Colonization Minister secret revealed

I just posted a file "Gobankrupt.zip" in the scenario/mod archive SE IV maps and scenarios. The game was started loading map9a. Events frequency none. High resources, home planet good, 10 planet start. Add Clays as empire 1 and select controlled by PLAYER using style from race. If controlled by computer the empire gets spread all over the quadrant despite 10 starting locations for empire 1 being given in the map, another BUG. Select player able to view scores of all players. Select neutrals only and low. Select high difficulty no bonus.
Start game and for Clays select no prompt for colony type, full AI on. Then change players to Clays controlled by computer and the neutral controlled by player. Watch the Clays score from the neutral. Ok, things I learned.

1) If you put space yards on colonies then they will ALWAYS produce a unit or ship once the yard is built, REGARDLESS of their yard rate and how many unused facility slots there are, until the empire goes bankrupt. So my suggestion to forego yard bases is turned 180 degrees around. Build LOTS of yard bases and yard ships, build NO yards on colonies, until this **** problem with building ships is resolved.

2) With yards on colonies the amount of time required to go bankrupt depends only on your starting resources and number/quality of planets start. The split between ships and colonies is up to you. You can have lots of colonies and few ships as in the previous post, or lots of ships and fewer colonies, as in the zip file saves. If you are going to go bankrupt anyway, it is better to have lots of COLONIES. The reason is simple. Once bankrupt the AI halts the ship/unit construction queue at the entry at which bankruptcy occurred. Projects already queued are not removed. But no new projects are started. See below.

3) The facility build is scheduled with facilities being run on colonies in the order specified in AI_planet_types ? The order for my files was Homeworld, mining colony, farming colony etc. What I see is that the homeworlds got to run a lot, but once the ship queues were emptied on the original homes, no further work was scheduled, because there were no facilities to be built. M/O/R was a puzzler :
Turn 34 production 111k/14k/13k storage 1k/316k/49k
Turn 75 production 319k/106k/42k storage 1k/1238k/79k
The minerals ran after homeworlds. Then only if the rads was deficit it got to run ? The orgs ran with whatever was left over.
The occasional project was also buiilt on other world types, which remains a mystery.

4) This is needed EVEN IF the changes in the previous post are implemented. What I suggest is that this IDIOT AI do what ANY sensible human player would do when facing minerals bankruptcy. Queue HOLD on all non mineral production scheduling until the minerals deficit is corrected. If a mineral colony is building something besides mineral extraction facilities, it comes AFTER the ones actually building them. ANTICIPATE the minerals bankruptcy by taking the total build RATE POTENTIAL of all colonies and ship/base yards as a sum, adding in the ship maintenance, multiplying the total by X turns (10 would be good, make it an AI_settings file entry) and subtracting the mineral resources in storage and X times the income total. If the result is a positive number, it is time to GET MORE MINERALS! Now check how many unused facility slots are available AND specified for minerals resource extraction within the next X facilities on ANY colony type. Take the total slots for each colony which can build WITHIN the next X turns and calculate the production they will generate. Sum the production POTENTIAL for all these colonies. Compare it to the deficit per turn calculated from the balance deficit above divided by X turns. If the deficit is greater, then it is time to PLANT MINERAL COLONIES. Tell the colonization minister to find the best known minerals potential planets. Dispatch colony ships to them from the idle colony fleet (see 8 below), and if not enough ships are built, then make a SPECIAL production minister call to build them, but NOT on the worlds which are supposed to build minerals!
AFTER that is done, then run queues on any other colonies that produce orgs/rads if those are in deficit, STOPPING when the balance becomes storage/X minerals deficit.
Then take queue holds off any queues which ALREADY have a UNIT scheduled, STOPPING when the balance becomes storage/X minerals deficit.
Then take queue holds off any colonizer production queues, STOPPING when the balance becomes storage/X minerals deficit.
Then run any ship/base production queues for which work has ALREADY started, STOPPING when the balance becomes storage/X minerals deficit.
Then run the remainder of the queues as usual, STOPPING when the balance becomes storage/X minerals deficit.

5) The AI WILL build monoliths! On rads worlds, with rads 900/t and monoliths 900/900/900 /t the AI chose the monolith! Of course the min/orgs at 1000 just built the regular facilities. So research stellar manipulation but not m/o/r above level 2. What is REALLY needed is for the AI to compare the TOTAL from all three to the single resource production and if significantly greater then build the monolith, same as a human would do.

6) The AI was squandering its puny residual minerals in storage doing retrofits. That might be smart for warships but was dumb for transports. Also the AI was trying to do illegal retrofits. What it should do is if the retrofit WOULD be illegal, then select the next most recent design until it IS legal, same as a human would do.

7) The AI is totally failing to anticipate the maintenance as a percent of production specified in settings. It should STOP scheduling and queueing up ships when the percent of maintenance WOULD exceed CURRENT resource levels. Anticipating future resources at the time of build is unnecessary since most ships take just a few turns to build.

8) Notice that there was a large fleet of idle colony ships in all the save games. So the number of colonies to be planted is NOT affected by the difficulty setting or player/computer controlled. It may very well be too **** complicated to deduce from just taking stats on planting. I tried, but without a detailed check including what had orders to plant but had not yet planted, I cannot tell from just watching the score from the neutral. I am NOT going to load 70 savegames to check it. Let it remain a mystery, and it is probably subject to change without notice anyway....

9) This AI build queue might NOT lead to bankruptcy for a long time IF the AI is able to make and keep trade treaties. But the other AI will put it in a world of hurt for planting so many colonies and eventually even the most tolerant partner will break, even if MEE is not reached first...

10) I am going to revise it to build lots of yard bases and yard ships and take the space yard facilities off the colonies. Then I will play test until I find what avoids bankruptcy and post. Basically you must have extended periods of time when few or no units are built, relying on warships and mines to defend the empire. I will keep regularly building mines and the initial ramp up with weapon platforms, fighters, satellites and eventually troops. The troops are important even if the AI never captures a colony because they increase happiness. What is needed is 15-20 turns of rapid expansion with units, followed by 40 turns of ship/base/mine production then cycle back to the start. The 40 turns can be accomplished only by planting colonies between ship/base calls so that there is a need to build more. Otherwise the entries are satisfied with no new production and it just wraps around to colonies and units again without getting facilities built. EXPAND OR DIE!!!!!

11) I am sending an email to MM pointing to this thread. Anybody with other minister complaints can post here and know it will be seen.

12) The attached queue file is the only change from before. Now I am going to get some sleep. Up over 24 hours again...