Messages

526

After Action Reports / Re: Assemble the Minions!

« on: September 21, 2012, 12:12:12 PM »

Interesting.

I will admit I was overlaying my own experience with my current game where I am having a difficult time defending multiple fronts.

However, as I am on difficulty 9 so that is to be expected. (See my Heroic Fortress King AAR for more details, this is Winge's thread, not mine.)

Looking forward to your next game session Winge, lattice maps are always interesting for me to read about as their are always multiple strategic options available.

D.

527

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.084 "Diplomatic Incident" Released!

« on: September 21, 2012, 12:01:37 PM »

Yes, well.

The Doomsday Clock starts at 1 minute to midnight when you begin a new game.

You want to make it even closer to midnight by building a Mk II nuke, let alone FRDing it on your homeworld?

* Diazo goes to hide in the next galaxy over.

D.

528

After Action Reports / Re: Assemble the Minions!

« on: September 21, 2012, 08:36:27 AM »

I would not be so sure.

This is lattice map, he's going to have multiple entries into his territory, at least until some gate raiding happens (well, if it happens depending on his playstyle). That's going to spread his turrets and fleet out.

Having said that, I have not played 8/8 recently so I'm not sure exactly what intensity that will end up with.

D.

529

AI War / Re: When does the Dyson start spawning ships?

« on: September 20, 2012, 11:34:32 PM »

Spire Civilian Leaders will increase AIP while the AI Command Station is present and decrease AIP once the AI Command center has been destroyed.

The presence (or lack of) a Human Command station does not affect the AIP reduction.

What the presence of the Human Command Station will do is Capture the Civilian Leader and so make it vulnerable to the AI destroying it and the associated AIP increase for it's destruction.

(Er, does it have one for being destroyed? I can't remember.)

So right now, if there is no command station or a human command station present, the civilian leader gives the same amount of AIP reduction.

D.

530

AI War / Re: When does the Dyson start spawning ships?

« on: September 20, 2012, 08:47:40 PM »

It's actually a CPU cycle savings mechanic, only worlds that the player has ships on get their full CPU cycles, worlds you don't 'see' or have ships on have a reduced CPU usage (or no CPU usage) to prevent CPUs from melting even more then they do.

Normally this is not noticed but there are a few borderline cases, such as the Dyson sphere, where this results in odd behavior.

D.

531

After Action Reports / Re: Assemble the Minions!

« on: September 20, 2012, 07:23:01 PM »

I'll be watching this one with interest, it has been quite a while since I've seen an AAR with beachheads that has cross-planet waves disabled.

PS:  If anyone can explain how to insert pictures in with text, like I see some users doing, I'd like to know.  Either an explanation or a link to a forum post would be much appreciated!

What you need here is the http: link to the picture that then gets stuck in the img tag bbcode.

For example, the image from your first post is at: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=11699.0;attach=6038;image so put that in your post as follows:

Code: [Select]

[img]http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=11699.0;attach=6038;image[/img]

The img and /img is the bbcode img tag I am talking about.

That ends up with:



The trick I use is to post with the img tags, then right-click on the attachment at the bottom of my post and 'Copy Link Location' to get the http: path, then use the modify post function to insert the images.

Hope that helps.

D.

edits:

Also, found the Dyson world, 3 hops from home.  Are Lattice maps normally this interesting?  I might have to play them more often.

I find they are, I've been playing lattice pretty much exclusively since it came out.

I think that, aside from when I played a 10-planet map, that is the earliest I have ever scouted a core world.  Gravity (P8) has way too many Mark V’s to be anything else.  The Ion Cannon/Orbital Mass Driver/Warhead Interceptor is another clue.

Interesting. Looking at the map layout I would not have expected to see a Core world there at all. Usually the first homeworld is seeded as many hops from your start location as possible with the second AI homeworld seeded as many hops as possible from both the first AI homeworld and your start location. This rule is not 100% accurate though so I guess you've found one of the exceptions.

If one of the AI homeworlds is in the bottom right quadrant of the map, my guess would have been farther out at Barret.

532

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.084 "Diplomatic Incident" Released!

« on: September 20, 2012, 03:38:33 PM »

I'm not sure there is a big worry there.

I'm pretty sure all the really high resource cost targets have the Immune to Reclamation tag and so do not get reprocessed already.

Looking for cheese is always fun but I'm not sure there is any to find here, or enough to find here to worry about it.

D.

533

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.083 "Core Values" Released!

« on: September 20, 2012, 10:15:00 AM »

Ya, I'm not going to go back and replay it, but that first wave at the 10-15 minute mark with the single Shadow Frigate is a terror and this tweak will not have changed that.

We'll see what happens when the shadow destroyers hit. This game is going to cross the Mk II threshold well before I'm in position to attack the AI homeworlds.

D.

534

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.083 "Core Values" Released!

« on: September 20, 2012, 10:09:40 AM »

• Removed the wave-calc rule that was preventing more than 1 of a specific starship type from being added; normally it wouldn't make much difference but it was impairing the Spire Hammer, Heroic, Starfleet Commander, and Extreme Raider AIs from scaling up their extra wave components.
• Made the AI-Type-specific units added to waves (Spire Hammer, Heroic, and Extreme Raider AIs do this) scale up quantity-wise with AIP (based partly on AI Difficulty) as well as wave size, but also scale down with higher-tech-level variants.

Just a note that it looks like this is working correctly. The Heroic AI sent 2 shadow frigates in its last wave that got sent my way.

The 2 shadow frigates that got sent from the home system had been hanging around as threat on the warp point and also join in so it made for 4 shadow frigates attacking, actually lost my command station as the shadow frigates focus fire it.

With 4 frigates even a Mk II FF does not last long.

They died shortly thereafter as the turrets were still intact but I'd say it's doing what it is supposed to.

D.

535

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.083 "Core Values" Released!

« on: September 20, 2012, 10:01:54 AM »

That's one of the nice things about AI War is that when comparing two ships, there are always situations where  one ship is better then the other and vice-versa.

Don't underestimate that bonus against Polycrystal, I think that is the hull type I am most commonly looking for an attack bonus against.

Having said that, the game is always evolving. A long time ago Sentinel Frigates used to have an attack penalty when there was more then one of them present on a planet and they were pretty much used only for their Advanced Warp Sensor ability.

Their damage was adjusted when the attack penalty was removed but their origin as a ship that was intended to be limited to one per system still shows.

Oddly enough, Sentinel Frigates seem to like me. They have been an ARS capture in my last two games while I can't remember the last time I ended up with Snipers. (I generally don't Ship-Hack.)

D.

536

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.083 "Core Values" Released!

« on: September 20, 2012, 09:22:11 AM »

Question is the sniper shipcap not a bit small (20) compared to the Sentinal frigate (19) the frigate is almost better in every way. (apart from the damage multipliers, but the sentinal does more damage, and fires quicker)

Hmm looking at the wiki they are balanced by the fact that snipers shots hit instantly. Not really impressed by that tbh.

Hey Soy, first time I've seen you so welcome.

* Diazo waves.

First, note that the wiki is out of date. The ship caps for all the fleet ships got redone a couple weeks ago.

Having said that, this exact question came up a couple months ago. If I remember the discussion at the time correctly, the sniper has different attack multipliers that give it a distinct role that is different from the sentinel frigate.

I am not on my gaming computer so I can't check the actual numbers at the moment but that is where I remember the discussion ending up last time around.

D.

537

AI War / Re: Some noob questions

« on: September 19, 2012, 06:50:12 PM »

What was the human conflict about though? Was there an ideological difference, or just a standard power struggle?

My headcanon has it as a standard power struggle. The game intro scroll just says 'civil war' so it's pretty vague.

And why are we destroying 'Data Centers' when obtaining data/knowledge is so important?

I think the logic behind this was the Data Center term came from our current data centers around the world that house the servers run the internet, so destroying the Data Centers in game was equivalent to destroying the records of our activities by destroying the location where said activities were recorded, effectively making the AI 'forget' what we have done.

In part anyway, the AI has backups of course.

D.

538

AI War / Re: Some noob questions

« on: September 19, 2012, 04:40:57 PM »

Of course, theorizing about the details of the AI doesn't solve the very real problem of the AIs trying to kill us.  That's what Raid Starships are for!

Yes, Raid Starships are for dying.

*grumblegrumbleStupidDataCentersInHeavilyDefendedSystemsgrumblegrumblegrumble*

I'm getting a lot of attempted use of out them at the moment.

 

D.

539

AI War / Re: Some noob questions

« on: September 18, 2012, 11:31:09 PM »

Hey there, welcome to the forums. 

1) Supply: No, continuous lines are not necessary. Every Command Station provides supply to the planet it is on and all adjacent planets. As a rule of thumb, mobile military ships do not require supply, all stationary structures do and mobile non-military ships are the odds ones out and may or may not require it.

Note that Supply does not prevent mobile ships that 'Require Supply' from moving into a system that lacks supply, but all they will be able to do in that system is move.

2) Stars are pretty much background only. Thematically you are fighting in the part of the system that has the warp points, not near the star for that system. Add in a whole bunch of game-engine reasons and I don't think this is something we will ever see.

3) Carry over I'm guessing? If you call something a nuke you know it blows things up. If you call it 'Sciency Fictiony Weapon of Doomy-Doom' you don't get what it does right away and have to read the description. Same reason 'Scouts' and 'Fighters' carried over, they could have been called 'drones' and 'snub-ships' but those don't have that immediate role recognition.

4) 2 AIs are to give variety. The AI type has a huge impact on how the game goes and the two AI types mix things up a bit in any given game. Fighting against a Fortress Baron/Tank is pretty much a totally different game then fighting a Speed Racer/Stealth Master pairing.

D.

540

AI War / Re: The doctor prescribed pain

« on: September 18, 2012, 08:38:33 AM »

First, OMGWTFBBQowowowowowowo.

Second: Just ow.

Having had a second to calm down, it is quite incredible how the game can scale up like that.

For comparison I play single-HW, non-FS and I think there is something like 30,000 ships total in the entire galaxy, with both mine and the AIs ships being counted.

You have 3 times that as threat alone, my mind just boggles at that.

* Diazo boggles some more for good measure.

D.