golems aren't that scary. Bombers, Heavy Bomber SSs and Raid SSs will do the trick.
Radar Jammer Harder --> Moderate- Quite nasty but not that bad. Comparable to Peacemaker
Spire Hammer Harder --> Moderate - Easier than Starfleet Commander. Doesn't have bonus Wave or Reinforcement multipliers

Scorched Earth Harder --> Red/Technologist - Has anyone won Scorched Earth? Has anyone dared to try? Go ahead Faulty Logic. You have a lot of time to do cheesy stuff. I'd be interested to see if it's possible to win Scorched Earth on 10 diff.


Changes to Red/Technologist AIs
Crafty Spire Red/Technologist --> Harder - The Spire stuff is really nasty especially early game. Attacking an AI planet too early in the game will end the game right there. However I don't feel like Crafty Spire deserves a red name.



Changes:
The Tank changes (Option 1)
Increase The Tank AI's Reinforcement Ratio from 0,9 to 1,25.
Change description to: "Planets are heavily defended and does heavy attacks on the players."
I mean The Tank is a TANK. Tank hits hard and can get hit hard.

Alarmist (Alerts are meh)
Make the Alarmist AI spawn threat when the player causes an alert: In addition to alerting the surrounding Alarm Guard Posts the AI would also spawn threat ships 2-4 hops away from the planet were they player caused the alert. The amount of threat ships spawned would depend on AIP. Now the player would actually want to avoid alerting anything. On 10 difficulty an alert could be like a "mini CPA". Atm the alerts are meh. They don't really do anything.
If this change is made to the Alarmist AI, Alarmist should not be moved from Harder to Moderate.

Attritioner
Buff the Attritioners: Make the Attritioners to be protected by the AI Command Station.
This change alone would increase Attritioner AI's difficulty by a lot and make it "Harder" AI.
If this change is made to the Attritioner AI, Attritioner should not be moved from Harder to Moderate.


New Red/Technologist AI ideas:
New Technologist AI: Technologist Stealth
Wave & Reinforce Multipliers: 1.00/1.00
Additional Spawns and Unlocks: Extra Unlocks: all ships with cloaking.
Description: Like the Stealth Master, except the enemy uses only the highest-technologies right from the start (these are quite a formidable foe). Pain is fun but it hurts.

The Tank changes (Option 2)
New Red AI: Iron Fist
Wave & Reinforce Multipliers: 1.3/1.3 OR 1.25/1.25
Additional Spawns and Unlocks: Extra Unlocks: Extra Unlocks: Space Tanks and Armor Ships. Half of all waves and reinforcements are Space Tanks and Armor Ships.(25% of all waves and reinforcements are Space tanks. 25% of all waves and reinforcements are Armor Ships.)
Description: Like the The Tank, except the planets are heavily defended, does heavy attacks on the players, and uses more Space Tanks and Armor Ships. When the AI rebellion began, Iron Fist challenged Chuck Norris to a duel and won. Humans were defeated.


I think these changes would be reasonable and make the game better.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9935

13

AI War Strategy Discussion / Ship combos

« on: November 16, 2012, 01:29:41 PM »

This is a list of ships that work very well together.
You should consider unlocking MarkIIs of these ships early in the game. MarkIIIs only if you either already have an Advanced Factory or you know you will soon have one. You must also make sure you will be able to hold the AF or you will waste 3000 Knowledge.

Sniper + Bomber + Fighter/Zenith Starship
Snipers counter Fighters, Bombers, Close Combat and Guardians.
Bombers counter Missile Frigates and big stuff.
Fighters/Zenith Starships counter Bombers, Close Combat and Guardians.

Munitions Booster + Missile Frigate + Riot Starship
MarkI Munitions Boosters increases Missile Frigates' (and others') damage by 80%. This means Missile Frigates basically have 1,8 damage multiplier against everything. MarkII Munitions Boosters boost damage by 110%. Riot Starships make sure the Missile Frigates will always out range the AI ships.

You might wanna add MarkII Bombers to protect the Munitions Boosters since they have Refractive hull and thus are countered by Missile Frigates. Munitions Boosters are very fragile and you will have to replace them quite often. Luckily they're dirt cheap.

Turrets + Munitions Boosters + Leech Starships
The "Munitions Booster + Missile Frigate + Riot Starship" strategy can be combined with this one.
Munitions Boosters work insanely well with heavy defenses. Especially Sniper, Spider, Missile and Gravitational Turrets and Heavy Beam Cannons. Select all MarkI Munitions Boosters and keep half of them (press L) constantly boosting the turrets. Keep the other half with your fleet. A cap of MarkI Munitions Boosters can boost hundreds of ships/turrets so half of them is enough.

With MarkI Munitions Boosters your defenses will do 80% more damage, stop the waves 80% faster which means you will have much less stuff to rebuild.. which means you will have much more resources to use for something else. Add MarkII Gravitational Turrets protected by MarkI Hardened Force Fields and your defenses will be nearly indestructible.

While turrets boosted by Munitions Boosters slaughter the AI ships.. which are slowed down by Gravitational Turrets.. MarkI and II Leech Starships reclaim half of the wave.

Anti-Armor + Missile Frigate + Riot Starship
Anti-Armor Ships counter Bombers and heavy stuff.
Missile Frigates counter Fighters, flies and mosquitoes.
Riot Starships will make sure Anti-Armor Ships and Missile Frigates will out range the AI ships.
Add MarkI Bombers and MarkII Basic Turrets to take care of the Missile Frigates.

Vampire Claw + Missile Frigate
Vampire Claws counter Guardians, Missile Frigates and Bombers. Vampire Claws are immune to missiles so Missile Frigates wont counter them. Vampire Claws are very cost efficient. A cap of MarkIs costs only ~25k.
Missile Frigates counter Fighters, flies and mosquitoes.

Neinzul Youngling Weasel
These guys work with almost anything. Especially defenses. They're basically mobile, cheap and spammable cannon fodder and Counter-Missile Turrets. They also counter Bombers and some other ships quite well. Just build a Space Dock dedicated to spamming Weasels and put it on loop when a wave is about to hit. Missile Firgates have a bad habit of out ranging Gravitational and Tractor Beam Turrets.. which will lead to your defenses being overrun and owned by Bombers. Weasels will help with that. A lot.

You could also take Neinzul and Cloaker Starships with your fleet and spam Weasels with them.


EDIT: Zenith Bombard + Missile Frigates + Riot Starship
This combo is quite similar to Sniper+Bomber.

14

AI War / Trillion ship CPA

« on: October 16, 2012, 01:32:31 AM »

Last night I dreamed about AI War... It was a very short dream. More like a screenshot I think I had something like 1000 AIP and there was a CPA coming with "1 Trillion Ships". When I saw the CPA announcement I was like what the hell?? And then the dream ended.
What the hell??

15

AI War / Dealing with the special forces

« on: October 14, 2012, 07:32:10 AM »

As soon as I leave my planets I get attacked by ~1500 ships (~60 of them were Spire Railclusters). How do you guys deal with them?