Messages

16

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Newbish questions about Science Labs, K-raiding, fabricators

« on: December 07, 2012, 08:24:01 PM »

Basically yes.  You have a choice between K-Raiding, Ship Hacking, and SuperTerminal Bronco Rides.  In general, you don't want to go past two ship hacks worth of hacking points, the AI tends to get a bit grouchy if you do.  As in Thermonuclear Holocaust grouchy.

So basically 3 K-Raids = 2 Ship hacks (ship hacks go up in cost for each additional one, K-Raids are linear).  However, you don't start paying the real price on the second ship hack until AFTER you hack it.  The ship hack costs are included on completion.  K-Raiding is done per point.

The 'raid the universe' was part of why the new components were included.  Somewhere around here is an AAR I did where I K-Raided *everything* during a high end game, which started a bit of that discussion and the folks around here came up with this very neat system.  That's against the purpose of K-Raiding.  K-Raiding was intended, design wise, to allow a struggling player to get some free K to get 'back on the ball' if they were losing the slow slide against AIP.  It was never meant to allow someone to tackle the entire tech tree at AIP 140. :-)

In general, you can get away with two ship raids reasonably easily and then pick a planet (at most, two) that you can isolate the wild mage rolls from in a corner of the galaxy and raid it.  If you K-Raid early you'll find ship-hacks will be very difficult.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Interested in being a part of a private alpha for Valley 2? Read here.

« on: December 07, 2012, 03:05:16 PM »

People were stupid in the 80s, too.  But they had giant manuals back then that explained everything in painful depth.

And people actually read them, most importantly.

But again, "people" only referred to an extremely technical subgroup.  Now we're talking about the populace at large, with the explosion of computer use.

Once Grandma started gaming, there was no turning back.  If Woody had gone to the police, this would never have happened.

Btw, pretty screenshot.  I like the tile artwork.  Is that actual 3D isometric or just some really nice 2D artwork?

18

AI War / Re: AI low cap ships

« on: December 06, 2012, 02:01:50 PM »

One of the things I've noticed in my games, particularly with the SF, is that I end up killing off all the little guys when our fleets make contact, and if I'm not taking the system (passing through, finding a DC, whatever) and my fleet moves on, it starts to skew the numbers heavily towards the low-cappers.  Threatfleet started doing the same thing as my turrets would 'clean up' the little guys on my satellites before the worlds fell, but the big guys just kept building.  Zombards in particular are a problem in this one particular epic game I'm playing because they're slower than the main SF fleet, so they're always late to the party.  I've started to take on the SF fleet in toto to make sure the problem doesn't re-arise.

Another reason low-cap is overpowered in PC hands is AI Eyes.  A cap of gatlings risks firing off the Nuclear Eye.  A cap of Maws doesn't.

19

After Action Reports / Re: 1/1 Chaos Rules the Galaxy

« on: December 03, 2012, 10:39:13 PM »

 

Dude.  That sounds like SO much fun!!!     I'm going to have to try that!

20

AI War / Re: Keith Appreciation Thread

« on: December 03, 2012, 10:36:58 PM »

I don't mind criticism of the game or recent changes or whatever; we need that.  But it's also good to have a healthy balance of not talking only about the things that we don't like, etc.

Yeah, we've been a bit rough and nitpicky with the game's design lately, haven't we.  Sorry about that.   

Some personal things I love in the recent builds:
SF fleet intelligence.
Threatfleet nastiness.
Strategic Reserve (definate !FUN!)
Modular Starship as a bonus ship
Log File adjustments for readibility and locatabilty.  This is some awesome now that I'm used to it.
New CPA methodology (now that I get it).  Continuously neuter your backfield... or DIE human scum!

Thank you.  They're much appreciated.

21

Off Topic / Re: Company of Heroes 2 vs. Wargame: Airland Battle

« on: December 01, 2012, 02:28:25 PM »

As for End of Nations, I didn't like what I've played of it. I just can't swallow the whole idea of persistent progression in a competitive RTS game.

Same.  The name of the game for RTS games is "even footing".  Take that away and you've ruined it for me.

Ah, that's a shame.  There's an older game based on the same philosophy called Shattered Galaxy.  I adored that game.  I have a feeling this one will eat me too.

22

Off Topic / Re: Company of Heroes 2 vs. Wargame: Airland Battle

« on: December 01, 2012, 01:00:19 PM »

Neither, I'm waiting impatiently for this:

http://endofnations.com/en/

Is it not up? It says it's in open beta? Or do you mean you are waiting for beta to end?

They were supposed to launch last year.  They've just finished their fourth closed Beta while they finish some tweaks and apparently found a couple of major balance/gameplay issues, so they've delayed again.  Open Beta was supposed to have launched 2 weeks ago, until something in CB4 made them go back to the guts of the engine.

23

Off Topic / Re: Company of Heroes 2 vs. Wargame: Airland Battle

« on: December 01, 2012, 12:53:37 PM »

Neither, I'm waiting impatiently for this:

http://endofnations.com/en/

24

AI War / Re: Request to Keith - CPA Strategic Reserve Spawns

« on: December 01, 2012, 12:51:22 PM »

Thank you both for the proofread.

Looks reasonable, except the first paragraph had "threat fleet" instead of "threat" in a couple places. Fixed that.

Ah, yeah, you're right, I hadn't really thought about that.

The whole calculation breakdown still looks very difficult to understand, but I'm not sure if anything can really be done to improve it 

I'll try to rework it in my head a bit and see if I can simplify it further somehow.

Looks good overall; I made a couple small corrections to some numbers (champions add 0.066 multiplier, not 0.66, which would be twice what an extra HW adds), but this is certainly a vast improvement

Heh, thank you.  I'd thought it said .066 but my knee-jerk reaction was "That's it?!  Can't be..."  Whoops.

By the way, on the multiple impacts of difficulty on the formula result, I did some quick calculations to find  "all else being equal, what multiplier does each difficulty give?".  I think I did this when working out the formula but I must have paged that memory out to disk  

<snip>

So Diff 8 has CPAs a bit less than 2x as strong as diff 7.  Diff 9 has CPAs a bit less than 3x as strong as diff 7, but 9.3 jumps to roughly 4x, 9.6 to roughly 5x, 9.8 to roughly 7x, and 10 to roughly 10x.

Neat, nice evaluation.  If I start feeling ambitious I may transfer this to the wiki.  That little table I did took a rediculous amount of time for me to format.  This one couldn't have been any better, here in the forum, though.

I'm hoping Dazio comes by and decides the code section looks horrible and he gets a chance to work some magic on it. 

25

AI War / Re: Request to Keith - CPA Strategic Reserve Spawns

« on: November 30, 2012, 07:43:28 PM »

I've completely rewritten the wiki page for CPAs to bring it inline with the new rules.  Can a few of you proofread it for me and make sure I didn't leave any bias in there and that it reads intelligently?

Also, the code component looks... horrendous.  However, my ability to format a wiki is equivalently bad.  If you know of a way to make that prettier, by all means, please do.

Link: http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Cross_Planet_Attacks

26

Off Topic / Re: Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten

« on: November 30, 2012, 06:06:14 PM »

I haven't gone the 1 of each route yet which there's some achievements for, but I tend to balance it.  I build a couple that I'll only boost to 3 as cheap entries and a few to 5.  I've got two berserkers who really up the bleed (they get the best #s), but my archers are mostly crit + armor punch.  One of my priests is a full out Boost 3 healer, another two of 'em are maxxed off on Zeal boosts.

I have a little bit of everything and just experiment.

27

AI War / Re: Request to Keith - CPA Strategic Reserve Spawns

« on: November 30, 2012, 02:46:42 PM »

And today I learn two new acronyms I didn't care about until an hour ago.  Thank you gents.

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AI War / Re: Request to Keith - CPA Strategic Reserve Spawns

« on: November 30, 2012, 02:26:51 PM »

Ah, thanks for the explanation on FInt.  If I read that article a few hundred times I'll probably understand all the underlying pieces, but that's my own problem.

Google-Fu is really failing today, I can't find the image I want for 'this pool is too damned deep!'. 

Alright, I'll see what I can do to turn that into newbie consumable information for the wiki.  Appreciated!

29

AI War / Re: Request to Keith - CPA Strategic Reserve Spawns

« on: November 30, 2012, 01:55:20 PM »

Okay, I am CAFFEINATED!... and can finally try to make sense of this. 

If you're going to include the Core CPA formula may as well include the normal one (that's why I pointed to the logs, though obviously getting a natural CPA to be announced for observation purposes is nontrivial unless you have a handy save), so here's an example log entry from a fairly vanilla diff 7 game:

Honestly I was just pointing it out there for completeness.  When I rewrite the wiki article I intended to do the calculations in a separate section.

Code: [Select]

since diff > 7, numberOfSecondsPerPointOfMinimumAIPForCPAPurposes = 360 + ( (FInt)60 * ( (FInt)7 - this.AIDifficulty ) ).IntValue = 342This is what determines the scale of the "alternative minimum AIP".  At diff 7 it's just 360, and below diff 7 it's "360 + ( (FInt)51 * ( (FInt)7 - this.AIDifficulty ) ).IntValue;"

Okay, Googlefu has failed.  What's FInt do, that a Floating Int declaration or something?  Also, how does this affect it on higher difficulties?  I can probably figure that out once I know what FInt is doing.    Also, found the CPA listing finally in Waves_MainThread.  It looks like this number ends up static for the entire game, that'll make things easier.  I'll probably just make that into a table for sanity's sake.

Code: [Select]

difficultyFactor = ( this.AIDifficulty * this.GetHandicapMultiplier() ) / ( 13 - this.AIDifficulty ) : 1.28This is the diff/handicap multiplier adapted from wave-calc logic.

The "difficultyFactor" variable name is a bit imprecise, in that difficulty is factored in many times throughout this whole tour-de-pain.  Its overall impact is quite explodential.

Interesting, so Diff affects both the minimum AIP calculation and then affects the CPA volume itself.

Code: [Select]

simulateMaxTimeWaveFactor = Mat.One + ( ( this.AIDifficulty * 2 ) / ( ( 14 - this.AIDifficulty ) * 3 ) ) : 1.73This is simulating the max size increase a wave can get from simply having been a long time since the last wave.  Iirc waves can have a higher multiplier than this now due to the ingress-point calculation thing (which does not apply here) but that's where this is originally from.

What's Mat.One stand in for?

Code: [Select]

humanHomeworldCountMultiplier = Mat.One + ( (FInt)( humanHomeworldCount - 1 ) * FInt.FromParts( 0, 330 ) ) + ( championCount * FInt.FromParts( 0, 066 ) ) = 1Just accounting for champs and multiple HWs.

Just to dig into this far too deeply, what's .FromParts doing here?  Not being able to find the base function I can't check out the methods associated with it.

Code: [Select]

numberOfShips (before applying cap-scale) = ( (FInt)effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes * difficultyFactor * simulateMaxTimeWaveFactor * simulateDoubleWaveFactor * simulateDifficultySpecificWaveSizeMultiplier * humanHomeworldCountMultiplier ).IntValue = 1094Putting it all together.  As Bognor pointed out, if the result would be less than 200 here it just doesn't bother and skips the CPA.

The next and final step in computing the actual number of ship is: on normal caps divide this by 2; on low it divides by 4, and on ultra low it divides by 8.

Ah, that's what you mean there by cap-scale.  For some reason I thought wave ship-caps multipliers were going to come into play.  That's... brutal.  Explains why I nearly got eaten by the last CPA... (Yes, this particular game is going on the timescale of epicness... I'm at 15.5 hours in already).

Code: [Select]

11/27/2012 11:24:30 PM (6.009)
-----------------------------------
Triggering CPA (always from first AI); Game Time: 13:51:00
effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes = this.AIProgressionLevelEffective = 147
since diff > 7, numberOfSecondsPerPointOfMinimumAIPForCPAPurposes = 360 + ( (FInt)60 * ( (FInt)7 - this.AIDifficulty ) ).IntValue = 240
minimumAIPForCPAPurposes = Game.Instance.GameSecond / numberOfSecondsPerPointOfMinimumAIPForCPAPurposes = 207
effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes = Max(effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes,minimumAIPForCPAPurposes) = 207
difficultyFactor = ( this.AIDifficulty * this.GetHandicapMultiplier() ) / ( 13 - this.AIDifficulty ) : 2.25
simulateMaxTimeWaveFactor = Mat.One + ( ( this.AIDifficulty * 2 ) / ( ( 14 - this.AIDifficulty ) * 3 ) ) : 2.2
simulateDoubleWaveFactor = 2
simulateDifficultySpecificWaveSizeMultiplier = 2.5
humanHomeworldCountMultiplier = Mat.One + ( (FInt)( humanHomeworldCount - 1 ) * FInt.FromParts( 0, 330 ) ) + ( championCount * FInt.FromParts( 0, 066 ) ) = 1
numberOfShips (before applying cap-scale) = ( (FInt)effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes * difficultyFactor * simulateMaxTimeWaveFactor * simulateDoubleWaveFactor * simulateDifficultySpecificWaveSizeMultiplier * humanHomeworldCountMultiplier ).IntValue = 5123


Everything else looks right

Thanks Keith, appreciate the in-depth discussion on this.

30

AI War / Re: Request to Keith - CPA Strategic Reserve Spawns

« on: November 30, 2012, 01:36:17 PM »

Nope, just one line.  One very long line.

   Question about CPAs.  When the AI is pulling troops from a barracks, does a message display in the log that the barracks have been destroyed if it empties?  I could not for the life of me figure out how I managed to destroy a barracks on a random world far from where I was currently operating in a recent game.

Nope, it'll just deflate the barracks without a warning.