When AI scrap ships ?

[Q]

Oleg I think you are right.
I did some observation in a simultaneous game, where you can login into an empire without turning it to human control. And indeed there were some empires thar scrapped the same type of non obsolete space yard base while building a new one of the same type. Without the AI bonus the resource spending exceeded the income which probably caused the scrapping. However the game had a high AI bonus (= 5x production) which was shown correctely in the empire status window.
My conclusion is that the AI indeed still does not take the bonus into consideration when he has to decide if scrapping is needed.

[oleg]

Thanks, Q.

We all are very smug about how buggy is Moo3. But look here - after 3 years and many patches (thanks MM, I really appreciate your continious support of the game ! But still..) there is an apparently simple but devastating AI bug

To the best of my knoweledge, there will be no new patch any time soon if ever. Then question is what can we do. What effect has "maintanence percent of resources" in AI_settings on AI ? Does it count when AI decides to build ships or when to scrap ? Or both ? It is important to know if I want to make it, for example >100% or alternatively very small.
Any ideas ?

[Q]

I tried a value >100% for maintenance limit in the settings.txt file for the race I observed. No effect.
The problem IMHO is that the beta-testing for SE IV works suboptimal. I do not criticize the beta testers - they do a great job - but the system. If you make a fix like the one of the maintenance limit, MM should give a couple of beta testers the precise job to check it. As far as I know (please correct me if I am wrong!) nobody coordinates what the beta testers actually test. It's open to everybody what they do and therefore some features are never really tested and bugs persist for years. Another example is the "change bad intel chance" ability that never got to work.
For SE V this should be changed IMHO.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Q:
I tried a value >100% for maintenance limit in the settings.txt file for the race I observed. No effect.
The problem IMHO is that the beta-testing for SE IV works suboptimal. I do not criticize the beta testers - they do a great job - but the system. If you make a fix like the one of the maintenance limit, MM should give a couple of beta testers the precise job to check it. As far as I know (please correct me if I am wrong!) nobody coordinates what the beta testers actually test. It's open to everybody what they do and therefore some features are never really tested and bugs persist for years. Another example is the "change bad intel chance" ability that never got to work.
For SE V this should be changed IMHO.

How exactly did you test it ? remember - AI does not read settinds.txt file during the game. Moreover, it is stored in .emp file (I think - but may be wrong). Thus, file changes will not affect games in progress and you may have generate new .emp file too !

[Phoenix-D]

.emp files don't store any AI information- just race setup.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
.emp files don't store any AI information- just race setup.

Wrong - it stores strategies for example and does not read them from AI_strategies file. This is the reason for infamous complaints about TDM Orks' - the supplied emp file was generated before author added new strategy selection to AI_design and AI_startegies files. But AI reads only design but not strategy and spits Messages !

I am pretty sure same goes for settings file - SE reads it only once, when race/player is generated !

[Q]

Originally posted by oleg:
How exactly did you test it ? remember - AI does not read settinds.txt file during the game. Moreover, it is stored in .emp file (I think - but may be wrong). Thus, file changes will not affect games in progress and you may have generate new .emp file too !

I changed the value in the running game, but I am 100% sure that the settings.txt file is read at least for some values during the game: I increased recently during the ongoing game the number of drones per target in the settings.txt file of a race and the effect was seen almost immediately.

[Suicide Junkie]

That would be your problem, then.

The racial stats cannot be changed during the game.

EMP files are essentially a script for quickly filling in the racial trait choices during the game setup.

[Q]

I did the following check in the simultaneous game I described before:
- picked a race that did not scrap (because maintenance was only about 60% of the income without AI bonus).
- lowered the maintenance limit from 80% to 10%.
- next turn this AI race scrapped a ship!

Conclusion: the maintenance limit is read during the game and low values will increase scrapping.
I do not know why values higher than 100% don't work, but it might be a hard coded limit.

[oleg]

Ok, how about this test :

Set "largest hull" for first 10 turns = 300.
generate the empire with this setting. Start a game. AI will make design only destroyers, transports, etc.
Now, exit the game, edit AI_settings to mke ai design larger ships, sey up to 1000. Start SEIV, with the old emp. file. - AI still designs small ships only. Changes in AI_settings are ignored !