The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Okay, I'm sure everyone who just clicked that title has alarms going off in their head that this is a big prank, but I do have a serious request for the core team worth considering: nerf the god-forsaken Arilou. I know supermelee like the back of my hand by now, I'm sure a lot of us do, and let me tell you there's no ship I hate having to fight more than that one. Landing a fair shot on it is roughly the same as getting a Royal Flush in a poker game!

Could you guys be so kind as to program in a 1 in 15 chance that it'll not teleport away from incoming fire or something like that?

not to disagree, but look at it this way, if you set the battles to cyborg in a normal game. that means if you have the arilou fight for you, there going to be seriously taken adavatage of. i like the idea that its to my advantage that the arilou are hard to beat. maybe if there was toggle to turn the ai up or down, would solve that. i do agree that that ship, handed me my behind on more than one occasion. id like to see all the ships ai tweaked for sport. just to add to the challenge and all.

~DEFIANT

i've always found the chenjesu incredibly hard to beat using most dudes, since they've got a great long range weapon which quickly turns to a short one, and the energy draining dealy doesn't help much either.

of course, I could just be bad at the game.

edit:  oh yeah, for the record, utwig too.  i could only get them in the normal game by keeping my distance in the precursor and holding down the fire button, waiting for it to accidentally turn off its shield.  except with orz, orz invading dudes did the job pretty well, with a few lost.

again, i could just be bad.

Utwig is nearly unbeatable with "perfect" play.  Arilou is almost truly unbeatable (can only die if a chain of unlucky teleports keeps putting it in the way of the shots).  However, Utwig is ALSO nearly unbeatable with "pretty good" play except versus the Chenjesu.

We have no plans to change the AI for 1.0.  That's a pretty huge task, and we'd just as soon preserve the original game in 1.0.

Many threads on here will compare the theoretical "best practice" for ships vs. what people can actually do vs. what the AI actually does.  All three are pretty wildly different.

Star Control would be the Worst MMOG Ever.

I agree with Shiver.  I don't know if a lot of the ships have been toned down or not between SC2 and UQM, but Arilou, Slylandro, and Pkunk are just about impossible sometimes to take out on Awesome level.  Very computer-accurate reflexes, and very good at avoiding your fire.

Same with Utwig and Yehat in shielding....Utwig can be knocked down and out quite easily by many ships though, so I'm not too worried about him.  Yehat OTOH is almost perfect (at least in SC2), and takes a continuous attack against to do well.  Even if you slime it with the VUX until it's non-functional movement wise, it can still take you out, because that shield is permanent as far as the VUX is concerned.

I wouldn't go for seriously neutering these ships, just make them a little less hard to hit than they are.  To me, if very few well piloted ships can take down those ships (which is the case with me and Arilou, Pkunk, and Slylandro, even after 11 years of playing the game), then that indicates a problem.  Especially it's a problem when you consider that many of the capital ships (29 & 30 pts) have multiple ships that a competent supermelee player can use to destroy them.

To wit, Denkc...an awesome Chenjesu computer pilot should fear  well piloted Chmmr, Ilwrath, Supox, Chenjesu, Ur-Quan, Spathi, Androsynth, Utwig (if that DOGI doesn't connect, Chenjesu is done), Orz, Syreen, Mycon, Slylandro, Zot-Foq-Pik, Yehat, Melnorme, and Mmrnmhrm.  By "fear" I mean, either the ship should be destroyed or seriously damaged.

The rest of the capital ships have almost similar weakness lists.

skipped the Kohr-Ah in that list too....that's a fun one to take against a Chenjesu.

The druuge super aiming gun is fun to deal with as well.......

Maybe it's just because I've been playing this game too long, but I don't find those ships all that hard to beat. Some of them (like the Skift) take a while
to hit, but you on;y have to do it once. For every ship, there are a few
others that are really good at killing them. If anything, I'd like to see
the AI upgraded, not crippled.

"We aren't screwing with it 'til 1.0" is fair, I guess, but with the way the game plays now it seems like 0.6 or so will be just as good as a full version. Please keep this in mind when the original game is complete.

I've noticed a few other problem ships as well. I thought I'd point at the Arilou first of all as it seems to be the most "gimped" ship in the game. The other super fast ships as well as the shield ships could use a more gentle fix. There's nothing especially wrong with the Chenjesu as I see it.

Zeep-Eeep: The difficulty of a ship should reflect its point value. Clearly there's a problem if people fear a 16-point Arilou more than a combined fleet worth 60ish points of most other ships. The ship AI should be fair to the average gamer, not the average SuperMelee crack fiend.

You used the word average. That is not how the AI should be on the hardest level. It should be much harder than the average gamer.

But Awesome AI is what the story mode uses, isn't it? They could make that (with aforementioned adjustments to gimped ships) be standard and make an Insane setting that's virtually unbeatable with any ship, but currently the game isn't set up that way.

I was under the impression story mode doesn't match any of the super melee settings, but rather a totally seperate AI routine.  Seems most obvious against the slylandro - if story mode used awesome AI, few would survive their first probe.

I noticed very little difference between the two, except for the probes as you've mentioned. The story is easier because it keeps all the dangerous AI ships from fighting you, except for the Yehat if you aren't careful.

Would it be a good idea to make the story probe code be used in melee as well? They'd behave more like 17 pointers, that's for sure.

This would be the path that I would take.  Call the "Awesome" mode something more befitting and then make a "Challenge" mode.  Actually what I thought would be cool is an adjustable AI...something like..

1) Intelligence - the kind of tactics that get used.  Set on the low side it uses dumb tactics, run at you and shoot, etc, etc.  Set on the high side it uses tactics similar to what a human player might use with the ship given enough time.
2) Aggressiveness - how aggressive is the AI against you?  Set on the low side, it's more evasive, tries to hit you, but doesn't really go after you hard.  Set on the highest setting, comes after you hard, does as much damage as possible, and will sacrifice its own crew to harm you more.  Basically a "death wish" setting...

I'm sure I could think of more given enough time, but that's a thought if anyone wants to try to code an alternative AI.

this is exactly how i would want it. some kind of slider to increase or decrease the ai. i totally agree. good thinking there Captain Smith. im sold... how soon can we get this together and shiped out. ha ha ha :D

~DEFIANT

I don't think there will be a 0.6. I actually expect that after 0.4, 1.0 will follow.

As for irritating ships, I personally don't like fighting against the Pkunk, because it makes the battle a game of chance. Sure, other ships have some randomness involved, but nothing as drastic as giving your opponent a fresh new ship (and possibly another one, and another one...).

My suggested solution to the problem is just to not put the gameplay-ruining ships in the computer's team, or banning them in person vs person.

The skiff can't control where it reappears when it teleports.  If it teleports onto an object--an asteroid, the planet, or your ship--it immediately dies.  I can almost always kill an Arilou skiff using a Vux simply by forcing it to teleport often enough with limpets.  The strategy takes a lot of patience, though.

For those of you who really hate the Arilou, I strongly suggest you watch what the computer does against it.  (See the thread titled "OCD" for background...)

On a 14vs14 ship matchup, an awsome computer arilou is beaten by an awsome computer fleet of:

Androsyn,
Chenjesu,
Chmmr,
Kohr-Ah,
MmmmHrn,
Slylandro,
Umgah,
Ur-Quan,
Utwig,
Vux,
Yehat.

It is tied exactly by the Shofixi.  Now, some of those would require skills beyond most players to defeat the arilou.  (like the Slylandro, or the lucky-shot Ur-Quan)  But at the same time I find that the arilou are very defeatable by the mycon, and if I am feeling lazy, an earthling cruiser can usually defeat them just by using the point defense.

In some ways, the arilou is the computer's best played ship... It is the only one I believe that the computer does smart energy management on.  (It makes sure it has enough to teleport out.)

But you are smarter than the computer, right?  You can adapt.  If the computer can consistantly defeat the Arilou with 11 ships, why can't you?

W

Ivy_Mike: Clever. I'll remember that.



This argument falls flat due to the fact that I can trash all of those 11 ships on Awesome AI with relative ease, some of them without batting an eyelash. I'll watch how the AI fights itself as Arilou, but my skill at the game really isn't the point. My suggestion is for the benefit of newbie and average SC2 players more than the melee fanatics who've been screwing around with the game on and off for a decade that you see on the forum.

Of course you can.  If you pick the right ship.  The computer, however, doesn't pick the right ship.  Using the Arilou, beat the Chmmr.  Or the Utwig, or the Yehat.  Not impossible, but difficult.  For me at least, I can't beat an awsome computer controlled fleet of Chmmr with a fleet of Arilou.  I, of course, can beat it with a single Thraddish.  The computer can't even kill one Chmmr with a fleet of Thraddish.

The most frustrating ships for humans are the ones that we can't control as well as the computer, like the Pkunk and the Arilou.  But let's face it, since the computer sucks so horridly with almost every one of the other ships, it should have something, right?

But, back to the Arilou, the following strategies work well:
Chmmr:  Just wait.  It will die.

Earth:  Point defense, or if you have full energy, missile.  Once in a blue moon you get lucky.  Also, the arilou doesn't like to charge in if you are aiming at it, so you can keep it at bay sometimes.

Mycon:  Again, by running away and then pointing at it, you can keep it at bay long enough to heal up from the times where it gets too close.  Eventually you will get a lucky shot.

Utwig:  Stay still, aim in it's direction, and fire.  shield if it gets too close.

Yehat:  Same as Utwig.

Yes, it is difficult.  That is why the arilou costs 20 pts for a ship that can be killed by an ur-quan with a single bolt.

W

Personally I think the new players should just start off as standard (weak cyborg) and work their way up like the rest of us. I worked very hard since a young child to master SCI melee and even with the 7 hierarchy ships I can defeat the entire alliance fleet (Arilou included) with 2 or 3 ships to spare (i usually have 4 to 5 alliance ships against the hierarchy though ). So the Arilou isn't as hard as you think, especially when you consider that there are SCII ships like the Chmmr that can destroy them in seconds. To me the Arilou is the hardest ship out there and the others you mentioned are much easier but to be perfectly honest I would like a harder Arilou AI. I do so much better with the ship than the computer does at it's best. If you play enough you can guess it's movements and know how to counter them. They're obvious things like aiming your weapon at it to keep at bay (which was already pointed out) and I hate that they don't use the planet to their benefit. To me that's their strongest weapon. A favorite tactic of mine used to be to camp out by a planet, wait for the enemy to come after me, and as they're passing (assuming they're smart enough not to crash) jump out and blast them before blinking away.

Heck if you work hard enough even an Ilwrath can defeat them but it is such a pain. In SCI there was a mission in campaign mode where it informed you that they had discovered that certain ships were better at certain other ships. Basically they expected you to use the Ilwrath against the Arilou and another hierarchy ship against an alliance one. Well let me tell you anyone who thinks the Ilwrath has more of an advantage against the Arilou than the Umgah are sadly mistaken but it's possible to do with some work. The joy of Star Control, to me, was mastering each ship and being the best I could be with each, even trying silly things like defeating a Yehat with a Mycon (which I did, thank you very much - it's a lot of luck and depends on you getting a gravity whip and having a good hour or so to waste lol). *shrugs* Maybe it's just me but being able to actually beat that ship which is so hard you're trying to convince people to tone it down is a lot of fun - goals = good.  :)