Hum, recommended by frags and it's on offer.... tempting

I read you talk about this game in some other threads before (I think with H@h@ or Cheese, can't remember)

But do you have to have a co-op person to play? or can you play solo?

Ok, bought it, 6 bucks is very cheap, I am in family now so I don't really have time to try it out now.

A mix of SupCom and Sins cant be bad for that price, and it's a small game from a one guy team, good to help also

Hum, I am in Europe right now so maybe different deals than Msia but AI Fleet War was showing for 6 euros here, so means 6 usd for US based.
You could try to use a proxy

Ha alright, from my experience sometimes Steam just don't "convert" and 6 usd price makes a 6 euros price (which is VERY different.... but that's how Steam do...)

Just did the basic tutorials, seems interesting yar, the "look" of the ships reminds me a bit of some old school games like Master of Orion 2 and all

He he he yar, I like this kind too but sometimes also lack the time to really explore all of them.
Will be back from family soon so will have more time to play (and will be back to desktop instead of laptop ^^) but high competition between all the new games I bought during Steam Xmas.

Still in the middle of the Intermediate Tutorial (which is more of a mini-campain-tutorial), still find the UI cluncky a bit but not so bad.

Well, Heart of Irons is pretty hard to get into to be honest but I do remember spending some awesome time on the 2nd one, its just pretty overwhelming at first. And I do admit it can be pretty boring to tune the productions/supplies/reinforcements/upgrades/consumer goods sliders pretty much all time (that was improved in HoI3 a bit though).

As for AI War, so far I am not used to the keyboard shortcut yar, getting slowly to it, not being efficient in using keyboard shortcut is one of my major issue in gaming in general actually, I am a clicker by instinct and in some games (some speedy rts or even WoW) it sometimes makes me way less efficient.

To get back to your screens frags, the transport ships seems pretty interesting to avoid blockades yar, I was actually wondering if later on the game would not end in a turtling issue? Since from my little understanding of the game and it's possibilities so far it seems to be doable to really make some systems or wormholes pretty much impassable to the AI. The turrets system coupled with force fields seemed to me like it could hold some pretty huge fleets for a while. Or is the AI really "smart" and will find holes to pass through?

Stuff like Stealth or these transports (and maybe some empty ones sent first as lures) seems interesting

Yar, one question I had about the Steam version is are we getting all the patches too?

Because I don't remember an update for AI Fleet recently

Ha yar, I simply did not start it yet since the update. And since the game is small I probably did not see it downloading it.
The "View Update News" of Steam is also pretty useless most of the times.

Good to know about that, Steam not getting last updates (or getting them later) is one of the few bads points about it.

Too "busy" in GTA4 atm but this game is pretty interesting
The xpas seems also to add a lot but I think I will train more on the vanilla game first.

Yar, I got me the xpac, it's pretty cheap and I can play it later on when i got more time to dedicate to that game (it's not the game you can play 5 minutes or so)

Well, they have a trial dispo if I am not wrong so you might want to test it out first, it's quite special strategy game, quite far from normal RTS or even Sins, it's a bit of its one of its kind animal

It's quite far from Sins really in the mechanisms, I would really say it's worth trying though.

Just not kind of game for anyone though.

Thing is, the game scale can go up to tens of thousands of units in each camps on bigger maps, so while the graphics are really not the issue, the simple amount of calculation can hog some lower systems.

But the guy making the game (yes, it's mostly done by one guy only) is improving performance pretty often, very good support for the game.

Frags: I am still pretty noob at it, I am still finishing the advanced tutorial, but could be willing to try out coop with someone more experienced to test it out.
But as usual I am in China so connectivity might be an issue, not sure how is the lag for that game

I like the amount of support the guy is doing for his baby, he is also pretty reactive for bugs/issues and really listen to the community

For the key, you got the "Copy to Clipboard" option on the Steam menu, then just paste inside AI, works like a charm ^^

Well, I managed to finish my first map today. I put the AI at level 3 which ended up being way too easy (AI pretty much passive) but at least let me test more capabilities than the advanced tutorial. Was on 50 planets map, good length/strategy ratio I found. Took me around 7 hours to finish

Free Roam Defender mode is really awesome and I love how much micro-management it takes off your hands (especially for Engineers and Rebuilders).

I think this game is the first one where I see some really "smart" auto-mode that let you concentrate on the important things while handling the small craps like rebuilding mine fields or destroyed turrets.

Playing around more with some of the units was fun too:

- Parasites are really awesome for getting your some Mark 4 and Core units and basically sometimes finishing fights with more units than your started

- Mobile Repair Station can really make a difference in some tougher planets, engineers are just a bit too slow to repair lots of ships.

- I used one Golem, the Hive one which was really really really expensive to use but very powerful once fully loaded, it basically killed all the ships on the 2 AI core planets on its own (500 wasps = pwn). The other golems all seem to have some pretty big drawback though, I am not sure if they are really worth the cost/AI increase compare to a similar cost fleet or normal sheep. It crippled my economy for qutie a long time to bring it online and used a huge proportion of my energy, but I just wanted to try it out

- Zenith Power Generator are now on my very top priority list to grab (I got 2 in my map and they let me use the golem, otherwise impossible to have enough energy while still having some resource left)

I think I might try level 6 for next game, will be quite a bit step up but could be interesting. Lots of room to improve my resource management though, I usually ended up running out of resources for too long.

@frags: I think I will try to complete at least a couple more games before trying the Coop, which level of AI do you usually use?

Well, I tend to be a bit of a slow, methodical player so I always take longer than really necessary but usually "play it safe" (that was also my first game and I was playing around with the units/golem and all)
Yesterday my 2nd victory was after about 6 hours of game too, with a harder AI (lvl 6)

But yar, this game is not twitchy fast game anyway, it's another genre.

Yap, I totally agree, it's impressive really

I just started a Lvl 7 campaign and it's really a big jump from 6 to 7, I had to restart a few times on different maps to pull it out ( kept getting surrounded by level 4 planets that pretty much boxed me in, not exactly fun for a first game at that level)
The AI really start to harass you in the first 5-10 minutes, which is really surprising for a game that last so long.

The AI (the enemy's and your own units one) is really what separate that game from others. Like how your units on FRD mode separate themselves equally if two groups of enemy arrive and all, it's impressive
I read on the forum that the guy used fuzzy logic and some advanced AI behaviors, I studied that a bit during my uni time but it's the first time I see it being used in a real game.

I am finally on to a good start but took me about one hour just to make my home planet safe (I hate "immune to tractor beams" enemy ships...) and to take one of the neighbor planets.

I am still only taking Parasites as my special ships, I just find them too good at the beginning (when you have limited resource) and at the end (to get these yummy Core/IV ships). But they do cost quite a lot of energy which is not easy to pump at the beginning.

If some big AAA developer could bring out this kind of AI in another game, it could really be impressive

When I think about it, recently the two games that really impressed me are this one and Dwarf Fortress new release, both made by one guy team for their programming core.
These 2 guys programming skills put lots of people (me included) to shame really, go go Indies!

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Apr 3 2010, 04:17 PM

Yar, AI 7 really jump to your throat in the first few minutes, its not huge waves but it's quite problematic when you just getting started.

Have to spend more research on turrets at first than I spent on AI6.

My AI7 game is still pending, did not have much time to finish it.
I am pretty sure of winning but it would still take me quite a lot of time to mope the rest of it, really lots of enemy ships on the planets. Feels a little bit like a drag and less interesting, I think I prefer early game where you have to scout and sneak.

I would be up for a Coop too if there is room, friday 10pm could be alright for me, just might need to get ready to play a bit late at night, or to save the game and restart it at a later date, not sure we can do it in one sitting if starting at 10pm ^^

From what I read the AI gets also bit harder if there in coop, depending on how many human players there are. I am game for any AI level you guys wanna do, could be good to not start too high to get our feet wet.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Apr 11 2010, 09:20 PM

It's really more to try the coop mode than anything else seriously, would be quite curious how the AI plays differently with more people.

Edit: 16/04: tonight is on or not then?

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Apr 16 2010, 12:08 PM

So 10pm tonight? How to meet?

I never tried the game MP yet but I believe we need the IP of the host no?

Hopefully I don't have issues or lag because I am in China, see how it goes anyway, it's for testing sake