Messages

1561

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 26, 2012, 10:16:58 AM »

Sounds good to me.  On #4, this mantis issue mentions very briefly that the large project cutoff isn't accounting for repairs being 1/10th construction.  Is that still true?  Or was it just a player perception?

I have since learned that the base repair rate is actually 1/4 (25%) of the construction cost (though this get multiplied and divided all over the place based on repair rates and other factors EDIT: due to a bug the Kieth just mentioned he fixed). Still, it is something that is worth looking into.

EDIT2: Wait, is the base repair rate supposed to be the rate listed on the unit? And what about the base repair cost, aka, the cost of repairing a unit from 1HP to full HP?

@Diazo: Note that only the Home Command Station is immune to Vampire Claws.

Don't military command stations also have fusion cutter immunity?

1562

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.047-5.049 Archived Memory

« on: July 25, 2012, 11:04:57 PM »

Quick check here, anyone else seeing this:

Hovering over a unit brings its popup on top of any controls shown in the lower left of the screen, obscuring those controls. Expected behavior is for that popup to locate itself to the 'north' of said controls, not layered on top of them.

Example uploaded: my OCS's controls obscured.

Or maybe I'm nuts and just never noticed this.

Not a huge deal, as IIRC, the popup should go away if you stop hovering over the button.
Still you make a good point, it would be nicer from a GUI design standpoint to prefer "north of the button" for the ship type descriptions in the build menus.

1563

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 25, 2012, 10:59:57 PM »

All these people "complaining" about the new FF and all the various flippery that is spawned on the home planet. Why, "back in my day", all we had was the homa command station, a Mk. I FF (an actual one that cut into your FF ship cap), a shipyard (the fleet ship one), a Mk. II energy reactor (from before the energy revamp), and that's it. (EDIT: Oh yea, and two Mk. II engineers, two Mk. II scouts, and one Mk. I science lab like now) I'm pretty happy with what we have now. (Not saying it can't be improved upon, but I feel like they are already being pretty generous to us).

I don't usually have a problem with early game FF immune stuff. I generally can detect FF immune stuff "early-lish" thanks my early game scouting, and I can usually deal with it with the proper unlocks and well placed turrets (in particular, grav turrets, tractor turrets, tachyon turrets (if needed), and turrets around my wormhole AND my command station).

1564

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 25, 2012, 10:44:36 PM »

On a semi-related topic of home command station defense, can you PLEASE make Home command stations auto-repairible regardless of the large project auto-assist cutoff? It's so annoying to have to set my home planet's cutoff to 3334 (as 3333 is the rate the home command station repairs at), and to have to explain to new players why they should do something similar, or at least why their engineers aren't auto-repairing THEIR MOST IMPORTANT STRUCTURE IN THE GAME.

1565

AI War / Re: Setup Scripts

« on: July 25, 2012, 10:26:57 PM »

I know I have said it, as well as others, but these setup scripts need to be integrated with the lobby. We need to be able to copy out our current setup and paste in other setups into the game. This is the easiest way, as most people don't want to bother with programming. What they really want is to copy other game setups and post action reports.

Yes, as a lower priority feature request, better integration with setup scripts and setup script features, and the GUI. As I said, especially nifty would be the ability to "export" simple scripts from the game setup lobby.

Now, I am fine with the complicated scripting features, like advanced randomization, strings of boolean logic, or arithmetic to determine numeric settings, to not have an nice GUI way to create them. But even an easy way to export a simple script would be very useful.

(Yes, I do realize I am repeating myself )

1566

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.047-5.049 Archived Memory

« on: July 25, 2012, 10:00:25 PM »

Also when I select a Zenith Trader on a planet I don't have control over it looks like I can build stuff there. Probably shouldn't be able to do that.

If it is a planet in supply, then yes, you are allowed to build stuff with the trader.
You aren't supposed to be able to be able to build stuff with the trader on planets not in supply, but there is an old bug where you can build with trader on planets without supply, and I'm not sure if it has been fixed or not.

1567

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 25, 2012, 09:00:56 PM »

I'd vote for plasma seige "damage spreading" immunity, unless that would interact poorly with forcefield stacking. In which case I would vote for my second choice, buff it to at least Mk. II FF stats.

1568

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 25, 2012, 07:04:29 PM »

The home command station force field has three annoyances to me.

1) If you're not prepared for FF ignoring entities on the first wave(s) your stockpile of +AIP stuff that you start with gets chewed to itsy bitsy pieces.
2) Get hit with a few siege starships and the equivalent occurs.

Not really sure how to deal with those short of making the home FF not a forcefield but rather a "mega exo-shield" or something. Actually, that might not be a bad idea. Or at least, indirectly solve the "complaint" by adding a new, spawned on game start, non-rebuildable exo-shield for the command station, that would act like the exo-shield for the harvesters, except without the cloaking of course.

That wouldn't help with the other stuff, but it would be a start.

I personally would support the idea of simply doing damage transfer from those starting components (HCC, Settlements, cryopods) that are irreplaceable and game ending to the HFF.  It'd go a long way to lowering the problems.  It's not really late game that's a concern.  By the time somthing hits your home system in the late game with enough firepower to be concerned you're probably dead.  It's early/midgame waves and raiders.

Or that, make it some sort of weird "mega-multi coverage exo-shield" type thing.

3) I know it's not true but it feels like the blessed thing has as many HPs as a FF I.

Actually, except for radius and ship cap, they ARE FF Is in stats. Thanks to their radius of a Mk. II, but the Hp of a Mk. I, this makes them MORE fragile than Mk. I forcefields, albeit it does cover more.

Kind of feels like a ripoff (and nearly, but not quite, an insult) when you consider that the AI, for their initial FF over their home, is a Mk. V in name AND in stats.

1569

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 25, 2012, 05:34:42 PM »

Sorry, what I am suggesting is that,
1. Human Home FF (HFF) would get the "provides invincibility to the command station on that planet", which would work even if it wasn't protecting the home at henmoment, it just has to be alive.
2. Add it to the list of high value structures list the AI has, so it will still try to take it out when it can't target the home command station.
3. Give it "lowest FF protector priority" so that other forcefields will take damage first, with the HFF only taking damage if there is no other forcefields protecting something it is covering. This way, even though the AI would prioritize it, it wouldn't die quicker than it does now if you are sane and have other forcefields protecting your home as well.
4. (optional) boost be HFF stats to a Mk. II or Mk. III level

1570

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 25, 2012, 05:14:24 PM »

Maybe give it the "protects the command station of the planet" effect, like Core guard posts and command station shield guard posts have?
From my brief messing around (read, torturing the engine with modifying save files in unsupported ways ), I have determined that the "protects the command station of the planet" effect works just fine for human command stations.

Iirc, the AI has no concept of that flag (outside of the minor faction logic at the end of Fallen Spire for dealing with Core Guard Posts, which isn't efficient enough for general-purpose use).  So it might incidentally kill that specifically forcefield generator during a homeworld attack but it wouldn't prioritize it the way it will the home command if it thinks it has a shot at killing it.

Hmm, so this could cause the AI to sort of become "unfocused" during homeworld assaults, as it couldn't target the home command station (with it being invincible until the home-FF goes down), and it wouldn't treat the home-FF specially?


Could you just add the home-FF to the list of "high priority to attack" list of units the AI goes for, like advanced factories and other such structures are?
With the previously mentioned "lowest FF protector priority" thing I mentioned (which I have no idea how hard that would be to implement), and maybe Mk. II or Mk. III FF stats, this wouldn't cause the home-FF to die so much quicker.

1571

AI War / Re: About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

« on: July 25, 2012, 05:04:21 PM »

Maybe give it the "protects the command station of the planet" effect, like Core guard posts and command station shield guard posts have?
From my brief messing around (read, torturing the engine with modifying save files in unsupported ways ), I have determined that the "protects the command station of the planet" effect works just fine for human command stations.

Something may need to be done to make it less likely to be the first one to be destroyed, though. Maybe give it the lowest "forcefield protection priority", meaning it will protect what is under it if and only if there is no other forcefield can protect something it covers?

Giving Mk. IV-like stats might be good as an alternative, to give us something like the Mk. V forcefield that the AIs get for their home. Or if you want to be really crazy, in addition to.

1572

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: What gives?

« on: July 25, 2012, 10:03:01 AM »

Why haven't you guys given us multiple major updates to AVWW in the past 3 days? Shameful! XD

But seriously, I know you guys are starting to spoil me when I start getting antsy when the upcoming patch notes haven't been updated with something new for only a few days in a row.

Starting to get update withdrawal, huh? That's how you know you are becoming one of us.

Also, we're spending a lot of the available time we do have on the expansion for AI:War and another project we're not really discussing yet.

Wait, what? Another project?

Oh boy, now its time to speculate on that.


...


Don't tell me that dating sim joke we made a few months back is turning in to reality. 

1573

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.047 Archived Memory

« on: July 24, 2012, 04:57:21 PM »

Sprite pooling is only one part of what was backported, but we've already undone so much of the other stuff that we think this is the main possible culprit left   So finding a value on that slider that doesn't break either of those expected condition seems plausible and would be a great step in the right direction.

Another step in the right direction is to somehow convince the Unity guys to start bundling their product with a newer version of Mono that doesn't have such a "derpish" GC implementation. That way, poorly sized pools would cause bad performance, not crashes.

But yea, short of that, this sort of thing will be helpful.

1574

AI War Technical Support / Re: Game performance

« on: July 24, 2012, 12:56:20 PM »

I'm not seriously trying in 10/10, but I am learning a ton of stuff really fast.  That said, there are still a lot of mechanics I am not familiar with, and CPA falls into that.  I'm sure no one in there right mind would push threat that high on purpose, but I think then it hits a certain threshold, the AI should send them and flush the excess.

CPAs will trigger whether you created threat or not. There is no way to stop them from freeing those ships, short of destroying so many fleet ships on defense, that the AI cannot fulfill its CPA count (quite hard to do, though there have been some reports of it)

There are other mechanics for dealing with ludicrous amounts of threat. Barracks, packing them into carriers, scraping lower marks for a higher mark (not 1:1 though, like it has to scrap 2 Mk. Is to get 1 Mk. II), and other fun stuff. If all else fails, the AI has scrap waves it can send, where it will send excess threat as a wave to "flush" them, though it is quite rare that it will have to resort to that.

Actually, when a scrap wave triggers, does it "teleport" them to a wormhole on a human planet side, like a normal wave would spawn at the wormhole?

1575

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Various things

« on: July 24, 2012, 12:45:17 PM »

I would rather create an AI choice that says "beginner AI - no gravity drill" really. I dont see how anyone could have fun with gravity drill AI. It will basicly make you snooze while playing.

You can turn off the grav drill AI, and any other AI type for that matter. In the AI War install directory, under RuntimeData, there is a DisabledAITypeList.txt or something like that in there.
In that file, any AI types you give it will not show up nor be selected by any random AI chooser. (note, the AI type has to be the internal name of the AI type, though in most cases, the internal type is the same as the displayed type with the spaces removed)
It should have plenty of examples already in there, including a commented out entry for the grav driller. Just uncomment that entry, and any others you never want to see.

(The entries for AIs introduced in expansions are probably not in there. If you want to disable those, take your best guess using the method described above, or just ask for the entry to put in)