AI advice needed.
 

Currently working on a new AI 'style'. This style was to have ships above 400kt(Light Cruisers) to have the Launch/Recover fighter ability, so that all ships above destroyer could carry and use fighters. The ships do carry the components but I can't seem to get them to carry fighters, the fighters are on the planet but only get loaded into carriers, not the light cruisers that have 2 figher bay II's. At least I have not seen it happen yet. Currently in turn 16 of a test game, at med tech with a few other test AI's and the Xi'Chung/Punidon.

Any suggestions on how this style of race could be implimented. Have not seen/developed the Heavy Attack Ships, which are just copies of the Carrier in the Design Creations modded down to 600 size and larger, but will be interesting to see if they will load fighters.

------------------
"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

I think it is only possible if you design the ship as "carrier". Otherwise the AI will not load fighters. What do you think would be the advantage of a small number of fighters in attack ships compared to the special carriers? The carriers are the only "special" ships that are included into the fleets.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Q. Just trying to make a race similar to the old 'Moo2' ones that pack interceptors on every ship. Just trying something different. And if it works and we can have different cargo on different ships then we could finally have 'troopships' work. Like the example Atraikius played out. But if only the 'cargoships' and the 'Carrier' loads cargo then my designs won't work.

But, if the Carrier in Atraikius's example DOES capture the planet, then we can mod a Version of the Carrier for carrying tonnes of troops, and AI's will land troops!....Finally.

Heres hoping. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

------------------
"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

I ended up starting a new game before I could see them do that again, but in the current game they have been in a see-saw war with the pyrochette - orks go through warp point and loose all ships to mines, pyrochette counter attack the orks wax tiny barren rock, orks finish construction of new fleet and destroy every pyrochette ship outside of pyrochette system, recolonize the barren rock, and try to go through the mined warp point again. They just finished researching mines, and immediately started construction of 8 minesweeping light cruisers (pyrochette just got destroyers). They have fighters and troops and are almost done with thier first carrier - I'll let you know if they try it again.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Deathstalker:
Q. Just trying to make a race similar to the old 'Moo2' ones that pack interceptors on every ship. Just trying something different. And if it works and we can have different cargo on different ships then we could finally have 'troopships' work. Like the example Atraikius played out. But if only the 'cargoships' and the 'Carrier' loads cargo then my designs won't work.

But, if the Carrier in Atraikius's example DOES capture the planet, then we can mod a Version of the Carrier for carrying tonnes of troops, and AI's will land troops!....Finally.

Heres hoping. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe designate a carrier hull in the troopship design entry?

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Deathstalker,

Did that to the Zorians (noticed a slight goof on one of the designs but several of the other do put carrier bays on), I havn't seen them put fighters on them either, but it may be because I havn't gotten far enough in a game for them to have enough fighters for them too. Not sure about the only putting fighters on carriers though - just saw my Version of the Orks go after the Xi'chung homeworld with 2 dreadnaughts and two heavy carriers, one of the carriers also had 100 small troops on board. All four ships headed towards the planet smashing through about tweanty Xi'Chung ships and a lot of fighters. Sadly the Xi'chung crippled the carrier with the troops so I didn't get to see what would happen if they reached the planet.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Just as an update to the troops loaded on a carrier -

I was able to get the AI do repeat it, but it was real messy. In the process I was able to get the AI to actually use hangers when they are on destroyers, cruisers, etc..., although I'm having a hard time getting the AI to build them because of how it selects which type of ship to build, and been able to get the AI (Orks twice, Zorians once) to start including loaded troopships in its fleets.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Or edit a new ship into the carrier class that has a lower requirement for fighter bays and a higher kt ability. Thats what I would do.

Then simply paste and copy another ship BMP to fit it, and do the same for the Generic ship files so that all races will have the ship if they choose to build one.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Atraikius, HOW did you get the non-carrier ships to load fighers?? I had tonnes of ship classes with bays (all classes had them) but none loaded them.

If you can get this and the troopships working 'correctly' I will kiss your virtual feet http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

------------------
"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Deathstalker -

For the carriers, I found that ships were only loaded with fighters if they are classified as a carrier as you found. But, the design type in the Vehicle Design file is not what determines which type of hull to use, its the Majority Weapon. If the Majority Weapon is Cargo - you get a transport hull, if it is launch/recover fighters - you get a carrier. Useing this theory, I temporarily removed the carrier entry from the design file, and made a new carrier that used weapons for the majority and secondary abilities, with launch/recover fighters as the first add. ability, and cargo as the second - the race started building frigate sized carriers and loading them with about 15 light fighters. They could only launch one fighter at a time, but 5 of them in a fleet early in the game was tearing the AI they were at war with to pieces. The problem is that with both a normal carrier style and a warship style in the Design file, when the AI decides to build a carrier, it tends to always pick the true carrier over the warship style. I haven't been too worried about this as when I was originally making the zorians I wanted them to use almost exclusively the warship style of carrier but couldn't make it work - now I have them building almost exclusivly cariers from the beginning of the game - can't wait to see what happens when every ship in thier fleet starts launching fighters - should have a new fVersion of them on monday.

The troopships I believe was a similar issue to the carrier bays, the AI would build troopships using the transposrt hulls, but would include transports in its fleets. As the number of troops that can be fit in even a small transport is excessive unless your trying to take a planet with a very large pop. or a lot of troops, I had the AI design the Troop transport with three cargo must have abilities, and then weapons for its majority and secondary abilities, with cargo as its first add. ability. After a few turns, my Ork AI had two fleets with loaded troopships (one was even the flagship), and the Zorians had one. All three fleets broke up shortly after that, and I restarted a game then because I had made a bunch of tweeks that would be more apparent at the beginning of the game so I havn't seen it happen again yet, but the Orks are currently researching troops in my game now. I believe that the fleet break-up were because all three of the troopships still had some cargo space left, and both the Orks and Zorians had begun building troops again resulting in the troopships breaking off to finish loading.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Atraikius - as they say on TV, "you da man"! Good research work... any update on whether the AI actually tries (successfully or not) to invade planets with troops?

I'll have to look into the "warship as carrier" stuff too. That was one of my favorite tactics back in SE2 and SE3; I picked up the idea from the Hydrans in Star Fleet Battles.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Very impressive, this ought to give the AI (yet) another boost in dangerousnessness. I can't wait to meet these new races.

------------------
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a career ... oooh, it's all too much for me. "

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Still haven't gotten past the loaded troopships in fleets point - had to restart the game again because after making a small tweek to the zorians research file every AI race in the game began only placing one major and one secondary weapon regardless of the settengs filling in with the majority weapon once all add abilities were covered, and researching techs out of order - have no idea what happened.

On breaks at work I've been trying to type up the notes I've made on the AI and hope to be able to post it up for everyones benitit within the next week.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Back when I was modding the Borg I had trouble with them boarding ships consitantly. I modded the Settings txt for the strategies (ie, optimal firing range etc) and set the 2ndary strategy of Optimal Firing range to 'Capture Enemy Ships', they boarded ALOT more after that. Maybe if you alter the 2ndary strategy to be 'Capture Planet' then the fleets will start to capture planets? Or maybe not, just a suggestion though.

Although another thing I noticed was that the Borg capture ALOT more in Tactical combat vs. Strategic combat. Any idea why certain strategies work better/work at all in tac vs. strat??

------------------
"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Ok, just a thought. Doesn't the AI load cargo bays with any unit it can get on a planet? If this is true you could try to include a cargo component in the design so it will pick up fighters "by accident".
But the AI would be forced to only build fighters on planets to make this one work.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Deathstalker - Already have them using optimal followed by capture planet.

Mephisto - That does work but its really messy - use a longer turns betweens attack setting so that the ships will stay in orbit over a planet longer, delibarately set the AI to create resupply planets on smaller worlds that are unable to hold a large amount of cargo since the AI seems to stage forces at resupply bases the most frequently, and set the AI to build either fighters or troops as every 4-5 entry in the contruct Vehicle file and fighters/troops get loaded fairly frequently - gets really messing in the out of storage space area though.

As an update to the troops - Current game has Ork (seem to do the troop thing the best so far) task force of 1 destroyer, 2 battlecruisers, and 1 battlecruiser transport (60 troops and flagship) about to hit Q's CueCappa homeworld. I played the next turn and viewed the Orks results - they had eliminated all the defenses and reduced population to 1092 at the cost of 1 damaged battlecruiser - went about 8 more turns but no follow up attack - I suspected they hadn't dropped the troops due to the 60 troops most likely being unable to take planet, and did not carry out follow up attack due to the race due to just hitting end turn when I had viewed thier status by toggling the player control setting. reloaded the game and tryed again - first time 1 BC and DD split off to destroy Pyrochette fleet of 1 LX, 4 LC do to pyrochette declaration of war, 2nd time, 1 BC + 1DD again eliminated pyrochette fleet after war, but remaining BC and Troop Transport (which were unable to get through defenses alone previous time) went after Sergetti fleet which had also declare war this time - gave up for the night after that and went to bed - hope to have success tonight.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

I was able to have some limited success Last night, but due to inconsistancies i was unable to verify that it works correctly or attempt to optimize thier performance.

I'm attaching what I currently have for my Orks (AI almost done, ships either default neutrals or gorns from Starfleet command as I have a long way to go on the pics) and would appreciate it if any of you could give them a try and give me as detailed reports on them as possible.

For those interested, I posted a typed up Version of my design cheet sheet in the Mod/help section.

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Atraikius,
That file is an excellent explanation of how the AI to builds. Thanks!

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Atraikius: Would you be willing to allow me to include your excellent "Cheat Sheet" (with credit of course) in the Modders Guide? Otherwise I will include a pointer to it, but it would really help if the reader didn't have to jump back and forth between documents.

[This message has been edited by Dubious (edited 08 June 2001).]

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Dubious - Thats fine with me.

[This message has been edited by Atraikius (edited 08 June 2001).]

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Atraikius, I saw your troop transport at work! He dropped his troops on a planet, but they were too few to take over the planet. However this is a very promising start and if you can increase the troop capacity it may really be successful.

[This message has been edited by Q (edited 09 June 2001).]

Re: AI advice needed.
 

Q - thanks for the info, only saw them drop the troops sporatically while trying to adjust the strategy to work - eery other time I reloaded to test changes they would change course into a minefield.