quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
All these variations sound like great fun for humans. Have you considered what will happen to the AI?
[ 12 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]
Who cares about the AI? I play only PBW games, unless I am testing something to try in a PBW game. Without cheating, AI will be at a severe disadvantage. Currently, SEIV empires do not remember things like Last known position of fleets, Last known presense of colonies, etc. The limited stored information in the game severly works against an AI, assuming you programmed it to think about these things. Perhaps special AI files could be stored on the hosting computer to remember stuff that player's empires currently cannot recall. Unless you are playing a rediculously simple game like Risk, the AI will be too hard to program competitively. People devote their entire careers writing AIs for Chess only has 16 units per side with 6 different kinds of pieces. Chess also has an exhaustive catalog of known good lines to follow that can be built into a database. SEIV and most strategic games are too complicated to program. When are you AIers going to give it up and let Aaron work on new features to make the game more diverse? The purpose of the AI is to learn the game so you do not get creamed by the first experienced human you meet. If you are not bored playing the AI, you are not ready to play humans.
The best effect of cloaks is it causes your opponent to research and deploy some sensors. Stealth Armor is nice in combination with Scattering armor for defense bonuses. If you get Stealth Armor, you expect to use it only for a short while. The same with Boarding Parties as someone else mentioned. However, with Boarding Parties, every ship needs a security team. Whereas to counter stealth, you only need one device per system (not per ship).
I like the idea of making racial cloaks one level hard to defeat for the non racial counter techs as long as the non racial counters are extended one level more in the game so they can be eventually countered. I do not want to be forced to play a certain advanced techs every game. As it stands now, I feel you have to either play Organic or design to fight an Organic. I would hate to have to always take Psychic just be be able to see the top level Psychic cloak.
I do not consider Stealth Armor to unbalancing (original thread), because its stealth effect never improves as you go from component I to II to III. The first sensor that can see it permanent negates it until they go for the actual Cloaking device under the Physics tree.