AI war fleet command.
I wrote this about it a while ago, so it;s outdated now. The latest updates and patches add EVEN MORE to the game.
In AI War: Fleet Command up to 8 players fight against 2 god tier AI. In a galaxy consisting from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 all the way to 120 star systems. (Only one planet is used per system). These planets are connected by nearby wormholes. ( actual combat takes place in the space around the planet)
Back to the AI. Now, you might think "AI in all RTS games is shit."
Not in AI War. The Ai in this game doesn't pretend it's a human like in other RTS games. the AI starts off with a large numerical advantage, however not all the AI ships know that the human players are around, and therein lies the first part of an AI War strategy; subtlety. If you attempt to rush the AI, it will react. However, this doesn't mean you have to sneak around either. The AI plays by slightly different rules, it reacts differently; it can even do things that nobody programmed it to do. (On the AI War forums there is a thread dedicated to amazing things the AI has done).
So, to destroy the AI you simply must destroy their Home command stations. (1 per AI). If all the human Home command stations are destroyed, game over for the humans.
Now, to economy. In AI War, there are 4 resources. Crystal, Metal, Knowledge and Energy. Crystal and Metal are infinite, as long as you have harvesters on harvest nodes you will keep getting it. These 2 resources are the main resources used in building. Although you do have storage for these resources, you will be primarily be concerned with your income. That is, when you build something in AI war; it doesn't subtract the cost from your storage. What is does instead is subtract a certain amount of resources from your income until it is complete. Nominally you want to keep your income positive most of the time. (Engineer can build things faster but then they drain resources faster because they are building faster).
Note: different planets have different numbers of harvester nodes. Each node provides 12 of crystal or metal per second. There are never more than 8 of one per planet.
Knowledge is the only real limited resource. It is used for unlocking new tech and more advanced versions of ships you have. It is limited because only 2500 can be collected per planet by science labs (which can move). On larger galaxy maps, there is more knowledge.
Energy is produced by power generators. Most ships use energy, however energy is only shown as a balance, that is how much is not being used. It is similar to a universal population cap that can be expanded by building more generators. Generators come in 3 Marks take resources to run, and decrease in efficiency if you have more than one of that Mark on a planet.
Time for the good part: Fleets and ships.
In AI war; there are 3 types of mobile combat units. Ships; starships and golems (golems are only in the Zenith remanent expansion). Ships are built from a space dock and comprise most of your fleet. Examples of some ships are: Standard fighter, Heavy Bomber, Missile Frigate, Bulletproof Fighter, Sentinel Frigate. These ships usually have s hip cap (for each Mark of each ship) of somewhere around two hundred, some have more some have less. The sentinel frigate has a low ship cap per mark because it is very powerful and expensive.
One more thing; at the start of each game each human player can choose one special bonus ship. They way they do this is by selecting their home planet. Each possible choice for a human homeworld has a special unique ship type.
Speaking of Marks, there are 6 Marks for each ship type in the game.
Mark I
Mark II
Mark III
Mark IV
Mark V
Core
To unlock new Marks and new starships you spend knowledge at a science lab, it is unlocked then you can build that mark of that ship. Example: I unlock Standard Fighter II, I can now build them. This is a great boost to fleet strength.
To define Marks:
Mark I is basic, they usually have the highest cap.
Mark II are significantly stronger (But have a loew unit cap)
Mark III more so
Mark IV can only be build by humans if they have stolen an advanced factory from the AI
Mark V is exclusive to the AI
Core units are extremely deadly and are (usually) only found protecting the AI's core systems, hence their name.
However, it s possible to find fabiricators that produce one sort of core or mark V unit. If you lose the fabricator, you lose the ability to make that unit.
On to starships.
By comparison, starships are much, much more expensive than ships and have ship cap of less than 10 per mark, however they can provide much needed support to your fleet. Starships are not meant to operate alone (except maybe the raid starship). There are many types of starship. Light starship is the type everyone starts with. They boost the attack power of nearby ships and fire more than one bullet with each shot. Starships vary greatly; the raid starship is extremely fast for any ship. It fires powerful lasers and can move and fire though enemy force fields. (This is impossible for most units).
There are other units; turrets of great variety for planetary defence, support units like the mobile repair station, the speedy (and large) transport ship, the useful decloaker and the mighty (but limited) Fortress.
AI war is great for another reason apart from huge fleets and cool explosions.
There is practically no micromanagement involved. Ships intelligently target enemies; can be set to roam a planet's space eliminating enemies or to power down to save energy. Control nodes can used to tweak the behaviour of many ships, reducing the need to lots of orders per minute.
It is similar with the economy. If you set up your economy right, then you can pump out ships while still gaining resources. (Which you ALWAYS need later, unless the difficulty is too low for you)
This might seem to make the game too easy, but believe me the AI is always up to it (as long as you've set the difficulty to a decent setting).
The difficulty ranges from 0 (sandbox), 1 (very trivial), 2 (trivial),) to 7 (normal) and then to 10 (Doom). I play on 7.6
The difficulty curve of the AI is not linear either. Going from 6 (Less Easy) to 7 (Normal) there is quite a jump in intelligence.
Now, to further spice things up, there are AI types.
Different AI types will exhibit different behaviours as well as usually starting with one more ships unlocked.
These AI types are grouped into 4 groups:
Easier - The AI has a weakness that the humans can exploit if they know the AI type (i.e.; it's not set to a random easier type)
Moderate - AI doesn't really have a huge weakness and may exhibit very annoying behaviours.
Harder - AI has practically no weaknesses and can exhibit some brutal behaviour
Technologist - A subset of harder; technologist AIs are moderate or easier AIs that use the HIGHEST MARK SHIPS FROM THE START (not core, mark IV and V).
The AIs sends waves at periods at the player. (However some AI types do not). The number of waves per interval corresponds to the number of players. Usually they consist of one main type; however it is possible for the host to set an Ai modifier that causes them to send a real mix.
AIs progress along with players. When a player takes an action, like destroying an AI command station, the AI progress rises. When it gets high enough, The AI will start using higher mark ships in its waves...
There are also things the players can do to bring the AI progress down. Example: destroying Data Centres, which are usually well guarded.
AI War requires strategy to avoid being caught unaware by the AI, to avoid making the AI progress rise to rapidly, to plan and coordinate attacks and to WIN.
tl;dr
if you like strategy, tower defence or 4X games, buy AI war fleet Command. The demo available on Steam or from the Arcen games website.
C95J said:
That's mainstream.
P, and AC:MoA (on PS1)
