Topics

1

AI War / Warp Gates with multiple players

« on: March 20, 2012, 07:13:21 AM »

So after years of owning this I started my first MP game with a friend but I have no idea how the warp gates work in mp

Do we need to leave 1 warp gate next to each of our territories or just next to 1 of our territories to achieve the bottleneck thing?

If we leave just a single warpgate next to my territory will the AI send unannouced waves to my friend?

2

AI War / Uhmm New patch??

« on: June 17, 2011, 11:21:04 PM »

So i bought the LotS expansion quite a long time ago but i havnt played it once since I wanted to play a patched version.. However it seems that the patch is never going to leave beta and its starting to get to me.. i dont want to play the beta as i have bad experiences with them (they are of course betas).
When is the actual patch going to be released? So far i feel like ive wasted my money. I dont want to play the non beta release version either since chances are its kinda crap and from what ive read it does have some problems (again this is normal for a new release)

So yes i sound bitchy but ive been patient and im used to arcen releasing one patch after the other.. Maybe its because of the new game but i really dont care about that xD it would be nice if this would be cleanly patched

Maybe im missing something but both ingame and on this forum page the 2-3(!) month old beta patch is the last one can see :-/

So let me know whats up ^^ maybe im just missing something like an idiot

3

Game Development / Unity 3D thoughts

« on: November 18, 2010, 03:35:06 AM »

I've decided that it may be a good idea for me too to switch to unity3D from the engine I am currently using (although I'm not sure about this yet) and thought this would be the perfect place to ask some questions about it seeing that it is neutral (as opposed to the unity forums) and arcen actually uses it in a full blown 2D game (I am not interested in 3D for now)

First off, if you get  a chance x4000, I guess unity is handling the "2D" rendering quite well (I'm aware it's most likely textures on a 2D plane in 3D space though, correct me if im wrong) but what did you do to get that to work so well? Is there anything I should be aware of? Or can I just do what Unity "wants me to do?"

Btw I havnt even done anything in it. Im just reading about it and see there is a user made custom SpriteManager script available so Im wondering why that is.

Has anybody else here used the engine?

4

AI War / Aren't all AI types supposed to have random ship types?

« on: November 06, 2010, 09:07:38 PM »

I think I once read that the AI like the player gets the 3(4) basic ship types plus one or more types. Of course some AI's also have special ships only available to them and others always start with specific types.

Also if i recall correctly they also *unlock* ships as the game progresses.

Now I'm just asking because in my current game both AI's (Tag Teamer & Shield Ninny) are only using the basic ships from what I can tell (plus guardians) both to defend their planet and in waves... its getting kind of boring

I remember in previous versions the AI would send waves with a wide array of ships (i play with schizo on) and the planets would be defended with different ships

So far every single wave in this game has consisted of frigates, bombers and fighters and all planets are only defending with the same 3 (+ guardians)

5

AI War / AI Eye = Warp Gate??

« on: November 06, 2010, 09:17:44 AM »

I understand how they work except that it seems the game also counts them as a warp gate which isnt explained in the wiki.

When destroying a warp gate on a planet it was still listed as a hostile wormhole (the color of the name doesnt change)
I hover my mouse over the eye and it says Warp Gate[Full - AI Only]

So are they warp gates? Can I bee attacked from the corresponding wormhole if i leave it 'alive'?

6

AI War / Young Nanoswarm broken... nvm I'm just dumb :P

« on: November 05, 2010, 09:09:09 PM »

I have been sending one nanoswarm after the other at enemies but I havn't reclaimed a single ship.. Am I misunderstanding somthing or is the feature just not working.

7

AI War / Bug or 4.0 Feature - High level planets

« on: November 04, 2010, 10:55:04 PM »

I have noticed there are many many more low level planets in a full 120 planet map then previously. In fact there is only 1 level IV and one level III (not counting the core areas where there are a couple of IV's)

Is this intended or is something wrong?

And if it is intended then what was the reasoning? I looked in the wiki but couldn't find anything (Of course the release notes are so gigantic you cant really expect me to )

8

AI War Strategy Discussion / Version 4.0 & Armored Ships

« on: November 02, 2010, 04:36:50 AM »

So after my long AI war break I decided to give it a go with the new version and to be honest I'm not really sure what to think.. It doesn't feel as polished to me at first glance but then again it could also be due to me being used to the old version.

One major complaint is the music.. I don't mean to offend anybody but i REALLY preferred the old soundtrack

But that aside maybe I just need to get used to the new interface/engine. I cant make a definite decision yet.

BUT: Are the armored ships supposed to be this hardcore? I want to get into the new version but when starting with or up against armoreds I quit because it almost seems they are invincible!

Am i just imagining this? Or are they meant to be this resistant and need to be taken out with special ships.


I tried to kill a single one with about 150 ships (bombers and fighter mostly) and it took so incredibly long ( i mean long) that I just quit

edit: I know they are weak firepower wise but even if that "balances" them (it doesnt seem to to me) it doesnt matter.. It just takes AGES to kill them. It really slows down the pace of the game and when playing with AI progress increases would seem to make a big difference when having the bad luck of having an enemy that uses them

9

AI War Strategy Discussion / Using the Acid Sprayers

« on: May 08, 2010, 08:35:07 PM »

How exactly do i use these? Unless im playing against a zenith descendant I only use them as chaff.. They currently seem quite useless to me.

So how to best use them? Obviously they are meant to be used against zenith ships but usually you dont come up against large groups of them

10

AI War Strategy Discussion / AI Progress Difficulty Scaling

« on: May 05, 2010, 05:41:15 PM »

So I read the wiki entry on how to decide whether your playing the right difficulty or not. This is rather important to me due to my OCD and the fact that games take a long time. I really hate starting a game and play for 5 hours just to notice that it's to easy (If i stay alive for 5 hours then there is no such thing as "too hard" )

Now in that entry it says that the game is supposed to be the same difficulty pretty much the whole time.. So if it is too easy after an hour maybe you should restart.

Is this still true?

Now just to get this out of the way: I'm a TBS fan so I play with the pause option and I even (first time this game) turned off the Auto AI progress.

I understand this makes things alot easier (or at least there is not so much a sense of urgency which gets to me) so to compensate I I'm currently playing 2 level 8 AI's (Although fairly easy ones: Tank and Teleport Turtle) on a 120 planet map. I play with schizophrenic AI's, Unexplored map, Extra FOW and Ive hit the 2:30 mark and so far not having a problem at all (as in it's been extremely easy so far). The AI Progress is 137.

I don't think the auto AI progress is a big deal at this stage (It would only be up by 30... And in past games I had it at over 260 without it being much harder)


Ok so what I'm asking is: Does this get harder as the game goes on? Is the wiki entry bogus and the game is just easy at first and starts getting tougher and tougher once the planets start to fill up, waves get bigger and the AI's tech goes up? Is border Aggression going to make the teleport turtle into any kind of challenge?

As said I'm tired of starting over (Ive done it about 25 times...) but I also dont want to waste my time with a super easy setup lol

Btw I tried this setup twice before only I tried a Mad Bomber AI.. The first waves were all around 800(!) ships... Using the tank AI the waves are around 120...

Uhm... Isn't that a bit extreme of a difference? It just makes it EVEN harder to find a fitting difficulty

I'm absolutely loving the game so far but the only thing that is putting me off is the fact that I have really no idea how to set it up ^^



edit: On a side note... I'm running a 2.3ghz Dual Core laptop with 2.75 (usable... whatever that means) gigs of ram.. Am I even going to be able to play a 120 map till the end or is it going to get out of hand? I'd also hate to find the right settings just to have to stop sometime before finishing due to a quadrillion ships lol

11

AI War / 3.1.1.3 AI Progress Report not going away?

« on: April 27, 2010, 07:00:29 PM »

Hey sorry if im wrong (i could only test it quickly and have to go now)

When I got my first (new arnt they?) AI Progress Report for the +1 increase after 5 mins it wouldnt go away. It just sat there annoyingly

Again i only got this once and have to leave now so maybe others can report?

12

AI War Strategy Discussion / AI Points extremly low

« on: April 24, 2010, 11:09:36 PM »

Sorry I have another question:
I just started a game and noticed that the AI has an extremely low amount of points (on the scoreboard). Usually the AI starts with upwards of 300k
Right now they are both under 5k (Ive been playing for about 15 mins maybe)

Did something go wrong in the campaign generation? Is this going to be an extremely easy game or should i disregard those numbers?

Im playing at 7.6 Difficulty btw

13

AI War Strategy Discussion / AI Progress Not increasing?

« on: April 24, 2010, 09:27:14 PM »

Hi I'm sorry that I'm making a new thread for such a small inquiry and Im not posting it in the bugs section as im fairly sure it isnt one.
I remember playing this game months ago (before zenith remnant) and setting the AI progress increases to 1 every 5 minutes.
Now I have started to play with the Zenith Remnant and the AI progress is not going up every 5 mins (this is on every game i have started)
Does this all happen by the hour now? (As in an increase of 20 per hour?) . Or is something really wrong with my game?