Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem

ColdSteel · #1 January 28th, 2001, 04:36 PM

The suggestion I made here would only only fix what I feel is a very abrupt and artificial feeling transition to the Mega Evil Empire AI state. It would smooth that transition out some and better fit it to the race's differing characteristics. Obviously there are still some other AI issues with how the game handles Mega Evil beyond this that the suggestion would not fix. So, here are some more suggestions dealing with those:

One easy (code-wise) way to deal with the issue of the AI not being ready to declare war when the Mega Evil AI state is tripped would be to have a ME threshold AI state in the game. Say if the race's Mega Evil setting is 50 then when it hits 40 the game would trigger a change in the AI state to "Prepare to Attack". Then when they do finally declare Mega Evil on you, at least they'd be prepared to fight.

Another suggestion that might work for the very weak races is not to openly declare Mega Evil on you at all. That is, declare it, but only to themselves as an internal AI state. The game AI state would then attempt to ally with stronger races and use Intelligence, Politics and other means to subvert you but not openly attack you which would be sucicidal. Politically, they could ask existing allies to declare war on you or give resources and ships to allies already at war with you. In this way they could fight you indirectly without being openly at war.

Any thoughts on these additional ideas?

Baron Munchausen · #2 January 28th, 2001, 09:01 PM

Changing the way Mega Evil is calculated so that each AI reacts at a different point would be good. Another thing that would be good is a "warning" threshold prior to the "turn against you" threshold and a special set of Messages where the AI can complain about your aggressive expansionism so you know what's happening. These two feature together would contribute greatly to the realism of the Mega Evil feature. Of course, you'd have to allow for neutrals to remain 'neutral' and not be overly prone to turn against the larger empires. Being only one system, they'd be triggered very early in large games.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 28 January 2001).]

Barnacle Bill · #3 January 28th, 2001, 11:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Jubala:
Bill, the more you talk about Starfire the more I want to play it. I actually went to my local gamestore and asked if they had it but they didn't even know what it was. I'll keep looking.

You can't get in in stores right now, as it is no longer marketed by the original publisher but direct market via internet, etc... by the designer. The website is at http://www.starfiredesign.com/starfire

ColdSteel · #4 January 29th, 2001, 04:18 AM

Okay, I sent these suggestions to MM so we'll see what happens.

Jubala · #5 January 29th, 2001, 05:00 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Barnacle Bill:
You can't get in in stores right now, as it is no longer marketed by the original publisher but direct market via internet, etc... by the designer. The website is at http://www.starfiredesign.com/starfire

Ok, that explains that. I've been checking out the starfire site and lurking a little in the forum, but I usually don't understand much because of all the ingame abbrevations used. Like discussions on shipdesign. Plain gibberish if you ask me.

But I do understand enough to know I want to play the game.

SunDevil · #6 January 29th, 2001, 05:48 PM

ColdSteel,

I updated all the ai diplomacy Last week, and so I just wanted to tell you a couple of things.

1. MegaEvil Empire := 50 means that each turn that particular race will add 50 angry points/mood to their total, thus always increasing in anger.

2. I think its in the settings file you can set whether there is an option for Mega Evil Empire and also you can set a score to be reached in order for MME to take effect. There isn't a modifier in each race's files that govern this. (At least I haven't found one yet.)

3. I think your idea would be a good one, but MM is going to have to add some extra lines of code in their Ai_Politics file in order to make your idea race specific.

I hope this helps.

Barnacle Bill · #7 January 29th, 2001, 05:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Jubala:
Ok, that explains that. I've been checking out the starfire site and lurking a little in the forum, but I usually don't understand much because of all the ingame abbrevations used. Like discussions on shipdesign. Plain gibberish if you ask me. But I do understand enough to know I want to play the game.

Ship design in Starfire is pretty much like in SE3, but there is an upper case letter code for each system type instead of a graphic icon. For example, S = a shield system, A = armor, L = laser, I = �ion engine�, etc� There are wads & wads of systems, though. Secondary codes, sometimes numbers or sometimes lower case letters, are used to reflect generational improvements in the same system. Again like SE3, damage is normally scored on systems left to right, with each damage point killing one system. Damage from some weapons skip certain types of systems, or can sort of randomly select which system takes the hit. Shield systems are not destroyed but rather go down due to overload, and will be back up at the beginning of the next battle (if you survive this one), while everything else would need to be repaired. Shields & armor go to the left (in that order), but the order on everything else is pretty much up to the designing player. Different hull sizes take different numbers of engines per MP, increasing as the hull size goes up (the smallest get multiple MP per engine). Where multiple engines are required for one MP, the engines for each MP are placed in a drive room represented by (), for example (II) is a drive room with two engines in it. That is an addition since the earliest Version of the game, though. Ships have to include crew quarters & life support like SE4 (a combined system is available for small ships), but that is also a change since the original Version. So, neglecting the later (because I can�t remember the codes) a simple ship might look like like:

SSAA(II)L(II)L(II)(II)

But, you could put all your engines Last so you can run away once you have been �mission killed�, or put all your weapons Last in the hope of killing the other guy even if you have to limp home, or mix them up like above to compromise between those two design philosophies. You had the same sort of decisions to make in SE3, but in SE4 the random allocation of internal damage eliminates that aspect of ship design. Of course, with the huge variety of systems there are infinite ways to design a ship both from the standpoint of what systems to include and what order. This gets into what to research as well, in the strategic game. The designers are constantly tweaking the game balance to try to keep all the system types viable. Thus all the debate on the topic in the Starfire forum.