mines and fighters
 

I read on this forum someone suggesting turning
off fighters and mines to help the AI with its
ship building.

I tried this and quite a lot of the TDM races I
played with seemed to build less larger ships
than I remember from previous games.

Could turning these off have this effect? I also
noticed most races still had mine sweeper and
mine layer ships. The mine sweepers had only
point defence weapons and without fighters surely
these are less useful.

Is it possible to confuse the AI if you turn too
many things off or edit the files too much.

Re: mines and fighters
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sure. AI are made in order to work with standard game (or with a specific mod). Change default settings and AIs become totally ineffective.

Re: mines and fighters
 

If there are still mine layers/mine sweepers around, then the technology has not been disabled. By the looks of it, you have removed the mines hulls from the game, but the technology remains as the components are still available for the AI. You will want to disable "Mines" in the technology options at game setup, as it seems to be the problem here. (Unless the AI is somehow able to build disabled components)

PDC is mostly useful to hunt down fighters and seekers, so if you remove fighters, you will need less PDC (and so the AI should build less of them). Toying around with a lot of seekers in such a case would hurt the AI however. PDC is also able to target satellites and drones, but the former is not too common while I am not sure if the AI can even use drones. At any rate, your main weapons will likely be your main bet to take down drones, as you would need a lot of PDC to destroy a drone fully loaded with shields/armour/warheads.

Re: mines and fighters
 

I did deselect them in the game setup.
I used to get overwhelmed by carriers in the early
game.

The post I was reading said that by removing mines
the AI wouldn't waste time building mine layers
and sweepers.

Any opinions on this?

Re: mines and fighters
 

If the AI cannot research mines, it won't have minsweepers and minelayers.

So it won't build them if that tech is disabled.

Re: mines and fighters
 

my mistake, the AI had many ships called
mine sweeper and mine layer (class name)
it didn't build the actual layers and sweepers
on the ships.

Does anyone have an opinion on whether mines
are better in or out of the game.

Re: mines and fighters
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Every tool of destruction is a friend...a friiieeend...yessss yessss! **Ahem** Mines and fighters can sometimes be like those friends you never wanted, but at the least they make for more interesting role play.

Re: mines and fighters
 

Good thing you stopped yourself before you said 'precioussss' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: mines and fighters
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For their roleplay effect, mines are awesome. But the AI does have some problems dealing with them. If a human player encounters a mine field blocking access to a warp point s/he wants access to, the human player will likely shift production to solely build ships with mine sweeping components on them. The AI does not have this capability. The AI is designed to maintain a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet. As those ships are destroyed, the AI will build more. But it is doing this because it has been coded to always keep a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet and not because it has encountered a mine field.

When the AI bonus is set to low or none, I think the human player can severely hamper the AI players through the use of mines. On medium and high bonus, the AI researches faster and builds faster, and mines are less effective, in my opinion.

Re: mines and fighters
 

Mines can be fixed by reducing the limit per sector, cutting down the damage each does, and removing sweepers.

Then you can plow through them and take some damage in order to secure territory, instead of either being wiped out or sweeping them all harmlessly.

Re: mines and fighters
 

Mines and fighters become nearly obsolete by mid to late game. So don't focus to much upon them after you have a good level in mine sweeping and point defense tech.

Re: mines and fighters
 

Thanks for all the advice

Re: mines and fighters
 

The AI does seem to build a lot of sweepers. Can
this number be altered?

In settings the number of mines/sector is set at
100. Is this per wormhole or in the whole sector
map?

Re: mines and fighters
 

The limit is per sector, so you can put 100 mines in every single sector of a given system.

The main use for units (that is, fighters, with possibly some drones thrown in for good measure) is when you have a rather long period of peace, allowing you to build a host of such units without any maintenance. But in such cases, you should either go for big or stay home, as one or two hundred fighters won't do much against even a moderate fleet.

However, the main problem of units is to strike the enemy, since fighters cannot warp and drones aren't the most versatile hull around. So good luck for sending these fighters against an enemy fleet when warp openers are running. Now if Warp Openers are not available, a few thousand fighters would make for a very nice taskforce for your defence. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Mines might remain useful even in the endgame, if you use them to bother your foe by putting them in his systems for example. If Warp Openers are disabled, you might also use them to make scouting your systems harder, requiring a minesweeper just to reach the other side of the wormhole alive. Or in short, an opportunity may arise for you to use mines, but you shouldn't hope them to do much good to repel this fleet of three hundred warships currently heading for your homeworld. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ May 30, 2004, 09:56: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: mines and fighters
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For their roleplay effect, mines are awesome. But the AI does have some problems dealing with them. If a human player encounters a mine field blocking access to a warp point s/he wants access to, the human player will likely shift production to solely build ships with mine sweeping components on them. The AI does not have this capability. The AI is designed to maintain a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet. As those ships are destroyed, the AI will build more. But it is doing this because it has been coded to always keep a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet and not because it has encountered a mine field.

When the AI bonus is set to low or none, I think the human player can severely hamper the AI players through the use of mines. On medium and high bonus, the AI researches faster and builds faster, and mines are less effective, in my opinion. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, the AI is indeed smart enough to react when it encoutners mines. Not as well as a human, of course, but it does have the ability to respond. It will try to research mine sweepers if it doesn't have them, for example, and will send mine sweepers to the just hit minefield if this is possible. Exactly how extensive these 'special' routines are I can't say, since I don't have the source code to the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But this is what MM has told us in the beta forums.