IvanTheTerribleToo

Join Date 02/2006

Reflections on 1.2 Beta 1

Commentary

After running wtih 1.2b1 for three games now, I am finally able to post on it. First, let me say that 1.2 is a HUGE improvement over 1.1. Phat kudos to the dev team.

I have put a few posts out criticizing the AI, and many of my previous beefs have been cured.

This includes major improvements to:

1. AI ship/fleet building ability. They now field fleets in the end game that are a challenge to a fully developed human empire (tech wise, and military wise).
2. The AI will go after my starbases now, putting the hurt on.
3. They do a better job of defending their planets.
4. Planetary building is vastly improved, and quite effective IMO. This went from a 2/10 to a 8/10.

Some things that still need work include:

Definition: "Killer Fleet" - A fleet consisting of the strongest possible ships, and the largest possible based on MAX logistics.

1. The AI still fields a gazillion unprotected, or lightly protected transports. I believe this is the last major issue that is killing the AI. Transports should be guarded
by "killer fleets" only. I have said it before, and I feel strongly that this notion of escorts should be left to the hoes. As long as I have "eyes of the universe" which
I nearly always do, I am able to see and pick off nearly all transports before they reach their destination.
2. The AI is now "over-building" defense on ships. Defense is clearly a good thing, as long as your enemy has that particular weapon type. Unfortunately for the AI, a good
player will wait to see what the most worthy opponents are developing weapon-wise, and defense-wise, then focus on maxing the unproteched tech branch, and developing defenses
to match. Granted, I have seem the AI, do "a little" adapting, but still they are not adapting fast or nearly enough.
3. The starbase issue: I get SOOOO tired of pooring a gazillion constructors into developing a starbase, only to have it easily picked off by a strong fleet. Now granted,
starbases need to be able to be destroyed, but the cost of destroying one MUST be higher. The enemy must have to sacrifice enough to make it worth my while, which I strongly feel
should be AT LEAST one "killer fleet", and better yet, about two. A HUGE feature would be to make it so that I can add a starbase to a fleet, thus allowing me to stack ships with
the starbase, adding to its defense. Make it so the entire fleet can't move of course, and maybe make the logistics of the starbase 12 or so. Bottom line is there MUST be a way to
protect a maxed out starbase that I have poored so much into. They should not be so easy a target. Either that or add another level of attack and defense, say 100 att and 50 defense.
4. It seems that the AI isn't focusing on wonders and trade goods as much as before. Maybe I have perfected my technique of getting to the key ones first, but it would make it more
of a challege if they focused more on them.
5. The AI still doesn't build up it's starbases. It seems to have many of them, but mostly they are weak, easy targets. Starbases are relatively pointless without at least several
modules, don't you think?
6. The AI still seems to keep old, and way outdated ships around still. They should either purge them as they become dated, or upgrade them where feasible to save on maintenace.
7. The AI still seems to keep movement down relatively low. I am seeing "killer fleets" with 14 movement, but I am gaining a huge advantage when I have transports and constructors
with 43 movement, and ships with 25+ movement. Of course that sacrifices weapons, but fast "killer fleets" can reek havoc behind the lines, leaving the slower more powerful ones
at home to guard planets and starbases. I would like to see the AI do this as well.

Bugs: these are probably already reported, but I will list them anyway.
1. When you combine two fleets, or add ships to a fleet, you loose the rest of your movement after one attack.

Other things I would like to see changed:
1. I would like the mini-display to update after a battle instead of having to click on a fleet again to update them.
2. I would like to see the ship display window update hitpoints after a battle without having to click on the fleet/ship to get them to update.
3. When fleets are stacked together, I can't easily remove ships from the fleet without either moving it, or opening the fleet manager. I would
like to see the single fleet display pop up first, then have to click on the stack to get to the current multiple fleet/ship type of display. Or, click once
to get the single view, and twice to get the double view.
4. I would like to see the completely evasive precursor library added to the game. It is easy to get a precursor mine, but I have been playing "lots" since the game came out
and I yet to see a library, even going through a gazillion ctrl-n restarts.
5. The game does run faster, and this is great for when I play on my laptop (Dell M60 which is no slouch). It still seems to bog more than desired when there are many fleets/ships
on the screen at once. Is there any way to turn off some additional graphics features?
6. I would like to see an option for "instant movement", where ships just arrive at their destinations (or reach max moves) instead graphically moving 1 square at a time. This would
be a huge help. Another maybe better option would be a key assigned to "complete move" so that I can set a ship going, then hit this key and it automatically arrives at its
destination. Another key for "move all instantly" would be nice. When I have 20 constructors in transit, it really drags the game to have to wait for them all to move, especially
when I have the screen centered around a heavily trafficked area (I usually move the screen via mini-map to an unpopulated area, thus speeding up movement, but I would rather not
have to do this to accerate things).

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

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1. I would like the mini-display to update after a battle instead of having to click on a fleet again to update them.
2. I would like to see the ship display window update hitpoints after a battle without having to click on the fleet/ship to get them to update.

As long as the ship or fleet remains selected, the context area will be updated after a battle to show the new HP, moves left, etc.

When fleets are stacked together, I can't easily remove ships from the fleet without either moving it, or opening the fleet manager. I would
like to see the single fleet display pop up first, then have to click on the stack to get to the current multiple fleet/ship type of display. Or, click once
to get the single view, and twice to get the double view.

When fleets are stacked, you can double-click the icon in the stacked ships list to open the fleet manager for that particular fleet. You can then move ships in and out of the fleet (even move ships from between fleets in the same parsec)

Is there any way to turn off some additional graphics features?

In the Options menu, go to the Video tab. This tab has a section "Performance Options" There are many options there to turn on/off advanced graphical features.

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wow, long post!

I have found 1.2 a huge improvement too, I have only managed to play 1 game so far, but I got absolutely MURDERED

, which is something i have not been used to! I think the main reason is the planetary improvement fix.

you have some good points, in particular the lack of serious armament or ability to include in a fleet to effectively defend a starbase in late game. Also i noticed too the tendency of the AI to build many starbases with few modules - they always have lots of starbases but they dont really do anything useful!

I dont think troop transports necessarily have to guarded by 'killer' fleets, in an area where you have forced some undefended planets the chances are the opponent will not have any nearby 'killer' fleets of their own, so enough of an escort to protect from small 'strays' and ultra-quick, lightly armed poachers would be enough IMO.
or just having very quick transports is a better answer, then they dont need escorting so much (but i guess thats in point 7)

mark

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This update is a big improvement, and the things you're listing are all pretty minor issues. As in the AI is 75% of the way to making perfect fleets, just not 100%. That's not that bad.

I get SOOOO tired of pooring a gazillion constructors into developing a starbase, only to have it easily picked off by a strong fleet.

I agree. The amount of investment it takes to create a fully maxed starbase, combined with the fact that it can't move and so doesn't stay relevant or dominant for long, means that it wouldn't hurt the game balance for a maxed out starbase to be completely impregnable.

When I saw the "Starbase Fortification" branch of the tech tree I thought they were going to make a strategy viable where you didn't have to have fleets at all. You could raise up your military rating by building super-strong starbases and win with influence bases. I thought that would have been a fun change.

5. The game does run faster, and this is great for when I play on my laptop (Dell M60 which is no slouch).

They really didn't mention any graphical improvements except simple explosions, but it is running noticeably better on my machine. I have seen some pretty blue explosions instead of fireballs and I even saw my engines light up one time (I pick a color for my engines in the "Appearance" tab, but I usually never see it on my ships). There looks like more detail on the skin of the ships, too. But I still don't get colored lights when I place them on my ship.

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They really didn't mention any graphical improvements except simple explosions

Changing the code (AI routines and other routines )has a great effect on performance than graphics.

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I'm talking about the full fleet battles. I don't think the AI is doing any thinking then. But when I have a battle over a planet, it runs just as smooth instead of going frame by frame whenever the planet is in sight, the way it used to. It's definitely improved.

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They really didn't mention any graphical improvements except simple explosions

Simple explosions were just one of the many graphical improvements in version 1.2.

There have also been some major improvements to the way the ships were handling their graphics data in version 1.2. This has improved the performance in both the main map view and the battles, and anywhere you see ship models. The ships are using a lot less memory than they used to.

The number of polygons in the planet model was reduced which also improved performance. This is one of the reasons why, as you mentioned, the animation is much smoother when a planet is in view.

There was a bug that was preventing the engine trails from appearing on some ships and that was also fixed in 1.2. This is the "engines light up " that you saw. These trails can be toggled on/off in the options menu. There is an option under Interface/Battle Options for "Show Engine Trails"

The simple explosions will help out for people who are running low on memory and are experiencing a stuttering during the battles whenever something exploded.

Also, if you are using the example mod, you will notice there are also some new fleet formations that will make the battles a little more interesting.

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The only graphical change in 1.2 that i've noticed has been that SOME of the ship's engine flares have been fixed.

I'm still waiting for the first ship "wing" on the jewelery in ship design to be fixed. Besies that and how wierd the planet lights work, or if they work because they never do on Earth or homeworld, nothing else is wrong.

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6. I would like to see an option for "instant movement", where ships just arrive at their destinations (or reach max moves) instead graphically moving 1 square at a time. This would
be a huge help. Another maybe better option would be a key assigned to "complete move" so that I can set a ship going, then hit this key and it automatically arrives at its
destination. Another key for "move all instantly" would be nice. When I have 20 constructors in transit, it really drags the game to have to wait for them all to move, especially
when I have the screen centered around a heavily trafficked area (I usually move the screen via mini-map to an unpopulated area, thus speeding up movement, but I would rather not
have to do this to accerate things).

I have the same problem, but a much larger scale. Before I go to war, I basically pump out dozens of ships, along with doznes of transports and have them go to a couple of rally points. This takes forever if you are zoomed out.

Luckily, my friend told me about a little trick. Apparently, if you zoom ALL the way in, it will skip drawing the ships moving, making the ships arrive at their destination extremely fast. I haven't tested it as of yet since I'm waiting for the final release of v1.2 before playing any more games.

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I think most of your issues you brought up on top can be fixed if you set the difficulty setting higher for the game. If you put anything from normal and down, the AI looks stupid compare to you especially if you know the game in and out and have been playing for a long time. Try it and you'll see, you won't regret it mate.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Actually, in the last game I did, My opponent went lasers- I built up a military starbase to assist fleets, and it really smashed the fighter fleets my opponent was using to bits. When they sent the heavy fleets, it was a speedbump, but it was a fairly cheap starbase (gave it 18def or so vs beams)

I still think fighters are underpowered compared to cap ships though.

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Hi!

I get SOOOO tired of pooring a gazillion constructors into developing a starbase, only to have it easily picked off by a strong fleet.

I agree here. A fully developed mining SB needs ~25 constructors - that's 5000 BC investment. In my last game I had mining starbases with 81 beam defenses (full level 2 defenses + 2 mil. resource starbases). Drengin with their beam attack ~25 fregates usually destroyed it with ther killer fleets (10 fregates), and they lost on average one to two FFs in the proces, or 400-800 BC. Defenses work too random to be really effective for starbases. What we nedd for starbases is IMO a constructor module, that would add hitpoints to them. For each level of SB defenses a module that would double the amount of hitpoints it has by default. So level 1 SB defense would also include a module to double hitpoints (+1*base HP), the level 2 2*base, and level 3 4*base. Altogether the fully upgraded SB would have (base + 1*base + 2*base + 4*base) 8*base HP. Why so much? Fleets grow in firepower AND number of ships, so just a linear increase would not be sufficient to make SB a really hard target.

My 2 cents.

BR, Iztok

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I play on suicidal.

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Not true. It really doesn't matter what size ship you use, they all balance out in the end between hull points and hit points. A stack of tiny ships, built with the same weapons, should be comparable to an equal logisticaly level of huge ships. At least in the same ballpark.

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