Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

An in-depth discussion of Leaky Defenses can be found in the Carrier Battles mod tutorial pages:
DEF 200 : Damage Theory and
DEF 340 : Armor Mechanics
These pages are coming from CBmod, but the underlying game mechanics are universal. Just use your local mod's statistics and follow along.

DEF 340 in particular goes into detail of the tradeoffs between thick (large, low hp/kt) and thin (small, high hp/kt) leaky armors, plus the effects of tech level on damage absorption rates.

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

I had a question about Atmospheric Probes and what the purpose behind them was. It states to keep the AI from prematurely designing colony ships. How so? And why don't you want the AI designing colonyships?

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

SJ those links in your post don't seem to be working at the moment.

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

When the AI designed ships by colony module ability, it would make designs for all 3 types when it only had one actual colony tech. It would then proceed to build a bunch of useless ships sans any ability to colonize. The atmospheric probes are there to prevent that from happening.

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

AI research scripts are especially poor:

After starting with low tech and medium cost, in 2410.1 the AIs have (nearly) finished Laser and Projetile Weapons or their special version of it (level 5 or 6)

Yet, they only have ship building at 2 and therefore are restricted to <200kt hulls.

Some even (e.g. Puntherrain) build mines, but do not even have a mine layer design!?

Nearly all have satellite(s) and layers designed, but do not build any, but troops and bunkers.

Some troops do not have weapons, but 2 pieces of armor ..

They don't have any chemistry or physics researched, therefore no shields and only the basic armor available.

The AIs use leaky armor as if it was 'magic' armor, filling biggest part of the ship with max level weapons (at least, of what is left after dropping enough engines in to get somewhere at all) - this results in "who shoots first wins"-situation especially between AIs even more then necessary because of the design of the combat engine.
.. see screenshot ...

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...53-armor_X.png

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

Are you offering to help beef up the AI?

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

I'gladly report everything troublesome I find.
But I'll have a job interview tomorrow. If everything goes well, I doubt I'll have much time in the future to spend on game mods, or games at all, as I'll have to do training-on-the-job. For a year or two http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
If not, well, I think I'll have some time to spare then ..

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

I started a singleplayer game with the new components.txt posted here, but it looks like it's still broken for the two AI's living on ice worlds.
The others have pretty much fully colonized the part of the galaxy I can see, and they're both stuck with a single planet.

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

'Was only partly fixed. Try this file, should work better ... .
You'll have to start a new game, though, to be sure the AI designs the colonizers correctly.

Re: Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released
 

Thank you, that does work better!

In spite of your advice, I couldn't help but try it in my current game...
It took them a year or so, but they seem to have caught on nicely. Besides the exact component versions, their designs look identical to what the other races use.
I designed a colonizer manually for one of them, which it seems to have built and then marked obsolete in favour of its own new design.

Ofcourse, they do have about a hundred planets worth of catching up to do now...