Messages

1

AI War Strategy Discussion / Unbelievably hard starting position

« on: November 09, 2010, 09:11:06 AM »

Ok, found a starting pos. Really hard to survive it. My lifespan is about 18 minutes. The settings are the following.

Both Zenith and Neinzul expansions on.
2 diff 8 AIs, one Assassin, the other Tag Teamer.
All plots on.
All minor factions on.
Complex ship types.
Realistic hubs, 80 planets.
Seed: 935546875
Pick anti-armour planet.

My strategy so far has been trying to get Mark I fleet ships up. Hasn't been working so far. Keep getting owned by that hits around 14-15 minutes in.

If I figure out a way to survive I'll update this post.

Edit: Well first wave is easy to survive as long I use anything EXCEPT anti-armours. :/

2

AI War / Re: Z polarizers don't make sense (aka tooltip LIES)

« on: November 09, 2010, 08:58:33 AM »

Isn't 'proportional-to' just a different way of saying 'damage=basedamage*armorrating'? So multiplying by armor rating would still hold....

On further thought the phrasing "does more damage against heavily armored targets" might be more to-the-point for the layman's tooltip.

But out of curiosity, I thought "x is proportional to y" simply meant "as y increases, x increases", not that they increase at the same rate.  As opposed to "x is inversely proportional to y" which I thought meant "as y increases, x decreases".

Anyway, I don't understand the term, I shouldn't use it in a tooltip

Pretty sure "proportional" means in a pattern. e.g. x = root(y), x = 2y, y = ax^2 + bx + c, etc etc.

Oh, I didn't realize the tooltips said actually multiplied by, rather than simply proportional to.  Z Polarizers were dominating lots and lots more stuff than intended so I changed it to be multiplied by the square root of the target's armor rating (pre-computed square root, of course).  Also boosted z-polarizer base damage by quite a lot to compensate.  Just need to fix up the tooltip now to just say proportional-to.

As for their actual balance, I'm certainly open to suggestions, but the old linear relationship was too brutal.

That gives me the impression the pre-computed values are old, since root(1000) = 31 not 22 and root(200) = 14, not 20. (game was on Normal, so all the 'armour ratings' were doubled). You also have 2 different values for 1000 armour.

If they actually WERE square roots of the armour rating I think they might be fine. They'd get 83* vs 7000 armor mark III bombers (they currently get 59).

Actually I think a good formula might be damage*root(armor * 2). It'd make them scale better against high armor stuff. e.g. 118 mult vs 7000 armor, but still only 20 mult vs 200 armor.

3

AI War / Z polarizers don't make sense (aka tooltip LIES)

« on: November 09, 2010, 06:41:18 AM »

So yeh, story time!

I pick Z polarizers again, thinking they'd be fun and strong unit. Homeworld spawns next to a Mark IV planet... I think I can probably take it out extremely quickly. So start preparing. Then I get curious. I wonder, just how much damage does a Z Polarizer do? It says "attack * armour rating". Ok, so vs a mark IV bomber, it should be 7000 * 96... I check the reference thing in stats... That's weird, Mark IV bombers BEAT them. Something ain't right. So I send one to an enemy planet, pause right as it arrives, and start checking the damage values. Turns out the "armour rating" is rather arbitrary. My findings.

Note: Armour rating = actual damage / 96 (damage of mark II Z polarizer). Armour value = displayed armour in the ship's tooltip. With AV/AR, lower = better.

Ship Name	'armour rating'	armour value	AV/AR
Fighter	20	200	10
Frigate	24	300	12.5
Zenith Bombardment Ship	24	300	12.5
Bomber	44	1000	22.72
Spec ops post	88	2000	22.72
Wormhole gaurdpost	2	0	DIV/0
Warp gate	62	1000	16.12
Orbital Command Station	76	1500	19.73
Siege Starship Mark III	28	200	7.14
AI Missile Gaurd Post	56	800	14.28

No pattern at all. They barley kill bombers faster then frigates (27 hits vs 30, 1000 armor vs 300). What I assumed would be the armor rating isn't the armor rating at all.

Conclusion: Tooltip needs to be fixed to match the ship, or the ship needs to be fixed to match the tooltip. I'd prefer the latter.

PS. Wasn't sure if I should put this in bug reports.

4

AI War / Re: Dreadnoughts

« on: October 20, 2009, 06:18:01 PM »

Originally dreadnoughts were suggested to have a powering up directional weapon (super laser or the like) so that they can vastly out range all defenses and 1 shot kill most smaller buildings but mainly all spaceships, maybe thats something MK2 or MK3 should get - Mk1 to slow the ship down, MK2 and MK3 to shredder them, that way their role as starship counter (think arachnid for players) would become more defined, i think..

That'd be pretty cool, especially if they couldn't fire past force-fields (it'd absorb the shot and take damage).

I'd probably do that they all have that mega-cannon, and they still have that spider like several shot thing with long range. So you got this massively powerful offensive weapon, supported by a long range spider cannon as defense, to keep the smaller ships away. :]

5

AI War / Re: Help with selecting a new game

« on: October 18, 2009, 03:25:56 AM »

Haha, here's one thing you could try (warning, will lag IMMENSELY).

Basically do a 10 planet map, then keep searching until you get the 2 enemy homeworlds (non-starting planets) adjectent to each other, and only one wormhole into the starting planets. Then select every starting planet. It's you with 8 planets (all homeworlds) vs the 2 AI homeworlds. Make them 7+ and both homeworlders. Then try to win.

6

AI War / Re: Dreadnoughts

« on: October 17, 2009, 08:53:03 PM »

Ok, Dreadnoughts aren't so impressive.  Not all units are going to be as impressive as others since just getting to build that extra amount of firepower is a bonus... but that probably doesn't cover it completely in case of the dreadnought.

So what sort of boost should they get?  Stick with their "role" as is and just pump up the damage?  Give them a bonus against a ship type that their current competitors (raid starships, fighters, etc) don't have?  Give them some sort of special ability to compensate (like temporarily disabling a struck starship for 10 seconds, though that might be too micro-ish or have other big problems)?

Or do raid starships or the other competitors need a nerf to make the dreadnought feel more needed?

Or some combination?

From my experience with them I think they need bonus damage against shields, turrets, basically all non-mobile ships, to make them good at the role of "bombardment". Against mobile ships increasing their engine damage to say 100 so they 1 shot most ships engines would be nice (and also make them somewhat decent at taking down starship engines - currently they'll kill the actual starship before it's engines die). I also think they II and III varients need a straight damage boost to match their knowledge cost.

7

AI War / Re: This AI is awesome.

« on: September 29, 2009, 03:16:45 PM »

Alright, so some more crazy antics from the AI in a recent game.

Had a whole bunch of cruisers sitting near my home station. There was also a bunch of enemy cloaked ships somewhere, good 200 at least. And a wave of bombers heading towards home station. I quickly checked my defense, only to find out those cloaked ships were etherjets, and that they were making off with my cruisers in the opposite direction! I quickly ordered a flagship on a nearby planet to return home for defense. Thanks to some fancy trickery with repairing a shield I managed to wear the bombers down and survive!

8

AI War / Re: Pathfinding and perma mines

« on: September 28, 2009, 01:35:14 PM »

I imagine flagging a wormhole as "no-go" is possible, but avoiding them by "pathfinding" ain't gonna happen, since this game doesn't have any pathfinding anyway (which wormholes to take is the extent of it).

You should probably take a second read over that.

It made sense in my head. <3

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AI War / Re: A whiff of imbalance in the air

« on: September 28, 2009, 12:43:02 PM »

Yeh, I made a thread on it, mostly recommending how to balance them. Yours drives the point home much better that they need to be nerfed.

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1303.0.html

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AI War / Re: Pathfinding and perma mines

« on: September 28, 2009, 12:40:32 PM »

I imagine flagging a wormhole as "no-go" is possible, but avoiding them by "pathfinding" ain't gonna happen, since this game doesn't have any pathfinding anyway (which wormholes to take is the extent of it).

11

AI War / Re: Prerelease 1.999H (Ship Acceleration/Deceleration When Moving)

« on: September 27, 2009, 08:06:10 PM »

My guess is a dark city reference.

and what's that? >.<

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AI War / Re: Prerelease 1.999H (Ship Acceleration/Deceleration When Moving)

« on: September 27, 2009, 05:21:53 PM »

Could someone please explain what Murdoch means? D:

13

AI War Technical Support / Re: DirectX Problems

« on: September 27, 2009, 12:30:28 PM »

"ATI Radeon XPress 200M. "

Sounds like some really really terrible mobile integrated card. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't support DirectX at all.

After a quick google, it appears your card should fully support DirectX 9.0. No idea really.

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AI War Technical Support / Re: DirectX Problems

« on: September 26, 2009, 08:54:33 PM »

You running mumble?

15

AI War / Re: Prerelease 1.999H (Ship Acceleration/Deceleration When Moving)

« on: September 26, 2009, 06:38:26 PM »

I'm bothered by it a bit. The sudden stopping and starting never bothered me, so. "Don't fix what ain't broken" as they say.

I'll get used to it tho, so don't worry.