AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release)

[dejagore]

I've started recently on Very Hard difficulty as prewarp Wekkarus empire and .. oh my! I was beaten so hard. Not sure if it was because of enormous number of pirates nearby which literally either destroyed all my mining stations or dry my coffers due to tribute. When I was planning to colonize first planet, Quanemo had like 25 colonies !

Here are some screenshots from that gameplay : http://imgur.com/a/Z2kg7

Anyway just started new gameplay as Banoserit with pirates set to few/weak.

@Icemania - thanks for great AI tweaking. Seriously - I can't remember to lose a DW vanilla game on that difficulty ever

[Cubano]

First off, this is a spectacular effort. I'm just now starting to play after quite some time off and can't wait to use it. Question though:

What is the recommended Research Speed for the AI Improvement Mod, or does it matter? I typically play on Expensive so you don't fly through the tech.

Thanks,

Alex

[Twigster]

Hola Cubano,

Icemania never put out a recommended Research Speed to go with the Mod; that's always up to the player. I always play most expensive research myself. In short, it does'nt matter.

[tppytel]

Something seems odd with the ship design template usage in my game - my (standard) empire appears to use the pirate design templates. I may be misunderstanding something - I've always manually controlled everything before and never looked closely at the auto-generated designs. But, for example, the regular Quameno frigate has 2 graviton beams and 1 regular beam while the pirate version has 3 graviton beams. If I start up a new game, my starting frigate is built to the pirate profile (3 grav beams). As the game progresses, it continues to use the pirate templates (1 reactor on a cruiser, for example, instead of 2).

Is something messed up here? Am I misunderstanding what's supposed to happen? While I enjoy the full manual experience at times, I'd also like to run faster, more automated games. And letting the AI handle research and design is really the biggest part of that.

[tppytel]

I see I may be misreading the Quameno design situation, since the Quameno start without Beam Weapons in the mod. But I've been poking around more broadly at how mod files are handled and have lots of questions, so I made a more general post to the Design and Modding subforum.

[jacozilla]

After playing quite awhile with DW Extended, upgraded to this AI mod recently and really enjoying the additional challenge, very well balanced so far (e.g. I am getting beaten lol)

But one confusing question - why are there so few manufacturing plants per spaceport design?

All the other pre-designed templates look like good improvements and sorely needed where AI undersigned significantly - like for example how the default mining stations start way under mining cap, but the new ones with this mod start close to the mining cap for number of gas extractors, lux, and mining engines

But for spaceports, I notice that even for massive number of construction yards - like say large spaceport at starting tech with 36 yards, it still only uses 1 manufacturing plant of each type, total. So not even the 1:3 ratio recommended in the help text - which would imply 12 plants of each type, but just 1 single one - so 1:36 ratio?

Has there been some patch/update I am not aware about where only 1 plant is needed in order to avoid slowdown in construction due to fabricating the components needed time?

[ASHBERY76]

Something I have noticed with the races is very little use of boarding pods.They are pretty dam powerful.Pirates use them put having some of the main factions use it would add the gameplay.I have done this myself of course.Just thinking of the non modders.

[Sithuk]

The 30 plants to 1 yard ratio is discussed in the following thread.
tm.asp?m=3180183&mpage=1&key=plants?

ORIGINAL: jacozilla

After playing quite awhile with DW Extended, upgraded to this AI mod recently and really enjoying the additional challenge, very well balanced so far (e.g. I am getting beaten lol)

But one confusing question - why are there so few manufacturing plants per spaceport design?

All the other pre-designed templates look like good improvements and sorely needed where AI undersigned significantly - like for example how the default mining stations start way under mining cap, but the new ones with this mod start close to the mining cap for number of gas extractors, lux, and mining engines

But for spaceports, I notice that even for massive number of construction yards - like say large spaceport at starting tech with 36 yards, it still only uses 1 manufacturing plant of each type, total. So not even the 1:3 ratio recommended in the help text - which would imply 12 plants of each type, but just 1 single one - so 1:36 ratio?

Has there been some patch/update I am not aware about where only 1 plant is needed in order to avoid slowdown in construction due to fabricating the components needed time?

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

Something I have noticed with the races is very little use of boarding pods.They are pretty dam powerful.Pirates use them put having some of the main factions use it would add the gameplay.I have done this myself of course.Just thinking of the non modders.

Might have to do with the number of pods available in the templates. In my own custom game, I've put at least two pods on even the escorts, and due to this, I have a lot of my ships stolen from me.

Another problem is that the AI is a little over-zealous in taking down the shields. Many times, a ship the AI tries to capture is actually destroyed while the boarding parties are fighting for control. I've seen this so often that when there is a ship I want to capture (big AI design I have no access to), I manually control the fleet that will accomplish the capture, down to a micro-managed level.

[HerpInYourDerp]

There's also the bug with boarding pods not reloading properly if the capture fails.

[thefinn12345]

Is anyone else getting a huge amount of freighters being built around their home planet ?

There must be a good 50-100 freighters just sitting there doing nothing.

[zenkmander]

Reporting in with my experience so far!

First game as the Banoserit on Normal difficulty. Challenging but fun, no serious massacres from the AI.

Second game however is turning out very different. Playing on Hard as the Ortain (Dictatorship). More challenging than the Banoserit but still fun. Went up against Ketarovs first, hit them early enough to have the advantage and wiped them out. Next were the Phaerax, who I had a tough time with for a while (especially invading their homeworld), but I eventually won.

The REAL challenge is my current conflict with a Kiadian Dictatorship. I'm getting absolutely destroyed by them; they're landing enormous armies on my colonies, not to mention their tech is miles ahead of mine. My hyperdrives are at 15k, theirs are 50k. My size 500-650 ships have ~150-200 firepower each (fighters), their size 800-900 ships have 500 firepower each! I think they have Plasma Torpedoes already. They're also packing a TON of armor (and probably repair bots too), as I'd have huge swarms of missile bombers focusing on one ship and it would still get away.

I know the Kiadians are good at research but man! This is crazy. And I haven't been neglecting research capacity or priorities at all.

I think I might lose this game.

Edit: Here's a video, pretty crazy! I had lost a lot of ships by this point but the result was the same even with 50 of mine vs 20 of theirs.

https://youtu.be/avx2-y7Scco

[jarardo]

Question on tractor beams in this mod. I've tried a setup of railguns and tractor beams, the idea being that the tractors pull in the target into the railguns range. I've got all my stances for everything except for carriers set to point blank, but I'm seeing my ships push the enemy away out of railgun range.

If I let my fleet control itself when fighting, in large battles my fleet will be spread all over the system with 1 or 2 of my ships just pushing the enemy ships away and just pelting them with the small amount of missiles they carry. Even if they win it just ends up making the battle take a really long time.

Any suggestions? I've done some testing and I'm not seeing very consistent results.

Thanks!

[Bingeling]

Are you sure they are point blank against stronger opponents?

[Icemania]

The 1.9.5.8 Patch added the following:

- ship decision whether to use tractor beams to pull or push a target now uses optimal attack ranges defined by battle tactics, e.g. when set to Point Blank then will pull within close range, when set to Evade will always push. Spaceports defending a colony will push when enemy troop transport gets too close in an attempt to prevent them from dropping invading troops at the colony

I know that it worked well a while back, but my testing focused on observations from the designs using the design templates available via Modding. If it's not working in specific cases it's a hard coded problem I can't fix and should probably go in Tech Support with as much detail as you can provide.

[Blabsawaw22]

whoops! totally saw that you were the other guys! ha.. nevermind my last post. too funny.

Can you delete posts here? I don't see an option..

[elvenour]

Can someone please reupload this mod? I really hope that i can enjoy this mod too

The dropbox link seems broken

[elvenour]

Is there any site that i can use to download the ai mods? Like mirror sites?

[Icemania]

All, my bad, due to the volume of links I have in dropbox I tried to better organise them. Unfortunately, moving them into folders changes the links, so I’ve updated the OP to reflect the new links. Give it another go and please let me know if any issues.

[Hattori Hanzo]

I downloaded the mod from your DropBox and it seem to work perfectly [8D]