AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release)

[Icemania]

There are a couple of reasons to have a mix of flee with Shields at 20% and Never Flee.

For a race using Beams, they can take a bit of damage getting to Point Blank range in the first place, and then they have a battle changing advantage.

For a human playing the AI it's going to be harder if more Empires and Pirates are persistent in attack. You might still win the battle but you'll take more losses as well.

Also I'd like to keep some tactical variety between the races.

[Blackstork]

I agree on beam users but I'd keep flee at 20% for long rangers and fighter uses since they are in disadvantage in point blank and Ai just rewarp ships sometimes and it does not harm consistency of his attacks. Missile capital ships benefit from 20% shields much more than point blank. Human can just play carefully and defensively and engage in war of attrition vs outnumbering ais.
Player can outmaneuver and catch Ai ships with outnumbering force but that won't be easy without hyperdeny BC Ai will flee in time.

[Icemania]

Fair enough. I'd like to keep Never Flee for Aggressive Races using Torpedoes as they also use Point Blank. The Passive Races using Torpedoes can fleet at 20% as they use All Weapons. This will give a different flavour to how Torpedoes are used by different races.

I'm playing a test game with the Boskara at the moment and these new tactics are awesome!

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Icemania
• Even with the correct Construction Size technology and plenty of available cashflow there is a delay before the AI will build Capital Ships. Please advise what the trigger is or remove the delay if hardcoded.

This wasn't mentioned as fixed in the 1.9.5.8 Beta patch notes but is anyone else seeing an improvement here? Looks like it's been fixed.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Here's your dang defeat screen! Darn bugs attacking my home planet! Ive lost my main space port! Now if you could get the AI to invade planets more we would really be screwed!

Cool dude! In a test game at the moment, I'm watching an AI that started larger than the other empires. They have 4 fleets. Individually they don't have the forces to invade the homeworld of an enemy nearby (they wiped everything else out) but if 2-3 of those fleets combined, the homeworld would have been conquered long ago. One for Erik and Elliot I would suggest.

[Icemania]

Looks like one of the fighter/bomber focused races is causing trouble for others [:D]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/261470/di ... 635829277/

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: Icemania
If lurchi add more Super Weapons for other weapons types I would like to see more of it.

Most weapons have them in Research Reloaded. [8D]

[Blackstork]

Most destructive weapon are cookies (not browser ones) which bring races to Dark Side.

BTW Icemania, you can test AI mod on Beyond with Such-Oos now and see how they pile their friends versus own enemies and treats. Diplomacy race combined with AI mod is something awful to have as your opponent, even if it seems to be peaceful weakling race Once they will have tractor beam to protect their colonies from sneaky troop invasions they could be completely awful thing to face as AI, because of political pressure they can create and pile even neutral alliance races on you.

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka

Ive integrated Dwaines wonder balances into your mod.

Both wonders and governments will be integrated into Research Reloaded once balanced. I'd be way happier with turning most wonders into facilities to level the field even further, but that's impossible so far. [:(]

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Looks like one of the fighter/bomber focused races is causing trouble for others [:D]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/261470/di ... 635829277/

Cool.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Looks like one of the fighter/bomber focused races is causing trouble for others [:D]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/261470/di ... 635829277/

Good catch that he was using your mod!

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Let's talk tactics, preliminary thoughts are as follows.

TacticsWeaker and TacticsStronger
Apply Point Blank for:

(a) Any race with Beam & Wave Weapons because it's fundamental to the weapon type (Gizurean, Mechanoid, Sluken, Wekkarus, Phaerax, Yl'ta)
(b) Torpedoes if the race is Aggressive (Boskara, Kiadian, Shakturi, Keskudon)

Otherwise All Weapons as that is appropriate for other weapons types.

Used for Military Ships and Base/Ports/Stations.

InvasionTactics and FleeWhen

(a) For Aggressive races, Invade Immediately and Never Flee
(b) For Passive races, Invade When Clear and Shields at 20%

Used for Military Ships.

To simplify the effort required I'm just going to focus on the races that use Point Blank.

[Icemania]

I've got all the Point Blank tactics done now.

I've added Tractor Beams to all Spaceport designs. Note plenty of Vanilla Spaceports have no Tractor Beams at all.

I've added Tractor Beams to all Capital Ships (for all races using Point Blank). Yet to test what Tractor Beams do on ships with All Weapons tactics.

[Tanaka]

Hi Ice changes look great! Have you decided what to do about the resupply ships?

[Icemania]

With respect to Resupply Ships, not yet Tanaka. Next step is getting Tractor Beams into the Research Orders. I'll post a link to a test version at that point, with these new mechanics I would like to see the observations of others. Then I'll think more about Resupply Ships.

[Icemania]

As suggested in the Steam forum, to help players that use a mix of manual research and automatic designs, in the Galactopedia I've now stated the design template focus with weapons. This is available in the Excel sheet as well but this makes that information more accessible in-game.

[Blackstork]

Hey Ice
Since AI mod is part of Beyond i though to do some informative thing.
2 things actually.
Weapon Info Grap, and Alliance Info Graph.
Weapon specs were not changed from your mod in Beyond, just added more races with their spec.
Alliances changed drastically because of lore , creating more epic "Gondor-Mordor", Good vs Evil devision.
The style should be like my Leadership Graph charts in Beyond mod.
They could be much more nicier representation, and eventually added into pedia.
So since we are aiming for megamod thingy anyways for weapons graph you could use it (there iwll be just bit more races) (or i iven make smaller version ). For alliances - here is layout i will do in Art form... Not sure if that will be helpul due some real differencies in alliance teams
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Icemania]

Adding more information in the Galactopedia sounds like a great idea. I won't add those graphs here but look forward to seeing it as part of Beyond.

[Icemania]

Oh man this is meant to be my time off work ...

Just tracked down an undocumented feature of the new freighter shrinking introduced in 1.9.5.8.

The observation was that at the start of the game the modified (larger) freighters in the Mod were available to most races. However, this was not the case for the Ackdarian, Gizurean, Kiadian, Wekkarus and Jintus. The freighter designs were exactly the same. Why just these races? What do they have in common?

They all have a Speed/Agility Energy Research Focus. But so do the Sluken, Enton and Riktoh ... yet they worked fine?!

The problem was the field "ResearchDesignOverallFocus". If this is set to 1 (Speed/Agility) then the shrinkage algorithm changes. In order to reach the size limit needed, the number of thrusters in particular needs to be reduced by the game, which this setting prevented. When I changed it to 0 (Balanced) the freighters for the remaining races all shrunk to align with the others.

I don't think changing this field matters otherwise, but I don't really know, as there is no detail in the Modding guide about exactly what it does (as is the case for the majority of fields). Since the Research Orders and Design Templates are customised anyway, hopefully not, but please report any problems with 1.02 once it's released.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Here's your dang defeat screen! Darn bugs attacking my home planet! Ive lost my main space port! Now if you could get the AI to invade planets more we would really be screwed!

Cool dude! In a test game at the moment, I'm watching an AI that started larger than the other empires. They have 4 fleets. Individually they don't have the forces to invade the homeworld of an enemy nearby (they wiped everything else out) but if 2-3 of those fleets combined, the homeworld would have been conquered long ago. One for Erik and Elliot I would suggest.

I've updated the Developer Support Wishlist in the OP accordingly.