AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release)

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile
I started a new game, but "unfortunately" everything is working well.

Icemania, I'm so disappointed in you, I expected more bugs.

My apologies.

I expected a casual part-time effort, at my least productive time of day, after long working hours, using a bunch of parameters that have little or no explanation in the Modding Guide, would lead to many bugs.

If I actually worked in the gaming industry, where many have lost the plot on quality control, I can assure you I would have met your lofty expectations.

And if I actually worked in some other parts of the gaming industry, I would thank my colleagues, who have helpfully pointed out some of my mistakes, by banning them, deleting their posts and labelling them as ungrateful and entitled.

End Rant. Normal service shall now resume.

[Icemania]

Now, if that doesn't motivate you lot to find the bugs, nothing will. I'm sure they are there, it's an Alpha.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile
Icemania, I'm so disappointed in you, I expected more bugs.

Didn't you get them with the upgraded Shakturi?

[Skasski]

Will this mod also improve auto-designs of player empires if players set ship and base design to be automated?

Can/will this mod change station designs to remove obsolete (fuel)storage from starbases, as planets already provide infinite storage and only one module is needed for the design warning to go away? (and maybe similar things if they exist)

[sayke]

If I actually worked in the gaming industry, where many have lost the plot on quality control, I can assure you I would have met your lofty expectations.

And if I actually worked in some other parts of the gaming industry, I would thank my colleagues, who have helpfully pointed out some of my mistakes, by banning them, deleting their posts and labelling them as ungrateful and entitled.

Bahahaha - I just wanted to say that this was awesome =D

[Syntax]

original posted by Isemania: "My apologies.

I expected a casual part-time effort, at my least productive time of day, after long working hours, using a bunch of parameters that have little or no explanation in the Modding Guide, would lead to many bugs.

If I actually worked in the gaming industry, where many have lost the plot on quality control, I can assure you I would have met your lofty expectations.

And if I actually worked in some other parts of the gaming industry, I would thank my colleagues, who have helpfully pointed out some of my mistakes, by banning them, deleting their posts and labelling them as ungrateful and entitled".

WOW - what a great phrase, now thats what I call an declarative answer!!!!

I have implemented your mod in my game: - so far so good.....will give u feedback as I play a bit more...

Thank u for the long needed modification...

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Skasski
Will this mod also improve auto-designs of player empires if players set ship and base design to be automated?

Absolutely. I've played most of my test games with Ship and Base Design automated to check how the AI applies the improved templates. On Default, I find Automatic frustrating to watch so I play full micro. However, in my Extreme difficulty test game I left the Ship/Base Design, Research and Exploration on Automatic. I could then play at 4X speed with very little pausing and found it really fun.

ORIGINAL: Skasski
Can/will this mod change station designs to remove obsolete (fuel)storage from starbases, as planets already provide infinite storage and only one module is needed for the design warning to go away? (and maybe similar things if they exist)

All of the Ship and Base designs have already been optimised. That said, I'm sure further improvements could be made, suggestions are welcome. Indeed I haven't tested the one fuel cell design idea ... although Spaceports have no cargo bays.

Please just keep in mind that there is no conditional logic in the templates so I can't emulate what I actually do in-game. That said, it's worked out a lot better than what I expected when starting this mod, partly with the 1.9.5.6 changes that help with the Military Ship shrinkage issues.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Syntax
I have implemented your mod in my game: - so far so good.....will give u feedback as I play a bit more...

Your feedback is very welcome.

Post release I'll fix whatever comes up as well and I'm more than happy to help others who are applying this to other mods.

[Sirian]

ORIGINAL: Icemania
And if I actually worked in some other parts of the gaming industry, I would thank my colleagues, who have helpfully pointed out some of my mistakes, by banning them, deleting their posts and labelling them as ungrateful and entitled.

Oh, yes, there are people out there with 'zero' social skills.

[spiralaxis]

Random thought: What if "All Weapons" was changed rom "80% of Max range" to "Range at which you get 80% of Max damage"?

I had always assumed All Weapons meant "Within the range of your shortest-ranged weapon".

[Icemania]

For Torpedoes or Missiles, I want the AI to stay outside of the range of Short Range Weapons, so All Weapons (default) is good as is. If they were forced to go in a lot closer, which is what 80% of Max Damage implies, that advantage would be lost.

Keep in mind most of the races in this mod are single weapon focused so "within the range of your shorted-ranged weapon" is a selection of one. By researching too many weapons, AI weapon research is not competitive enough. The benefits of a second weapon have to be significant to justify them.

[sayke]

Icemania - Quick point of clarification: Without the v1.9.5.6 patch, ship scaling concerns make this unusable on very expensive research configurations, right?

[Tcby]

EXAMS OVER. can't wait to settle down to this after work..

[xepooqu80]

Hi Icemania!
Lot of progress

Some observation from the game with latest version and 1.9.6 playing securan, normal start
- The cruiser design becomes available at 300 and at 400 size but it has either no weapon or 1 epsilon torpedo. I saw in the template there should be 2 fighters bay but they are not added in the shrinken design -> the ship is completely useless
- I got a CTD (screenshot attached)

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: sayke
Icemania - Quick point of clarification: Without the v1.9.5.6 patch, ship scaling concerns make this unusable on very expensive research configurations, right?

There were two shrinkage related issues with 1.9.5.5:

1. Military ships are quite often shrunk excessively, leading to ships with no weapons, or very few weapons. That looks to have been resolved with 1.9.5.6 before the crashes stopped my testing. This is a general observation on any research setting.

2. Civilian ships are not shrunk at all. My designs are Size 230 rather than Size 160 or less which leads to significant improvements in speed and extraction. So if you are playing Expensive Research or above, on a Prewarp Start, there will be a delay in building Civilian Ships until Space Construction research is complete. You can still play but it doesn't meet my goals with the Mod. This is on my developer support wishlist and I'm hopeful it will be considered. If this is not patched, I'll consider providing two editions of the Mod at release.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: acantoni
- The cruiser design becomes available at 300 and at 400 size but it has either no weapon or 1 epsilon torpedo. I saw in the template there should be 2 fighters bay but they are not added in the shrinken design -> the ship is completely useless

See the previous post. I'm hoping this will be fixed in Patch 1.9.5.6 thanks to support from Elliot and Erik.

ORIGINAL: acantoni
- I got a CTD (screenshot attached)

Please report this on Tech Support. I have no idea if it's related to this Mod or not. All I can say if that I've done everything that I can to follow the Modding Guide.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Icemania
1. Military ships are quite often shrunk excessively, leading to ships with no weapons, or very few weapons. That looks to have been resolved with 1.9.5.6 before the crashes stopped my testing. This is a general observation on any research setting.

The 1.9.5.6 Beta 2 looks to have resolved this. Please test it out.

[Retreat1970]

Pardon me if this has come up (quite a few posts to read through). I thought since this was an AI improvement mod I'd ask.

Will you be adjusting AI tax rates at all? The reason I ask is because growth (money) trumps all IMO. When I play a game in absence except for tax rates (manual) I always dominate by mid game. The AI tends to overtax, overspend, and overbuild which hampers growth. By keeping taxes low (I do 14% for the happiness bonus just my way) until pop is close to max, the AI seems to be quite happy living within it's means.

[ParagonExile]

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

Pardon me if this has come up (quite a few posts to read through). I thought since this was an AI improvement mod I'd ask.

Will you be adjusting AI tax rates at all? The reason I ask is because growth (money) trumps all IMO. When I play a game in absence except for tax rates (manual) I always dominate by mid game. The AI tends to overtax, overspend, and overbuild which hampers growth. By keeping taxes low (I do 14% for the happiness bonus just my way) until pop is close to max, the AI seems to be quite happy living within it's means.

The values where the AI starts taxing are hard-coded, but Icemania made it so low and medium populations have zero taxes.

[Tcby]

What do people think of the new racial biases? I like the idea of them being higher values, but I'm not totally keen on the bloc format. I'm concerned it may make galactic politics too predictable.

One of the goals behind Haree's extended races mod was to create more complex galactic situations. There are many races in his mod that have positive biases with races that would normally be in separate blocs in the vanilla game. One of the results of this approach is the increased likelihood of large scale, unpredictable wars. Choosing who to ally with is also a more difficult decision than in valilla. The Tairoshans are a good example of this, because they make friends with everybody and quickly form defense pacts and trade agreements with most races. In Haree's current livestream game, almost the whole galaxy is at war. The same war [:D]. All it took was one opportunistic DOW for the whole thing to move into chaos.

Of course, the AI mod cannot implement this degree of complexity because the vanilla race pool is too low. What I'm more interested in is starting a discussion about what people like/dislike about current biases (high values that also somewhat ignore previous racial family bonuses), so that by the time this mod is being adapted to DWE, that process will be less complex.

As it stands now I enjoy the possibility of conflict that these values represent. Unfortunately in my most recent test game I played with too little automation, and so the AI empires are too scared to start wars with me in the middle of them all, a member of a couple defensive pacts and many times larger and more advanced [:(]

Next game will be almost fully automated with all races, so we'll see how that pans out.

Edit: side note: on normal research, planet quality, and difficulty, the Haakonish built the Traders bazaar in the 18th year of a prewarp start.

At that point the automated research pathing of the shandar had them sporting the holographic network and size ~900 carriers. Fun times.