Messages

1

Off Topic / Re: Wargame: Airland Battle

« on: May 12, 2013, 02:14:23 PM »

However, the learning curve isn't particularly hard. I had one of my friends buy it last night that has never played any of the games in the series. We played about 5 games in a row, and on the 4th game he was beating me (this is with me putting in quite a bit of time on the predecessor and this one as well).

That was me!  Was nice to at least delegate the initial ass-whooping to someone I know 
I am enjoying this game a lot more than any other RTS I've come across recently. Here's some reasons why:

1. The setting. I am especially fond of the planes, as I've spent a huge amount of time with the Su-27, Mig-29 and such in Eagle Dynamics' flightsims. I love those machines and have never seen the represented properly in an RTS. Until now (C) 

2. The deck system with hundreds of units satisfies the TCG junkie that I am quite well

3. Realism and good gameplay are balanced and neither one is compromised by the other much at all.

4. How you use a unit matters a LOT more than the stats it has and how much it costs. An infantry squad can die in the open and not hit anything or pay for itself 10+ times with a deadly flank attack.

5. The game doesn't ever feel "unfair" for me. I always know why I lost, and there's always something I could have done to prevent it. Each game I can do something better than I did last game.

Now not everyone feels the same way about that last point, so they head to the forums or the chat lobby and do the things competitive RTS players do, which drops a bit of a shadow on the community. But if you ignore the noise, there's quite a lot of useful information on the forums as well.

All in all, definitely can recommend picking it up. Even though it's not released yet, it looks ready (except the SP campaign is not in) and I haven't encountered any technical problems myself. Runs so well, too, very surprised, given the scale.

2

AI War / Re: Repair Questions

« on: December 16, 2012, 03:25:02 PM »

2) However, as you can see in the attached screenshot,  the Ion cannon V is being repaired and my economy is in the crapper.  The resource tab does not show the drain (I think it is sorted ascending by metal consumption).  The ctrl tab for engineers assisting with projects more than 400m/s does not seem to apply to forts/mobile repair units and it is not easy to find where the drain is without manually searching.  I could be missing something obvious again.

It should be in there somewhere, have you tried scrolling it or sorting by something else? Just making sure.

3

AI War / Re: Repair Questions

« on: December 16, 2012, 12:14:51 PM »

1)/3) Ctrls menu, set Engineers Don't Assist Large Project to a higher value (or 0). Mercs and some golems cost more than 400/s to build and so don't get repaired automatically
2) Stats -> Resource Flows

4

AI War / Re: AI War: Monobattle

« on: December 15, 2012, 01:57:47 PM »

Honestly...any ship in those numbers are going to destroy everything 4000-17000 is hardly a balance point

No ship cap violations here  That would be too easy.

5

AI War / Re: Special Forces and Core Reserves need an overhaul

« on: December 15, 2012, 12:08:07 PM »

Got logs of that buildup?

That would help distinguish between just the AI decided to focus on low caps, but still "paying" for them properly, and a legitimate math problem letting the AI get too many and no sacrificing numbers elsewhere for it.

I have some logs from my last game. There's definitely something weird going on here. Have a look at this one: (it's a vanilla 7/7 game)

12/15/2012 11:38:40 AM (6.009)
-----------------------------------
Doing Special Forces Spawn; Game Time: 3:52:03
baseSizeFactor = 30
specialDifficultyFactor = Game.Instance.Options.TotalSpecialDifficultyModifier (based on difficulty, homeworld count, handicap) = 1
effectiveAIP = 31
aiTypeMultiplier = (1 + 2 per Special Forces Captain AI) = 1
specialForcesPostsInNonAITerritoryMultiplier = Mat.One + ( FInt.FromParts( 0, 050 ) * numberOfSpecialForcesPostsInNonAITerritory ) = 1
specialForcesStrengthCap = baseSizeFactor * difficultyFactor * effectiveAIP * aiTypeMultiplier * specialForcesPostsInNonAITerritoryMultiplier = 930
strengthMissing = specialForcesStrengthCap - totalExistingSpecialForcesStrength = 470.89
percentMissing = strengthMissing / specialForcesStrengthCap = 0.51
maxNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength = ( ( 196 * 300 ) / specialForcesStrengthCap ) * 60 = 3793.54
actualNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength = maxNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength - ( ( maxNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength / 2 ) * percentMissing ) = 2833.57
strengthToSpawn = (FInt)( secondsPerSpawnCheck * 196 ) / actualNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength = 4.36
strengthToSpawn = Min(strengthToSpawn,strengthMissing) = 4.36
allocating 0.25 out of 1 (1.09 strength) for role: None , eligible types:MissileShip, Raider
allocating 0.53 out of 1 (2.3 strength) for role: AntiBomber , eligible types:Fighter, ZenithReprocessor
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: LongRange , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: CopperPlatedBastard , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: Tractor , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: Gravity , eligible types:
allocating 0.11 out of 1 (0.48 strength) for role: Reclamator , eligible types:SpireTeleportingLeech
allocating 0.11 out of 1 (0.48 strength) for role: DefenseCracker , eligible types:Bomber, ZenithElectricBomber
actually bought:
1 MissileShip @ 2 each, so total for line = 2
1 ZenithReprocessor @ 24 each, so total for line = 24
1 SpireTeleportingLeech @ 4 each, so total for line = 4
1 ZenithElectricBomber @ 10.11 each, so total for line = 10.11
Grand total: 4 ships, 40.11 strength

So basically, if it decided it wants ship X for a role, it's going to buy at least one, nevermind that it costs 6x more than its whole budget. Seems like it's the same kind of problem that was happening with reinforcements before. When it picks fighters and not reprocessors, it also only buys one, so there's almost equal numbers of both even though reprocessors are 8-cap and fighters are 98. This also indirectly makes the forces respawn faster than intended, as every spawn I looked at exceeded its strength budget, even if not in such an extreme fashion (here we have 4.36 budget, 40.11 actual)

6

AI War / Re: AI War: Monobattle

« on: December 15, 2012, 10:11:15 AM »

Yes. Space planes "pwn" stationary defenses; that was their intention.

As noted, against a mobile fleet, you start seeming them drop in effectiveness rather sharply.

With micro they are just as good against a mobile fleet. The only things that could touch them in my game were the Teuthida drones and blade spawners. I guess if I had any other units, I wouldn't be able to micro them as much, but from what I've seen here you might as well not bother with other units 

7

AI War / Re: Special Forces and Core Reserves need an overhaul

« on: December 15, 2012, 09:52:40 AM »

I don't yet have an opinion on the balance of reserves/SF, but the SF are rather easily cheeseable. All you need is a beachhead on a CSG planet, and the whole galaxy will apparently rally there. 50-70 long-range turrets are enough to deal with the stream of units (on 10/10 no less).

8

AI War / Re: AI War: Monobattle

« on: December 15, 2012, 09:48:30 AM »

That was only about 4,000 after the first HW, but that one post >.< 17,151 is, interestingly, almost exactly 100 caps. Don't think any other ship could top that (maybe Blade Spawners, but one grav guardian under a FF and you have to reach for a warhead)
Oh, did I mention that Planes can also kill fortresses with impunity? Yeah, nothing's broken here, move on 

9

AI War / Re: AI War: Monobattle

« on: December 15, 2012, 05:09:57 AM »

Victory! The Teuthida/CoreFF took about 2 hours to bring down, but it was smooth sailing after that. 17,571 Planes built in total.
Space Planes need a good whack with a nerfbat. I was able to completely ignore the 2x Wrath Lance on the first HW, the Teuthida railcannons don't work and the drones don't do the x10 splash, the rest of the core posts also do nothing, and they clear normal planets like... say pre-nerf Maws. Also a huge pain in waves (that might only apply to higher difficulties, though).

10

AI War / Re: AI War: Monobattle

« on: December 14, 2012, 04:36:46 PM »

So I started a pretty vanilla 7/7 here (49-planet grid). I picked Space Planes for my only ship, and at 3:42 gametime I finished neutering the first homeworld.
Space Plane might actually be the best ship for this (unless you cheat and pick parasites. Actually, Planes are probably still better.)
However, the Teuthida guardpost under a forcefield on the second one might cause... problems.

11

AI War / Re: AI War: Monobattle

« on: December 14, 2012, 06:46:57 AM »

However, in AI War, you can't just do this and expect to get off your homeworld...

Challenge accepted.

A 1/1 mono-warhead game could also interest some deranged people 

12

AI War Meeting Grounds / Re: Looking to co-op with others! (all DLC packs, GMT)

« on: December 10, 2012, 01:40:10 PM »

zoutzakje, you can add me on steam (minotaar) and we can try something wacky (or just straight up brutal) I'm at GMT+4.

13

AI War / Re: Barrier to (multiplayer) entry?

« on: December 08, 2012, 11:57:45 AM »

Hi, welcome to the forums  Yeah, I've had mostly the same experiences as you - every time I start a new coop game, something has broken somewhere in the past six months or so

14

After Action Reports / Re: 1/1 Chaos Rules the Galaxy

« on: December 08, 2012, 11:18:23 AM »

Does your setup involve outrageous amounts of EMP warheads? 

15

After Action Reports / Re: 1/1 Chaos Rules the Galaxy

« on: December 04, 2012, 04:21:44 PM »

Err.. should we make this an official lobby script and hold competitions or something? 
I'm going to hold off doing this until someone reports, though