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[Ranakastrasz]

The Pincho freighter has a innate hull mod giving hull regeneration. It doesn't seem to regenerate armor, and cannot equip such. This seems like a bug, since those shouldnt be mutually exclusive.

On the other hand, the hull does regenerate fast enough that it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

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I just built my first station. On the first payday, it teleported into the sun....

As in, it is now orbiting the planet's sun. I now realize that stations orbiting the sun cannot be intentional.

[xenoargh]

The Pincho freighter has a innate hull mod giving hull regeneration. It doesn't seem to regenerate armor, and cannot equip such. This seems like a bug, since those shouldnt be mutually exclusive.

On the other hand, the hull does regenerate fast enough that it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

All of the Gaian ships regenerate, and can't take Armor Regeneration; they're mutually exclusive.

I just built my first station. On the first payday, it teleported into the sun....

As in, it is now orbiting the planet's sun. I now realize that stations orbiting the sun cannot be intentional.

Orbitting the sun is actually OK, although you cannot do that on purpose; only Colony Fleets can create stations orbiting a sun.  Anyhow, what must have happened there is that on pay day, an AI faction took over / destroyed your station, but your faction founded a new station via a Colony Fleet or took over an AI station on its own.  I really shouldn't allow that routine to run in the system the player is in, it breaks continuity too much.  Will fix that tonight

[Ranakastrasz]

Uh.
Ok...
That was bizzare.

So I was correct to worry that my station would be promptly destroyed, but it is OK since it made a new station at a different location.

Odd. Aside from balance, what reason is there for Glagian ships to not allow armor regeneration? As opposed to normal hull regeneration which works fine with armor regeneration?

[xenoargh]

No real reason other than balance; I mean, if you want to have me make up some lore about it, I can do that, but really, that's all it is.  

I feel that if they could regenerate armor, shields and health, I think they'd be just about invincible in player hands flown solo, given enough speed buffs to run away and regenerate.  

To put it into perspective... they're able to stack a great deal of health regen atm:  hero regen, Engineer regen, Gaian regen and Auto-Repair regen.  Add in the hero damage-taken buff, etc., etc., and factor in shield hits.  

So, while I haven't tested it with max hero buffs... I strongly suspect they're already massively OP if you really stack for all that properly on their capship and have Blast Doors / Heavy Bulkheads; at that point, you probably don't need armor at all and are probably invincible, so long as you don't get surrounded by fighters knocking your engines out constantly.  

Anyhow, I can't really comment on that, as I didn't test a maxed-out hero-buff build with the Gaians and haven't worked out all that math in detail... but I'm thinking that they're probably ridiculously hard to kill at that point.

Anyhow, the "local stations changing hands" issue's fixed.

[xenoargh]

Bug in Autofire AI flux-management system relating to ships that don't have Shields is fixed.

Working on various things related to the Brawler AI to improve its behaviors a bit, both in terms of how close it face-hugs and getting rid of the bomber-style system where it attacks then backs off.

I am also kind of tempted to write a pure interceptor AI that deliberately tail-chases; it'd be pretty useful for Frigates tasked to take on big targets, amongst other things.

[Ranakastrasz]

Ah, makes sense.

Suggest adding tooltip information that it interferes with armor regeneration. That is the main reason I brought it up.

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Do you have control over AI shields? If so, where in the code is that managed? I would like to look at it and see how it works.

[xenoargh]

Do you have control over AI shields? If so, where in the code is that managed? I would like to look at it and see how it works.

Of course; the AI has to manage everything.  Anyhow, it's in a block that I really should port out of the AIs and to an include at some point, since it's redundant to every AI, but it starts with //SHIELD CONTROL. 

It's not terribly fancy stuff, really; just attempts to keep shields up until it's time to Vent and keep it facing the nearest enemy if Omni atm.

[xenoargh]

Wrote a more effective shield manager routine tonight, for certain cases where it isn't working as well as it might, like the Onslaught. 

Essentially, it's going to behave a little more like the Vanilla AI, in the sense of dropping shields sometimes, when it appears to make sense (i.e., we're a battleship-class thing and flux levels are rising to critical levels, but we haven't taken damage to Hull yet; in that case, go ahead and lower the shield and risk taking some damage rather than Overload or Vent. 

Not sure that this would be wise to apply to anything that isn't a capital-class ship; most Cruisers lack enough buffer, in terms of armor, to survive for long if in that situation. 

Brawler AI's had various small issues fixed up, including retreating from an opponent that is close to death (i.e., no more losing Destroyers who face-hugged a Cruiser to death, etc., hopefully).

Fixed Bio-Hull description to cover the incompatibility with Armor Regeneration; thanks again to Ranakastrasz for pointing out the inconsistency / missing description

[xenoargh]

Oh, and also:  

Spoiler

[close]

Had fun with the Nautilus, distracting the better part of the Glaug fleets whilst my Liberators and Warthogs made havoc.  Good times

I think that there will be a couple of new weapons for the next build, other than Boss stuff; still thinking about it, but:

1.  I'm thinking a Phased Torpedo would be cool.  It would be able to pierce shields and hit phased things, which sounds cool and useful.  Heck, it might even be fun as a counter to the terrifying evil that is a souped-up Acanthus.  Probably will have some important weak spots, since nothing would be able to intercept it or stop it, like a fairly abysmal range and tracking.

2.  I'm thinking that some sort of anti-Phase weapon might be interesting.  Something that is pretty useless vs. regular ships but is deadly if you're phased... perhaps it automatically un-phases a ship (a disruptor?) or something nasty like that, where it doesn't kill directly, but it's quite dangerous to phased things and doubles as a weak shield-pen gun.


Oh, and... what about a fighter that could phase and was pretty smart about using it?  

That might be very interesting; IIRC there were pretty serious problems with Phase Cloak with Vanilla's AI and fighters, but I don't think there's anything that would go wrong here, other than it just being plain evil.

Also... does anybody want more Drone variety / rebal / whatever?  I feel like most of the Drones are pretty useless atm, personally; some of that is the AI, some of it's just issues of how deadly Drones are right now.  

If you agree, what's missing that you'd like to see?  

For example, one of the bigger issues I see atm is that the Drones that don't have shields are just getting stomped.  So I'm inclined to give the PD Laser Drones some shields, or something.  I don't really mind with the Glaug drones, where there are always more of them coming, but it's annoying with the PD Laser Drones, and the Assault Drones, which were pretty terrifying a while ago, don't really bother me atm unless I simply cannot afford to drop shields at all.

What about new types?

For example, what about a heavy-duty drone type that was few in numbers but was pretty potent, like the Vanilla Terminator Drone?  What about drones that acted like fighters and were totally independent of the mother ship once launched?  What about drones that were purely defensive and did perfect orbits around the mother ship at all times, unless they lost their engines?

Anyhow, just some thoughts; I'm still working on the Boss stuff slowly and I'd kind of like to get a few other things rolling, thought-wise, as I go.

[Schrekse]

I like the idea of more drone variety, since at the moment they are usually little more than a nuisance. How about something like an artillery drone of some sort? Something that can do some serious damage at long ranges before the mother ship gets into trouble. Also, on the subject of Phase Cloaks, how about a weapon that forces another ship to cloak for a certain amount of time? Just long enough to take a seriously dangerous ship out of action long enough to take out some key targets, maybe?

[Ranakastrasz]

The shield AI thing I was thinking was along the lines of catching fatal projectiles and overloading.

That is, If it detects a projectile that will deal 50% local armor, or 5% of the remaining hull, then it is worth overloading to block. Which will always trigger for a reaper, which is always worth overloading to block, since it tears though even the heaviest armor. Well, maybe not the heaviest...

~
Swift Frigates should decay over time, or else not count as ships for a victory. Or something like that.
~
Any pulse beam weapons firing more than twice a second are, I believe have less armor bypass than a continuous beam weapon.

[xenoargh]

How about something like an artillery drone of some sort? Something that can do some serious damage at long ranges before the mother ship gets into trouble.

That might be cool; some sort of big drone that can hit things at long range, basically a mini-ship rather than a little AA drone- that might be cool.  Will look at that idea, along with stuff like Drones that can use Systems, Drones that act like conventional fighters, etc.

The shield AI thing I was thinking was along the lines of catching fatal projectiles and overloading.

That is, If it detects a projectile that will deal 50% local armor, or 5% of the remaining hull, then it is worth overloading to block. Which will always trigger for a reaper, which is always worth overloading to block, since it tears though even the heaviest armor. Well, maybe not the heaviest...

It already does that, but it's hard to make it do it well, since right around when it's supposed to do that, it's also making the decision whether to Vent or not. 

I'll take a look at that sequence and maybe make it only decide to Vent if that condition isn't happening, see if that helps it avoid getting insta-slain by Reapers.

[Ranakastrasz]

Having issues with frozen battle resolution again.

Already issued a retreat order, and my single deployed ship retreated. The battle then stalled, and going into the esc menu only had the quit option.

[xenoargh]

Did you just give your ship the retreat order, or the entire force via the command menu?  If the latter, then there's still a bug hiding there somewhere

Oh, and!  The very first build of the Boss mechanics is getting done today, finally

[Ranakastrasz]

Entire Force.