LOUD AI & Game Speed Improvement Project

[HTKatzmarek]

@mingley

Front-end:
The "number of files to download" does not show correctly if there are more than a single digit of files - it goes to the next line.

I'll take a look at it when it's downloading all of the files from scratch. I didn't notice it when I tested it, but maybe something changed. I'll see if I can expand that field slightly in the GUI, and it'll be in the next version of the updater.

[Sprouto]

About the Omni Cheat - I just remembered that we moved that option out, it is enabled automatically by the AIx AI. Unlike the Sorian version, which gave the AI total vision and Omni, the LOUD version gives him about 2km.

[mingley]

About the Omni Cheat - I just remembered that we moved that option out, it is enabled automatically by the AIx AI. Unlike the Sorian version, which gave the AI total vision and Omni, the LOUD version gives him about 2km.

Cool, that makes sense. However that's only Omni coverage. Radar coverage is, as-noted, still quite low - considerably less than a T3 radar would produce.


I've been doing some more testing on the crash damage thing:
So, I have a forward firebase that has 11 T3 flaks, 7 T3 AA, and 5 mobile T3 (because I didn't have the unit-pack with the T4 AA enabled) + Omni. That's a total of 23 T3 AA - almost 2% of my entire unit limit for AA for a single small forward base! And yet they can't take out a single Czar before it's overhead (about half dead by the time its there), and when it crashes down.... boom, there goes half the firebase.

Sandbox test; 4*4 grid of T4 AA (that's 16 T4 AA!), backed by an omni against a single seraphim bomber (AhWassa). They do destroy the Ahwassa near immediately, but Newton takes over and it crashes down just short of the front line of the grid (damaging the first row of T4). I did it a second time, this time with two bombers - the first bomber lands exactly in the middle of the AA grid, annihilating all of them!!!!!! The second bomber (about 1s behind the first) survives and gets to launch its payload.
So I must ask - what are the tools you mention that stop this from happening? If 16 T4 AA can't stop a single bomber effectively, I'm at a loss as to what to use against 4 of them!

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[bug] So I figure hey, I can play with no Air Experimentals enabled at least - there's a toggle for that in the Unit Manager. Except it doesn't work. Even with every mod disabled and playing stock LOUD, all of the air experimentals are still available to all factions.

[bug] I have a MEX that is both there and not there. Visually it's there but not animated. But I can't selected it, reclaim it, or destroy it, OR build a new MEX there. I think it was destroyed by the AI quite a while ago so I have no idea what's going on. Saving and loading the game doesn't do anything - it's still there and not.

[Sprouto]

Thanks for the bug reports I'll have those checked quickly.

As for the Air Experimentals, you'll never 'stop' them - but it's where you do engage them that matters the most. Your AA defense should be forward from your key facilities - and you should have a force of ASF's to not only spot them, but engage them long before they get anywhere critical. Relying upon a single radar, built inside of the primary position, with concentrated AA defense next to it is just far too juicy a target. LOUD is especially attracted to tight clusters of high value units and the fact that his air experimentals figure they can dance right up to those targets tells me that he's not seeing any (or enough) deterrent to getting to them.

While I easily admit that's it's annoying that what goes up must come down, it's a fact of life.

[PhilipJFry]

@mingley
just build ASF if you wanna kill t4 air units

if you report a bug then i recommend posting a local replay file of the game with the bug to make debugging easier
even better to make a short sandbox game with cheats enabled to reproduce your issue

[Sprouto]

I have been unable to recreate your issue with Air Experimentals being restricted. When I have the restriction on, no Air Experimentals can be constructed - they simply do not appear.

If you can get me a replay of the game in which you had this issue, or the LOUD.log of the same game, we can find the issue.

[mingley]

Actually, the entire Unit Mods page seems to be super-flaky. At some point in the last few days I set No Nukes and No Game Enders to On. Now if I disable them, they come back to be checked restarting the game.
Conversely, if I select "No air experimentals", then when I next load the game, and possibly even the skirmish screen (sometimes), it will be unchecked. I wonder if this is related.

I also get flaky behaviour when selecting maps. Sometimes they select, sometimes they don't. Sometimes the map preview is an empty grey box.
Unfortunately in neither circumstance can I be more specific because I've not identified a pattern. Hence the general "flaky".

LOUDs check-updates finds everything in order and makes no changes. No mods.

[Sprouto]

Ok..that does sound off indeed. The LOUD folder is intact or the launcher would certainly complain.

If you're on the Steam version perhaps you should let Steam verify your files just to be sure. Also, for the sake of a test, I don't know if you have the User Mods and User Maps toggles turned on, but that might also be an issue where something is getting in the way. Turn them off if you do and see if this has any impact.

[mingley]

What's going on with the unit-cap?
I've just noticed that not all units have a unit value of 1? Is that expected? I am utterly failing to have an airforce to stave off waves of 5-9 Czars at a time (and yes, they're annihilating my forces by crashing, not shooting (well, except my fleet which they are shooting, but that's my fault )) because I've hit the unit-cap but I definitely have far fewer than the ~1300 units the limit is set to. Probably a less than half actually. After some experiments it seems like the Paragon for instance, has a "unit" value of 50!!!!

It's all well and good saying to use lots of ASF, but to take a single Czar out reliably requires about 50 ASF's per Czar. They're attacking in waves of 4-5 per AI and building about one every 40 seconds. So I need about 200-300 ASFs (and that's ignoring that they're scattered over patrols on a 20*40 map)! I definitely don't have anything like a unit-cap sufficient for that with this! And the T4 AA - that's 5 "units" a pop it seems. I had about 20 of them, so they alone were using about 100 unit-cap!

Shouldn't a unit be a unit? I always thought they were.

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[bug] My Salvation is targeting something that has -2147 million% health (integer overflow?).


[bug] The Quantum Teleporter appears wrongly in the "idle factories" list. In fact, it doesn't appear at all, but there's a black box there.

[bug] Supreme Economy Mod and UI Mass Fab Manager overlay each other in the UI.

[Sprouto]

Think of the unit-cap as another resource. Early units through most of T2 are indeed 1 to 1 (some are less such as walls), but as you hit T3 that relationship begins to change, and in particular with Experimentals as you've noted. If you're playing with an AIx LOUD, his unit cap goes up with the cheat you set - if you use the Enhanced Unit cap option, rather than the Unlimited setting. This will keep him playing within the same ruleset that governs you. If he's on Unlimited, and you're using either of the Resource Rich mods we include (but don't reccommend), then LOUD can flood you with units - not always what you might want.

One of the least noticed features of LOUD is the relationship of veterancy and unit cap. As a unit gains vet level, you'll get some additional unit cap, more with each level - and it's permanent. In addition to this, if you've got the LOUD Structure Upgrades and LOUD Integrated Storage mods turned on, quite a few buildings will have their unit cap cost reduced or even eliminated when they are upgraded. Lastly, each SACU has a minor cap reduction when built (but it's only one), actually reducing your current unit cap total - so build lots, reclaim your low level engineers, and take advantage of the many structural upgrades LOUD provides to keep your cap costs in check.

To this end, the units in LOUD have had their veterancy tables carefully aligned to encourage this use. Of note, the Seraphim units in general gain veterancy slightly quicker than other factions, and for some units, like static defenses, we've added additional veterancy effects such as vision radius - in addition to the traditional health and regeneration perks.

Overall, this allows you to have games with lower initial unit caps, and the fact that lower tier units can gain vet with only a few kills, makes the early game somewhat more important, and gives more value to the lower tiers in that regard. In practical use, this rewards the aggressive player who goes out and engages in combat and puts a drag on the typical late game T3 Power Gen/Mass Fabrication dynamic.

In summary, this makes the unit cap management aspect of the game quite intriguing - one that requires a bit of planning and forethought, especially with respect to using high-end experimentals

On the subject of ASF's, they are still 1-1 on unit cap. Most of the experimentals range from about 4 (for the light experimentals) upto about 12 or so for the abominations. The Paragon, as you've noted, uses up 50, which is just slightly less than the unit cap absorbed by an equivalent number of T3 Pgens and Mass Fabs.