AI Wars

[buhwhyen]

Figured I should finally make a thread about AI wars related stuff. I'll probably be posting random thoughts that come to mind here and there and occasionally be writing about general strategy and RTS game theory (unit composition, army positioning, resource management, timing, etc).

But anything related to the game (information sharing, questions, ideas/theories, and/or scheduling times for everyone to get together to play - NH) is obviously fine.

[buhwhyen]

Copy pasted from the random gaming thread
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So some random stuff that needs to be mentioned about AI wars.

Money in this game is different than in most other rts games. It works something like each crystal/metal node gives you income/unit time (seconds?), in any case its 12 (crystal/metal) per unit time. Similarly, orbital command stations give crystal/metal per unit time. This is what your income is based off of.

When you build something, obviously you pay as you go in this game. So each building or unit you make has a cost in terms of crystal/metal per unit time.

What does this mean? It means that if your stored crystal/metal (money) is going up then you could be producing more than you already are. Producing meaning building more ships or structures. So if you have 300k metal in the bank, you can have a seriously negative "balance" of income compared to your income.

So if I'm telling you to spend your money, I'm really saying build more space docks/starship constructors/turrets/mines/engineers. Because your economy can support more than what you're doing. If you tell me that you've maxed out on ships and can't build anymore then all I have to say is: Then why aren't you doing anything with them?

If you have a lot of ships, attack, take another planet, help someone defend theirs. Try not to think of only yourself. Just as you get help when you need it, you also need to help other people. You DO NOT have to wait for someone to help you attack if you think you can take the planet yourself. Nor do you have to wait for someone to tell you what to do, I think everyone has a reasonable idea of what they can/can't take on their own.

If you have 300k metal but under 5k crystal, then build some crystal manufactories. That's what they're there for. Use them. I had 20 metal and 20 crystal manufactories for balancing my money when I was building a ton of turrets/mines/forcefields (which are crystal heavy) and replenishing bombers (metal heavy). Keep in mind these give you +8 metal and -12 crystal? Or something along those lines. That means they're inherently inefficient. So use them only as you need them.

=> too much crystal -> metal manufactory
=> too much metal -> crystal manufactory

The game also automatically toggles your manufactories on/off to help you not ruin your economy. YOu can disable this by building a structure to turn this off, under the control tab of your builder.

You can also toggle them on and off manually as you need, just be sure to not have both on at the same time or I will pretend to not know you.


Random shit
-If you need help, ask. I doubt anyone is really watching all places on the map and keeping track of every attack. Please do not wait till you've lost your planet to say something.
-When in doubt just do what you think is right (this is probably a bad idea to say this, but whatever). If you're doing something hella dumb, someone will say something...probably. If you really don't know just ask or propose an idea.
-No one expects you to be omni potent, but I like to think that you can do more than watch your ships build and wait for someone to tell you what to do.
-Not only 1-2 people need to build defense for everyone. Similarly, everyone should contribute to planets that are choke points/hold points where we will no longer progress beyond that planet.


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Some, NH, deeper thinking
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If you have an imbalanced economy you can do some stuff other than build manufactories to balance out your resources. This is something that I do, but not necessarily that you have to or even should do as an alternative to manufactories.

In earlier stages of the game, say if you have a lot more crystal than metal. Then it becomes difficult to build a lot of bombers. So instead skew your composition of ships more towards fighters/frigates. And focus on not just blindly running at every guard post and using the frigate range to your advantage and kill use your fighters to kill anything that comes close to your frigates. This army composition (frigate centric) is actually stupidly cost-effective because you're really just replenishing fighters cause your frigates shouldn't be taking a lot of damage.

This also leads into semi-early dreadnaughts. Which are good, or something. Dreadnaughts can essentially replace a large number of bombers because their range and damage output is really good. Granted you will be killing stuff a lot slower, but it also means that you don't have to rush in to kill off guard posts, you can kill off lightning turrets and other heavy damage dealing turrets (heavy beam cannons anyone?) without taking any losses.

Being crystal heavy also has the advantage of making it a lot easie to build static defense (turrets/mines) which are ALL crystal heavy with the exception of the heavy beam cannon, which are just plain expensive.


On the other hand, if you're metal heavy then you can basically go the completely opposite route. You instead are frigate light, and go bomber/fighter heavy. The advantage to this composition is that you are a LOT LOT LOT more mobile. Frigates among are the slowest moving ships in the game, only faster than tanks? In any case, you deal a lot of damage up close with this composition, but you also take a lot of damage because you get outranged by just about everything under the sun.

This composition can also similarly lead to early starships but rather than dreadnaughts you tend to go the flaship/zenith/spire starship route. Personally I've come to like these a lot less mostly because of the nerf to the attack boosting (this change was completely warranted, though). They also have mediocre range themselves, 7800 for all 3, I think. Less than frigates by 2200, which is a considerable amount.

Obviously it's a pain to build turrets/mines when you're starving for crystal.

This composition does tons of damage, but takes a lot of damage as well. You'll lose huge chunks of your army, but you'll clear out planets a lot faster as well. I like this composition less because I like not constantly having to rebuild the majority of my fleet after every attack, but it does work pretty well.


Ideally you'd want a relatively even split of crystal to metal, but slightly more crystal heavy because you want a little extra for mine/forcefields/turrets. Since the ships that die the most are
1) fighters
2) bombers
3) frigates
You should be mostly rebuilding fighters/bombers when you attack. If you aren't, then you're probably not grouping up your units properly when you're attacking.

Ideally you want a good number of frigates and bombers and a large number of fighters to just soak damage. Starships tend to be much less effective until you have a good fleet to support them, so I generally don't even bother with them till i get most of my mark 3s built up and have a fleet of over 1k ships. Before that point, you run a really serious risk of losing them in battles because there aren't enough other targets (ships) to soak damage for them. And frankly, losing a single dreadnaught or flagship is equivalent to ~50 bombers/frigates. So in terms of cost effectiveness, if you lose a single dreadnaught/flagship, you were probably better off not having them in the first place and instead having 50 more bombers/frigates.


So your basic options are:
1) Use manufactories to balance/skew your resources so you get the ship composition you want.
2) Don't use manufactories and build your ship composition to match your available resources.
3) Stock pile resources and bitch about it.

[buhwhyen]

Economy - Energy and capturing new planets
So like the other resources (crystal/metal) in this game, energy is quite a bit different than the more classical RTS "food" or "supply" resource.

Classically, you spend "x" amount of money to get "y" amount of supply. That is, you pay a set amount once and get a different set amount of supply for the rest of the game, assuming the structure does not die.

However, in AI Wars, you spend "x" amount of metal/crystal to get "y" amount of energy, but also have to pay upkeep for the rest of the game to sustain that "supply" you get from your reactors. So you pay once for the reactor, but continue paying for the rest of the game.

An interesting caveat is that your buildings essentially cost "supply" as well as your army. This means that the more buildings you build and control, the more energy you need, the more reactors that need to be built, etc etc.

So to put this effect into perspective, say you take a 4 resource planet (2 metal and 2 crystal) which nets you a total of +42/42 metal/crystal (2*12+18 - not sure how much mark 1 orbital command stations give. [#of nodes*12]+[resources from orbital command station]). And say you build a mark 1 and mark 2 energy reactor on this planet. That gives you a total of 47,000 energy (40k+5k+2k, [mark2+mark1+Orbital CS]).

For reference, mark 1 and mark 2 energy reactors have the same efficiency, that is the ratio of energy to crystal/metal upkeep is the same. For 5k energy you pay -2/-2 crystal/metal per unit time. So for the 45k energy from the 2 reactors, you pay -18/-18 crystal/metal per unit time. So in reality, you're only netting a total of 42-18=24 crystal/metal per unit time by taking this planet. This is actually barely enough to run 1 more space dock without engineers speeding up the build queue.

Along with this, there is also another implication. That is you cannot reap the benefits from a new planet immediately after you take it. In fact taking a new planet typically will greatly hinder your current economy. It's pretty counter-intuitive that a planet with more resources to give also causes your current economy to suffer that much more because you have to pay for the crystal/metal harvesters, which also take time to build. Similarly, energy reactors take a considerable amount of time to build. So taking a high resource planet is definitely great for the long term, it does have draw backs for the short term.


So what does this all mean? It basically means that in more classical RTS games, there is no long term detriment to getting a lot more "supply" than you need because you pay once and are done. In AI Wars, you pay for the duration of the game, so you should try to keep your energy sufficient, but not excessive. You can always turn off generators if they're not needed, but having an excess of 100k energy on a regular basis is a bit wasteful.

Also reaping the benefits of getting new planets takes time and put a damper on your current economy. This is part of the reason that your economy does not scale in any similar fashion to classical RTS games where your economy essentially doubles with 2 bases, and triples with 3. Taking new planets drains your economy in the short term and the long term while adding less than substantial boosts due to the upkeep costs (unless its a resource heavy planet). So in many cases, the increased army size (that require a lot more energy) along with the added structures (at least partially are needed for defense) require additional energy. Obviously you would need more energy reactors to support more stuff and would hence dampen your economy further. This is why your economy doesn't grow that much compared to the early game, despite having twice as many planets.

Preferably you should use only mark 1 and mark 2 generators, but there are times where you just need mark 3 reactors because you have too much energy costs. Mark 1 and mark 2 generators are equally efficient - pulling in 5k energy per -2/-2 crystal/metal. However, mark 3 reactors (I'm not sure on exact upkeep costs of mark 3s) pull in 80k energy for -40/-40 upkeep cost, which is quite a bit more than mark 1 and 2 reactors.

Random note:
Mobile builders are actually really energy heavy. They take over 1k energy each to keep running. Each colony ship also takes 1.5k? energy as well. You should try to build these only as necessary because they can quickly add up to a large amount of additional energy that is needed to keep a positive energy balance."

[buhwhyen]

arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=74.0

random stuff for multiplayer performance improvements. NH