Would it be possible to edit the following AI parameters?

[Q]

I know it is probably too late for the gold edition but may be for a future patch:
- Until now the AI claims one adjacent system to his colonized sytems. If you could edit this for the more aggressive races to two or even three, the AI would not be stopped so easily by empty systems as it is now.
- Colonization minister: If you could specify the maximum distance the colony ships are sent for, you could avoid useless orders to colonize a planet on the other side of the galaxy.
- Even better would be a editable priority list (as for targeting) which planets should be colonized: nearest, largest, breathable atmosphere, value, condition.
- Possibility to let colony ships be refueled on their way to their target, if there is a possibility.
- Specify if a colony ship should be escorted by war ships and if so the number of the ships in this protecting fleet.

Just some ideas.

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Q:
I know it is probably too late for the gold edition but may be for a future patch:
- Until now the AI claims one adjacent system to his colonized sytems. If you could edit this for the more aggressive races to two or even three, the AI would not be stopped so easily by empty systems as it is now.

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Or possibly if they could be made to claim empty systems, that would have the same effect.

quote:

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- Colonization minister: If you could specify the maximum distance the colony ships are sent for, you could avoid useless orders to colonize a planet on the other side of the galaxy.
- Even better would be a editable priority list (as for targeting) which planets should be colonized: nearest, largest, breathable atmosphere, value, condition.
- Possibility to let colony ships be refueled on their way to their target, if there is a possibility.

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They can do that now IIRC. Unfortunatly usually they don't have resupply facilities in the right places. Perhaps we should tweak the construction minister to raise the priority of resupply facilities. That should be doable now and have the same effect. Also, the AI can be fairly easily taught to build colony ships with solar panels and quantum reactors when available. And to build colony ships using light cruiser hulls which leaves even more room for supply components and cargo. All which helps the situation.

Some of these are changes others have made to AI's to make them perform better. Maybe these changes can make it into the stock game at some point.


Geo

[Q]

Even if the AI claims the empty system, the AI will never claim the next adjacent system with planets next to the empty system. Therefore that will stop it's expansion if I prevent any colony ship to get there (which is quite easy).
The refuel of colony ships is indeed not a too big problem. I myself posted standard colony hull ships with a quantum reactor for the late game. But in my experience in the early to middle game even the "advanced" colony ships with light cruiser hulls and supply storage components run frequently out of supplies. And because the AI builds it's colony ships mainly on the home worlds in the center of it's empere (which is good, because there is enough population) the way may be too long without resupply.

[Alpha Kodiak]

The problem that I have with refueling colonizers is that they won't deviate even slightly from their path to refuel, even if there is a resupply depot in the system they are in. I have changed most of the AI's that I have put together to have a very high priority for resupply, but the colonizers won't use them unless they depot just happens to be on the path that they are taking.

I made a suggestion that if a colonizer was in the yellow or red on its supply status, the AI should check at the beginning of its move to see if there is a supply depot in the system it is in. If so, just insert a move to the resupply depot at the top of its command queue. Then, it would move to resupply, then continue on its mission. So far, though, that hasn't been implemented.