[Master Belisarius]

Originally posted by cybersol:
I am in the process of developing my first AI for the unmodded game. My first attempt is a normal (no special racial trait) race. Starting with nothing between the *Begin* and *End* lines of the AI files to make the race from scratch.

From scratch??
It's something against my principles, I thought. Never started a Cobol program or an AI from zero!!!!

Originally posted by cybersol:

To learn, I am mining the top 14 AI’s from death match 2 for ideas and insights. I have searched through the forum for many topics related to AI design and read a lot of information, but I still have some questions.

Looks like a good approach.

Originally posted by cybersol:

If you design AI’s, then maybe you can help. Reading through AI Text Files Tips & Hints I noticed many of the bugs mentioned there that seem to have been fixed, but I still wonder about some of them. Things that seem to be fixed, please tell me if I am wrong: boarding, kamikaze, and troop transports now work as expected; recon satellite no longer produces forever. Things that still don’t work, again tell me if I am wrong: AI still doesn’t use recyclers or resource converters; still not a good idea to use mine sweepers and cloaks together (though it works for already marked mine fields on the mine sweeper type) ; planet based fleet training still not effective.

Agree with your observations...

Originally posted by cybersol:

1) Can the AI now effectively use cloaking abilities on Space Yard Ships? MB uses cloak, Mephisto still does not, and Rollo doesn’t even use Space Yard Ships.

A cloaked ship can't build anything... but as you noted in your second post, I think the best use for these ships is try to recover damaged ships that can't move...
I dislike when the space yard ship build something... usually they build Defense bases in middle of nowhere, or build colony ships and send those ships to colonize planets without load population first (and then the new colony will be useless for the AI!).

Originally posted by cybersol:

2) If I use the same ship name (and type) but different weapons for a light cruiser than a destroyer for instance, then I notice the AI often thinks the destroyer is newer and the light cruiser is obsolete. I thought this only happened after the dreadnaught class was reached?

I only saw this behavior when an AI reach the DN, but maybe the trigger is that after some time without redesign a ship, the AI decide to redesign using the previous ship design with different weapon...

Originally posted by cybersol:

3) Is there anyway to stop the AI from trying to retrofit to a “newer” Version of a ship that is in fact the same as the old Version? This results in ships being wasted just sitting there and trying to be retrofitted but failing because the ships are identical.

Nope, I don't know how to do it... Think Aaron "fixed" it in several patches, but the behavior is still there.

Originally posted by cybersol:

4) I don’t suppose anyone knows a trick (without modding) to have the AI specifically call for normal armor without any special abilities?

Think you can do something like:
Misc Ability 1 Name := Armor
Misc Ability 1 Spaces Per One := 10

Or use the "Armor Spaces Per One := 10"

The problem is that considering the free space, the AI will try to use the most advanced Armor...
For example, a BC design (size 600K) with the line: Armor Spaces Per One := 60, will have 8 Scattering Armors!!

But if you put this line at the end of the Misc Abilities:
Misc Ability 11 Spaces Per One := 10
If this design still have 60K of space, then, the AI will put 1 Scattering Armor and 1 Standard Armor.

In the same way, if the ship have "free" space, the AI will complete the design using the best available Armor...

Conclusion: if you want to use a ship with lot of Standard Armors (not Scattering!), you should not research After Armor III!

Originally posted by cybersol:

5) AI_CONSTRUCTION_VEHICLES.TXT. It seems in my experience that you get a more even distribution of ships if you add multiple copies of the exact same entry (colony ships in exploration for example). For example, build some colony ships, build some attack ships, build colony ships again to replace, build support ships, build colony ships again to replace, etc. My guess is that if the hardcode is at entry 12 in this file, then it goes to 13 when it finishes 12 without looking at 1-11 again until the next time it arrives at them by going around one at a time through the loop. How do you think it works?

I think the AI always check the 1-11 every turn. My guess is that the AI always start from the number 1 in the queue and check if need to build the item or not. One after other.
For this, if the queue is very large, the AI have problems to reach the Lastest items in the queue... because always is building trying to replace the loses in the first places of the queue.

Originally posted by cybersol:

I’m sure I will have more questions later. Any assistance you can provide will be much appreciated.

If I can help you, just drop me a mail.

Best Regards

JL

[ June 12, 2003, 02:58: Message edited by: Master Belisarius ]