One thing I think might REALLY help the AI...

[Talenn]

Make it less 'scrap-happy'! It seems to take delight in scrapping its ships and bases. Two games in a row now my closest opponent builds a base early in the game and 2-3 turns later, it scraps it. Maybe this a result of a maintenance rountine, but if that is the case, it should evaluate whether it can afford it BEFORE it builds it.

I can understand scrapping old outdated WPs and whatnot, but ships should be refit even if its not the correct current 'size'. At least until it is 2 or 3 classes too small.

Another thing it does is scrap ships rather than throw them at someone. I know this is somewhat harder to remedy, but I've seen this situation frequently as well: I have an enemy world (often Homeworld) blockade. The AI build a ship. It sits for a turn or two, and then scraps it when it cant afford it. Why not at least make the mad 'banzai' and die fighting?

Oh well, I just figured I'd point out an area to MM that might be used to help remedy the ailing AI.

On other change I've made to help the AI is to move the amount of resources reclaimed from scrapping a ship from 30 to 70. This at least lets it recoup its losses a bit for the time being.

Talenn

[Taqwus]

Hmmm. It scraps ships? Interesting. I normally play on larger maps where I don't get to observe this early behavior.

It should definitely consider maintenance cost afterwards. Could it have been making a bad estimate of its resource production (e.g. battles cause its happiness to drop enough to lower production to the point where it unexpectedly couldn't afford it)? Maybe it didn't have enough reserve minerals, et al, to refit -- but that seems unlikely. My spies can usually leech off a decent amount of resources from an AI, at least until said leeching starts to hurt them.

This -- bookkeeping, not prediction -- is one of the things that it should be able to do better than a (lazy) human; I, for one, don't sit down with a spreadsheet or notebook and track expenditures, et cetera. It means I play very suboptimally, no doubt, but I prefer to be more freewheeling. But a machine can handle the tedium without complaining.

Maybe scrapping doesn't cause the happiness hit that a lost battle would? Hrmmmm.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Repo Man]

I had the same observations. I was getting bored so I decided to take over manual control of a neutral empire which was being attacked by the number 2 empire. My "real" empire gave the neutral several ships, and I build additonal ships for the neutral. I built enough ships to bring the maintenance cost to about 50% of the income. Since the attack never came (suprise suprise) I place the neutral back on AI. Over the next 10 turns it scrapped almost all the new ships.

[Jubala]

I agree, the AI is way to much scraphappy and doesn't retrofit enough if at all. And if it can't afford a ship or a base temporarily why does it not mothball it?

In the file Default_AI_Settings.txt there's a field "Maximum Maintenance Percent of Revenue := 80" (MMPoR) that stops the AI from building more ships and bases (hopefully not units). I have often seen when setting an AI to human control to see how it's doing that they have maxed out their resource storage and have a surplus of between 10k to 25k that just get wasted each turn so why does it scrap all it's ships and bases? Is it because the MMPoR?

I also think that "the only use latest biggest hull" mentality of the AI is hurting it badly. Smaller faster ships are very useful imo.

[Michou]

Well, it's seems to me that the AI has a decent number of ships (Hard, low bonue). Those ships are just not very good (not enough refit maybe...by I am heavy on research...)

The main point, I think, is that the AI does not used them properly. Precisely, it does not :

- Attack with massive fleet (Concept of Schwerpunkt for the wargamers among you)
- Follow on on attack (maybe it is just honorable and graciously wait for an opponent to recover before delivering another blow )
- Build enough fighters for its carriers
- Escape obvious attack by human player (Human player would withdraw to keep its force intact and wait for reinforcement)


Sorry if I seems like I am complaining, I am not ! I think it is still a very good game.

First time with Space Empire, hope Malfador will stand by its reputation.

[Talenn]

Michou:

Yes, many people are mistaking suggestions and observations for complaining and 'whining'. Its par for the course in many forums. Until recently, I hadnt seen it here though. I think MOST (not all) of the people posting here are trying to help the game be as good as it can be. And that means reporting it's shortcomings in hopes that they will be rectified.

More to your points:

1) Try using the adjustments to the AI_Fleet files that Tampa_Gamer suggested. It does cause the AI ships to stick together a bit more.

2) The AI can easily be encouraged to build more fighters through a tweak in the AI_Construction_Vehicles file. I havent gone in and done so yet, but I know its possible.

3) I concur 100% that it should follow-up and finish off areas. It does seem far too merciful when it has an advantage.

4) Corollary to '3' above...has anyone seen the AI attack the same location twice with the same force in the same turn? For example, a Fleet with 6 movement can attack a planet 6 times (!) in one turn. I do it often to finish off planets after the defenses are down. However the AI only seems to attack once a turn, even it has not moved at all. This could be another tweak to make it more challenging, IMO.

Talenn

[Psitticine]

There does seem to be a curious logic applied to scrapping ships by the AI. They seem to hold onto some early ships as if they were valued keepsakes and ditch others as soon as they glide out of space-dock for the first time. I don't know how many times I've faced a fleet made of a mix of escorts armed with those first level DU cannons and cruisers with fifth level energy beams.

Not complaining, mind, just saying I agree this bit needs tweaking.

[Mephisto]

Michou, try testing my MOD. I won't change any tech just the Designfiles for the AI so it will build some better ships. Actually the AI would build better ships of it's own but there is a small "bug" in MM files that prevents this. The AI is putting in so much weapons that there just no more room to anything else when the AI reaches this point in it's design. I have fixed this to first put in ECM, ECCM and so on and then put in all the weapons.
Fighters in large numbers are somewhat difficult to do: The AI first builds up a fleet and until this fleet is complete it will not build a fighter force. Sadly you can't turn this around because the AI would build hundreds of fighters but no ships in the meantime.

quote:

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Originally posted by Michou:
Well, it's seems to me that the AI has a decent number of ships (Hard, low bonue). Those ships are just not very good (not enough refit maybe...by I am heavy on research...)

The main point, I think, is that the AI does not used them properly. Precisely, it does not :

- Attack with massive fleet (Concept of Schwerpunkt for the wargamers among you)
- Follow on on attack (maybe it is just honorable and graciously wait for an opponent to recover before delivering another blow )
- Build enough fighters for its carriers
- Escape obvious attack by human player (Human player would withdraw to keep its force intact and wait for reinforcement)


Sorry if I seems like I am complaining, I am not ! I think it is still a very good game.

First time with Space Empire, hope Malfador will stand by its reputation.

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[Psitticine]

Before reading this thread and the one that spells out the AI construction control file so nicely, I had wondered why my comparitively "under-gunned" ships did so well against the enemy. I get it now! Support, support, support!

Does the AI acknowledge at all that units can be built without ship yards? A nice tweak, and one I'd assume would require coding changes by MM, would be if the AI would go ahead and build those units at colonies without yards (just as I myself do) while the ships and carriers are being constructed at the space yards. After adjusting the amount of units called for, this could make a *huge* difference in the military base constructed by the AI.

I wanted to say thanks to you, [K126]Mephisto, Tampa_Gamer, and the other modders and explainers. I'm dying for the soon-to-come time when I can finally explore all these mods in the detail they deserve! Thanks for the effort put in towards them! Maybe sometime soon, I can get in on the fun and put some of the ideas floating around in my head into testing. 8)

[Michou]

Thanks Mephisto, I'll make sure I do. I think if we could get 7-8 "optimized" races we would get more interesting games.

I sure look forward to meet your new fighter races. Maybe specialization is the way to go to get "killer" races.