Messages

1

AI War / Re: Tackle Drone Launcher balance

« on: October 31, 2012, 03:06:53 AM »

i assumed little damage meant over 80% health remaining in test 3.

And generally would've done better against bomebers because of lower speed. 

Add in single riot and well, i dont know ,i expect things to be drastically different.

Bottom line : full mk I-IV caps of single bonus ship is enough to take out all the uncarried ai ships , thats bit much.

2

AI War / Re: Tackle Drone Launcher balance

« on: October 30, 2012, 05:38:45 PM »

Imo still bit unreasonable.

MK versions don't really matter , as they all get pushed back equally. They would probably perform simliarly vs MK V bombers.

3) Test 3:
- Add MkII and MkIII TDLs to human side
- Send in 800 fighter wave
- Result: fighting is heavy, but wave repulsed without much damage to home FF.

800 is a lot, its almost as much as the ai will let out of carriers at one time.  Add in mark IV and likely only thing you still have to worry about are carriers, which admittedly are big deal.

As for numbers... i don't know, buuut lets say 600ish ship for similiar result as test 3.  Might be bit on the high side still, but probably in more acceptable limits.


Oh and this : Drones need to lose their FF immunity, or at least make them FF-move only.

3

AI War / Re: Poll: Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: Player-side (II)

« on: October 29, 2012, 12:59:18 PM »

Actually mark I is jsut fine if you back them up with forts.

MarkI Radar Jammer is useless and MarkII is too expensive.

Yes to MArk I...but the MArk II too expensive???  I don't even know what to say to that.  I don't even consider the cost noteworthy.  5 million of each is trivial really.  I don't really consider a Super Fortress too bad, and that's 18 million each.  My last game I got an Ion IV to 95% before I won, and that costs 43 million of each.

Different play styles. Kahuna never goes past ~5 planets i think.

4

AI War / Ai planetary reinfocement speed

« on: October 29, 2012, 03:40:01 AM »

What kind is the formula for this?

Some observations :

At low AIP , the reinforcements are totally neglible. Even at highest difficulties, i don't think most people even notice them.

At high AIP they become pretty radical.

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11890.0.html in this game for example, aip is 500ish, 7 game. 7 something planets alerted. Single reinforcement pulse in single planet can spawn ~600 something fighters + some other ships. For comparision regular wave in the said game can be around 1000 tachyon mircofighters. So single reinforcement pulse equals about single wave?

I really think something is off when AIP jumps up, the most dangerous thing becomes previously completly ignoreable reinforcement building up constant Carrier spawn.

5

AI War / Re: Cannot continue Spire storyline

« on: October 29, 2012, 03:27:33 AM »

Save game?

Have you killed all AI planets surrounding second city, and built habitation center there?

6

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Always Slaughtered part way through by carrier waves

« on: October 29, 2012, 03:25:55 AM »

Looking at the save game ... well couple of things.

Neutering doesnt equal killing everything.

Probably would've needed to scout better and earlier.

I see a lot of planets that are dead without any reason whatsoever. 3 still have their K in them.  If you wan't AI to not launch waves from there, kill gate, eyes, and any warp guardians. Not CMD.

Also you've got core world alerted permanently, that is bad.

Aip should still be at tolerable limits, and game might be salvageable  (barely).  You are too spread, need to consolidate defenses. First priority should be getting warpjammer on murdoch.Halt all current fort /golem constructions. After that, bait all the stuff waiting in ai coreworld and kill them. Build some defenses on murdoch (preferrably turrets, ffs 1 fort at some point ,probably not now). Then get kalxi  , shuihahanhaoihnahnoa (those worlds, forgot exact names). Destroy all AI worlds between these worlds and your other worlds. Move all your forts and turrets to these 2, murdoch and wibiyaiyiay (your westernmost world). Remove forcefields in your deep worlds and move them to these worlds.

After that you can still take systems, golems ARS ,CSG, to prevent Deepstrike threat. I wouldn't take many though. And you can't keep them, mine them out of K , repair golem, leave.

AIP amount is doable for 7 difficulty, but you need to absolutely limit the amount of ingress points for AI. Warp gate raiding is completly useless at this kind of AIP.


If you want to start a new game, i would recommend X map. It suits this kind of playstyle pretty well.

Cough, wanderers opinions about ai are bit skewed towards playing extreme challenge games

edit: played the game a bit. Doable still but  hard yeah. Not sure if reinforcement sare working as intended, that carrier spam seems rather extreme for default difficulty.

7

AI War / Re: Poll: Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: Player-side (II)

« on: October 29, 2012, 12:01:05 AM »

About grav turrets:

I'm willing to bet that none of the players that don't recognize their nerf worthiness have used higher marks.    MK III range is 9k and speed limit 2.  SO missile frigates can ourange that but you can completly shut down those with antimissile thingie.  And what do you have then? 3minutes of free firing time on enemies with your long range weapons. Per turret. Add in radar jammer , FFs, anti sniper turrets and you have complete immunity to 90% of AIS arsenal. Exo waves of course bypass this untill the lead ship is  cleared but that doesn't really matter(as in if these things stop any number of enemies 99% of time easily, the 1% isn't going to matter that much)

8

AI War / Re: Nominations for target of the Nerfbat of Damocles (II)

« on: October 27, 2012, 03:40:23 AM »

Tackle Drone Launcher (Still retardedly OP)
All gravity things. Especially when used by the AIs player
Special Forces and Core Reserve respawn rate
Spire Railcluster
Spire Blade
Zombard
Heavy Beam Cannon
Spire Maw
Spirecraft Martyr
Spirecraft Scout
Spirecraft Jumpship

fixed

9

AI War / Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (VIII)

« on: October 27, 2012, 03:12:08 AM »

*Nomination: Gravity turrets
   In addition to the reason above, going up in mark gives a buff in slow down amount, get a buff in slowdown distance, get a buff in cap HP, and keeps a consistent cap. All of these together make the higher marks of grav turrets severely OP. At least one or two of those increases (or for the last one, consistency) over mark needs to go. Also, it should be noted, like all the other Mk. I grav units, even the Mk. I grav turret has a really crazy big slowdown for how cheap they are to get.

Seconded with minor adjustment. Either range increase or gravity increase has to go . Preferrably gravity increase as the upgrade on gravity alone would probably be next worthless. MK III gravity turrets make practically everything irrelevant.


lordsloth: Yeah gravity effect isn't affected by emp

edit: holy wrong topic batman

10

AI War / Re: Nominations for target of the Nerfbat of Damocles (II)

« on: October 26, 2012, 04:16:12 PM »

TDL

Best utility in game,  godly damage, sturdy , fast , decently long range, partially ignores FF, god among ships.

11

AI War / Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (VIII)

« on: October 26, 2012, 03:59:48 PM »

infiltrator , laser gatling ---> such low damage and armor piercing that they be horrid vs anything with armor.

Wouldn't be a problem if their damage vs unarmored targets was great but it really isn't.

12

AI War / Re: Bonus Ship Ommission File

« on: October 26, 2012, 11:17:29 AM »

My suggestion(not that anyone would want to read YARAS- yet another ridiculous armor system ) : Armor system to similiar to what tome uses.

Armor consists of two values, Armor and Armor maximum migitation %

Examples on how system would work in practice:

100 shot damage vs100 armor 100% migitation = 0 damage

100 vs 100(50%) = 50 damage

100 vs 100 000(25%) = 75 damage

Clear enough?  This would allow for further differentiation between units and different roles for the units based on armor. Low armor ,high migitation would be excellent against small damage per shot ships. While extreme armor , low -middish migitation would be basically reduce set % regardless of the amount damage of the shot.  Or extreme armor, (95% migitation), where you basically absolutely want armorpiercing.

Armor piercing would have to be changed a bit too. Instead of flat number (this imo is the worst part of current armor system, lowish number values here for edxample infiltrators and gatlings bascially mean that these unit suck against anything but unarmored things) to  reduction of MIGITATION value.  This would allow even low numbers of armor piercing to be  effective in some cases(for example in previous case of 95% armor migitation, armor piercing value of 5 would double the damage done).


Pros :

Value of armor could increase
More differentiation between ship types
APR wouldn't be such a mess (currently practically only useful APR is maximum number)
Sudden senility attack, sure i had more

Cons :
1 more value(although techincally not true, currently the migitation value is just flat 80% )
maybe bit less intiutive( although in current version you have to slog through the forusm to get the info on 80% max )

System could be used theoretically the replace whole multipliers thing but i won't actually suggest that as that would be too much pain in the nether regions.


Some specific mechanics that might need to be adjusted:

Armor rotting : Probably better if this reduced the migitation value, by very low amounts , say 1 per mark for armor rotter and the effect removed from most other ships that have it.
Armor inhibitor : As is.
Armor booster : Woud be better if this affected migitation or both. And not 3X amount, flat increase, say 25% to both, or something akin to that, maximum amount for this effect might be needed).
Polarizing: Not sure if it would need any change.

Imo the biggest issue with current system is low values of APR especially on swarmer type ships, mainly laser gatling and infiltrator, as their damage is cut to 1/5 against most targets or some dps increase so they are at least good vs unarmored targets.

13

After Action Reports / Re: How high can you go?

« on: October 25, 2012, 03:33:10 PM »

Here you go.

Also another thing that is probablyh bug in this. If you check some enemy planets, like the ones near the popped planet in nw arm, yo u see that 1.) both ais have unlocked exactly same things 2.) both ais are reinforcing each others planets.

I might be more than little senile but i don't remember this happening before

14

After Action Reports / Re: How high can you go?

« on: October 25, 2012, 03:42:26 AM »

Yep the next CPA was messed up. Message showed that AI released 20k ships from its strategic reserve when it didn't have that much and actually released aroud 10k ships.

In other news, game is at ~1200 aip and completly bat¤#%#& crazy. Each reinforcement pulse is about 3 caps worth of ships. In 6 all 6 planets i have alerted. AI packs 200ish ships in transport and sends them in every other minute. These things are like mini exos, some guardians and half of ships are low cap ones. Oh and every other one of these has all ships MK V because of core. By themselves they are no problem. But they come and keep coming and stop be from doing any serious rebuilding on my minefield and grav turres.

Grav III turrets + radar jammer II  is such a ridiculous combo. I haven't felt the need to build spire city or about 7 caps of turrets i have unlocked on the whipping boy.  At this point only couple of things could kill me. Badly timed exo, that would clear up my grav turrets and make a path , wave of spire corvettes. Not sure if there is anyway i could defeat 1k of these just sailing past my grav turrets. Oh right warheads, nevermind there.  Full waves of bombards, raptors and possibly something that could almost outrange grav turrets might be  a problem, mainly because of my turret positioning is horrible.

Then again , if i'm looking at another 1200 aip if i capture almost everything and wave sizes of 100k might be enough to kill me by just sheer hp.

15

AI War / Re: Bonus Ship Ommission File

« on: October 23, 2012, 11:15:49 AM »

Anything worth killing, and killing immediately, are those things with oodles of hitpoints and the heavy/ultra-heavy hulls.

This is simply wrong. Outside of Exo waves(and even these UH is consideration only when they spawn golems... which is pretty brief window, from no golems just starships, to no golems- hunter kilelrs instead) there is exactly one ship with ultra heavy hull worth any consideration : Stealth battleship.

For heavy hulls... well , there aren't any threatening ships. Tractor platform maybe but... Even in the starships the most dangerous ships are ultra light hull and artillery hulls. And maybe medium, if you are relying in gravity effects.

Whereas for example medium  and polycrystal ... just about all of them require  fast kills.