Messages

1

AI War / Re: Wat Is Dis I Dont Evan (Range Shenanigans)

« on: February 22, 2012, 06:02:26 PM »

Well, AFAIK, Anyone who does distance checking, and is competent, will not use the highly expensive method of taking the square root of a distance unless absolutely necessary

Let's keep the conversation civil, we're all just trying to improve a game we love here .

I think your comment should actually be directed at Keith, the developer of the game, who was the first in this thread to explain that their "approximation" algorithm is an improvement on comparing the results of sqrt().

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AI War / Re: Wat Is Dis I Dont Evan (Range Shenanigans)

« on: February 21, 2012, 11:48:53 AM »

They doubless already do that elsewhere... the method they use is obviously even cheaper to run...

Are you sure they already use it? I only suggested this because of Keith's comment:

At a few specific angles and displacements it can be simply wrong, but it's probably several orders of magnitude faster than sqrt(a^2+b^2)

Keith is a developer of the game, and he's comparing the not-completely-accurate algorithm they use to the sqrt() algorithm. I want to point out we should be comparing it to the squared function instead, since it's also much faster than the sqrt() algorithm.

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AI War / Re: Wat Is Dis I Dont Evan (Range Shenanigans)

« on: February 20, 2012, 07:10:26 PM »

Why not use the exact calculation, but just don't sqrt() either side? I mean compare range squared vs. distance squared? That avoids the sqrt() calculation, for better performance.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Easiest 80 Planet Map Type?

« on: February 15, 2012, 01:09:04 PM »

I've always ignored Spokes maps because they hurt my eyes (so many crossed wormhole paths, so confusing!).

You're right it does look excellent for knowledge raiding on a low AIP game, though :-P

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Easiest 80 Planet Map Type?

« on: February 14, 2012, 07:21:49 PM »

If you're able to keep rerolling to find a map you like, what do you folks think is the easiest 80 planet map type (7/7 difficulty)?

I think the X Map looks easier than usual to win the game - if you can start deep inside a quadrant of the X that has only ~15 planets or so, then you can conquer the entire quadrant, including the center star. You have a perfect set of whipping boys en route to your homeworld, a pretty good knowledge base and economy that won't often get destroyed, and it's only ~4-5 hops to each AI home world from your main whipping boy planet.

Is there one easier than that?

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Knowledge Spending: Offense vs. Defense

« on: February 13, 2012, 12:49:53 PM »

I'm playing with no plots or minor factions enabled. All expansions enabled, normal ship types. I'm mostly having trouble with the end game. Sounds like many folks have success with offense-as-defense, and so I suppose I'll continue to work with mostly unlocking offense, as I do now.

I've setup extreme whipping boys that can even protect against CPA's in the past (only one or two entrances to the rest of the galaxy), but made the mistake of leaving an un-neutered Mk3 world right outside my whipping boy (the main entrance to the rest of the galaxy), which really screwed me over one game as the AI continually reinforced it, and it was just about impossible to get past it or neuter it. This time I tried the "gate raiding" whipping boy strategy, but my network of planets is too spread out to effectively protect against a CPA or the huge flow of core ships that will stem from the AI homeworld's 2x core raid engine guard posts when I try to finish it :-P

Every game I play I learn something, and I'm getting better. I guess I just have to keep at it. Thanks for the replies, everyone.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Knowledge Spending: Offense vs. Defense

« on: February 10, 2012, 06:38:19 PM »

How many Mk. 3 ships do you typically get to unlock by end game?

I'm playing the vanilla game (no fallen spire, etc.).

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Knowledge Spending: Offense vs. Defense

« on: February 10, 2012, 06:24:53 PM »

So I've played a lot of games on 7/7 difficulty, and never won any of them. I always feel like I need both more offense and more defense than what I have :-)

I'm curious - to those of you who have won - how much of your knowledge do you spend on defense, and how much on offense? I usually try to spend most of it on offense (Mk. 3 ships + starships + economic unlocks). Perhaps 75% offense, 25% defense (by defense I mean turrets, mines, shields, fortresses, etc.)

For those of you who have won, what do your unlock patterns look like? How much do you spend on offense vs. defense - do you try to unlock all the Mk. 3 ships available to you? Or do you unlock all the turrets? Or what portion in between?

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Core Raid Engine Guard Posts (2x)?!

« on: February 10, 2012, 01:54:37 PM »

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I don't have spirecraft or golems enabled. I'm playing 7/7 both vanilla AI. AI progress is around 260 (Mk 2). Generally most fancy expansion features are disabled (no dyson sphere, etc.). Simple ship types enabled, only.

I also forgot to mention that there are 2 gravity guardians on the neighboring world that I have to destroy on the way in. Of course, sending in even a small number of ships to destroy the gravity guardians fires up 2 raid engine waves :-P Or if I hide them in transports, they can't make it far due to the gravity guardians.

I think everyone agrees I need to bottle up and take the hit, so I'll prepare to do that.

Any ideas on how to get around the gravity guardians? Are there any ship types that are immune to gravity? Also, will missiles be helpful here? I don't mind a little AI progress. If I don't surpass this obstacle, I'm going to lose the game anyway.

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Core Raid Engine Guard Posts (2x)?!

« on: February 09, 2012, 10:44:55 PM »

I thought I was finally in a good spot to beat my first campaign (have a good base, Mk. IV factory, 4x ARS, lots of knowledge, AI progress not too high, etc.). Then I saw the 2nd AI homeworld - it has 2 Core Raid Engine guard post things (whatever they're called).

So as soon as I enter the system adjacent to the AI homeworld, I get 2x 1:00 countdowns, and when the timer reaches zero, a TON of Mk. V ships spawn. What the heck can I do? I only have unlocked Mk. 3 of bomber, frigate, fighter - all my other ship types are Mk. 2. This seems really, really difficult to finish.

Any suggestions?

11

AI War / Re: What ammo type works against what hull?

« on: April 21, 2011, 01:05:31 PM »

Might be a typo (or disagreement on what ">" means), but fighters beat bombers, bombers beat cruisers, and cruisers beat fighters, so the proper RPS relationship is the opposite of what's written above, specifically it should be:

Cruiser > Fighter
Fighter > Bomber
Bomber > Cruiser

12

AI War / Re: 4.0 Is Awesome! A Few Questions, Though...

« on: October 31, 2010, 03:52:39 PM »

Ah, I see it now. It doesn't show them for the homeworld, I think that's why I was confused. After exploring a few planets, I do see unexplored counts, so that does help a lot.

However, this still makes it difficult to scout manually. What I want is to be able to tell my scouts "go explore links starting from this enemy planet", or something like that. Right now I can only do that by actually looking at the planet and looking around manually to find all the wormholes, and right-click on them. Is there an easier way?

I'm too lazy to keep zooming into enemy planets and looking for the wormholes, so I guess it's automatic scouting unless someone knows a better way :-P

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AI War / Re: 4.0 Is Awesome! A Few Questions, Though...

« on: October 30, 2010, 07:45:37 PM »

OK, I feel happy with the answers for #1 & 2 (works great if my color isn't black :-D), and I understand #3 will likely come back later on.

However, #4, I'm not sure. I tried the "unexplored wormholes" galaxy display mode, but it doesn't seem to make any difference at all with the options I'm playing with (maybe it's the "don't show unexplored planets" option I have enabled?).

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AI War / 4.0 Is Awesome! A Few Questions, Though...

« on: October 30, 2010, 04:58:40 PM »

I just downloaded 4.0 and love it. Definitely a huge improvement.

However, a few questions (possibly bugs?):
1) On each planet, one or two of the AI Guardians seem to be blank grey boxes. I used steam to download 4.0 and then updated to the latest in-game after that, but it didn't seem to go away.
2) It's incredibly hard to see the range of turrets I'm placing now. The color is so similar to the background color that I just can't see the circle like before. Are others seeing this, or is it only me?
3) How can I move stars on the galaxy map like before? The context menu doesn't seem to be available on the galaxy map screen anymore.
4) I tried "don't show entire galaxy map" and like it, but I do find it's really hard to scout manually, because I can't see all the links I know about on the galaxy map screen. I wish when I scouted a planet, the galaxy map would show all outgoing links, and I could send a scout to one of the outgoing links, even though I hadn't explored the planet at the end of that link.

Should I file bugs for #1, #2, and #4, or is there something I'm missing?

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AI War / Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work

« on: August 26, 2010, 04:22:06 PM »

Looks done to me. Ship it!

Seriously though, thanks for the info. I like that you guys are so open about your development process.