Messages

16

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.072-5.073 "A Revised Experience" Released!

« on: August 29, 2012, 02:26:35 AM »

Okay. I'm thinking CPAs are dangerous again.

On patch 5.073, 3rd CPA of the game at 11:45:00 game time, 10,000 units are about to be freed.

Will be interesting and is more in line with what 10/10 should be.

D.

Not seen that yet, but I did try Normal+Champion with hard broken golems, hard broken botnet, hard spire... the 3 exo's are very hard to defend against. Think I need to tone it down for my next game, too many hunter killers. But dangerous CPA is pretty cool.

17

AI War / Re: Poll: What should be done with special forces?

« on: August 28, 2012, 03:54:49 AM »

More of them, and maybe one mark up form AI would be OK I think.

18

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.070 "The Once And Fortress King" Released!

« on: August 23, 2012, 02:13:18 PM »

Going for a new game now... but fortress king sounds nasty

19

AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 23, 2012, 02:01:02 AM »

I do have some changes in mind that I think will help players not feel like they have to farm.


The term "grind" is largely unhelpful from a developer standpoint because it's used to mean so many things:

1) Gameplay that is trivially easy (by that stage of the game) but literally mandatory, so the player just goes through the motions because they want to get to the rest of the game.

2) Gameplay that is trivially easy and optional, but has sufficient rewards that the player goes through the motions because those rewards will help them get to the parts of the game they enjoy (or maybe those rewards are sufficient motivation in themselves).

3) Gameplay that may be quite challenging but that the player does not enjoy, but literally has to do to progress, so they do it to progress.

4) Gameplay that may be quite challenging but that the player does not enjoy, and is optional, but has sufficient rewards to motivate the player to do it anyway.

5) Gameplay that the player doesn't enjoy, even if it's challenging, optional, and has no rewards that can't be obtained elsewhere.  In other words, the player just doesn't like that part of the game.

And others.


So, while I understand it is a useful word when describing how you feel about a particular part of the game, if folks could clarify exactly what they mean by "grind" (maybe we need a wiki page with numbered definitions ) in the specific cases they use it, that would help me a lot in actually figuring out what to do about it, if there's anything I can do about it (someone not wanting to be motivated to gain XP is one thing, somoene who just doesn't like champions is another).

Thanks

For me a grind is more or less the old super-terminal: I would build up defenses, and then build a command center. Kill as much as possible, then kill my own command center before the AI get too many reinforcements. Rinse and repeat until the cycle can no longer be sustained.

So in other words, repetitive doing the same thing over and over for the same rewards in order to gain an advantage for the later game.

In moderation, some grinding is OK, but when it can be taken to the extreme on the other hand..

Maybe my explanation was not all that good, will see if I can dream up something better once I get some coffee

20

AI War / Re: Arcen Games Heading To PAX Prime With Indie Mega Booth

« on: August 22, 2012, 08:36:45 AM »

Looks fun, too bad I live across the world

Any good game conferences in your area? I'm very ambitious in regards to our attendance at those things, Chris can attest to that.

I am afraid not. At least not that I know of. I live up north in Norway in a town called Tromsø (fairly big by Norwegian standards, 100k people or so), but other than that is pretty desolate here in every direction. Maybe something going on down in Oslo, but I have not heard of it. Closest thing I guess is a big annual LAN party called The Gathering: http://www.gathering.org/tg12/en/

21

Shattered Haven / Re: Shattered Haven -- Another Upcoming Project

« on: August 22, 2012, 08:27:52 AM »

So is this the reason why nothing has appeared on the change list for AI War today?

I think the simple fact that this game will be made by Arcen is good enough for me to get it. After all, I got Tidalis even though I don't like casual games like that just because it's Arcen. The music was worth the money.

Heh, indeed. But so far all Arcen games are quite excellent. Not many publishers puts the same kind of love into their games as Arcen. For the 2.5 years I have been part of the community (albeit somewhat less these last months due to work and other RL stuff), I have seen good things

Looking forward to this game as well!

22

AI War / Re: Arcen Games Heading To PAX Prime With Indie Mega Booth

« on: August 22, 2012, 08:03:40 AM »

Looks fun, too bad I live across the world

23

AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 22, 2012, 06:08:36 AM »

Yea, I don't want infinitely-farmable stuff to give XP.  I'm ok with temporarily-farmable stuff (nebula ships) giving XP as long as the scenario progresses towards termination or there's some sufficient motive to finish the scenario; that's true for the 3rd one (and the 4th one, which is basically done now, just gotta do some other stuff before a release), but the 1st and 2nd need work.

For AI ships, I'm thinking having them give 1 point (per mark, perhaps) of shadow-charge might be a good way of having them give something, but not something that can be infinitely farmed.  Even that may prove unbalancing by letting the champion drop truckloads of projected ability units onto the field in the middle of a massive attack.  On the other hand, "in the middle of a massive attack" may be exactly when they need to do so.  On the third hand, it might lead to a lot of having to pause to properly use the abilities (even with better keybinds for using them) before your capacitor maxes out from the AI ship deaths, etc.

Lotsa hands to consider.

Indeed. I have played a few games now as normal + champion, and when you suddenly got a huge blob of bombers coming to visit you, a lot of nifty abilities is nice. Last time my champion was dust after a few seconds, and so was my command center while my fleet kept futilely shooting the blob

And I know myself enough to say that if I can farm XP from an unlimited source, I will do so. Just as I kinda abused the old AI SuperTerminals. I don't think I am alone in this either ;P

24

AI War / Re: Is there a way to wake all ships on a planet on purpose?

« on: August 22, 2012, 01:59:34 AM »

Do sane people play this game?

Hehe, I don't think so ;P

25

AI War / Re: A Lack of Hats

« on: August 21, 2012, 03:29:42 AM »

Fortunately for me, I use far zoom 99% of the time and hats do not affect me

26

AI War / Re: Balancing the Fleet Triangle - A Community Poll

« on: August 21, 2012, 03:05:58 AM »

I do upgrade bombers a lot, but also fighters. Fighters are so cheap ans is easy to use as expendable defense or offense. I would use missile firgs more if they had the same speed as well

27

AI War / Re: AI War: Ancient Shadows OST (Preview & Info)

« on: August 21, 2012, 02:23:28 AM »

The one track on the Shadows preview page was very nice! Looking forward to the rest

Might I inquire about the tools you use to make the music?

28

AI War / Re: Is there a way to wake all ships on a planet on purpose?

« on: August 21, 2012, 02:09:31 AM »

Send your squad to attack the command center, but stop them.

It seems that the game triggers on a command to attack the command center, not actually shooting it. So often all the AI units go after me from the other side of the system by me just pressing the attack command on the command center.

Bug or intentional, I dunno.

29

AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 20, 2012, 10:29:44 AM »

So far I am liking what I see in this expansion. I did not think you would expand AI War this way, but I really like it.

I foresee many hours of gaming in the coming months

30

AI War / Re: Shield Bearers/Wormhole Guard Posts/etc can shoot?

« on: August 20, 2012, 10:27:39 AM »

I noticed that stuff like wormhole guard posts can shoot, as well as things like shield bearers where their primary use isn't the weapons and you'd never really build them (or the ai would never really spawn them) for the weapons.

It's clear that they probably don't *need* the weaponry, since so much stuff just doesn't have any weapons, but why do they have some?

(possibly part of a continuing series of "why is X the way it is")

I guess bearers don't need weapons, but I like some extra firepower . But for balancing and flavor I guess just having the shields could work well.