new SEIV patch !!

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
But now there is Yet Another Vulnerability in the AI. Before, it was vulnerable to Psychic races because it didn't know to use the MC when it was in conflict with a Psychic race. Now it is vulnerable to ALL human players because it doesn't know to NOT use the MC when the player comes after it with the Computer Virus. And it will use the MC even in transports which is a ridiculous waste of resources. And yes, it will use them in any size ship so designing an AI that uses both large and small ships in the late game is impractical. This is a very bad change.

BM, it is better to have them just lose the MC from a virus than to have them lose the whole ship to an AS.

[Q]

You are all right about the AI problem with the master computer after the new patch. But IMHO the solution is quite simple: make the cost of a master computer equal or less than a bridge plus one life support plus one crew quarter and the size equal or less than 30kT. Then it will not harm the AI to use the MC even for the smallest ships.
In my personal mod I went a step further and made the master computer technology a racial technology and this works very well.

[Q]

Originally posted by Rexxx:
Still haven't tested the new patch yet but I read about some very bad news.

I would say we've got a new ultimate weapon. Against those poor AI races who like robotoid factories and conquering my planets I would design a large weapon platform. Large WPs with combat sensors, 5 CV III and 6 PDCs should do the trick. This mounted CV has a range of 12, it skips shield and armor. Extremely efficient.
Well, an attacking fleet of direct fire ships will be getting in trouble. I would call that the renaissance of the plasma missile.
Add to this the talisman and direct fire ships become useless for planetary attacks. My next AI will be religious (as a bonus this trait allows access to resorce boosting facilities without the vulnerability against CVs). As I said very bad news...

Please, please tell me that this scenario is flawed.

I believe it is flawed.
Look everything you describe was already possible before the new patch against human players who used master computers. Did that prevent the use of master computers??
You slow down ships by destroying their master computer, but they will still be able to fire and therefore destroy your colony if you have only the weapon platforms you describe. Then it is easy to repair the master computer after the combat if you have a repair ship in your fleet. And advanced AI races have ships with repair components in their fleets.
Therefore I don't think the computer virus has become an ultimate weapon.
But you point to a problem I criticized when the first news about this patch came out: if you start "balancing" the game by hard coded changes you might get more new problems than you solve.

[ January 28, 2003, 10:48: Message edited by: Q ]

[Rexxx]

Originally posted by Q:
I believe it is flawed.
Look everything you describe was already possible before the new patch against human players who used master computers. Did that prevent the use of master computers??
You slow down ships by destroying their master computer, but they will still be able to fire and therefore destroy your colony if you have only the weapon platforms you describe. Then it is easy to repair the master computer after the combat if you have a repair ship in your fleet. And advanced AI races have ships with repair components in their fleets.
Therefore I don't think the computer virus has become an ultimate weapon.
But you point to a problem I criticized when the first news about this patch came out: if you start "balancing" the game by hard coded changes you might get more new problems than you solve.[/QB]

Well, I don't give up so easily.

My point was that a human player can easily exploit this new "Yet Another Vulnerability in the AI". Add lots of fighters to the WPs described above and the attacking fleet will get serious troubles.
You're right, advanced AIs use repair ships. However, so far I found no way to divide these ships evenly between my AI-fleets or to make sure that each fleet gets at least one. The only workaround I know of is to build "enough" of them and hope for the best. Another AI-problem which doesn't exist for the human player.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Nodachi:
The changes made so that an AS can no longer effect a ship with a damaged MC make perfect logical sense because a ship with an MC has no crew to convert. However, if a ship's MC is destroyed then that ship should be dead in the water instead of being able to continue to fight with a movement penalty.
Can't disagree with this from a realism perspective. However since ships with destroyed B/CQ/LS are allowed to fight and move with a penalty, then ships with a destroyed MC should be able to as well. No?

It looks to me that the AI in general just got handicapped and psychic AI's just got screwed. The AI is handicapped, but I don't agree it's any worse then before, just different. We gave them their right arm back but we took their left.

Psychics maybe got screwed a bit, but the general consensus seemed to be before that Psychic was too powerful anyway.

Heavy handed I think is a good term for this change. I think a change was needed. I would have prefered something else, but I think this is better than what it was before. But hopefully in the next patch he will tweak it a bit more. The more people talk about it and make suggestions the better though because then we can get a better idea of what should be proposed to Malfador.

Geoschmo

[ January 28, 2003, 13:38: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[LGM]

Originally posted by Q:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rexxx:
Still haven't tested the new patch yet but I read about some very bad news.

I would say we've got a new ultimate weapon. Against those poor AI races who like robotoid factories and conquering my planets I would design a large weapon platform. Large WPs with combat sensors, 5 CV III and 6 PDCs should do the trick. This mounted CV has a range of 12, it skips shield and armor. Extremely efficient.
Well, an attacking fleet of direct fire ships will be getting in trouble. I would call that the renaissance of the plasma missile.
Add to this the talisman and direct fire ships become useless for planetary attacks. My next AI will be religious (as a bonus this trait allows access to resorce boosting facilities without the vulnerability against CVs). As I said very bad news...

Please, please tell me that this scenario is flawed.

I believe it is flawed.
Look everything you describe was already possible before the new patch against human players who used master computers. Did that prevent the use of master computers??
You slow down ships by destroying their master computer, but they will still be able to fire and therefore destroy your colony if you have only the weapon platforms you describe. Then it is easy to repair the master computer after the combat if you have a repair ship in your fleet. And advanced AI races have ships with repair components in their fleets.
Therefore I don't think the computer virus has become an ultimate weapon.
But you point to a problem I criticized when the first news about this patch came out: if you start "balancing" the game by hard coded changes you might get more new problems than you solve.

---

If the attacking ships have a Bridge (or Auxillary Control), they should still get 1/2 movemement after the CV takes out the master computer.

[Krsqk]

Any feedback about my Prefer/Allow/Disallow idea? If it sounds reasonable, especially to the AI modders out there, I'd like to send it to Aaron. It seems a simple enough means to permit AI use of MCs but yet prevent all-out usage. And it gives one more thing to mod.

[LGM]

I cannot believe people are still grumbling about AI limitations. Since there is no way to code your AIs to look at the environment around them, it will be hard to produce good AIs. You really need to be able to access information that would be available to a human playing the game. You need to know your resource levels, what are my shipyard capacities, what kind of races surround you, where there are big stacks of ships controled by other players, what those designs look like, etc.

If you really want to create smart AIs, you need to program them and have SEIV provide a way of indicating an executible module to make your designs (e.g. a COM object, a .NET object, or a DLL to invoke your AI code). In conjunction to this, SEIV would need to define interfaces that could be used to get information on the game (List of colonies, ships, units - friendly and enemy; Resource Information; Rival Race Information; Rival Designs; Treaty Grid; and so on all need to be available). Until you can create AIs in such a manner, they are going to be weakly driven by priority parameters. Those priority parameter are based on what you think is important in every game, they do not react to what actually transpires.

The only time I play SEIV is against humans, other than to test a race design for early growth (testing construction rate versus resource production) to make sure my designed race will be balanced.

This new patch fixed some bugs and weakness that human players could really exploid against other human players who do not know about them (or whose race cannot exploit them). A good fix was the quad damage versus shields fix. I moded those weapons to be Shields Only and I made the damage 4 times bigger to avoid Temporal Players from exploiting that bug.

The MC/Al Subverted takes away the unstopable combination of Virus + Allegiance Subverter for Psychic races. Now, the Psychic has one weapon for MC ships and one for crewed ships and he has to guess which type to build. You build both, you might not get to use one. This allows designs to be counterd, but at a cost. Before there was no counter to a Psychic with CVs before the patch.

[Krsqk]

I don't think most of us disagree with the need for the fix, just the extent of the fix. AI use of the MC was broken, and it needed to be fixed. This patch did that. However, by not adding any limiting factors controlling the use of the MC (i.e., not on colony/transport ships), it gives a new set of obstacles to the AI. Colony ships will now be what, 4000 mins more expensive? That adds a turn to ship building for all but those with God-like construction. That is a disadvantage.

The solution I've suggested would allow the AI to use MCs when it's convenient/appropriate, but allow modders to control or forbid their use for designs which won't benefit from it. Admittedly, there will still need to be some hard-coded basis for determining when MC use/disuse is warranted, but it's better than nothing.

[ January 28, 2003, 18:22: Message edited by: Krsqk ]

[capnq]

I cannot believe people are still grumbling about AI limitations.

Not only do I believe it, I'm not even surprised at it.