AI Minesweeping

[KiloOhm]

Hey, I was getting whumped by the Serengeti empire over the Last few nights and was pushed back to my Last homeworld (started with 3 :-( ). Well, they were encroaching on my territory so I used a couple of cheese tactics. I first build up some "Queen Ants", which is a small fighter with max engines and a missle rack. I've noticed that missle racks are a severely overpowered weapon. They made quick work of the frigates im my system.

Then I proceeded to build a bunch of mines an put them around my home planet, along with at the warp points. The AI ran a couple of ships into the minefield before he actually SWEPT mines out of the warp point. I got the message "12 Mines have been swept from our minefield at 4,1". That's great! The AI seems to be reacting to minefields now!

Just though I'd share my observation with you guys.

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Regards,
KiloOhm

[Mephisto]

Yea, it is reacting to mines now.
Unfortunatly, it will also send a minesweeper if the WP is guarded by Sats.

quote:

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Originally posted by KiloOhm:
Hey, I was getting whumped by the Serengeti empire over the Last few nights and was pushed back to my Last homeworld (started with 3 :-( ). Well, they were encroaching on my territory so I used a couple of cheese tactics. I first build up some "Queen Ants", which is a small fighter with max engines and a missle rack. I've noticed that missle racks are a severely overpowered weapon. They made quick work of the frigates im my system.

Then I proceeded to build a bunch of mines an put them around my home planet, along with at the warp points. The AI ran a couple of ships into the minefield before he actually SWEPT mines out of the warp point. I got the message "12 Mines have been swept from our minefield at 4,1". That's great! The AI seems to be reacting to minefields now!

Just though I'd share my observation with you guys.

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[This message has been edited by [K126]Mephisto (edited 22 December 2000).]

[Talenn]

No, I dont think the Missile Racks are overpowered per se, but the AI doesnt react well to being overrun with fighters...ie, it doesnt REACT at all. All of its ships will continue to carry the same number of PD weapons regardless of whether or not you use Missiles/Fighters or not.

Try using those same fighters against a fleet of your own design that includes even 2-3 Destroyers that are packed with nothing but the requireds and level 4 or 5 PD cannons. If done properly, there wont be many fighters that even get a change to fire.

Overall, I'd like to see Fighters get a slight upkeep cost associated with them. Then I'd go in and limit PD weapons a bit. As it is now, Fighters and Missiles seem to be all or nothing weapons against a human player. Either they are worthless (the enemy has plenty of PD weapons) or they are overly dominant (they DONT have enough or high enough tech PD weapons). I personally dont care for that feel, but I'm hestitant to reduce PD weapons as long as Fighters can be churned out in unlimited numbers provided a player has the patience to queue them up, deploy them and use them.

A possible solution I'm working on is to remove the ability of fighters to move within a system. That way, you would still be limited by cargo space etc and thus they are more controled. If I do that (and it works as hoped) I think toning down PD weapons would be a good idea.

Anyways, thanks for the report on the mine sweeping. Its good to see that it actually works as intended now!

Talenn

[Jubala]

I think the beat way to linit pointdefense would be to remove it's ability to always hit. Why should pointdefense weapons be so much better at hitting the enemy than normal weapons? Don't they have the same targeting systems? If so, why not? You get my drift.

[Mephisto]

A middleway for fighters would be to only allow replenishing them when landed and using up some resources every turn. This way the player cannot station hundereds of fighters in orbit (poor pilots...).

[Noble713]

Point Defense DOES miss, just vary rarely. I think they have a really high built-in to-hit bonus, but they aren't infallible.