The Rage Collective v1.2
 

I have posted the latest Version of the Rage over in the Mod forum. I have included many of the changes suggested in other threads, though I did not change the racial traits. Changing the racial traits would have involved a much larger changes to the research and design files than I was prepared to make at this time.

Please let me know what you think.

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

Very good work, thank you again!
Until now I played only a short game with your new rage Version, but it locks very good.

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

And the winner is.....

the rage!


I played now over 40 turns with the new Version of the rage and they are number 1. They do really very good and I see nothing at the moment that is wrong. They may very well be the strongest AI race at the moment!

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

I have been playing with the Rage 1.2 and I have to admit that I've own this game for 5 months and this is the first race that has kicked my butt! Right now I am unable to advance because the Rage is keeping me boxed in. They have great ship design and use great tactics. At this moment I don't have answer to them.

Great Job! This race should be a blue print to other modders!

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

Thank you all for the excellent feedback! Without the feedback, the Rage would be no where near as effective as they have become.

Again, thanks!

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

The rage Rocks! They are kicking the poo out of the other races! LOL! Right on.

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

Good god, this is my first long (100+ turns) game with the rage and they are mopping up the universe without breaking a sweat. Even races that normally give me problems (modpack Sergetti etc) are being hammered. Right now the Rage are at war with all four races that have contact with, and so far as I can tell by peaking at the other races in GM mode the Rage are winning all four wars. Even the poor Borg are so devastated that they are actually making trade treaties now with everyone they have contact with. The odd side effect to this is since I'm on the other side of the Galaxy I'm finding it easy to survive and flourish for once because half the AI's are too busy trying to stay alive to give me problems. SO far it's Rage, Me, Xiati, Earth Alliance, XiChung, Sergetti, Sagella, and the Borg, then the neutrals

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

I happened to notice a noticable weekness in the Rage this weekend, (to some extend it seems to effect most of the races though) In one game, the Rage were destroyed by an AI player in the first 15 turns or so, but I'm not sure who did it.

Then in a game yesterday, I started in the system next to them. After a hostile message from them refusing a Non-Aggression treaty on turn 4, I immediately began attacking them without declaring war, and ended up wiping them out by turn 9. From what I could tell, the problem lay in the fact that since I did not declare war, they never shifted to the attack or defend construction que. This resulted in them not building any noticable defenses on either of the two planets they had, and the continuation of construction of thier colony ships (Which were promptly destroyed).

I have two possible suggestions for you in this case:

1 As a majority of the combats resulted in a stalemate, each time I attacked, thier current anger settings resulted in them getting a little happier with me. This prevented them from reaching an anger level in which they would declare war on me, thus preventing them from switching production to warships and defenses which would have stopped me. (I believe this is what had happened to them by an AI player earlier, with the AI player attacking but not becoming angry enough to declare war, while the Rage did not become angry enough to declare war either).

2 Once again, as a warship or more sufficient planet defenses would have prevented me from eliminating them, either of them earlier in thier exploration que would have given them the protection they needed to hold on long enough to build more warships.

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

Well don't make them much tougher, I already dread facing them http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif. Great race.

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Atraikius:
I happened to notice a noticable weekness in the Rage this weekend, (to some extend it seems to effect most of the races though) In one game, the Rage were destroyed by an AI player in the first 15 turns or so, but I'm not sure who did it.

Then in a game yesterday, I started in the system next to them. After a hostile message from them refusing a Non-Aggression treaty on turn 4, I immediately began attacking them without declaring war, and ended up wiping them out by turn 9. From what I could tell, the problem lay in the fact that since I did not declare war, they never shifted to the attack or defend construction que. This resulted in them not building any noticable defenses on either of the two planets they had, and the continuation of construction of thier colony ships (Which were promptly destroyed).

I have two possible suggestions for you in this case:

1 As a majority of the combats resulted in a stalemate, each time I attacked, thier current anger settings resulted in them getting a little happier with me. This prevented them from reaching an anger level in which they would declare war on me, thus preventing them from switching production to warships and defenses which would have stopped me. (I believe this is what had happened to them by an AI player earlier, with the AI player attacking but not becoming angry enough to declare war, while the Rage did not become angry enough to declare war either).

2 Once again, as a warship or more sufficient planet defenses would have prevented me from eliminating them, either of them earlier in thier exploration que would have given them the protection they needed to hold on long enough to build more warships.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Excellent observations. Early on in the development of the Rage, I put a twist in the AI that would make a small increase in happiness when you destroy one of their ships. (This was before the personality of the Rage had fully formed.) I wanted to see if I could make the AI make peace with a superior power that was beating them up. It didn't work, and I basically forgot about it. It looks like it can have an unintended side effect early in the game. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...s/rolleyes.gif

When the next patch comes out, I will work on a new Version of the Rage to make sure that it is fully compatible with the patch. At the same time I'll see what I can do about this, as well as a couple of other tweaks that I've been thinking about.

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

Another thought hit me as I was driving to work:

One problem that I have seen early in the game is that the AI queues up three or four items in the construction queue and never removes items from the queue. So, the Rage may have three colonizers queued up in the only shipyard when they are attacked. Even if they shift to a war footing, it may be six turns before they start building a warship.

Is there any way around this that any of the modders know? Ideally, when the mode shifts, the queues should be redone to match the new requirements. Either that, or there should only be one thing in each queue at a time so that they will adapt to the new circumstances faster.

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

Alpha - no way that I know of to prevent this. We actually wanted this for a long time b/c in earlier Versions of the AI there was a severe problem with them having NO queues filled. Now of course, we have the opposite problem b/c the AI is not checking their maintenance restrictions as to ships. I think this is supposed to be fixed in the next patch and could help the "multiple queue" problem you pointed out. Otherwise, you can make sure the exploration queue is minimal so that when it flips to the attack/defend queues (where they spend 95% of their time) there won't be problems.

Of course, the ability to call ships based on "design name" intead of "design type" would help alleviate this problem http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: The Rage Collective v1.2
 

If you don't mind me suggesting;

You could split the initial 3 colonizer so that they build 1 colonizer, 1 turn of sattelites, followed by the other 2 colonizers. Then they would have the satellites to help slow down the attacker until they start building warships.

In the Anger file, you could set the attacking stalemate anger to a slight positive with the defending stalemate a large positive. Since stalemates are frequently seen when attacking a planet that has too many defenses or population and require more than 1 attack to finish them off, this should either keep them attacking, or help them build up the anger to defend themselves better. Set the Attacking win anger as a positive, and the attacking lose anger as a good sized negative, then if they are winning their attacks they should keep attacking, while if they are rutinely getting beet, they should make peace and stop throwing away ships. And finnaly set both defending win and defending lose to good sized positive values, because in either case they are being attacked, and if they aren't in a war mode, they will need to be.