Messages

61

Tidalis / Re: Tidalis and Steam Search

« on: June 14, 2013, 09:57:18 AM »

None of our games are showing up in the search right now, and the "Specials" and "Coming Soon" tabs are no longer present on the front page... I assume they're just in some kind of site transition right now

62

Off Topic / Re: Planetary Annihilation: Total Annihilation IN SPACE

« on: June 14, 2013, 09:36:51 AM »

I do think they shouldn't have put it in playable form on steam if they didn't want more players.  Just do a pre-order.

But it'd be worse to back it out now, most likely.

63

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.047 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkIII" Released!

« on: June 14, 2013, 09:30:58 AM »

Lightning Torpedoes (spawned by Lightning Torpedo Frigates) can now be given direct commands from the player.

  Unlimited power! 

Yea, I'm sure those will be cheesable out the wazoo.  But it's advanced enough and probably fun enough that that's fine, the nerf will eventually come

During one test (before controllable torpedoes) the full I-V caps of frigates built up a really honkin-big pile of torpedoes during one attack, such that pretty much any follow-up attack that came in was simply annihilated by the "stockpile" due to the 3-minute lifetime.

Flashbacks to Harrington podnaughts stacking salvos.

As I understand it, the batch explore will, lets say, build 20 scout mk2s, and then just issue the auto explore for them?

I dont suppose it would be possible to set up a modified picket order?
What I am looking to do is automate putting up single scout pickets on planets 2+ away or so. In theory, all I want this to so is to group move the entire set of scouts to a planet that needs picketing. After all scouts have arrived, and stopped, it then leaves one behind and repeats this order.

Probably a lot more difficult to implement then that, but its something that would likely save me a lot of time (up to date scout intel is super important)

I did actually implement a scout-picket equivalent setting but it's a lot more fiddly to work with so I commented it back out.  Basically there are two things we'd want it to do to be properly automated:

1) If multiple scouts succeed in picketing the planet, either scrap the extras or retry the picket logic with them
2) And whenever a scout successfully pickets, reduce the "target batch size" for that scout type on the building space dock by 1 (otherwise it will never send another batch)

And neither of those two things is really all that reasonable to code, I'm afraid.

But you can use the "manual" "Auto Scout Picket" order from the context menu with scouts selected to send a batch of them out to try to picket stuff.  You'll need to scrap the "extras" on each picketed world manually, though (it won't send one at an already-picketed planet, but it may send more than one against a non-picketed planet because one may not survive).


On MLRS guardian being Medium hull: yea, there's the MLRS fleet ship, and there's also the more recent rule that guardians should be medium hull so that fighters counter them.  But given the MLRS bonus vs light, I can just make these have an artillery hull so bombers counter them (as they counter missile frigates) instead.

Oh and Keith you gave the Raptor a 5 bonus instead of the 6 you posted.

Haha, oops.  It's just a typo in the release notes, 5x is what it needs to be to give the relative percentages listed.  If Raptors weren't cloaked (and blazing fast) I'd go for 6x and maybe some more base dps, but as it is that'd be a bit much.


On the Infiltration and Raid guardian exo cost thing... yea, they get more DPS than the Raid Starship, and start 1 tier lower exo-wise.  The Raid Starship has more durability due to the armor, and more speed, but that is a bit out of whack.  Will actually just bump all the non-dire guardians up two tiers.  May be a little too nice but not by much.


On the AI unit dancing I'll take a look; some exos naturally dance due to a long range leader (and all do when approaching a wormhole transition, in many cases) and the fact that the AI doesn't take 10-30 seconds to loop through all its units in a significant battle anymore sometimes exhibits behavior which looks like that, but it sounds like it may be conflicting with the "Galaxy-Wide-Chase" targeting of the exos, which is something that can be fixed.

Normal threat dancing is probably something else, and probably not real dancing (i.e. the situation is changing, so its decisions change, but eventually settle on something if the situation warrants it), but if there's any saves where it can be demonstrated I can certainly take a look.

64

AI War / Re: Poll: What bonus ship types need to be more useful for the player?

« on: June 14, 2013, 08:55:55 AM »

In know on paper the grenade launcher has gotten a massive boost, but until swarmer ships are balanced so they are not just a box of tissues to soak the tears of my cpu I don't think they will truly shine.

The grenade launcher will also counter fighters (Light hull type).

65

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Kahuna's Guide To AI War - Find Your Inner Super Cat!

« on: June 14, 2013, 08:43:32 AM »

Awesome stuff, thanks

FYI to the readers: I had asked Kahuna to rope these topics together so I could link them from the tip-of-the-day thing, though I think he was planning on compiling them here at some point anyway.

66

AI War / Re: What do you the envision hunter plot as? (poll)

« on: June 13, 2013, 06:22:52 PM »

Eh, sacrifice a planet or two for the sake of the galaxy. I don't mind. It's acceptable losses. I mean really, how many people are living on that one cracked lava-covered planet?

Possibly some very displeased Spire.  Were, at least.  Now they have rather more free time.

You do bring up a good point. The AI's stuff is all outside of the galaxy... I feel like after winning a game, you should be allowed to send Mark III nukes into the exo-galactic wormhole.

Speaking of some very displeased Spire with a sudden influx of free time.

67

Off Topic / Re: Planetary Annihilation: Total Annihilation IN SPACE

« on: June 13, 2013, 06:21:35 PM »

I've seen some perfectly reasonable conversations over there.  But yea, I wouldn't swim in that pool.

68

AI War / Re: What do you the envision hunter plot as? (poll)

« on: June 13, 2013, 06:14:29 PM »

I was thinking of strategies, but then I started thinking too hard.
"What if I convince my enemy to nuke his OWN planets with the nukes that he shoots at MY planets?"

When the "his planets" in question are in your galaxy, and all his truly important stuff is in other galaxies?

Warheads, the solution is still always warheads.

69

Skyward Collapse / Re: Update 2.0 distribution?

« on: June 13, 2013, 05:49:23 PM »

Yea, generally speaking I think the games would run from the flash drive, just plug it in any machine and run the .exe .

But I'm not 100% sure what performance would be like

70

Skyward Collapse / Re: Developers requesting feedback: font suggestions.

« on: June 13, 2013, 05:48:02 PM »

Comic Sans all the way 

If only it had a sense of humor.

71

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse 1.008-1.009 "Massive Bigness" Released!

« on: June 13, 2013, 05:43:06 PM »

Looks good!  Unfortunately, I have been temporarily captured by Skyrim, so it will be a little while before I try all of these out 

I guess we need to arrange for a little Labyrinth+Yggdrasil accident in Whiterun?

72

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.047 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkIII" Released!

« on: June 13, 2013, 05:39:16 PM »

Keith, is it intended that Dire Guardians can be chosen for exos if Dire Guardians are off in the game settings?

The game setting is actually called "Dire Guardian Lairs" and that's what you're turning on/off.  The Dire Guardians being eligible for exos is a separate thing.  Though each AI only gets 3 types of Dire Guardian randomly chosen at the beginning of the game, with more added at higher AIP (so if you're playing a 4000 AIP FS game then it will presumably have them all available).

So yea, that particular bit of pain is intentional   Should actually add more variation to the exos where it's picking stuff in the golem range.

73

AI War / Re: What do you the envision hunter plot as? (poll)

« on: June 13, 2013, 05:33:53 PM »

The nuke-on-death effect doesn't actually increase AIP does it? You could totally abuse special forces avengers if you could kill them. ...then again, they could totally abuse YOU.

Yea, I think that would be a mutually abusive relationship.

74

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.047 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkIII" Released!

« on: June 13, 2013, 03:50:59 PM »

It's sort of a way to build a "scout factory" that sends scouts on automated scout runs. You'll still have to micro them to get the full map, but it sounds like some of the busy work is removed, as long as you don't mind some set up? I haven't tried it yet, and it clearly is one of those little hidden expert features that will take some time to mature.

It can get the full map for you if you clear enough of the enemy tachyon sentinels and whatnot.  Basically it's just like this:

1) Set a space dock to loop-build scouts
2) Whenever you think of it, go to that space dock, select all the scouts, and give them the auto-explore order

But with the 2nd step done automatically whenever it's build all the scouts it can.

75

Off Topic / Re: Planetary Annihilation: Total Annihilation IN SPACE

« on: June 13, 2013, 03:26:01 PM »

The complaining on the Steam forum is going to be epic.

I'm trying to figure out a suitable combination of the word "Complaint" and the word "Ragnarok".