AI CAMPAIGN ; Released

[JLS]

Originally posted by oleg:
I don't like new fighter weapons, Armed Cockpit and Turret guns. I don't like them at all.
When fighter with 1 AC and 2 TG fires on stack of fighters it can kill 2-3 in one shot ! Even if targets have shield. I think it is overkill. It is just does not sound right. Also, it is often to have 1-2 spaces left on fighters, Why not to reinstall small armour for fighters ?

The idea of combat-only movement is a good one IMHO.

Thanks for the endorsement of Tactical Combat movement. This is a good starting point

In regards to Armed Cockpit and Turret guns these are optional weapons of choice, and they make a good addition to Interceptors and Fighter-Bombers.

In regards to Air to Air fighter Combat if you have 4 carriers loaded per side ( a few escorts optional) with a good combination varieties.

Some examples:
20% small Interceptors: Cock Pit with Bow Cannon, 2 Turret guns, engines with after-burners and a combat sensor.

30% small Fighter-Bomber: Cock Pit with Bow Cannon, 1 turret gun, 1 multi purpose weapon beam and a combat sensor. No after-burners.

20% medium Fighter-Bomber: Same as above with no turret gun but add a shield and ECM.

20% medium Fighter-Bomber: Same as above loose shield and add rockets or (racial) Torpedoes. Note Anti-Mater Torpedoes are different from others. All torpedoes are primarily anti-ship weapons.

10% large Torpedo Bomber: Same as F-B but include a shield.

Please add the above combination and percentages to your Simulation test with 4 or more carriers full for each side or Carriers vs. Planet with about half as much of the other sides in intercepters Fighters. Should make for an enjoyable show.

Note: Cluster Bombers are for a bombing planets and the unarmed cockpit is so it will not to engage in Air to Air. Optional Cock pit choice for a Kamikaze fighter.

Yes, the Point defense is about half that of a ships level 3 Point-Defense; on the Fighters Bow Cannon and less then half for the Turret guns. These values used to be less but the general consensus was to better the attack on Satellites with a little more bloodier fighter duals.

The main purpose different values, is to scale down the effects of fighters versus ships , considering both offensive and defensive stacking. So if we lower beam weapons to benefit Ships now we need to deal with shooting down fighters and Satellites so that gave rise to the Bow and Turret guns which is just basically point-defense. The same applies to armor in regards to defensive stacking. But armor might be back in the next Version.

All these weapons values are changeable put the premise above is still some what true.

TACTICAL FIGHTER MOD is still in it infancy and will start to make more sense with play and some positive changes, so we can make this better for the next release.

[ February 22, 2003, 15:08: Message edited by: JLS ]

[JLS]

Originally posted by oleg:
Small rocket pods, small parasite and few other fighter weapons use the same family number (2508) It cause mighty confusion during upgrade and not all weapons are listed when you use "only latest" view option.

Thanks for pointing that out in regards to multiple racial choice and families, we play tested Fighter Tactical interface for the Last few weeks in 2000 point setups where only one race trait is usually chosen by us and that’s how this got thru.

Many thanks and Consider it changed

[ February 22, 2003, 15:17: Message edited by: JLS ]

[oleg]

There was an idea circulating long time ago but never implemented - give AI a starting atmosphere converter. It should be available from the start to AI, upgradable to "normal" converters and require immense amount of time to convert atmosphere - for example 200 turns. AI constr_facil. file should have it as a first entry for all colonies. It should fix the problem that AI never scrap facilities and for example once it builds 3 mineral miners on domed medium planet it will never scrap one in favor of atm. converter.

This mod is the first one with dedicated AI tech and should take care of this problem !

[JLS]

Advanced Design Engineering

Allows the human player some Components that the AI player can’t possibly use yet or is at a disadvantage if you gave it to them… Mostly for AI Balance.
Some examples are:
Drop tanks for fighters so they can patrol a sector longer.
SPACE YARD Ships (the AI is at a real disadvantage here)
Ships Repair Bay Compartment (mostly AI logistics)
Cargo and Supply Niche
Cargo and Supply Compartment
Base Maneuver Thrusters (not recommended for early bases and kept to 1 combat move, so it will not move to soon from the planets protection in simu games). To name a few.
~Hardened Life Support.
~Combat Bridge
~Combat Aux Control
~Represents the research invested to towards the ultimate war ship.

[JLS]

Originally posted by oleg:
There was an idea circulating long time ago but never implemented - give AI a starting atmosphere converter. It should be available from the start to AI, upgradable to "normal" converters and require immense amount of time to convert atmosphere - for example 200 turns. AI constr_facil. file should have it as a first entry for all colonies. It should fix the problem that AI never scrap facilities and for example once it builds 3 mineral miners on domed medium planet it will never scrap one in favor of atm. converter.

This mod is the first one with dedicated AI tech and should take care of this problem !

Yes, I had tested that ability and it does work good; as well as some others, mainly on the AIs Primary Culture Center and they worked as fine until a HUMAN players captures the Planet or worse the home world.

However, the AI keeps up really good with Resources in AI Campaign; after a few hundred turns you will see that their doing just dandy

[ February 22, 2003, 16:05: Message edited by: JLS ]

[Suicide Junkie]

There is no need for Colony Modules on Colony ships. (Prevents fast colonizers)
Type Colony ships is now selected from the ship SIZE drop down menu in Create.

I would suggest that the colony module component state in its description and/or abilities that it is not required on a colony ship.

I don't quite see what you mean by "preventing fast colonizers"
If you don't want Cruisers carrying colony modules you could either use a colonyship-only mount, or increase the "size" of the colony ship.

Also, you can't use a colony module on a base, since bases have no movement. You need at least 1 MP to land a colony, and even emergency propulsion pods won't help if you've got no movement points to start with.

Argh.
Maybe I'm just too used to QNP, but these engine limits are really annoying. I got all this free space, and I wanna go faster!

PS:
Your supply storage bays are a little odd (just like unmodded SE4, in fact). They are twice the size of an engine, yet hold only 20% more supplies.
My engineers need a smack upside the head if they can't figure out that they could just cut off the thruster part of an engine, and fit two or three in the space of one supply tank.

PPS:
For the "Small Arms I" troop weapons, the description says "+5 to hit", while the ability says +10.

Design Type "Armored Vehical" should be "Vehicle"

[ February 22, 2003, 16:46: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[JLS]

[quote]Originally posted by JLS:

ability and it does work good; as well as some others, mainly on the AIs Primary Culture Center and they worked as fine until a HUMAN players captures the Planet or worse the home world.

However, the AI keeps up really good with Resources in AI Campaign; after a few hundred turns you will see that their doing just dandy

Speaking of testing abilities on the AIs culture centers, I tried (Resource Reclamation at 200) several months ago and the AI had never dropped in the Negative net resources even when I scraped all but one Culture Center putting the AI in a 4000 maintenance deficit and he never scraped a single ship although he could not build anything new. Sounded good to me, for a worse case AI scenario; until the next mourning when I realized that if captured by a Human Player it could facilitate an neat enterprise of building ships and then scraping them for near 100% Profit. Thats when I took another look at the AIs specific facilities