AI construction queue problems (ship construction)

[HreDaak]

[quote]Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
I've known for a long time that the AI doesn't check if a planet has cargo space for what it is building. This results in loads of satellites being built and then LOST with nothing to show for the allocated resources. I have asked MM to let satellites (at least) be automatically deployed when built if there's no cargo space.
[quote]

I think that the AI checks if there is enough free space in the planet to build ONE unit of the things it is trying to build. If there is less space on the planet than one of these units would take it will not try to build these on that planet. But if there is enough space for ONE unit then it will try to build as many of these units on the planet as it can in one turn, the excess units that cant fit on the planet are simply not build on that planet (log Messages: not enough storage or something). Problem in the late game are Medium and especially Large weapon platforms that are so big that many of the planets cant hold even one of these monsters. So now if there is a call to build say 2 per every planet the AI has there will soon be very acute space problems on AI planets. Some larger colonies especially the ones with breathable atmosphere are able to hold several Large weapon platforms but the amount of these planets is very limited compared to the total amount of planets the AI has. So this can cause very severe building problems for the AI in late game as only those planets with breathable atmosphere and maybe some other large/huge planets are the only ones able to hold them. This also limits the amount of planets that can even try to build them and this in turn can cause the AI build queue to advance very slowly (or stop completely if AI runs out of space) if there is a call to build huge amounts of these Medium/Large weapon platforms...

[quote]
But the defense base thing is odd. I can't imagine what might be going on there. BTW, the AI _does_ build colonizers even if it doesn't know of any colonizable planets. The "must have" entry in the queue works for colonizers. I've seen every "Neutral" I ever invaded keeping a colonizer at its homeworld even though there are no planets left that it can colonize. Too bad. This is also a useless drain of resources.[quote]

Have you tried one of the examples i have posted in my previous Posts? These will reproduce that conflict bug. I suppose this could be a typo or some other small quirk in the hard coded part of the game that partly somehow mixes up defense bases and colonizers, but only Malfador can say if it is so...

Hummh.. i meant that the AI will not assign any more colonizers in its build queues if it does not see any more colonizable planets. This does not prevent the AI from having few leftover colonyships from turns that it still had one planet left to colonize. You can easily test this by making a construction file that has only 1 entry in the exploration AI state.

AI State := Exploration
Num Queue Entries := 1
Entry 1 Type := Colonizer
Entry 1 Planet Per Item := 0
Entry 1 Must Have At Least := 1000

AI will build new colonizers as long as it has free colonizable planets in its home system. Once there are no more free planets left in its home system it does not assign more colonyships to be built. Note that this can cause the AI to have 1 or more leftover colonyships depending on how many turns it took for the Last colonizer to do its job.
I think this is the reason why neutrals can have few colonyships left even though they have no more planets to colonize.

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 06 February 2001).]

[Daynarr]

You should forward these findings and savegames to MM before the patch comes out.

[HreDaak]

quote:

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Originally posted by Daynarr:
You should forward these findings and savegames to MM before the patch comes out.

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I will, but could someone else also try one of those construction lists and report if he experiences same kind of behaviour as i have.
I would like to be absolutely certain of this until i bug MM.

[Tenryu]

HreDaak,
Thanks for the information. I went into my AI files tonight and removed the Defense Base call from the lists and set all the weapon platform calls to 1 per planet.

I also put in God Emperor's increased AI PD Mod.

I play with a heavily Modded set of files and have been for weeks. It has been stable thus far although the AI never built enough stuff. I'm hoping these changes may cure a lot of that.
Thanks again to you and Emperor

[HreDaak]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tenryu:
HreDaak,
Thanks for the information. I went into my AI files tonight and removed the Defense Base call from the lists and set all the weapon platform calls to 1 per planet.

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The changes you made to the vehicle construction.txt file will take effect only if you load space empire IV again and start a new game. Saved games are not affected by these changes.

[Mephisto]

Ah, a very interesting topic!

HreDaak, I can confirm both of your observations regarding the defence base and the units.
The reason for production crippling due to units is AFAI can see it the cargo space. The AI just runs out of space but is still trying to produce units in effect building nothing.

But the best is, I think I found the error with the defence bases. It is plain simple. The AI analyses each turn which planet to protect (and will move its defence fleets in accordance). The AI is obviously doing the same for a defence base. So, what does this mean?
Simple. Every time you start a colonizer and this colonizer reaches a world, it will build a defenceless colony which the AI will try to protect with a defence fleet - or a defence base. As we need a space yard for building the base the AI tries something impossible - it tries to build a defence base at planet with no yard! So in effect the AI will try to build a base at this site to fulfil the requirements of the construction file but will never succeed crippling the total production this way.
I have confirmed this by building only space yard enabled colonies. The AI had no problems, builded a base at one of the new colonies and proceeded to build more stuff of the later lines.

I will send this to MM.

[This message has been edited by [K126]Mephisto (edited 06 February 2001).]

[HreDaak]

quote:

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Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
Ah, a very interesting topic!

HreDaak, I can confirm both of your observations regarding the defence base and the units.
The reason for production crippling due to units is AFAI can see it the cargo space. The AI just runs out of space but is still trying to produce units in effect building nothing.

But the best is, I think I found the error with the defence bases. It is plain simple. The AI analyses each turn which planet to protect (and will move its defence fleets in accordance). The AI is obviously doing the same for a defence base. So, what does this mean?
Simple. Every time you start a colonizer and this colonizer reaches a world, it will build a defenceless colony which the AI will try to protect with a defence fleet - or a defence base. As we need a space yard for building the base the AI tries something impossible - it tries to build a defence base at planet with no yard! So in effect the AI will try to build a base at this site to fulfil the requirements of the construction file but will never succeed crippling the total production this way.
I have confirmed this by building only space yard enabled colonies. The AI had no problems, builded a base at one of the new colonies and proceeded to build more stuff of the later lines.

I will send this to MM.

[This message has been edited by [K126]Mephisto (edited 06 February 2001).]

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Excellent! Send it to MM ASAP . The solution you've come up with the defense bases sounds reasonable to me. For now everyone should just remove defense bases from their vehicle construction.txt files and make sure that there is enough space on AI planets. This will let the AI build HUGE amounts ships and other stuff.

I have another test game running now in huge galaxy with 254 systems. There are 10 AI players with low computer bonus in this game and some of them are simply enormous. The first AI player atm is Cue Cappa commonwealth. It has score of 3.1M, 216 planets in 47 systems, 324 ships and over 3000 units. Second is the Xi'Chung hive with 2.1M score, 105 planets in 23 systems, 251 ships and over 1300 units. The third one is amonkrie with over 1.6M score.. and the other AI players are doing also pretty well except the cryslonite empire which is about to be wiped out by the Ukra'Tal. So far none of them has had any building problems. This is with the removal of defense bases and making sure that the AI does not run out of space on its planets. Oh and btw its turn 150 in this test game...

One thing i have also noticed is the fact that the AI does not take full advantage of its bonuses when you give it low/medium/high computer bonus. The bonus that does not get fully used is the production bonus. AI gets 2x, 3x, 4x the resources each turn it produces with the computer bonus turned on. But it's ship maintenance max is specified in each races settings.txt file and this is usually set to 80% of max resource income. By setting this limit lets say to 160%, 240% and 320% respectively you can get the AI build absolutely insane amounts of ships (without it having any maintenance problems)provided that you have also fixed those 2 other production problems...

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 06 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 06 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 06 February 2001).]

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by HreDaak:
[b] Excellent! Send it to MM ASAP . The solution you've come up with the defense bases sounds reasonable to me. For now everyone should just remove defense bases from their vehicle construction.txt files and make sure that there is enough space on AI planets. This will let the AI build HUGE amounts ships and other stuff.

I have another test game running now in huge galaxy with 254 systems. There are 10 AI players with low computer bonus in this game and some of them are simply enormous. The first AI player atm is Cue Cappa commonwealth. It has score of 3.1M, 216 planets in 47 systems, 324 ships and over 3000 units. Second is the Xi'Chung hive with 2.1M score, 105 planets in 23 systems, 251 ships and over 1300 units. The third one is amonkrie with over 1.6M score.. and the other AI players are doing also pretty well except the cryslonite empire which is about to be wiped out by the Ukra'Tal. So far none of them has had any building problems. This is with the removal of defense bases and making sure that the AI does not run out of space on its planets. Oh and btw its turn 150 in this test game...

One thing i have also noticed is the fact that the AI does not take full advantage of its bonuses when you give it low/medium/high computer bonus. The bonus that does not get fully used is the production bonus. AI gets 2x, 3x, 4x the resources each turn it produces with the computer bonus turned on. But it's ship maintenance max is specified in each races settings.txt file and this is usually set to 80% of max resource income. By setting this limit lets say to 160%, 240% and 320% respectively you can get the AI build absolutely insane amounts of ships (without it having any maintenance problems)provided that you have also fixed those 2 other production problems...

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In other words, there's a BUG with AI bonuses. The AI should be calculating its maintenance cost according to what it really has available to spend. If it doesn't "see" the bonus, it's as if it's not really there!

Glad to hear that this has been figured out, though. MM should credit many of you guys as Beta testers! It sounds like after this next patch the AI is gonna kick ***! We may have to start using the "low" difficulty setting!



[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 February 2001).]

[Emperor Zodd]

Great work guys!
This coming patch is going to be great!

Keep up the great work.

[Mephisto]

Right from the mouth of MM (regarding cargo and defense bases):

Thanks for the excellent observations. We had noticed these as well and
are working on putting in a fix for them.