Messages

1

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Can someone give me an example of appropriate turreting?

« on: January 10, 2012, 11:34:42 PM »

As was noted above, there's no ideal strategy--a fluid response involves multiple criteria.  But, as a starting point:

• Missile turrets are good for medium-range firepower and can often cover a couple wormholes.  Sniper turrets have less firepower but infinite range, and can serve much the same purpose if wormholes are more spread apart.
• I put a couple Tractor Beam turrets around any Enemy wormhole I think opposing ships might come through.
• I often build extra turrets after a specific wave announcement arrives--so long as you have the resources, you'll have plenty of time to build them.
• I also like Minefields, just as a cheap deterrent.

In general, you want to manage the number of enemy wormholes that might throw a wave at you.  This is done through conquering adjacent planets and/or gate raids--whichever seems prudent, given the AI progress implications and the overall strategic situation.

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AI War / Re: Playing solo experience

« on: January 10, 2012, 11:24:47 PM »

I only play MP with a couple friends in different cities, since we all like to get together and play (and jaw at each other) occasionally.

Solo play is good.  But I will throw out one warning:  This game is deep.  Not unlearnable by any stretch; especially so long as you keep the Difficulty throttled below 7, the game is pretty forgiving.

But take time to savor the complexity of what's going on.  If something feels like a bug, it's probably not, but rather part of the rich detailed set of tactical options you get.  Examples:

• Are a bunch of your ships moving inexplicably slowly as a battle continues?  It's probably because there's an enemy Ion Cannon somewhere around and they do Engine Damage (a la The Empire Strikes Back, if you've seen it!).
• Are some of your ships not firing?  Perhaps you accidentally put them into "sleeper" mode (used to sneak by opponents).
• Is one of your prized mega-starships getting crushed with amazing speed?  It's probably because Heavy Starships are very vulnerable to Bombers (as the Americans learned at Pearl Harbor) and the enemy's hitting you with some--so you'd better call in your Fighters fast!!

These things don't happen so often to make the game annoying, but they can happen often enough to leave you a little confused early on in the solo player experience.  If you spend a little time digging (and the forums are great for quick & easy answers to questions), you'll find a game that is innovative, open-ended, and very strategically challenging (it's the combination of the last two that seems particularly unique these days).

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

« on: January 10, 2012, 11:08:54 PM »

Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely try it out.

Actually, combining Parasites with Leech starships can be a GREAT defensive tactic.  It's a nice way to beef your local defenses up with modest numbers of "non-discovered" ships that won't apply to your Ship Cap (because you can't produce them in the first place).  Facing incoming waves, turrets provide the great attrition equalizer and you don't need the same overwhelming preponderance of ships & firepower that you do when mounting attacks on enemy systems, so massing Parasites and Leaches to defend one of your own systems nicely kills two birds with one stone.

This is especially true if you're facing a wave of missile frigates, since both Leach and Parasite ships are immune to Missile damage (but it's always a good idea to confirm that in the ship descriptions, as this sort of thing can be nerfed in a hurry).

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AI War / Re: Damage Calculation

« on: August 23, 2011, 08:21:29 PM »

One tiny qualifier to the explanation above, just so it's crystal clear:  Before deducting Armor, you deduct the "Amor Piercing" score from the armor rating (but never below 0).  Lightning Turrets do a better job with thick armor!

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AI War / Re: F***ing finally!!!

« on: August 13, 2011, 11:30:28 AM »

That style of play depends, I think, on the difficulty levels you set for the AI.  With higher difficulty levels, you simply can't take that many planets most of them time--the AI will rise up and smite you.  You still have bottlenecks, but I'm not sure it's so common to have a "front" like that--I think it's more common to have pockets of systems in AI space that you use as stepping stones to get where you want to get.

I haven't been playing the game that long myself, but I definitely appreciate the utility of transports.  They're a great way to bypass dangerous but relatively valueless enemy systems to focus on what you need most.

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AI War / Re: New Turrets

« on: July 29, 2011, 02:14:27 PM »

I do think a new turret or two would be fun.  Not sure exactly which niches are missing, but here are a few:

A "Tesla Turret" could be different from a Lightning Turret, because it's not so much an Area Attack weapon as just something that does much more localized damage to one target, with other damage to a few smaller nearby targets.  In that sense, it wouldn't be much different than the Flak Cannon already in the game, but maybe it packs a heavier punch and only hits a few units--or even slows down their reload time for weapons?  No idea how hard that would be to code, but we haven't seen any weapons that introduce any kind of "stun" effect.  It'd take a little play-balancing (maybe the duration of stun is in proportion to damage done as % of a ship's total damage), but has that sort of thing been tried before?

Not the Nanite turret proposed earlier in this thread, but I love the notion of a turret that does "duration damage" where it only hits one ship at a time, but that ship will continue to take damage over the next 90 seconds (or whatever) as nanites go to work devouring the ship like termites.

Maybe a "Point Defense" turret that actually has a 50/50 chance of shooting down enemy missiles and also can do modest damage to Swarmer, Light, and Ultra-Light craft?  Again, not sure how easy or hard that would be to code the "Missile defense" ability, as it's a new dynamic in the game (I think), but it'd be cool.

I wonder if there might be a way to introduce a Turret that did modest Engine Damage on top of normal damage?  The Grav Turret is a nice different flavor than the Tractor Beam Turret or the Logistics Station's ability, but why not introduce a turret that actually damaged AI Engines a little bit?

Maybe even have some Turrets that could only be unlocked by Advanced Research Stations?

Can anybody else tell that, if I were an AI, I'd play a lot as "Entrenched Homeworlder"?   

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AI War / Re: Update On Children Of Neinzul Donations For Child's Play (As of 7/1/11)

« on: July 19, 2011, 10:49:14 PM »

This is very cool.  Thanks for keeping it up on all our radar screens.

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AI War / Re: Help with home planit select

« on: July 19, 2011, 10:48:09 PM »

Man, the Devs even come back to posts to thank posters!  I wonder if they'll come back to just respond to somebody paying them a compliment.


Waiting...


Waiting...

 

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AI War / Re: a question on siege starship range

« on: July 17, 2011, 09:28:45 PM »

I won't dare to tresspass on the say of a master, but one other possibility that I ran into early on:  When I target a Siege starship on a ship class that is immune to Antimatter weapons, they instead try to close with that target. 

If another viable target enters range they'll stop to shoot, but that doesn't always happen, and even when it does, the Siege starships have often surrendered their most important advantage:  the stand-off ability.  Getting to 0 range won't do any good and will only get my fragile Siege starships killed, which makes this an annoying feature--one more tiny wrinkle in the game that is equal parts challenging and maddening (depends on how you game, actually). 

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AI War / Re: Whom do you play with?

« on: June 29, 2011, 11:38:25 PM »

Interesting. 

Based on the poll results so far, my experience isn't that atypical. 

Most of the folks who play co-op play with mostly the same people, and only a handful play with whomever they can find--and all the folks who play with "randomes" also play solitaire a fair amount. 

Lots of folks play solitaire, but few play exclusively solitaire. 

I'm assuming that people who play co-op mostly play the game with friends they knew before, as opposed to people they've just met online and now play with regularly, but that's an assumption.  That speaks to the social aspect of the co-op game, and also suggests that AI Wars sales might rely even more on word-of-mouth (verbal or virtual) than other games.

That's probably not a surprise to anybody here, but I wonder how representative it is of folks who bought AI Wars in general?  No way to know, I guess, but we probably all have opinions...

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AI War / Whom do you play with?

« on: June 26, 2011, 11:50:56 AM »

I searched around in some of the back history and did a few online searches to make sure this question hadn't been asked, and couldn't find any other instances, and I was curious to hear the answer.  

This question is as much about one's lifestyle as it is about gaming tastes.  For myself, I'm simply too busy to make a commitment to play regularly with strangers.  I've got a 16-month old kid, work is good but it's not giving me any slack time, and work around the house never seems as fixed as I'd like it to be!  I have two close High School friends that I've started playing with regularly--we live in different time zones, we're all busy with stuff, but we carve out time to play once a week.

I'm just curious how others on this board schedule their game play, and with whom (if anybody).

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AI War / Re: How Often Do You Pause Your Game?

« on: June 26, 2011, 11:46:19 AM »

I haven't logged as many game hours as many of you, but most of my pleasure in PC gaming comes from the planning and the strategizing.  I pause a lot--probably about half the time--but I'm trying to let the game roll forward and not micromanage so much.  I'm not sure if I'm succeeding or not!   

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AI War / Re: Suggestion: Special research buildings

« on: May 24, 2011, 09:46:51 PM »

I like the notion of unlocking something special, but I do think that, from a play-balance and AI standpoint, this is something that would take the Devs a lot of effort.  I'm not so sure that it'd be worth the payoff, in terms of development time and testing for play-balance, compared to some of the other developments that might be undertaken.

Those game-breaking technologies would be interesting, but they'd also be sufficiently random that they'd likely either be a waste of time or turn a difficult game way easy.  That randomness would be interesting, but I'm not 100% sure that it would really enhance the game play so much--depends on your gameplay tastes, I guess.

It almost feels to me that you're moving in the direction of a different kind of research tree if they want to go that way in AI Wars II.  Different planets offer different types of research bonuses--maybe each planet offers 1,000 research that goes into a "Universal" pool and and another 2,500 research that goes into a "specialized" pool (e.g., Economic vs. Starship vs ships vs. Defense).  Gives you one more thing to consider as you're plotting your conquest of the universe, and might give a bit more incentive to employ knowledge raids in specific places...

Those changes would be sufficiently radical as to upset the current game, and I don't think the current research system is sufficiently broken that it needs that kind of a fix.  But if they ever get around to making a sequel, it'd be interesting to see if they wanted to try that approach...

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AI War / Re: Selecting Level 4 Ships Only

« on: May 23, 2011, 09:00:30 PM »

Wow!  That is very helpful, folks, thanks so much for the answers!! 

I also had no idea that the Ship List on the right is selectable.  What a brilliant interface design!  I do wonder how many more gems are lurking in this game as I stumble my way through it!!   

Nalgas (fancy name, by the way!!), that explanation clears things up.  I'd tried selecting some ships first and then using N+4 as a follow-on, and had no luck with that, but your approach makes sense.  As does using the ship selection list!!

Under other circumstances, I use the "L" key judiciously.  BUT, in this case, because of an AI Eye defending an AI homeworld, I had to select not just all My Level 3&4 Bombers, but also all my Level 4 Missile Frigates, and my Level 4 Fighters, and my Level 4 Electric Shuttles...

Of course, I ended up losing the game 15 minutes into the battle when 432 Frigates stormed into my homeworld system.  I'd gotten greedy and kept my Bombers committed to the homeworld attack.  Pretty silly, given that I had all those Level 1 & 2 ships parked back at my nearest friendly planet.

Ah well, I'm still figuring out numerous aspects of the game (this was only the 2nd full game I've completed, to a happy or unhappy end!!).  Just little details like Mobile Builders, for example...

Thanks again for the warm welcome to the forum and the great responses.  One more reason to recommend this game to my friends!

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AI War / Selecting Level 4 Ships Only

« on: May 22, 2011, 10:54:00 PM »

Long-time lurker, first-time poster with a total noob question.  I've searched the forums for this using multiple terms but have had no luck, so I thought I'd try here:

The manual says that if I use the "N + 4" key, I'll only select Level 4 ships.  How does this work, exactly?  I've tried every way that I can imagine (holding down the N key, then pressing the number 4; just pressing the number 4; selecting ships that include Level 4 ships, then pressing the N key, then pressing the number 4; etc.), and there's clearly something in the interface that is eluding my simple little mind.  I've not had any trouble getting other aspects of the interface to work, but I just can select ships by level without manually clicking on them by ship type, which isn't quite the elegant interface I was hpoping for!   

In my case, I have an AI homeworld that's guarded by an AI Eye, and I'm just not eager to load my ship up with Class 4 Bombers and then Class 3 Bombers manually.  At the end of the day, I think I may not have the horsepower to do it, even after loading all my Starships and Level 4 and Level 3 and Level 5 ships manually.  Guess this is why they recommend not spending all your Research points until you know exactly what you're up against! 

Arghhh...