Messages

1

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.007-6.009 "Burying The Hatchet" Released!

« on: December 08, 2012, 06:15:45 PM »

Wow, the new enclaves are horrifyingly powerful, even on intensity 4.  I eventually got so many enclaves loitering on my worlds that I got 8000 youngling reinforcements whenever the AI sneezed.

2

AI War / Re: I really like Dark Spire.

« on: November 04, 2012, 05:11:24 PM »

Is there any sort of notification of when a vengeance generator hits critical mass, or does it just ... happen?

3

AI War / Re: !!!SPOILERS!!! Nebula unlocks

« on: October 11, 2012, 10:39:36 PM »

Shadow shadow: allows the shadow frigate to produce a shadow

Shadow shadow shadow: allows the shadow frigate's shadow to produce a shadow

Shadow shadow shadow shadow: allows the shadow of the shadow frigate's shadow to produce a shadow

Shadow shadow shadow shadow shadow: the massive amount of shadow produced by the shadow frigate and its shadows, shadow's shadows, and shadow's shadow's shadows melts your graphics card, causing the AI to cease function, winning the game.

4

AI War / Some AI taunts still don't work

« on: July 03, 2012, 11:10:21 PM »

Before the 5.000 days, the AI would play a "failed attack" taunt when you lose a large chunk of ships without doing much damage to a system, such as "Why do you throw your lives away?".  However,  I've noticed that the AI has stopped using this taunt whatsoever.  Even if I suicide thousands of ships into a planet without killing anything, the AI doesn't say anything at all.  Am I missing something?

This bug has existed for quite a while now, and I for one would love to see these taunts return.

Links:
Mantis post (from last year): http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3795
Forum thread (from last year): http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,8995.msg81960.html#msg81960

5

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.036 "The Wandering AI"

« on: July 03, 2012, 10:35:18 PM »

I guess it's about time that I start using enclaves.  Now they just seem far too attractive to refuse.

6

AI War / Re: Cyborg's Community Challenge: Play It Forward

« on: May 16, 2012, 10:11:19 PM »

Are there any other takers for this?  I don't have the time but I figured I'd just bump this to remind people that it's open.

7

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: So, what's going on in this forum?

« on: May 14, 2012, 03:03:45 PM »

Wait a second, what do ponies have to do with AVVW?  Threads still tend to get sidetracked here, I guess.

In any case, welcome to the forums!

Personally, I don't understand the whole pony ... thing.  Just don't get annoying with spamming pictures and it's fine.

There was a weird ATI driver bug that caused performance in the game to drop for some people unless they had 2 youtube videos playing in the background. The videos chosen by the person who discovered the bug (Castruccio) were of My Little Pony, and ever since then it's sort of become AVWW's unofficial joke.

Well actually...
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10131.30.html
Also read page 4 beginning For one of the strangest bugs in the history of bugs /but hey, it made AVWW eventually run ten times better thank to fixing it proper

Wow.  I thought you were pulling my leg on that one.

8

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: So, what's going on in this forum?

« on: May 13, 2012, 10:35:01 PM »

Wait a second, what do ponies have to do with AVVW?  Threads still tend to get sidetracked here, I guess.

In any case, welcome to the forums!

Personally, I don't understand the whole pony ... thing.  Just don't get annoying with spamming pictures and it's fine.

9

AI War / Re: Cyborg's Community Challenge: Play It Forward

« on: May 11, 2012, 09:56:48 PM »

I think that the next succession game should be a bit ... easier.  Perhaps, next time, we could start at difficulty 7 and work our way up?

10

AVWW Brainstorming / Re: Brainstorming Permadeath: Making Death Significant But Not Annoying

« on: May 10, 2012, 08:08:41 PM »

I feel that death is sill rather trivial because any investment you make into a character is optional.  In roguelikes like DCSS, you level up and rise in power, and find items that help you, all of which are lost if you fall.  In AVVW's case, you keep your items and decide when to level up, and your unused 'XP' carries over to new games.  This just disincentives using upgrade stones at all and encourages stagnation, in my opinion.

It's just that death is neither annoying (because it really has no impact unless you want it to), and not significant (because it has no impact if you don't want it to).

11

AI War / Re: Cyborg's Community Challenge: Play It Forward

« on: May 10, 2012, 03:57:58 PM »

Well, things went a lot worse than I'd thought it would.  I'm rather unused to situations like these, to be honest.

I first started off by preparing for an assault on the dyson world.  For about 20 minutes, I fortified Mikdesne with all the turrets I could build and a fortress.  I plopped down some newly unlocked Gravity II's, since they were in short supply.  After blowing up the command ship with raid starships, the alarm post triggered and sent a bloody crusade against my planets, which I thought I was ready for but really wasn't.

Suddenly, I wished I had build more than two martyrs to help deal with the attack.

They washed through Mikdense and wiped it out, and soon proceeded to go through Keweras and Kolo, causing major energy issues and brownouts.  Sadly, I ended up losing the civilian outpost on Mikdense as well.  I had to shut down power to the worlds that weren't in immediate danger, which was sort of impossible because all of the worlds had either lost their command stations or were under attack by those hybrids.  I had to shut down quite a few things to keep the fortress on the homeworld running.

It got rather close to a loss, but the mass driver on the homeworld just tore the hybrids apart, essentially saving the game.  The last 30 minutes or so of my session primarily involved rebuilding all the turrets and rebuilding the fleet, which is almost but not yet done.

The dyson/botnet/ars world is ready to be taken by the next player, I suppose.  I didn't really want to capture the botnet until I had the resources to repair it immediately.

12

AI War / Re: Cyborg's Community Challenge: Play It Forward

« on: May 10, 2012, 03:24:16 PM »

I'll take a shot at it.  I'm in the middle of playing right now ... and things aren't going particularly well.

13

AI War / Re: Poll: Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (V)

« on: April 13, 2012, 08:35:23 PM »

Personally, I don't find much use for armored warheads these days; their AIP cost is too restrictive for the same amount of utility of a normal lightning warhead.  Furthermore, they can't really be used for anything else besides being a slightly tougher lightning warhead, because it will not last long when being shot at and escorting it is just stupid.

As for other types of warheads, they're generally fine except for restrictive AIP costs (which should be there by design).  Tachyon warheads provide too little utility to make them worth it.  EMP warheads are in a pretty good spot right now, so I don't think any changes need to be made there.

Speaking of which, the Mark III nuke needs some buffing.  If you nuke the entire galaxy, wouldn't the AI be much less interested in keeping it?  After all, you can't really do much in a destroyed galaxy, and the humans are highly unlikely to build more due to destroying everything that could be used to make one.

14

AI War / Re: "Utility" function for balance goals

« on: March 20, 2012, 08:41:44 PM »

Well, the fighters are always the first ones into the fray because of their lower range.  Also, when they die, they tend to die en masse due to anti-fighter ships or structures such as MLRS guard posts or flak guardians.

Having a little chart like zharmad suggested is probably exactly the thing that is needed to be able to judge ship strengths and weakness on the fly.  It's far too much of a pain to do so otherwise.

15

AI War / Re: Human as an AI?

« on: March 18, 2012, 09:44:55 PM »

More like trying to fold a portable hole in on itself