Suicidal private and public ships

[OzoneGrif_slith]

Hello,

I set the game's mode to "Rule in absence" to see how the AI behaves when I'm busy somewhere else. So far, Shadow is a huge improvement, but I seen one problem and wonder if we can avoid it...

The asteroid field on one of my colonial planet is full with Kaltors and worms. Private mining ships go there every 5 seconds, trying to mine the asteroids, then immediately flee away... when they can... the space creatures in that asteroid field are well feed.

After a few minutes, the AI started to send frigates in the field to kill the creatures. Only problem: the AI sent these frigates one by one. After 1 hour (and fat space creatures), the empire's budget is as low as you can expect, all the military ships have been destroyed, and my empire is on the verge of being eradicated.


It looks like the AI doesn't evaluate the threat correctly. It should only attack when certain to win the fight. Right ?

[Mansen]

Similarly my exploration and (gas)mining ships don't seem to care about the Pirate shipyard (or the mass of pirate ships) in my neighboring system. They keep throwing themselves at the pirates like lemmings. [8|]

[YourConscience]

For the devs: I think in order to avoid complex threat analysis, a simple system could be used that is also used by ants:
Whenever a ship dies in a system, increase a threat number for that system or planet. This threat number only goes down very slowly by itself, or is set to zero immediately if an allied flied shows up and wins the fight. The higher the threat number of some system or planet, the less likely it should be chosen as target by private or lonely military ships. Above a certain level it should become a prime target for some core fleet to show up and mop up.

[BigWolfChris]

ORIGINAL: Mansen

Similarly my exploration and (gas)mining ships don't seem to care about the Pirate shipyard (or the mass of pirate ships) in my neighboring system. They keep throwing themselves at the pirates like lemmings. [8|]

I have ships that insist on trying to refuel at pirate bases and planets surrounded by pirates

[Peter Fisla]

I'm having similar problems in my game using 1.9.0.2 update. My human empire is now kind of spread out and I guess I didn't track how far the AI was building bases. The problem I have is that my empire is strangely spread out and the AI keeps sending frigates one by one to my remote new bases and the pirates keep killing them one by one. Same goes with exploration ships, they are getting killed one by one in few sectors and then I have to build new ones again which is killing my empire's budget. I'm still new to the series so I'm not really sure how to fix this yet but perhaps the AI military could use an update. Also the AI should try to colonize new planets that are near by rather than far away. My galaxy is HUGE, maybe I need to really scale down in my next game and start with something small just to learn the ropes of the game. I'm guessing I will need to optimize what game features to have under AI control vs what to have under human control...this delicate balance will take time.

It would be cool if there would be a way to do some simply scripting so that I could tell the AI how to manage military ships, exploration ships...colony ships. Example if I have a few frigates patrolling a base and a new research for ship armor is completed, ask me for permission to disengage from patrolling before proceeding for refit. Currently if I accept refit, all military ships doesn't matter what they are doing will go back to a base for refit...

On another note, is there a way to remove the squares/triangles around ships ? It looks kind of ugly, it would be cool if ships could have a colour outline to identify them to which empire they belong to...

Thanks!

[Scrove]

For the colonization issue you can enforce colony limits to somewhere around 1-2 sectors and they will be forced to colonize close rather than far.

[TrooperCooper]

Since shadows certainly the most pressing problem IMO. It constantly keeps ruining the private economy if their ships are to stupid to evade pirate-camped systems. [:(]

[Bingeling]

Or it is what fills your stage bank account since they have to buy new ships [;)]

[TrooperCooper]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Or it is what fills your stage bank account since they have to buy new ships [;)]

Untill they are bankrupt. Then its game over. [:-]

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: TrooperCooper

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Or it is what fills your stage bank account since they have to buy new ships [;)]

Untill they are bankrupt. Then its game over. [:-]

I think you need very rough settings for that to happen. Or a bug.

Do you have issues going to pirate camped independents? Grab that independent and keep the pirates away. All parts of that plan could be easier said than done, though.

[OzoneGrif_slith]

You get bankrupt anyway since your military ships gets destroyed as well.

Bankrupt and helpless... I've had another strange behaviour yesterday. A group of ship did wrap to the border of the system, and stopped there (in space), doing nothing. They were automated, but they didn't receive any orders from the AI. :\

[Bingeling]

I have run a lot of automated shadows games during testing, and never did all empires fail to get somewhat big. Some fail, that happens. So obviously the AI has been able to not go bankrupt.

The bankrupt AIs I have seen have not been early in the game, and they have not been small, and the bankruptcy was caused by issues that has since long been fixed. An empire that shrinks very fast, but does not lose its ships/bases, may be in risk of something going very wrong with the economy, though.