[Str8_Gain]

I'm currently in a game with No Warp Points and Finite Resources (galaxy size is Large). AI is set at Difficult, and I gave them a Low bonus, and set the number of AIs to Many (currently at 15). For this type of scenario, I'm not terribly impressed.

When I took a peek at the AIs during the early game to see how they were doing, I noted that:

a)in research, they made it to Stellar Manipulation level 3 long before I did, <b>BUT</B> absolutely refused to build any ships exploiting this, which would've given them access to more star systems. The ship designs they had they couldn't construct since they required Grav Quantum Resonator III or higher and Cruiser hulls (and other stuff like weapons and Shield Generator Vs). Meanwhile, I get GQR I and and expanding like crazy (sticking it on a simple Frigate hull), knocking off three AIs (so far) in the process.

b)related to a), I noticed that the AI in general couldn't manage resources worth a damn. In No Warp Point games, it's absolutely vital to hoard resources in the early game, especially Minerals, since Stellar Manipulation components are so expensive. Add Finite Resource to that, and it's even more so, since planet resource values decrease as you mine them out. If you've got no storage ready for them, then they're just wasted. So even if they had a simple ship design utilizing GQR I or a Grav Condenser, they couldn't build it anyway since they'd run out of resources paying maintenance on it, and lose the ship.

I guess the AI needs more tweaking in that sort of scenario. I haven't tried a "regular" game yet with 1.27, so I can't say how well it reacts in that situation. Time for me to get mucking in the text files to see if I can fix it. Any suggestions from modders would be greatly appreciated.