AI War: Fleet Command

Games
21

Yep, there are actually a lot of different options at your disposal. A lot of information like this is in the mini-guide, but basically:

  1. The best defense is preventative. Putting tractor beams around key wormholes is kind of a must. Putting turrets with the tractor beams tends to work quite well. Bear in mind that a few ship types, like Raiders, are immune to tractor beams.

  2. Ships that are in attack-move mode (hold down the Alt key and then right click, and the border of the ship will turn yellow in far zoom) are also great at defending wormholes, since they can pursue enemy ships that break through. Ships that are in attack-move mode will automatically pursue any enemies that come within their range.

  3. If you have either Spiders or Infiltrators (two of the 25 “bonus” ship types), those both do engine damage against enemy ships. So if you place them as defenders of a wormhole, they will often disable the engines of enemy ships that come in, preventing them from getting very far or stopping them all together. This only works when you have these units, though, which you won’t in many games.

  4. To prevent waves from coming into your resource-heavy planets (most especially your home planet), a big focus early on should be to destroy the warp gates at planets adjacent to yours. That will prevent them from warping in at all.

  5. You are always going to have ships warping in to some of your planets, and managing your defense vs your offense is one of the strategic challenges here. It takes some practice to balance it out, but basically try to leave as few “hostile” wormholes open as possible – or at least get rid of the warp gates near them. Don’t try to get rid of all the warp gates, since that makes the AI Progress go up too much, but get rid of the ones that threaten your most valuable planets if you can.

  6. If you are having trouble with lots of the little special forces ships just wandering into your planets, a couple of tractor beams pair with turrets will generally handle it. But you may also want to go and destroy the Special Forces Command Posts (use Cruisers for this) on planets through which the most special forces guys are routing.

By combining careful scouting with precision strikes, and defensive ships where need be, you can exert a great control over your environment. There will always be ships on some of your planets, but to a certain extent you can choose which ones. There are a ton of strategies open to you, actually, but it all depends on how aggressive or defensive you want to be, how open you are to heavily attacking the enemy early at the expense of having more of their ships on your planets, etc.

In version 1.004, which is coming out tonight (if you have Impulse you can manually install it, I’m pretty sure, but the update will be officially coming out through Impulse in 1-2 days), there is also a new option called “Free Roaming Defender.” You will be able to put your ships into that mode by holding V and right-clicking, and they will get a hot pink border in far zoom. While in that mode, they will actively pursue and destroy any enemy ships on the current planet, which makes planetary defense a lot simpler (this was a great suggestion by a player).

Let me know if you have any more questions (I’ll post here when 1.004 is out, in case you want that tonight)!

22

Now we’re talking, I like to have a little AI on my side too. Okay, your game concent sounds like a blast, I wish it was married with Gratitiousspacebattles dude that posted elsewhere, but I’m always game for large scale mayhem.

This is kinda like Supcom in space, you know, they had a fantastic mod for Total Annihilation, hmm Final Frontier or something.

Ok gotta to go work and earn the money to buy your game ;) Is it for sale now?

23

Haha, excellent. I’ll have to check out Gratitiousspacebattle, I’m not familiar with that one.

In some ways this is kind of like SupCom in space – the looping queues and the zoom and the general controls are all closer to that game than any other – but the way the AI works and the long-term decisions you have to make are really different. You have to really scout and plan ahead in AI War, because bad decision that you make early in the game can affect you negatively hours down the line, even preventing your victory if you are playing on the higher difficulties. That sort of persistence and long-term consequences is something I always wanted in an RTS game, so when I made my own I was sure to put that in there. :)

The game is indeed for sale now, through Impulse or through the Arcen Games website (it’s $20). Glad you like it!

24

Okay… I’ve tried every which way, but now that Games Explorer is integrated into my installer, I can’t get it out without breaking the ability to add future updates. That kind of bites.

However, the game as delivered through the Impulse client does not use the main installer or updates (updates come through Impulse), so that’s not an issue there. So, since your Games Explorer is messed up, if you do decide to buy the game at some point, do so through Impulse so that it will install right.

In the meantime, all you’re looking to do is try the demo anyway, so what I’ve done is uploaded a zip file that contains all of the game files (this is what the installer installs, just minus the installer. You can get the zip file from this location and simply extract it somewhere on your PC: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1004Full.zip That file is still being uploaded at the moment, and will be live in about 35 minutes.

Since the installer won’t be run when you download the raw files, that means you have to do the prerequisites installation yourself. The prerequisites are as follows. Please download and install any that you don’t have, in the following order

  1. DirectX 9.0c (http://www.arcengames.com/dl/dxwebsetup.exe)

  2. Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework (3.5 SP1 is nice, but not required: http://www.arcengames.com/dl/dotNetFx35setup.exe)

  3. SlimDX Runtime, March 2009 SP1 (http://www.arcengames.com/dl/SlimDX%20Runtime%20(March%202009%20SP1).msi)

For everyone else without this issue, it’s much better if you get the updated patch through the “Check For Updates” link in the game itself. The official notice about the new version of the game will be going up in the morning.

25

Hi Chris, I think my skepticism was aimed more at the UI and the bigger strategic picture… it wasn’t until I’d watched the last few of your tutorial video guides that I understood how all the small tactical actions fit into the wider planet exploring, wormhole blockades and targetted strike parts of the game. The intermediate tutorial then whet my apetite for more, and ultimately sold me on the game. Although to be honest, I was almost sold on the “large fleet battles” and “large scale icon based tactical space game” for $20 anyway. :)

I describe the UI as quirky, but I think it was because I didn’t fully get to grips with the zoom mechanics early enough. The AI wasn’t under question, I think I struggled a bit even with the “neutered” version for learning purposes, and I liked the idea that going “balls out” and destroying all the AI in all the planets made the AI ramp up its aggressive reactions… sort of forces you into a more cautious mode of play, where precision attacks are made because of a higher reason than just to rid the galaxy of the enemy. You actively want to hunt out Data Centers and destroy them because it weakens the AI’s progression and aggressive reaction to you. The AI starts out in the game way ahead of you in terms of numbers and tech, but thats part of the games charm, you’re making key stratgic decisions to surgically cut your way through them, controlling the planet space and the wormholes to allow your safe passage, and manage your fleets and resources to snake your through to locate their home planet and be ready to hit them hard at the heart…

I’m still just a newbie at the game itself, but I do see the exciting possiblities for replay in this more focussed “hunt”, rather than it being a tech tree race to superior numbers and planet clearance.

I also applaud indie developers who listen to their community, and are active and open in their discussion with fans, critics and potential new players. Being able to chip in with ideas that may enhance the game and have them seriously considered and sometimes implemented is a very seductive option to most serious players.

I was impressed with the game, that seemed to sneak out without hitting any radar whatsoever, which is why I sort of mentioned it on a number of gaming community sites that I frequent… I do seem to like the reveal of the undiscovered indie gem :)

26

Hmm … I might check the demo out, but I have to say the trailer makes this game look completely un-appealing to me.
I’m not sure, but I guess it’s the C64-level parallax scrolling and the fact that the units move about like in a shmup of the same era.
While I am not necessarily “in need” of a full fledged space physics simulation, a little dose of make-believe when it comes to stuff like gravity and velocity and somesuch isn’t misplaced in a space game, imo.
Maybe I’m alone with that opininon, though.

rezaf

27

Thanks for the help X4000, Finally got the .NET installed, of course then the system wouldn’t recognize the installer as a valid installer… so I downloaded the zip you provided.

That worked! Now tomorrow… er… later today after work I can actually try it out!

28

Managed to sneak in a round, okay, I’m agreeing that this game has ways to go, but hey, its a new spin over concept I like.

I think the focus in this game is large scale battles, so I’m forgiving at the graphics thing, I more see it as Cossacks in space now ;)

For 20 bucks, well worth the fun imho.
Cons, well its still somewhat micro heavy, however its pretty raw outta the burner, also the weapons- effects and otherwise atleast on the early game level, is pretty rudimentary.

Not to mention effects, maybe some modders can help him out here. That said, once you hit the scale this game is trying to stay at, too much and you have a slugfest.

29

What’s the exact effect of increasing AI Progress? Does increasing from 1 to 2 increases AI attack strength as much as 20->21 or does increasing AI progress get more dangerous as AI progress rises?

I’m playing a level 5 difficulty game and I’m at AI progress 28 at the moment and trying to decide whether its worth pushing 4 worlds off of my main front to grab an advanced factory.

30

a lot of errors where windows seems to hang for hours during install seem to be related to people switching off certain windows services. I know I used to get this, and when I went back and enabled all my services it went away.
Worth looking at.

31

The AI Progress is pretty linear, overall. When it goes up, the AI gets larger waves and reinforcements (that’s all that changes, it doesn’t increase their attack power or anything like that). At certain points, the AI also techs up based on AI Progress, but when it does that the number of units adjust downwards a bit to compensate.

If you already have an Advanced Factory, pushing off for that other one might not be worth it unless there are other objectives around. But if you don’t have one, the Mark IV ships would probably be worth it. It’s a judgement call, depending on what else you are able to find and go for in the galaxy.

32

These are valid points, I suppose, but that’s a strange reason not to play an indie game. I mean, I think that the point of indie games is that we have no money, so we work with what we can. The art is all from free sources (mostly Daniel Cook) or generated with inexpensive programs (universe image creator). The ship movement, etc, was also kept as simple as possible to allow for the incredible scale of this game – think of a tactical wargamer type game, only in realtime or in space. My inspiration for this game was much more Chess than Homeworld or whatever.

Normally I’m fine with differing points of view – not everybody is going to like every game, and not every game is for everyone – but one thing that bothers me with comments like this. Basically, when a pretty new AAA title comes out that has crap for gameplay, everybody complains about why did they focus on the graphics and not make the game actually fun. But then, sometimes those same people look at a smaller game with no budget to speak of, and complain that the graphics suck even though the game is fun.

I understand that, ideally, things would work that way, but except in rare cases like Braid or World of Goo, freelance artists aren’t teamed up with indie programmers. I guess it is because your average programmer is too flaky and never finishes the game (to hear Daniel Cook tell it).

Anyway, it just seems kind of like a no-win situation to a degree. I guess I could have taken out a loan on my house to pay for better graphics, but that seems unwise for any indie dev to do. I don’t mean to rant, but I feel kind of strongly about this. No offense intended, a lot of that is not really directed at you.

33

Hi Janster,

The game is actually in a pretty finalized state – I mean, I’m still running the free DLC campaign and have expansions planned, but that’s mostly for added content, ships, etc, as well. I doubt a large-scale overhaul of the graphics will ever be feasible, although if I later have an artist on staff then I would probably want that person to take a look and see what improvements they can make.

But, you’re absolutely right, with a game of this scale the simpler the graphics the better, to an extent. I knew what level of graphics I had available, and so used that as an opportunity to divert the CPU power elsewhere. Typical indie choice, I think.

If you’re finding the game that micro heavy, then I think you’re missing some of the shortcut keys or tactics. Try looking in the View Controls button in the in-game menu (hit escape while playing). Players who are experience with the game are able to manage about 3-4 fighting fronts at once (typically 1-2 offensively), and these are not the fastest clickers in the world – generally the better you have your defenses set up, the less you have to think about them. :)

34

Glad that worked! I think cliffski is right, if an installer fails that’s usually because some service isn’t enabled. You might also try upgrading your windows installer version (http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?FamilyID=5a58b56f-60b6-4412-95b9-54d056d6f9f4&displaylang=en) if it gives you ongoing problems with this and other installers. No worries with AI War since you have the zip file, but good for the future.

35

Ah, gotcha, thanks for the added info. That makes sense. I’m definitely not a UI designer, I look forward to (hopefully) having more money for future projects and being able to actually have someone who knows how to make it pretty. All I really know is how to make it functional/convenient/useful. :)

Ah, that all makes good sense, too. Yeah, I didn’t want to encourage caution in exploration so much as I wanted to emphasize the relative strategic importance of every planet. Like in Chess, when you take any position you are giving up something else (usually AI Progress, or you are creating more ingress points or spreading your forces thinner, etc). I had never seen this sort of system in an RTS before, it’s usually only in turn-based games because of the fact that turns limit the number of actions you can take. With RTS in the past, it has too often seemed easy to just spam whatever unit, then go and overwhelm your enemy with superior force. That’s fun too, to a point, but seems like every other RTS game has that as its focus. I wanted an RTS game that was sort of like realtime chess in space, and it took a lot of design iterations in the alpha before this design finally came out of all the things we tried.

Yeah, every map can be pretty different. You can really start out cornered between some high-level planets, for instance, or the AI core might be really surrounded, or you might have really easy or difficult access to Advanced Research Stations. Plus there are a lot of special units that you might run into on occasion, and a lot of the AI types are really different in feel. Plus some of the maps are really narrow in a lot of parts, with kind of “corridors” between planets that makes defense easier – but for you and the AI – while other maps are really open with lots of wormholes everywhere, making it easy to get where you want to go, but hard as hell to plus all those wormholes. Plus, then there’s all the various other ship types you can unlock through Advanced Research Stations. If you’re still on your first campaign, you’ve seen at most 1/5 of those ships. Some of the more complex ship types add some really unusual strategies (I’m thinking here mostly of EtherJet Tractors and Munitions Boosters). So yeah, should keep you entertained for a while, and I’m adding more stuff every week…

My key thing was to try and make a game that would entertain me despite the fact that I know exactly how everything works. In most other RTS games I am kind of done once I figure out all the strategies, since then it just becomes an exercise in refining the “best path” that I figured out. All of the randomization and differences in scenarios make it such that I still have yet to find anything resembling a best path in AI War, which was one of my chief design goals.

Thanks – I do think it’s important to connect with the community, both players who like the game and those who might not, at first or at all. Helps me learn what is important to people, and a lot of times the smaller gripes (obviously not graphics, but more related to gameplay) can be addressed once I hear about them. Everybody has different expectations when they come to a new game, and making sure that they see the game for what it is versus what it isn’t is sometimes a challenge. But a good challenge!

Haha, yeah, your posts have been much appreciated and have really helped broaden the exposure for the game much more quickly than I could have hoped for. With a game like this, I knew I had to have it where people could actually play it firsthand when they hear about it, since otherwise it would be hard for many to “get it” and really like it. Playing is believing, and all that. There are a number of reviewers that also have the game and so far they all seem pretty universally enthusiastic (knock on wood), so hopefulyl coverage like that will also aid the game in finding an increasing audience. At any rate, your support is much appreciated, and really helps at this early stage for the game. :)

36

Well, like I wrote, I have yet to actually try the game, and judged just from watching the trailer alone.
And I don’t think I’m THAT picky when it comes to graphics and user interface - I can play Dwarf Fortress without any serious issue, and there seem to be a lot people unwilling to put up with such a minimalistic interface. I obviously can’t say anything about your UI before I have tested the demo, though.
Anyway, I didn’t actually say anything about the graphics, just the rudimentary effects - scrolling and movement patterns.
There are freeware shmups (written by single programmers) out there that look much more professional in that regard (even if they have only basic geometric figures flying around), and - sorry, in my mind, a $20 game has to compete to such games at least, even if they’re pulling the indie card.

Still have to actually check the game out though. Who knows, maybe - as with DF - gameplay makes the game shine.

rezaf

37

Fair points. We’ll see what you think when you try out the gameplay. That and the AI were my focal points. And I don’t think the indie card is one that anyone voluntarily “pulls.” It’s what we’re dealt, and we roll with it.

38

Hi. Okay, I have tried it a bit, tbh, I get overwhelmed really quick here, Its not just the case of many units, but the fact that the maps are just one big criss cross mess, there is just too many entry points, and too much to watch.

Basically your screaming for some user made maps, or maybe a random generator that has a distance modification, so that warp points only goes so far, making the map a bit more coherent.

As it is now, figuring whats front and whats rear of the empire is practically impossible. Also the AI spams single ships everywhere, the command ‘v’ which sends units on prowl helped a lot, but there have are things that could help more.

A factory could produce ships that went into combat mode immediatly, thus giving me the ability to not be too concerned about the status of everywhere.

Also the smallest map is 80 stars…I faced some unit build limitations pretty quick, making me unable to field ships enough to cover my empire at all…again intentional or otherwise, but with the maps being as chaotic as they are, this did not help.

Regards
Janster

39

If you hold down Shift while hovering over a planet on the galaxy map, you can see what is adjacent to it with ease (it highlights them). The game definitely has a lot going on, you are right – and some maps have more wormhole entry points than others do. Sounds like you were playing on one with a lot of crisscrossing. If that bothers you, just hit New Seed a few times until you get one more to your liking. The idea of wormholes, in real life as well as in the game, is that they are not distance-dependent. IE, they instantly transport you between any two locations in the universe.

If it bothers you a lot, I could add some sort of mode for next week’s DLC that does less cris-crossing. Let me know what you think.

I could do that, but some maps are already more “coherent” than others, it’s just a matter of what kind you prefer when you click through them. I think I will make that a feature, having different map generation styles so that some are not so overwhelming. You’re the first person to mention this issue to me, actually, but that doesn’t mean other people haven’t felt the same way and just didn’t say anything. So I’ll put some stuff together that might make it more simple in some cases, and I’ll give you a link to a beta version when that is ready.

These are special forces units. It’s possible you are playing against a Special Forces Captain, which uses these super heavily (but their planets are much less defended, which is the tradeoff in your favor). If the units are coming into a given planet too much, you should kill the Special Forces Command Posts that are nearby to the planets in question. That will reduce the number of special forces ships that they get during reinforcements, and it will also cause them to route less frequently through the nearby planets. Additionally, pairing tractor beam turrets at each hostile wormhole will usually stop most of the special forces guys in their tracks.

Not quite sure about the wording of this one. If you are talking about the speed at which the factories can produce ships, add engineers to the factory (up to 3 – just right-click the factory while they are selected), and that will massively increase the production speed. Also building multiple factories helps.

Maybe you are asking about being able to have units coming out of a factory automatically go into the free-roaming defender mode? That could be an interesting idea, too – I’ll add that in the next release, even if that’s not what you meant.

Managing all of this is part of the strategy of it, honestly. If you have half a dozen planets all with hostile wormholes (and no gates destroyed), you are going to have a hell of a time fielding enough guys to defend everywhere. Ideally you can expand in such a way that you keep your flanks defended so that you can concentrate your forces forward more, just defending with tractor beams and turrets in the outlying areas unless a big wave is coming in.

Or, if that isn’t possible on the specific map you are on (because of Mark III or Mark IV planets being around, or because of having too many wormholes on the planets you take – which is a strategic consideration when taking a planet, by the way), then the best thing to do is to search for those Advanced Research Stations and to get lots of knowledge (stealing it off of enemy planets if need be) and then unlock some new ship types, or new levels of ship types. If you neglect your knowledge collection, but take too many hard-to-defend planets, that can also really crimp the size of your fleets.

I realize that there is a lot of adjustment to thinking about the strategy in this sense, though, since it’s so different from other RTS games. In most other games, if you can take something, then do. In AI War, that’s often a good way to lose, because you spread yourself too thin and raise the AI Progress up too much while getting too little in return. It sounds like you would like the ability to play on some smaller maps that might be a bit easier to deal with, though – I’ll look at adding that as an option for the next release, too.

I’ll post a link to another prerelease when I have that ready. Thanks again for playing, and let me know if you run into any other trouble or if there’s anything else that would make it less overwhelming for you.

Best,
Chris

40

Okay Janster, here’s a new prerelease version that has a few feature that should help you out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1005A.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.004, so you have to already have 1.004 installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

What’s new in this version:

  • You can have as low as 40 planets on a galaxy map, which makes it a lot less overwhelming if you’re just starting out, but which also probably hurts the exploration element. But to each his/her own.

  • You can now put space docks and advanced factories into attack-move or free-roaming defender mode when you set their gather points (just right-click like with any other ship type), and then ships that are created from them will go into the same mode as the dock/factory.

That’s all in this version, with looking at the lower planet counts I’m actually not sure if the simplified wormhole path linking is even needed anymore. Let me know what you think if you get a chance, if you still feel like it’s too overwhelming I can look into that more.

As always, if anything else comes up, let me know!

Best,
Chris