AI War: Fleet Command

Bleek · 23 Aug 2009 at 10:35

thedude23 said:
I tryed buying it there with my 3v card but it would'nt process my order ,which is weird as I brough the expansion for sins of a solar empire during the week using it

I just used PayPal, it was quick and painless. So if you have PayPal that would be my suggestion.

Bleek · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:39

http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Choosing_A_Difficulty_Level

This is quite important! I started with a level 3 and 4 enemy AI, I found that I wasn't really pushing for the first 2 hours and progress was steady and straightforward.

I moved up to a 5 and 6 level AI and things have become more interesting, I have to properly contest a sector/planet now - not just stroll on in with a small scattered fleet.

One question though - should I use multiple AI or just 1? Can I see the AI to be one-sided i.e. 'every man for himself' so they don't gang-up on me?

Glaucus · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:45

How much life on the astro train and there's two in my sector.
1,000,000,000 Heath if you can't read it.

Bleek · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:47

AcidHell2 said:
How much life on the astro train

Yeah I'm still not 100% sure of their purpose or 'authenticity'? To stop them destroy the nearby station(s), avoid the trains.

I assume they're in the game to eat away at your defences so that you simply can't overly fortify a wormhole making it impossible for the AI to breach?

If that's the case I think a 're-supply' drone to your outposts/weapon platforms would be more 'realistic' i.e. you can't just stack up on turrets at a jump point, you need to factor in their replenishment.

Glaucus · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:49

it's goign down. F1 about to start so i set a few 1000 ships in construction que and will let it run.

Bleek · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:50

AcidHell2 said:
it's goign down. F1 about to start so i set a few 1000 ships in construction que and will let it run.

http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Astro_Trains

It will take some time!

Glaucus · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:52

Down to 96% rofl yeah may take some time. the stations allready destroyed.

Bleek · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:54

There must be another station in an adjacent planet.

Glaucus · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:57

Hit My ship build limit

Bleek · 23 Aug 2009 at 12:58

Just in case you didn't know the ship build limit is per ship type.

Glaucus · 23 Aug 2009 at 13:24

Down to 80%
AT this rate it's 2minutes per 1%...

Give up, until I get some more tech.

Glaucus · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:02

How do I build orbital command station 2?
I've researched it or what ever you want to call it.

x4000 · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:10

Edleake said:
http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Choosing_A_Difficulty_Level

This is quite important! I started with a level 3 and 4 enemy AI, I found that I wasn't really pushing for the first 2 hours and progress was steady and straightforward.

I moved up to a 5 and 6 level AI and things have become more interesting, I have to properly contest a sector/planet now - not just stroll on in with a small scattered fleet.

Oh yeah, the difference is quite dramatic as you move up. People like to say that the true AI starts at difficulty 7 -- which is true in many senses, but I think it's also very interesting once you pass the 5 threshold. It can be useful to play lower than that if you are still learning the mechanics and just want to experiment around, though.

Edleake said:
One question though - should I use multiple AI or just 1? Can I see the AI to be one-sided i.e. 'every man for himself' so they don't gang-up on me?

Actually, you always play against exactly two AIs, no more and no less. This is part of the "asymmetrical" nature of the AI. It auto-adapts difficulty to how many human players are in the game, so if you like playing against double 6s in solo, then that's what you would also want in a 4-player game. The reason for having two AIs is simply to have a few splits in their thinking (so more is going on at once), and so that you can mix and match the AI styles which makes for more interesting combinations. There's no way to play anything other than all-humans versus all-AIs at this stage -- if you're playing on the right difficulty levels for your current skill level, the game is very well balanced for that sort of play. Good question, though!

x4000 · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:11

AcidHell2 said:
Down to 80%
AT this rate it's 2minutes per 1%...

Give up, until I get some more tech.

They really are not intended to be killed, just go for the train stations to re-reroute them, or build Counter-Negative-Energy turrets to thwart them. Here's some more info on astro trains and their purpose.

x4000 · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:13

AcidHell2 said:
How do I build orbital command station 2?
I've researched it or what ever you want to call it.

All of the command stations are built from colony ships. So if you build another colony ship, you'll see you have two valid options instead of just the Mark I command stations. You can only have one command station per planet, so if you want to replace an existing command station you'd need to scrap the other one first (select it and then hit Delete), then replace it with the mark II from your colony ship.

Glaucus · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:16

cheers x4000

x4000 · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:20

No problem!

VaderDSL · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:29

I'm going to buy this I think, just wondering are/will you be working on a new game? Perhaps one to rival Space Empires / Gal Civ etc. the massive unit count and RTS is amazing, but I'd love for a game to have such an expansive tech tree, and even possibly tech trees that are user made dynamically as needs arise?

x4000 · 23 Aug 2009 at 15:37

VaderDSL said:
I'm going to buy this I think, just wondering are/will you be working on a new game? Perhaps one to rival Space Empires / Gal Civ etc. the massive unit count and RTS is amazing, but I'd love for a game to have such an expansive tech tree, and even possibly tech trees that are user made dynamically as needs arise?

Thanks for your support!

As for other games, yes I am working on other games but none of them are strategy games (one planned one is tower defense, but that's all). For me with strategy games in the next 5 years, this one is probably it -- and I don't plan on making an AI War 2, either.

Instead, what I'm doing is continuing to grow this game itself, through free DLC as well as as later paid expansions. I plan to keep growing this game in that fashion for several years, basically as long as there is player interest, and the benefit of that is that players then get all of the cool features in one playable game, rather than split across several mutually-exclusive sequels. So the goal is to have this be one of the largest, if not the largest, RTS around within a few years of that.

I don't see the tech tree ever becoming too deep, because in the context of an RTS I feel like that is a bit too restrictive on play options and encourages similar repeating strategies. Don't get me wrong, outside the RTS genre -- CivIV, GalCiv, etc -- I think that a deep tech tree is the way to go and can work beautifully.

In the case of AI War, I like to keep the tech tree fairly shallow, but incredibly wide. In Civ there are only a few techs available to you at the start, but in AI War around 30% of the techs are available right at the start -- the challenge being that you can only afford one or two of them at first. So that's hope the "build your own civ" nature of the game really comes about, basically. It's certainly different from a lot of other games in that regard, but I think it's cool to try something new like that.

Bleek · 23 Aug 2009 at 16:01

DLC and expansions will be good, perhaps even a players-versus-players system? I appreciate the premise of the game, AI being central but as an option I think this game would work well in 2v2 and 3v3 format.