Matrix Games Forums

The computer fires at your biggest ships and you shoot at his smallest ships, there is no way to change this either. Could we fix this, please? The fire should be spread out randomly or you should have a way to select your prefferred targeting.
I love strategy games but this kind of thing ruins it. There was a similar problem in World at War at one point, don't know if there still is, have not played it in a while. The computer AI would fire all its shot at one tank at a time until it was routed, and then move on to the next one.
If you want to make the game harder & better, improve the strategy and AI, don't program it to cheat. I know, Matrix Games did not program the AI for Reach For The Stars.
I have also noticed that tha Hive, (not sure about others, but probably) seems to know where you do not have a fleet and send attack fleets to the systems with no fleets. This is without sending a scout ship to check first.

Having played through to the last Scenario of the Enter the KK I have always had no problem with the Combat System.

Have you any examples that can be recreated?[&:]


--Bob

"The AI seems to know where you aren't and goes there." I know it sometimes seems that way, but it isn't. If you ever get to the point where you have a picket in every system that the AI could possibly reach, you'll see the AI does jump into occupied systems (and every once in a while they'll jump into where your main battle fleet is going).

As far as the combat system goes, my experience has been the AI tends to target ships it can destroy, or at least damage (defined as killing a shield). With roughly equal numbers/types of ships, I don't see large differences in what units of mine are hurt. If you're taking DDs and CAs against Hive BBs, you're not going to kill very many of his big boys. Remember a Hive BB can absorb 30 hits.

My personal opinion is that the AI doesn't "cheat" and the combat system works well. Granted I only have empirical data to go on, but that has been accumulated over playing 60+ scenarios.

I think if you continue to play, your opinion of the AI will change. Try playing some of the scenarios from different sides.

I can't prove this, but I expect that your experience regarding AI targeting may have to do with the weapons and defenses on your ships and those of the AI. Personally, I've never noticed anything like what you observed--the AI targeting your big ships, while your ships only take on his smaller vessels--so it seems that it must be due to something like this. The formation you choose may also have something to do with it.

Overall, the strong, and, as far as I can see, non-cheating AI is one of the game's strongest points and one of the reasons I still play RFTS.

MOO II is better.

ORIGINAL: pargen

The computer fires at your biggest ships and you shoot at his smallest ships, there is no way to change this either. Could we fix this, please? The fire should be spread out randomly or you should have a way to select your prefferred targeting.
I love strategy games but this kind of thing ruins it. There was a similar problem in World at War at one point, don't know if there still is, have not played it in a while. The computer AI would fire all its shot at one tank at a time until it was routed, and then move on to the next one.
If you want to make the game harder & better, improve the strategy and AI, don't program it to cheat. I know, Matrix Games did not program the AI for Reach For The Stars.
I have also noticed that tha Hive, (not sure about others, but probably) seems to know where you do not have a fleet and send attack fleets to the systems with no fleets. This is without sending a scout ship to check first.

The AI does not have a different targeting algorithm to human players. It also doesn't deliberately send fleets to your undefended systems.If you think about this, then given the lag between sending a fleet and it arriving at its destination, it would to too easy for human players to sucker the AI into a trap. We always try to avoid such predictable and manipulable behaviours in our AI systems.

Gregor

young padawans...


the Ai ALWAYS cheats!

[:D]

ORIGINAL: marky

young padawans...


the Ai ALWAYS cheats!

[:D]

Aged Jedi...

Not all of us have gone over to the dark side.

Gregor