AI War:Current Post-5.000 Beta

Prerelease 5.005

(Note: this prerelease is not publicly available yet, we're still working on it)

Prerelease 5.004

• Added "Toggle Use-Group-Move-By-Default" In-Game key-bind (no default key, but you can set one on the In-Game tab of the input bindings window):
  • Toggles the value of the Use-Group-Move-By-Default global control (normally changed through the controls screen, but can be set this way for convenience).
  • Note that if you have the controls window open while using this key-bind, the controls window will not automatically update to reflect the change as that would destroy any changes made since the window was opened.
  • To make it easier to know which way it was toggled (without having to open the controls window, which would defeat the purpose), using this toggle displays a local message on the screen noting the change.

• HUGE Memory breakthrough.
  • Bad news first: the bad news is that this touched 63 different code files, and has resulted in approximately 4500 disparate lines of code being changed in a spiderweb pattern all throughout the application. So... expect some bugs. So far we haven't seen any, but with an organization change this drastic some are inevitable. Why, oh why, would we do this?
  • Well, that brings us to the good news: the baseline heap memory usage for the application has been literally HALVED, and in large savegames it's also... well, about halved in most cases. For those players that had been experiencing the dreaded "Too Many Heap Sections" error (thanks to Unity 3D's less than stellar garbage collector bounding capping out at about 900MB), this is tremendous news.
  • As a small ancillary bonus, this also makes both the program itself and individual savegames load a bit faster. The older your CPU, the more you will notice this effect (on older CPUs, it could shave off multiple seconds, actually).
  • As another not-so-small bonus, this restructuring cuts down on some confusing cases with the spirecraft and how some of the by-unit-scale stuff works. Long-term, this should mean a lot fewer bugs related to the unit cap scales, which is also welcome news. Some subtle bugs related to the armor rating have already been fixed as just part of making this transition, though we don't think anyone reported these specific ones.

• The regen ability now shows how long, in time, it will take to completely heal the ship from 0 hitpoints to full hitpoints, rather than showing the per-second gain. Thus some mental math is removed, and the display of this can be consistent between different unit cap scales.

• Ever since the porting to unity, annoyingly, we've had a bug of our own making that caused the first profile to always be the one used, rather than whatever you last used. Fixed.

• Player profiles are also now once again sorted by name, which they used to be but haven't been since the switch.

• A new "Don't Compress Savegames" toggle has been added to the Advanced tab.
  • The only time you should turn this on is if your save process is being inordinately slow, or if you are getting "Too Many Heap Sections" crashes. Otherwise, you'll want this on, as uncompressed savegames are pretty huge. But enabling this will save on RAM use during savegame compression and decompression -- the larger the save, the more the savings in RAM with the compression disabled.

(Released March 17th, 2011)

Prerelease 5.003

• Updated the Unit Cap Scale "High" option's lobby tooltip to note the chance of the game simply running out of memory in the late game and that autosaving and reloading every couple hours can be necessary to get through it.

• Fixed a typo in the first Fallen Spire journal entry.
  • Thanks to Neck for the report.

• Fixed a bug where the "I Have A Bad Feeling About This" achievement was not being awarded.
  • Thanks to Tirulii for the report and save.

• The AI's (announced) exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Fallen Spire stuff now also contribute points to a sort of "homeworld defense fund". If that has any points and an AI homeworld comes under major assault, a defense force is immediately spawned on that homeworld. This can prove... unpleasant.

• Minor faction Fallen Spire ships (NOT the human-controllable ones) buffed quite a bit.

• Previously the controls window was not fitting vertically on 1024x600 (which isn't officially supported but we try to make it playable). Fixed to fit better.
  • Thanks to Talaraine for the report.

• Courtesy of the current #1 on the mantis vote tallies: Added "Copy To Disk" and "Copy From Disk" buttons to bottom of the controls screen.
  • Copy To File creates a copy of your global controls (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) as "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory.
  • Copy From File prompts you to confirm first, and if you confirm it overwrites all your global control (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) from what's in "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory. If you don't actually have such a file it doesn't do anything when you confirm.
  • Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion that inspired this feature.

• Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote tallies list: Added "Mobile Tractors With Full Load Rally" toggle to the global tab of the controls screen.
  • If this toggle is checked, when one of your mobile units with tractor beams (notably Etherjets, Spire Tractor Platforms, Spirecraft Martyrs, and Black Widow Golems) has a "full load" (all tractors active), it will look for a rally post to rally to. If that rally post happens to be a redirector, that will work as it normally does, etc.
  • When the rally trigger kicks in, all other orders (including FRD and attack-move, etc) will be canceled on the tractoring unit. But if you give the ship an order after the rally behavior is triggered, it won't retry the rally unless it it loses one of its tractor targets and then fills up again.
  • Note that this does not apply to Riot Control Starships with tractor modules, because the modules themselves are not mobile units.
  • Thanks to PineappleSam for the suggestion inspiring this control.

• Another from the vote tallies: Artillery Golems are now immune to radar dampening.
  • Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion.

• Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote-tallies: Added "Auto-Scout-Picket" command to the context menu (there's also an key bind, unbound by default):
  • Tell all cloaking scout units in the selection to try to station themselves on a planet where you do not currently have scout intel. Basically it:
    • 1) Makes a list of all scouts with cloaking in your selection.
    • 2) Makes a list of all planets you do not have current (less than 5 seconds ago) scout intel.
    • 3) Sorts that list of planets by distance (ascending) to the planet with your selection.
    • 4) Tells the first scout in the first list to go to the first planet in the second list, and so on. If it runs out of planets it loops back to the beginning of the planet list and thus it will double up, etc. When it runs out of scouts it stops.
  • Please remember that this order (and auto-explore) are only intended to automate simple scouting situations and thus save you time giving otherwise trivial orders. If your scouts all die before accomplishing anything that means that it's not a simple scouting situation and you'll need to take manual control to get good results.
  • Thanks to Malibu Stacey for the suggestion that inspired this command.

• AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3, from previously being Unity 3.1.

(Released March 8th, 2011)

Prerelease 5.002

• Fixed bug in last version where maws had no ship cap.
  • Thanks to Orelius for the report.

• Removed the (somewhat jokingly named) "HasWarpEngineMufflers" UnitData flag, and replaced it with per-unit logic that looks at ActionStatus (Normal, MinorFaction, or Zombie) and tells it to not play wormhole-transition sounds for MinorFaction or Zombie ships that are allied with the player.

• Fixed bug on the stats window resource-flows tab where most construction/repair/etc outflows were reported as positive instead of negative.

• Fixed bug that was greatly delaying the onset of gravity slowdown on units entering grav range in some cases.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for the report and save.

• Courtesy of being really high on the vote tallies: previously double-clicking a single unit would select all (your) units of that exact type on the screen. Now triple-clicking will do the same thing except it will include all units of the same general type (ShipType). Meaning that triple-clicking a fighter of any mark will select all your fighters of any mark on the screen.
  • Caveat: the general categorization being used is sometimes more general than mark; notably remains rebuilders have the same ShipType as engineers. Requests to make triple-clicking an engineer not also select remains rebuilders are likely to be ignored ;)
  • Also, we have to do this triple-click detection manually, so basically it's looking for a third click within 3 tenths of a second after the double-click selection. If this timing is problematic, let us know.
  • Thanks to Toll for the suggestion.

• In response to the number-one-on-the-vote-tallies mantis issue:
  • Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Show Strong/Weak Info":
    • Defaults to Alt+W.
    • When this is active and the mouse cursor is over a ship, each planetary summary sidebar entry will display Win/Lose/Draw (and a % indicating intensity of win or loss, if it's not a draw) as a rough indicator of how effective a cap of the ship type under the cursor would be against a cap of the entry's ship type. Since planetary summary entries frequently include multiple distinct types of ships, this is perhaps most useful in conjunction with the "Guide" mode of the planetary summary that shows all ships of a given mark level (the default key for switching to guide mode is F1). However, even in normal mode this can be useful to at least get a rough feel for which of your ships on the planet are the best you have on hand against a specific target.
    • Caveat: this is not using a full simulation or anything like that, it uses the same simplified formula as the reference tab uses. So stuff with modules won't really get accurate results (because it's only counting the base hull), etc.
    • Suggestions on text color, default keys, etc, are quite welcome; we're not totally happy with the effect right now but don't have a lot of time to fiddle with alternatives.
  • Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Strong/Weak => One Vs One":
    • Defaults to Alt+E (so the full combination would be to hold Alt+W+E).
    • When both this and the "Show Strong/Weak Info" keybind are active, the strong/weak info shown will use a one-ship vs. one-ship comparison instead of the normal cap vs. cap comparison.

• Snipers (the ship, not the turrets) :
  • Bonus vs UltraLight from 6 => 1.
  • Bonus vs Light from 1 => 6.

• On to #2 on the vote tallies list: The mouseover tooltip for the AI Progress display on the resource bar now displays each of the tech level thresholds for each AI Player.
  • Thanks to wyvern83 for the suggestion.

• Fixed a moderately longstanding bug where having the first AI player at tech level 1 and the second AI player at tech level 2 would actually draw as the text "II/II" instead of "I/II" on the resource bar.

• The "selection description" window in the bottom right of the hud that shows the count of each type in the selection now shows two percents: the first is the average percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type (this used to be there before the Unity port, and it's back now!), the second is the lowest percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type.
  • Thanks to Vinraith for reminding us about the missing average-health info.

• The selection description window will now try to display up to 30 entries without resorting to a scrollbar, instead of only 5.

• Replaced the old "if CanUseNeinzulRegenerator then multiply by 2" wave-size rule with a more general UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier UnitData field.
  • Everything with CanUseNeinzulRegenerator (which is just the 5 youngling types), gets a 2 for this.
  • As an experiment, Bombers get 0.8 and Fighters and Missile Frigates get 1.2. Bomber waves will probably still be more dangerous (as is intended) but it might make the difference in "interestingness" less. Not planning to touch the bonus ship types because if the AI has a particularly bomber-like bonus ship type that should just be a characteristic of the kind of difficulty you'll be facing in that game, etc.

• Exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Broken-Golems-Hard or Spirecraft-Hard minor factions (but not Fallen Spire ones) now have a chance (50% for Broken-Golems, 20% for Spirecraft) of using an alternate composition distribution that heavily favors a large lead ship and a single battlegroup.

• Broken-Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exogalactic strikeforce initial-strength, per-minute-increment-amount, and maximum-strength all increased roughly 10%.
  • Thanks to Shrugging Khan for pointing out that these are a bit on the easy side right now. In other words, blame him if these slaughter you now.

• The Armored, Black-Widow, Artillery, and Regenerator Golems used in exogalactic strikeforces are now different than the "standard" AI golems (like those used by the Golemite AI Type). The main difference is that they lack the 1/10th-health-of-a-normal-golem rule (but the Armored variants still have a 1/2 health modifier, since they're so buff).
  • Thanks to Shrugging Khan for continuing to provoke the golems.

• Black Widow golem health and Attack Power boosted a bit (15%-ish).

• Regenerator Golem health doubled, in response to various concerns that they're less useful than other golems.

• The "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's current speed" logic has been extended to include "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's tractor-er's current speed", since in the "tow" case the target's current speed is almost always zero.
  • Thanks to kjara for the report.

(Released February 22nd, 2011)

Prerelease 5.001

• Made it possible to bind Mouse2, Mouse3, Mouse4, Mouse5, or Mouse6 to the primary key of a KeyBinding. For reference, Mouse2 is the middle mouse button. Mouse0 is left-click, Mouse1 is right-click, and both are excluded from this due to being used in many other ways by the main input code. Mouse3-6 don't exist on most mice, but are available for those who have them.
  • One example use of this is to bind OpenDefaultContextMenu to Mouse2 (middle mouse). We're not sure if this would cause major conflicts with middle-mouse-scrolling or mouse-wheel-zooming (due to accidental click-downs during wheeling); if you try it please let us know how it goes. Seemed ok in our testing.

• Fixed a bug where the special-move context menu's catch-right-clicks option was basically failing to do anything. Now when it is toggled on it properly re-interprets right clicks outside the menu as "set destination to clicked point and then execute".

• Updated tooltips for:
  • Armored Golem.
  • Artillery Golem.
  • Black Widow Golem.
  • Cursed Golem.
  • Regenerator Golem.
  • Hive Golem.
  • Botnet Golem.
  • Military Command Stations.
  • Captive Human Settlements.
  • Fallen Spire lobby tooltip (reference to wiki removed due to complaints).
  • Thanks to Burnstreet, c4sc4, techsy730, and Sunshine! for contributing suggestions about these.

• Fixed a bug where hybrids were... basically completely broken. Sigh. The "don't let hybrids rebuild modules if they've recently been damaged" code was inverted in such a way that they could never build modules. And because they could never get modules, they were never satisfied that they were ready to go attack or defend or whatever.
  • For reference, this bug went unreported for roughly 20 versions. The Hybrids are plotting revenge.
  • Thanks to Draco18s and Draco Cretel for reporting. The Hybrids might spare them.

• Reclamators (excluding zombie-reclamators) :
  • Replaced the "cannot do reclamation damage to ships more than one mk level higher" rule: the reclamation effect of the actual damage done is multiplied as follows:
    • If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64.
    • If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48.
    • If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32.
    • If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16.
    • If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8.
    • If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4.
    • If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2.
    • If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1.
    • There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable.
  • Leech Starship base attack power from 120k*mk => 30k*mk.
  • Parasite base attack power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.
  • Nanoswarms inherent 16x-reclamation property down to 2x, but no reduction in actual damage.
  • Spire Teleporting Leech base attack power also not reduced, because the general feeling is that these are pretty underpowered already. Might nerf these later if this proves to be too much.

• Parasites:
  • Effective range from 3700 => 6000.
  • Armor piercing from 0 => 750*mk.
  • Base Health from 7200*mk => 14400*mk.

• Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).

• Some triangle rebalancing:
  • The rationale here is that bombers have been having their way with forcefields a bit too much, and having fighters be so much more "general-dps" than the other two has made them much less a natural predator of the Bomber. Also, the Missile Frigate is still being reported as the least desirable by a significant margin.
  • Fighters (including the tachyon and bulletproof variants) :
    • Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2.4 => 5.
  • Bombers:
    • Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Heavy from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Artillery from 10 => 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 1900*mk => 2400*mk.
  • Missile Frigates:
    • Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Neutron from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk.
    • Base Crystal Cost from 700 => 500.

• Fixed a bug with the electric shuttle "chain lightning" mechanic where it could hit a single forcefield way more times than intended. Used to be as many as 200 per shot, but now down to 5 (anything can be hit 5 times per shot).
  • Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.

• Fixed bug where electric shuttles were able to chain-hit the same target 10 times in one blast (thus getting maximum efficiency against groups 20 or larger) instead of 5 (thus needing to hit at least 40 to get full damage).

• Fixed a bug where Spire Blades, Spire Minirams, and Spire Rams would not actually automatically die (but just self-damage by some amount) when attacking.

• Tractor Beam Turrets:
  • Base Health from 210k/840k/1680k => 560k*mk.
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.

• Beam Guardians:
  • Bonus Vs Turret from 8 => 1.
  • Bonus Vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.
  • Bonus Vs Artillery from 2 => 1.
  • Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 4500*mk.
  • Base Armor Rating from 600*mk => 300*mk.

• Laser Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.
  • Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).
  • Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.
  • Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
  • Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.
  • Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.
  • Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.

• Raider Guardians:
  • Now Have Radar Dampening Range of 8000.

• Lightning Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 800*mk => 600*mk.
  • Now use the same "can hit up to 200 targets max, but can do max damage to as few as 40 by hiting each target up to 5 times" logic as Electric Shuttles.
  • Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk (for reference, Electric shuttles on low caps have 1600*mk, albeit somewhat slower reloading).

• Tractor Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.

• Spider Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.

• Sniper Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.

• Tachyon Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 400 (flat) => 150*mk.

• Gravity Guardians:
  • Max Target Base Speed from 10/8/6/4/2 => 11/10/9/8/7.
  • Grav Beam Base Range from 8k/10k/12k/14k/16k => 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k.
  • Base Armor Rating from 100*mk => 300*mk.

• Zombie Guardians:
  • Shots Per Salvo from 2/3/4/5/6 => flat 2.
  • Base Armor Rating from 5000*mk => 300*mk.
  • Base Attack Range from 9000 => 7000.

• EMP Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.

• Carrier Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.

• Note: the guardian rebalancing is far from done, this was just to tone down some more obvious issues.

• Handicap now has the following effects, all of which is new unless otherwise noted:
  • AI
    • Previously it affected the speed at which the AI reinforced. It no longer does.
    • Increases the number of ships in each wave and reinforcement, and decreases when negative.
    • Roaming Enclaves and Preservation Wardens are spawned sooner or later into the game.
    • Scrap waves are scaled accordingly.
    • Specifically "forced waves" are scaled accordingly.
    • Cross planet atacks are scaled accordingly.
    • Saboteur and deep strike reactions are scaled accordingly.
    • For now, event attacks are NOT affected by this.
    • Initial seeding of AI planets are intentionally not affected by this -- same as human players get no starting benefit from handicaps.
  • Player
    • Increases the amount of resources gathered from producers (using a new formula), and decreases when negative (also using the new formula).
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting we revisit this.

• The tech level of the AI is now only inflated by 1 artificially when playing on greater than difficulty 9, rather than greater than difficulty 8.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.

(Released February 16th, 2011)