Messages

1

AI War Technical Support / Re: No Plasma Cannon for my cities?

« on: April 16, 2013, 11:25:27 AM »

(shameless plug) You can get ancient shadows for $1.24 right now though   http://store.steampowered.com/app/40408/

I was actually thinking of doing that anyway. 

I'm glad I could report a bug to you first, though!

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AI War / Re: Poll: which basic human unlocks need a buff?

« on: April 16, 2013, 11:23:56 AM »

The big problem I have with Engineer IIIs and Mk. III triangle ships in particular is actually Leech Starships and Parasites.  Why research and build them when you can go knock over a Mk. III world and steal them?  I haven't gotten the engineers yet, in my latest game, but the last time I played a parasite-heavy game that's all I needed... and in my current game, I've definitely got most of a cap of triangle ships (along with everything else a Zenith Descendant will give you) out of mercenary parasites and 3 caps of leech starships.

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AI War Technical Support / No Plasma Cannon for my cities?

« on: April 15, 2013, 09:41:16 PM »

I started up a game and started to do the Spire campaign, but I ran into the issue in the image attached...

Basically, load up the save and select the (unfitted) Spire Generator and you get the error.

I don't know if this is a problem with my install or most installs, though.  I'm also not sure how to run an integrity check on the Steam install.

EDIT: Oh, for what it's worth, I don't have Ancient Shadows but I have the previous expansions.

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AI War / Re: Knowledge Costs

« on: April 15, 2013, 11:42:34 AM »

The Hardened Force Fields are excellent.

And Hardeneds can take more punishment than the normal ones

No, they can't, really.  IIRC, the armor reduction cap is 80%, which means you'd take 1/5 of the incoming damage.  They also have 1/4 of the HP of a normal FF, so, if you have anything that has infinite AP to go through its infinite armor, you'll end up in a worse spot than with regular ones anyway.

That said, I usually unlock them eventually because I want more cap worth of forcefields.

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AI War / Re: MORE MORE MORE CHEAT...

« on: April 03, 2012, 01:59:28 AM »

If you want a game that is meant to be played that way, I suggest Total Annihilation. That classic game also has an economy based around resource inflows and outflows similar to AI war, but with no caps on anything. The units are also appropriately balanced around that type of gameplay, and there are a ton of fun mods for it too. =)

I'm pretty sure TA had a unit cap.  500 units including buildings, IIRC, or maybe 1000.  I specifically remember this because I once played a skirmish on a gigantic, heavy resource map.  As the AI sent a constant flood of enemies at me, I built an impenetrable defense but then discovered I didn't have enough unit slots left to mount any kind of real offense in the face of that incoming stream, despite my own near-unlimited income.  I had to start scrapping stationary turrets in favor of mobile, and scrapping lower end units for ones with more "bang for the slot" to get some pushback against the AI.

As far as I can tell, the 500 unit cap was for processing reasons.  (I've been told that, back when it came out, some people banned the Peewee for multiplayer because their guns caused excessive slowdowns.)  Anyway, it's in a config file somewhere and trivially changeable to something a modern computer can easily handle like, say, 5000.  I'm not sure, but I think the rerelease that I grabbed on Impulse may even have that in by default.

On the other hand, Core Prime water maps.  You needed all those resources, given the cost of a battleship.

6

AI War / Re: Resource Galaxy Statistics

« on: April 01, 2012, 12:06:08 PM »

If the M/C resources are independent of other items in a system (ARS, golems, datacenters, etc), then those systems with extra "goodies" will be much higher on the priority list for capture than anything else.

There may be a weighting of some kind to include them on those planets, but I've taken 0/1 ARSs as well as 3/4 ARSs.

Heck, I've taken a 0/0 ARS...

7

AI War / Re: Resource Galaxy Statistics

« on: March 31, 2012, 06:21:52 PM »

The numbers I'd really be interested in are:

- At the mid-game (gotta pick an arbitrary time... say, when you've found an AI HW and are beginning the plan to take it down, something like that), how many planets do you have?  How many metal spots?  How many crystal spots?

- At the end-game (about to actually assault a HW; in theory that could be the halfway mark but double-kill seems pretty popular nowadays), how many planets, metal spots, and crystal spots?

On one hand, sometimes you've got to take planets with really low resource counts.  On the other, there does seem to be a correlation between ARS/AdvFact/etc planets and higher spot counts.

Novice anecdote from game between AI kills, though it's a small sample size:
Base game 7/7; 40 planet galaxy; took 20; only 5 had <4 total resources.
It looks like I took about half the planets with <4 resources.  However, I did intentionally pass up one planet because it didn't seem worth the AIP for a 1-resource planet, even though it was sort of in the middle of a secured area.

I expect that the number of planets may creep up somewhat for more stars in the galaxy.  On the other hand, I'd say the limiting factor for what to take was really more knowledge than resources.  Resources you can always wait for.  Knowledge is finite.

8

AI War / Re: Resource Galaxy Statistics

« on: March 31, 2012, 05:40:58 PM »

It looks to me, from those graphs that it's *probably* uniform, with possible quirks in the RNG.  (... although, they've gotten pseudo-random number generators pretty good, by now...)

Eyeballing that second graph, it looks like the 4 bar is no more than 10% higher than the others.  I'm not very good at statistics (I'm not entirely sure how I managed to pass prob & stat when I had to take it...) so perhaps someone else could figure out what the odds of that just being noise is?  The absolute margin looks like it's still about what it was in the first graph. (... where it was around +40, I'd estimate)

I hate to say it, but I think you need more data before you can say with confidence that it's actually skewed.

9

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: How do you untangle the map?

« on: March 31, 2012, 10:19:20 AM »

I cannot find the "Galaxy Layout" option on the Galaxy Map  .  I have all expansions installed, running version 5.032--think that's the most recent.  Can someone help me find it--either tell me where to look in the menu or post a screenshot?

Edit: nvm, found it in another thread.  Thanks!

For other people who've failed to find it, can you link it here, perhaps?

Edit: found it in "Various Things" thread:

More !
- How do you best defend against spire devourer ships ?
- How again can you "manually" alter the galaxy setup, i.e. move systems ?

1) Maws, right? One possibility: you can try to pop them ASAP with Bomber starships or Plasma Siege starships.
2) Alt-right click on the galaxy map and switch to "Galaxy Layout ->My Layout". Shift-left-click and drag the planets.

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AI War / Re: Updating the Wiki

« on: March 28, 2012, 09:22:15 PM »

Filled in the last fleet-ship descriptions without an exact damage formula, but I mantis'ed them for future inclusion.

Hmmm... the wiki could do with a Ship-design pic with labels on the turret slots instead of the name small/medium/large...

Do I smell a need for photoshop work? 

Go right ahead, if you like. I was just thinking of putting letters into the boxes of the ship as seen in the CTRLS-tab.

It's definitely a lower priority task, but I do have lots of free time.

Anyone got a save with all the Spirecraft and Riot Starships unlocked? (Those are the only modular ships other than the Spire city stuff right?)

Speaking of which, the spire city stuff could use it too.

I'll hopefully have a save with all the spire fleet stuff unlocked sometime in the next few weeks. :p

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AI War / Re: Updating the Wiki

« on: March 28, 2012, 12:43:38 AM »

I don't know what it takes to get an account on the wiki, but I found an error...
You can fit a Laser Cannon Mk. III module in a Small slot on a Spire Cruiser.

Edit: On further investigation, it turns out that there are four slots that can take a Laser II or a Rail I, but only two of them can fit a HBC I whereas the other two can take a Laser III.

If I had a good suggestion for a better naming scheme, I'd propose it.  So far, I'm only coming up with "Beam" and "Turret", but they're all turrets.  Maybe Small, Medium, Beam, Large, and XL(FF)?

Edit2: counting

12

AI War / Re: Liking the new plasma starship

« on: March 25, 2012, 02:30:52 AM »

Well then, I stand corrected!

*hides*

  If you have more feedback, I'm sure the entirely-not-in-pursuit-of-the-hiding-player vampire claws will be happy to take a message.

Anyway, I'm confident the starship roster will continue to expand gradually as the game does

I'm quite new to playing this game, but I do think chemical_art might have the germ of a good idea here.  I'm just not sure what to do with it, or if we even can do anything with it.  Basically, mostly from looking at the wiki, it seems to me that Light of the Spire included several fleetships that really ought to have been starships, except that starships are always available, and these weren't supposed to be.  In particular, I'm thinking of the Spire Blade Spawner, the Spire Tractor Platform, and the Spire Stealth Battleship, as well as the Spire Maw.  I feel like one ought to be able to do something similar by creating lower marks of the advanced-fab-only starships, but I'm not sure how one would work it in.

Of course, I'd also be inclined to advocate that all the <8 base cap units be turned int starships, with an eye to keeping ultra-low caps reasonable.

Edit: On the other hand, techsy730 has a non-wild-eyed proposal that can be actually worked on in a reasonable time frame.

13

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.031, "Harvest Of The Unloved," Released!

« on: March 25, 2012, 01:16:34 AM »

I love the changes to the Warp-Jammer. I never used it, it was just too expensive knowledge wise, but now....

I'll try it out as soon as I find time, which is hard to come by unfortunately :-(

The new warp jammer is fantastic.  Can you spot the warp jammers in this image? 

The level 4 planet next to my homeworld is still there because I have a backdoor hacker as one of the opposing AIs, so I'm getting waves to my homeworld anyway.  On the other hand, being able to not alert a core world is a fantastic trick for a warp jammer.

Incidentally, the new Parasites are pretty fantastic, too.  I rolled the dice on my first ARS in that game and it came up Parasites.  (One of the other options was Space Planes, and I forget the third, but at that point I still thought the leftmost option, in this case Parasites, was the one that would be default...)  It varies depending on the units the AI is throwing me at any given time, but I think I'm running around with at least half a cap of every type of fleetship (except those immune to reclamation) the AI has... even without upgrading beyond mk. 2.  (I keep thinking I'm "almost done" with this game, and they'll be much less useful on the AI homeworlds.)  Well, okay, I did use Mercenary Parasites, too, but you always get those.  You do need something to bring the DPS, but I think you could probably get away with never upgrading any triangle ship if you have Parasites as your bonus ship now.  I'm not completely sure because this is only my third game, and the one with the smallest map, so far, but I've had a lot of fun playing around with all the ships.  It's a great tool for getting a survey of different ship types.

(Incidentally, if you have any advice in the above picture, say, about which homeworld I should hit first once I take out the rest of the A shield group, I'd appreciate it.)

Edit: figured out how to make the picture more manageably-sized

14

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

« on: March 20, 2012, 11:51:54 AM »

Part of the reason the pacing for this game seems odd, particularly to 'older hands' who are more used to all the little details in between, is because of the surge-wait optimal method of playing.  It would be best if we returned to base to pick up new ships continuously, actually, but the time that can sometimes be involved in that when you're warring 3 worlds out can be prohibitive.  So can the K for the Factory Ships.  There's little reason to raid *1* outpost, for example, when all the reinforcements will just go to a different guardpost in the same system, making the rest that much harder to raid.

I thought that reinforcement waves were multiplied by the number of guard posts in the system, and therefore blowing up guard posts reduces the number of enemy reinforcements.  Have I been misunderstanding that part of the documentation?

15

AI War / Re: Energy Effeciency Programming Challenge (CANCELED)

« on: March 15, 2012, 11:44:42 AM »

Techsy, I really think you need to think a little more closely about one other aspect of the challenge you are providing.  In the arbitrary case, I have a strong feeling this is equivalent to the knapsack problem.  (Actually, I suppose, based on the terms Wikipedia provides, this is more precisely the bin packing problem  Once you manage to get all of the greedy loopholes out of the challenge, you're going to end up with two choices: nonpolynomial (generally exponential) precise solutions and polynomial-time approximations.  Based on your previous comments, you don't seem to be willing to accept approximations, though.

If you are going to score things, I think it would be interesting to score them in both time and space, though.