Messages

1261

AI War / Re: Raid engine + Viral Shredders = Von Neumann Machines deluxe

« on: January 15, 2010, 04:54:46 PM »

Yes like the replicators in that entire replicator story arc (which i thought was one of the best of the entire set of sg1 story arcs ;p)

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AI War / Re: Resistance Fighters/Rebellions

« on: January 15, 2010, 04:46:22 PM »

Speaking of them, i now have my 2nd resistance outpost event, do i get the ships a 2nd time as well? Because i am inclined to ignore it this time... And more so because i will have a really hard-time holding a planet in that region of space where its now (basically not really next to any homeworld so i never planned on capping such a planet) or even that section of the galaxy - its already down to 71 minutes during which was fighting my way to the adjacency of a the first homeworld ..

I am starting to really dislike this event, because its the only one that *really* massively punishes you, no matter what you do.

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AI War / Re: Resistance Fighters/Rebellions

« on: January 15, 2010, 03:45:55 PM »

True enough, i noticed the same things now.. of all my fleet the only things never dieing are the resistance ships - i guess they go by their name indeed ;p very resistant... ^^

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AI War / Re: GFX Mod: Fuzzy Lines b'gone - 3000% performance increase

« on: January 15, 2010, 03:40:28 PM »

Slim.dx doesn't support opengl.. otherwise it would be slim.opengl, no?

Actually thats a good question though..

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AI War / Re: GFX Mod: Fuzzy Lines b'gone - 3000% performance increase

« on: January 15, 2010, 02:15:20 PM »

Hah, welcome to the world of problems that lines bring to a game (As a 3d-artist, you will face the dreadful problems of non-hw accelerated dx or hw accel. opengl lines. all the time) Its best to never use lines in a game in large scope. You can draw waypoints via connected looping pngs together and its extremely effective to do, for 1 line.. but not for 10k or more...

You know this issue is only really coming up now because of the very late increase of the damage boost range.. before these values were 250/500 but now they are 2000 each. And if you have 8 ships drawing these lines, you can imagine how that will kill performance once you are in a situation where those ships are tractor locked + under attack from other damage boosted ships.

Graphic cards aren't really made to draw things like these...

And something else, the best way to draw lines, is never to draw lines.... use polygon with a stretched 1pixel x 3pixel png base (so that would be a 3 pixel wide line with a gradient at the side - if you stretch it now the uvw of the polygon will adapt to that length without a single artifact all the while using the very same png for the whole range (it'll cause problems with AF though) and you get a 4 points and 2 triangles, in exchange for a fully working and instancing able 3d object (which looks like a line) ,p Maybe this'll be the possible fix for this. Its how i draw lines in a 3d-rendering

The best thing to do is entirely remove these lines from damage boosters and replace them with a different icon border effect, or somesuch

Anyhow i am blowing this up too much, its really only a dirty hack that simply wipes the png clean, and thus doesn't draw anything on screen = saves performance

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AI War / Re: GFX Mod: Fuzzy Lines b'gone - 3000% performance increase

« on: January 15, 2010, 01:38:53 PM »

You can use this mid save, yes.. and revert after a big battle (you will have to, since fuzzy lines are used elsewhere in the game ,p)

I had a little lapse when i wrote the topic title though, this doesn't improve the simulation speed of the game itself, so the game will run slower the more ships are on screen, but it *does* improve your frame rate because those beams are not actually drawn. The difference for me in a big battle was massive, but its a hack and should be regarded as such.

I hope i don't cause a massive support fallout now  

This only increases RAW FPS - not simulation speed of the game beyond what your cpu power allows.

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AI War / Re: GFX Mod: Fuzzy Lines b'gone - 3000% performance increase

« on: January 15, 2010, 11:54:53 AM »

Well these small sprites are very effective but drawing 20000 lines this way over each other will kill the performance no matter what, and i have a really bad case of this (i am warping in a fortified world with lots of MK3 tractors AND my damage boosted ships, short of not zooming at all i can NOT issue orders in that situation because i can't click on anything)

So this mod is more or less something for me to finish my game I am sure there'll be a fix to the issue at the core of this (which is the millions of fuzzy lines damage boosters, and i don't just mean my own, draw)

By the way - if you want a less drastic approach check these files - makes fuzzy lines less fuzzy ,p but with the full performance hit, just makes them a slight bit narrower (so this post is a beauty mod after you wonder where all the lines b'gone to, so the files attached here, they make the lines not gone again. But with the same performance issue ;p

These files will also make the galaxy map readable again (which i accidently killed with the fuzzy line remover as well) ;p

again, this is not a graphics mod that "improves" graphics, its a fix for the situations where your entire fleet warps in something and is tractor locked and you can no longer target said tractors because of 1 fps or less)

- So to avoid confusion - the top post includes files that allow you play through such a situation with full performance, and the post you are reading now makes these lines appear again, so you can continue playing after a huge battle (its annoying, but it helped me ,p)

Please do not hate me that the mod really does do what it says (ie, removing lines) ,p Do not even play with the thought of using this unless you fully understand that its a dirty hack that does what it says and that it does well. But you can NOT play this way all the time, its a mod for a specific situation

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AI War / Re: Does the AI ever backdown? or reduce your threat level?

« on: January 15, 2010, 11:48:50 AM »

Yes there is - atm i am trying to reduce progression to 200 and below (220+ is the tech 2 border on dif 7)

You do this via destroying the datacenters - every datacenter is -20 progression but you can only reduce it that much. You can not push it down to 0 ever, but you can reduce it usually below tech 2 if you are careful.

This is a vital tactic because it allows you to progress much easier to an enemy homeworld or finding the homeworlds without facing core ships on MK III worlds or tech 2 and 3 ships on MK1 worlds

Once the progression is reduced you face less reinforcements globally - less growth, and less threats. This is *the* game tactic to manage progression until you are ready to strike a fatal blow to the ai homeworlds.

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AI War / GFX Mod: Fuzzy Lines b'gone - with 3.011 obsolete

« on: January 15, 2010, 11:43:15 AM »

Mod has been made obsolete by 3.011 - performance issues are gone! ;p

This mod is only for advanced users

A very weird mod for sure, these 2 files COMPLETELY remove ALL fuzzy lines being drawn in the game, it includes tractor beams, constructor beams, and damage boost beams. And it does reduce brightness of the CTRL drawn lines by factor 5 (so 2000 ships in move order do not black out your entire tactical view anymore). This is not something you should install lightly unless you are advanced enough not to care for either of these lines (like me, its pretty obvious when your ships are tractored or damage boosted ,p).

You may now wonder what the mighty heck thats good for..

let me tell you - this mod will improve your close-up performance by a laughable 3000% , yes you read that right.

Before -
close zoom 1000 ships tractored - 4000 ships damage boosted 2fps - 300ms compute time

After -
close zoom 1000 ships tractored - 4000 ships damage boosted 20 fps - 300ms compute time (AI is locked at 20fps)

This mod is only for advanced users

It removes - ALL fuzzy lines (engineers + Tractor lines + damage boost lines)
It does make normal lines 5 times less visible - meaning you can see where you are going while holding ctrl now - but the small lines are all still there. So you can still see where your ships are going or what they attack (so don't worry bout that ;p)

On average this will make unplayable combat scenes (when zoomed in) perfectly playable now

LineFuzzy.png = Tractor/Damage boost/Engineer is the performance killer or solver
Line.png = Is the normal (small) lines with less opacity so that they don't white out the screen anymore

If you only care for performance gains in close-up you only need the linefuzzy.png (which is basically an empty png)

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AI War / Re: Resistance Fighters/Rebellions

« on: January 15, 2010, 07:23:21 AM »

But they cost a lot of energy resources and time to build. It takes easily 2 hours to be able to get them.. then you have to hold that world.

Yes they are effective but thats kind of the point, no? If they weren't would you capture them a second time? Right now this is a bonus for players who bothered to respond to this (not easy) event - they do have a lot of HP and range/damage yes, and they are a extremely nice addition to a fleet. But they are very expensive and very few in numbers...

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: high AI Progress

« on: January 15, 2010, 07:23:14 AM »

Well you are in a asymmetric war - the ai has access to an outside galaxy full of production systems and you have pissed it off pretty majorly now, to be honest i am surprised you can even survive a single attack on these progress levels (good teamwork it seems)

Also, the ai adapts to what attacks it and much faster at these progress levels...

Technically AI war was designed in such a way that the "capture all" strategy will lead to your destruction through attrition.

Heres something to remember, the AI is a sleeping demon with his army sleeping as well, and a billion brood chambers that are sleeping as well. Every progress increase, awakens the demon more, at 2000 progress you should surrender ;p At 6000 you are facing the Arch-demon himself and probably not even 10% of its production capabilities.

This is why i wanted AI War to have a deeper story by the way ,p

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AI War / Re: Resistance Fighters/Rebellions

« on: January 15, 2010, 06:51:57 AM »

I think they are ok, the reason is simple, chances are that when this event triggers, rushing 5 hops and fortifying that world are not as easy as you make it sound. If the reward is not there, why bother?

Also, they are only 42 ships each .. so their combat value is pretty low in a damage boosted up to mk3~ fleet

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Trouble breaking a level 3 planet

« on: January 14, 2010, 04:50:05 PM »

Actually every starship now sucks against them.. which is why you need your "flock" to kill them, with damage boosting very quickly too ;p

But ehm.. even if you reduce the range that doesn't change anything, i'd just merge my 2 fleets into one and get a more spread less even boost of damage, but any boost is a boost.

I am not sure what to suggest, nerfing them again will just lead to them not getting used anymore because thats the ONLY reason to build light starships A 50% reduction in range might be worth a try, if fleet ships get something else

Or maybe we should talk about an complete replacement of the munition boosting ability line - with something else`?

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AI War / Re: Overwhelmed by special forces at the start of a game

« on: January 14, 2010, 12:03:12 PM »

So are Distribution Nodes and their chance for infection / Golems and Resistence and where they appear \ stuck to the seed as well? Or is that truly random?

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Trouble breaking a level 3 planet

« on: January 14, 2010, 11:37:44 AM »

Light starships do not tripple your fleet size, they multiply it by 5 (ie 5 times more damage)

But Infiltrators and ac's are not part of a fleet ever (They both are entirely useless in a flow moving fleet), fighters, bombers, cruisers, more long range, more hard hitters, no melee ships is what makes a good strike fleet. When you munition boost your fleet you should have about 800-900 combat ready MK1 and MK2 and maybe 1 class MK3 (usually best to go cruisers for that) then you can take down pretty much ANY planet, even if it has 1000 MK3 ships on it (clearing the wormhole is then of course, the problem of autobombs/missiles)

What the nice forum geeks here described is the so called "fire sale" tactic, you destroy the enemy command station and retreat for the counter attack, once its over you take out the ion cannon and mop up the remaining guard posts. Sadly the AI decides that staying behind sometimes is more fun But once the reinforcements stop you have basically won.

Its important to note this

1) Never ignore an alerted IV or III world next to you at the beginning, later on you can afford 1000-2000 ships on a planet like that and still sail through with minimal losses but at the start every MK3 ship is one too many.

2) Damage boosters, Use them. Every single multiplier doubles your effective fleet size (and MUCH more, if you fight against ships below your MK rank) for example having core ships munition boosted gives you a MASSIVE advantage over the ai.

3) Did i mention to never leave your home without Damage boosters? More damage means less losses for you. Its the most important part of AI War (currently, anyhow ,p)