Messages

1

AI War Technical Support / Re: Mantis Tracker - how to resend activation email?

« on: February 17, 2012, 06:43:59 AM »

just to mention: still nothing -_- no idea? Should i just make a new email-account and try registering again with a different alias?

2

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: 30 seconds in...

« on: February 17, 2012, 06:34:31 AM »

i feel your pain -_-
ever since a game a while ago,  i feel tempted to quit whenever i see AI bladespawners.
30-50 of them per planet were so painful...when you'd manage to cut them down a BIT, while you rebuilt your fleet, there would be 3 more than before.
A MKIV planet in that game was the first time i resorted to a nuke.

3

AI War / Re: Regenerator Golem

« on: February 17, 2012, 06:30:59 AM »

maybe the regenerator golem could have your "shipyard" interface, as if it was a stardock, and you could click the ships on/off(standard all on), so those which are "off" don't get regenerated?
Of course, there's fabricators and stuff, but i'd already be happy with just deciding which of my "main" fleet ships the golem regens.
It's pretty nice to have for deeper raids and stuff, i especially started liking the regen golem during shard retrieval. Considering in my current game i first took hold in my "sector" of the galaxy before starting the spire missions...and well, that pretty much means the shard has a LONG way to go, a good part, of course, outside my territory. Having a Regen and a Cursed Golem along for the ride really helps, first in GETTING there, then in getting back.
Other than that, i don't use them much, mostly sitting on a defensive world not seeing much action.

4

AI War / Re: Armor is not that important currently

« on: February 16, 2012, 10:15:19 AM »

understandable, but i think a real problem is that a single mitigation mechanic doesn't scale well between Ultra-Heavy stuff(Golems and the like), Big stuff(Starships/Spirecraft) and Fleet Stuff.

As mentioned, if armor gets too "high" then it merely becomes a "80% less damage" automaton, or whatever the cutoff will be. If it gets too low, then it becomes meaningless, most of the time.

And really, splitting hull into sizes and materials would also just be another mitigation/bonus mechanic...in fact, radar dampening is just another mitigation mechanic(and an annoying one when the AI seems to love high-level Raid Starships).

Still, if there's only one mechanic to be used, i'd still vote for armor to be flipped around, as a "higher cutoff" point, per deflectors in my previous post. If you limit damage to the "armor" value, then it remains a functional mechanic across all fleet ranges.

Normal fleet ships could have low cutoff values to go with low health, meaning armor piercing eats them and other fleet ships will have slight trouble. And that's mainly where i see the problem with armor levels as they are now.
Fleet ships or Golems can be easier balanced via HP buffs/debuffs, or by mechanics like radar dampening, or shields.
Fleet ships however, by having armor that "minimizes-limits" instead of "maximizing-limits" damage input, are hard to properly balance. Any amount not too high to cause potential trouble will be quite meaningless in all but a few specific cases.

And sorry again if this was another issue that has been brought up before ^_^ i'll just freely voice my thoughts, and you can just ignore me if thats the case, but i think it's still more productive than just shutting up completely, maybe sometime i tend to tangent a nuance that was not mentioned or thought about beforehand

5

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Can someone give me an example of appropriate turreting?

« on: February 16, 2012, 07:59:49 AM »

I tend to use one "choke" system with 3 warps as Fortress World.

One of the warps goes to my cluster of home system+economy colonies, however small that may be.
One of the warps goes off to whereever i need to expand/go.

One of the warps goes to a low-level(MK1 or MK2) border world that will be the _ONLY_ world bordering one of mine with an intact warp gate.
That means all normal waves will be funneled into this world, and all CPA's or other attacks will also need to pass here to get at my juicy backlands.

This allows me to HEAVILY fortify this system, usually with a Logistics 3 station, Black Hole Machine, Planetary Armor Booster+Inhibitor, Radar Jammer MK2, full caps of turrets, several force fields, Spirecraft Attritioners and Siege Towers and a Fortress or 2(in Low-Power Mode until needed). I don't even use "grav turrets" in this, as i feel like cheating the pathfinding AI when doing so, but still, normally it holds it's own...if i find a golem of lesser utility in my situation, it goes there as well. Due to the waves incoming, it's also a nice place for a botnet golem.
Also, this allows me to fully utilize my fleet for offensive operations elsewhere in the galaxy and not having to run back every time the AI starts one of their shenanigans.

6

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: 30 seconds in...

« on: February 16, 2012, 07:50:29 AM »

Well, using it is of course out of the question, as there is no benefit to be gained, but is destroying it just to have access to the (rather vast) resources of the planet even a viable thing to do? That's what I want to hear opinions about 

just to correct that in CASE you had a wrong impression on that:
You _CAN_ work up a reduction debt. That is, any accumulated reduction never goes to waste. Next time you up your AIP, reduction will apply that you worked "up" before.
So well, there could be some benefit to be gained.

I had a same case in a game a while ago, with 7/7 comps, and some other easy planets to take. So i did that, and then focused all my attention on the ST. Was too early to really have a chance of holding it perpetually, but it DID help somewhat...

7

AI War / Re: Armor is not that important currently

« on: February 16, 2012, 06:16:13 AM »

Just to chime in on this:

How about a two-fold protection system.

Namely, using armors AND deflectors.

In this scenario, "armor" would flat-out reduce incoming damage by it's value.
Low numbers for armor, not pierceable, maybe medium values for stronger starships.

Effect: High RoF Enemies would do low(down to 1) damage against the targets, other ships deal damage almost normally.

Deflectors, on the other hand, would either CAP damage or reduce it by a percentage.(Percentage would be more in line with whats used now).
Personally, i'd even favor the "capping" as that would make balancing easier, imho, especially if some units(e.g. artillery golem) ignored deflectors.

Effect: High RoF enemies could do full damage(if no armor), but strong single shots would get reduced. On the other hand, these would be
"pierceable", increasing the "damage cap" that can be done to them.

Examples:
A Starship could have "Armor 5000", meaning any attack lower than 5000 only deals 1 damage to it, however stronger attacks manage to "bypass" the armor and deal damage accordingly. Effectively shutting down low-MK as well as low-damage/high ROF units.

A "Tank" unit could have "Deflectors 100", meaning no shot would do more than 100 damage per hit against it. However, a unit with "Piercing 1400" could
do 1500 damage per hit to it, making deflection and piercing meaningful mechanics.

Yet another, (say, flagship line) could have "Armor 3000" and "Deflectors 10000", meaning ships that hit lower than 3000 get reduced to 1, and stuff hitting higher than 10000 would get "capped" to 10000, which would have quite an impact on survivability.

That would create 3 distinct "groups" of units.

Those with deflectors would be vulnerable to piercing mechanics, but strong against high-damage, low RoF units.
Those with armor would be vulnerable to high-damage units, but strong against low damage, high RoF units.
Those with both would need to be carefully balanced, but would fit nicely for a starship role, providing good survivability with vulnerabilities on both ends.

Just throwing that out there...

8

AI War / Re: Save-scumming / Mastery of time-travel

« on: February 16, 2012, 05:49:18 AM »

as for the original question:

When i play single player, i only "savescum" on truely stupid mistakes costing me the game. If i was having fun i see no reason to say, "ok, picking up that shard was what the AI waited for, especially since right afterwards spire civilian leaders protested to bring the AI Progress Level up to MK3 and the AI used this for a CPA that will hit when the Shard is half way home, well, humanity is doomed".
I accept a certain back and forth, i tend to have a fortress system in a choke, and all beyond that is readily accepted to "fall", as well as golems or other stuff. But if it's game-costing, i see no reason to "stop" if i know i could do better.

As for multiplayer, i am currently playing with a friend new to the game...so yeah, we save-scum often. We play in "less-tactical"-mode, glassing the galaxy, against a lower-level bully and a higher-level assassin...so each of us "holds" one front, but as he's learning still, some reloads are just a necessity to prevent frustration.(i could always recover for him, but losing 4 systems, his whole fleet and some trader-purchased stuff is only "fun" the first time it happens...subsequent losses just seem to keep him out of the game forcing him to rebuild while i expand on my front AND clear systems on his for him to colonize...

9

AI War Technical Support / Mantis Tracker - how to resend activation email?

« on: February 15, 2012, 04:32:37 AM »

Yesterday I tried registering over there, same name as here.

However, i seem to not have received my activation email(neither inbox nor junk folder holds it),
and have not found a way to "resend" it, either?

My name, however, is now taken(i tried re-registering).
What do to?

10

AI War / Re: 5.025 Looks Good!

« on: February 13, 2012, 12:21:53 PM »

oh, i was not aware of that, sorry-
as probably obvious, i'm quite new to the forum, and while having stalked a bit, i have not stumbled upon those discussions.

If i'm not asking to much, could you quickly sum up the reasonings behing the "no" or provide a link to them?

I'd be very interested because AI War always struck me as a game that reduced tiresome micromanagement wherever possible, to streamline the gaming experience itself-
and manually turning on/off reactors as needed always struck me as a bit...irritating on the micromanagement side.
I have to admit though, up to now i didn't even realize there was a hotkey for this. But manually doing it was tiresome, at best, and i always wondered why THAT was not automatic when everything else seemed so convenient-(build loops, FRD mode, automatic harvesters...)

11

AI War / Re: 5.025 Looks Good!

« on: February 13, 2012, 12:08:49 PM »

yes please...automated energy management would be wonderful!
and even not too difficult.

currentenergyneeded=x
currentenergyproduced=y

if reactoravailable(zenith)
turnonreactor(zenith)
endif

while(reactoravailable(mark2)&&x-y>35000)
turnonreactor(mark2,1)
endwhile
//turn on MK2 until MK1's are more efficient.

if(reactoravailable(mark1)>=roundup(x-y/5000)
//see if we can bridge the remaining gap with MK1's, no matter if it's only 35k or smaller or we run out of MK2 and there are enough MK1's.
turnonreactor(mark1,roundup(x-y/5000)
//is so, turn on sufficient MK1 reactors.
else if(reactoravailable(mark2) turnonreactor(mark2,1)
//otherwise, instead add another mark2 if available(say you need 30k energy but only have 5 MK1 reactors).
else
while (x>y&&reactoravailable(mark3))
turnonreactor(mark3,1).
if(reactoravailable(mark1)>=roundup(x-y/5000)
turnonreactor(mark1,roundup(x-y/5000)
endwhile
turnonreactor(mark1,all)
//only if no mk2 are available and the remaining mk1 are not sufficient to cover: turn on 1 MK3 and see if we can cover the rest with MK1's.

if (y-40000>x)
turnofreactor(MK2,1).
//if we are running a redundant MK2 at this point, courtesy of MK3 reactor online, turn it off.


To sum it up:
This way, the game would do the following steps in "human speech":

Zenith Power Generator, if available, is automatically running. If you would get away with
fewer than 5 MK1 reactors after having build a Zenith, your game is ending soon, anyway.

Start up as many MK2 reactors as needed to bring energy coverage within 35k of whats needed.
Then, if possible, start enough MK1 reactors to cover the remainder.
If there's not enough MK1s, it starts up another MK2 instead.
If theres not enough MK1's, and no MK2's left, it instead starts 1 MK3, then takes another
look at wether, if energy is still needed, there's enough MK1's to do the job, and starts them
if possible. Otherwise, it starts another MK3 and looks again if MK1's are sufficient, until it
runs out of MK3's or the MK1's can take over. If we run out of MK3's, all MK2's are already running,
and so we also start all remaining MK1's, because even if we are negative, when stuff
gets killed, we may get back to positive faster...
Then, courtesy of low reactor count, we could be running 1 redundant MK2, so we check if it's
save to turn that off and there we go.

Naturally, to not impact other stuff, energyneeded should be a value that not only takes energy into account, but leaves a little buffer(and of course, golems would need a way to be considered here) and when you try to "activate" something from low-power mode, it should recalculate with the new need inmediately(so getting a fortress or low-powered golem online again would not be problematic). If you leave a little "buffer" you could probably get away with only running this calculation whenever you would get into negatives or once every 30 seconds or so(or only when you deviate from the "buffer" value by, say, 20k energy)

Note that this does not "cover" turning on or off reactors. It just takes a look in regular intervalls that would "activate" the most efficient set of reactors available for your current energy needs. Which, in my book, is totally fine for a automated energy management system, and less work.

I would absolutely LOVE that. If you could "set" the buffer to a certain size as players per CTRLS, then even golems would be unproblematic(even if your reactors would go haywire for a second, when the golem just came online and it attempts to get the huge energy buffer anew)