New Patch: Little AI improvements ?

[jowe01]

Its of course rather speculative so far, but from the release information concerning the patch (until 1.17) it seems that we cannot expect that the AI will actually become significantly more challenging than the lame duck it is right now.
Some AI changes were made in 1.15. They concerned some minor improvements in tactical combat, better retrofitting and overall a more aggressive AI behaviour.
Especially the Last point was one of major criticism on this and other Boards, so I am happy MM has addressed it (if it works). However, I already succeeded in making the AI a bit more aggressive by tweaking the AI anger file. Of course, this meant that the AI was more aggressive to everybody, not only to the annoying player who violated its border all the time (so the new patch DOES constitute an improvement in that department). Nevertheless, even the more aggressive AI still bores me to death. Anybody with 3 SE4 games experience will know what I am talking about: the AI finally decides declare war on me and moves its fleet of 24 dreadnaughts towards my only lightly defended border colony. I shudder with fear (and delight: will that stupid idiot actually put up a fight this time ?). I hit the "Next turn" button and... receive my usual turn report. No combat. When I look at the border system, I see that instead of attacking, the AI has withdrawn. Stupid idiot ! But not only that, it has left one single dreadnaught within reach of my 3 battlecruisers at the colony. Well, if I am not too frustrated to turn of the PC, the superior tactics of my BC captains will be enough to slaughter that single DN now. Three turns later, the AI will actually attack...with another single DN. And so on, and so forth.

What I am saying is that the AI will remain to be a deplorable adversary until its strategy/targeting algorithm is significantly improved (among other things). It does not seem that we will see this in this patch. The AI will hopefully be more aggressive/less tolerant and I'll say "Bravo MM" for this. However, the game will still not entertain you over the Christmas holidays.

[Shadow99]

You know it's strange, but some games the AI has actually made smart decisions against me (well pretty much)... like massing 30+ ships 1 sector from my strongly held planet & then rushing 20+ ships at me (which encounter my 2 battlestations, planet based fighters & platforms, & 6 or 8 ships that were being worked on... I normally get a brief good challenge from that (& loose some vehicles!), but unless said planet is in there system they normally back off rather than push their advantage & burn my world down...

Now if the AI had better evaluation of forces I think it would do better... It should compare Last known mass of enemy ships (easiest to calculate) vs. their current mass & when they outnumber they enemey (say 1.25 times opponent tonnage) they should attack as a fleet... This is especially true of warp points... warp points I think are handled horribly by the AI... More so than any other area in fact...

[Mephisto]

Lets wait and see...

[Danny]

What I really love is when I order my 23 Dreadnoughs to a sector throught a warp point, and the fleet not only doesn't move into the warp point sector contaning 1 emeny colony ship it waists all of it's movement points moving back and forth around the warp point so I can't even attack the stupid colony ship \that turn! Arrgghhh....!

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I AM Canadian.

[Seawolf]

Danny,

DId you have the repeat order active?

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Seawolf on the prowl

[Talenn]

Seawolf:

I've seen the same behaviour repeatedly and I've never used the 'repeat' command thingy. The 'automove' seem to always try and plot a path around known enemies but when it cant find one, it moves repeatedly back and forth rather than simply stopping resulting the in the problem that Danny mentioned.

Its annoying, but not a game breaker.

Talenn