Post by Zensi on Nov 19, 2016 9:12:28 GMT
Finally AI, level 4 ships are great and now the fun begins
At this level you will learn the basics of AI, so don't try to continue using your finger AI to control your weapons nor crew. However, specially at this level you will need to intervene at times, since its hard to plan for all the variety you will encounter. Besides, you are just learning the AI, so you will need to step in to fix any problems you have in your code.
The purposes of the AI are the following
You will encounter all sorts of ships. You will find some higher level ship, some really bad others doing everything right. Many will be like the ones you saw at earlier stages, poorly designed ships. You will also encounter a really awesome weapon, the teleporter. For which you won't really have many ways of countering.
Probably for the first time, you will find alliance's ships. As with all, some will be good others not so much. The better the alliance, the higher the possibility that they will have a better ship. So learn which are the better alliances, and from which have better ships. This will come handy when you decide to join an alliance.
Like at previous levels, you will have a rocky start, since your weapons aren't up to snuff for this level. Hopefully you have your saved resources, which will allow you to start upgrading your ship. The only new room is CMD, get it early to start learning how to use it. Just a quick note: you don't need the CMD room after programming the AI. Remove it before going into battle, your AI will still work.
You need to gather enough resources to continue upgrading, so you can compete with most ships at this level. All this is what you have done at previous levels, so it should be nothing new.
Which room to target, is a bit more complicated than before. Many ships now boast decent armor, so destroying the room and ultimately the ship is more difficult. Also if the ship is properly designed, they will have 2 if not 3 fully maxed reactors.
This makes destroying the reactors not as easy as before. Those 6 bars of health need more shoots to disable the room. Also decent repair AI will make the reactors more difficult. So basically it is a doubtful proposition with 2 reactors and a bad idea with 3. It depends on the ship, the armor, and weapons, if the reactors are a better target.
Here you need to figure which active room you want to shoot. Start looking for which rooms don't carry much armor, and might have low hp (few green bars). You have the choice of AA, engine, lasers, missiles, shield, teleporter, or turrets.
You might want to try to prevent boarders from reaching you, so the teleporter might be a target at the start of the battle. Unless your opponent has no shields, you won't get the first boarders. Both the lasers and missiles take some time to charge and fire, and will take several shots before your lasers penetrate the shields. So boarders will reach you before you can start hurting them at the TLP.
Something important need to do, is research beer. Before you head out the door to buy some microbrewery's concoction, go to your lab and start the research. From then on, it is important to fish for bux. The reason is to get better characters as part of your crew. With beer draws (as opposed to mineral character draws) is you can get epic and heroes for your ship.
If you are very lucky, you will get good crew, and if you are even more lucky you won't get uniques from beer. You can get anything from uniques all the way to heroes. Every time you don't get a hero, you get a 2% bonus that that should improve your odds of getting a hero. Nonetheless, you will need a crew with epic and heroes at higher levels. Also it takes a while to level up your crew, so it is better to start early.
As before, here is an image of my ship just before it finished upgrading.
At this level you will learn the basics of AI, so don't try to continue using your finger AI to control your weapons nor crew. However, specially at this level you will need to intervene at times, since its hard to plan for all the variety you will encounter. Besides, you are just learning the AI, so you will need to step in to fix any problems you have in your code.
The purposes of the AI are the following
- Repair your ship
- Control your power consumption
- Improve your performance of your weapons
- Repel boarders
- Target and bring down the enemy's ship
You will encounter all sorts of ships. You will find some higher level ship, some really bad others doing everything right. Many will be like the ones you saw at earlier stages, poorly designed ships. You will also encounter a really awesome weapon, the teleporter. For which you won't really have many ways of countering.
Probably for the first time, you will find alliance's ships. As with all, some will be good others not so much. The better the alliance, the higher the possibility that they will have a better ship. So learn which are the better alliances, and from which have better ships. This will come handy when you decide to join an alliance.
Like at previous levels, you will have a rocky start, since your weapons aren't up to snuff for this level. Hopefully you have your saved resources, which will allow you to start upgrading your ship. The only new room is CMD, get it early to start learning how to use it. Just a quick note: you don't need the CMD room after programming the AI. Remove it before going into battle, your AI will still work.
You need to gather enough resources to continue upgrading, so you can compete with most ships at this level. All this is what you have done at previous levels, so it should be nothing new.
Which room to target, is a bit more complicated than before. Many ships now boast decent armor, so destroying the room and ultimately the ship is more difficult. Also if the ship is properly designed, they will have 2 if not 3 fully maxed reactors.
This makes destroying the reactors not as easy as before. Those 6 bars of health need more shoots to disable the room. Also decent repair AI will make the reactors more difficult. So basically it is a doubtful proposition with 2 reactors and a bad idea with 3. It depends on the ship, the armor, and weapons, if the reactors are a better target.
Here you need to figure which active room you want to shoot. Start looking for which rooms don't carry much armor, and might have low hp (few green bars). You have the choice of AA, engine, lasers, missiles, shield, teleporter, or turrets.
You might want to try to prevent boarders from reaching you, so the teleporter might be a target at the start of the battle. Unless your opponent has no shields, you won't get the first boarders. Both the lasers and missiles take some time to charge and fire, and will take several shots before your lasers penetrate the shields. So boarders will reach you before you can start hurting them at the TLP.
Something important need to do, is research beer. Before you head out the door to buy some microbrewery's concoction, go to your lab and start the research. From then on, it is important to fish for bux. The reason is to get better characters as part of your crew. With beer draws (as opposed to mineral character draws) is you can get epic and heroes for your ship.
If you are very lucky, you will get good crew, and if you are even more lucky you won't get uniques from beer. You can get anything from uniques all the way to heroes. Every time you don't get a hero, you get a 2% bonus that that should improve your odds of getting a hero. Nonetheless, you will need a crew with epic and heroes at higher levels. Also it takes a while to level up your crew, so it is better to start early.
As before, here is an image of my ship just before it finished upgrading.