When AI scrap ships ?

Q · #1 May 31st, 2003, 05:37 PM

But this might be the cause! Did you check the empire status to see if the resources balance is negative? I believe when you switch to human control the empire looses its resources bonus and the minister therefore immediately starts to scrap ships before you start your turn.
I see the same thing too when I control the AI's but when I leave the AI undisturbed there seems to be no scrapping. However it's hard to be sure about this.

PvK · #2 May 31st, 2003, 06:46 PM

You could test the theory about the switch to human control by running the game as a human player but turning on all the ministers. Of course, that wouldn't prove that it didn't do it when under complete AI control.

You could also play a game with the "constant view of all systems" turned on, but that would require carefully watching each turn to see if the AI's ships were suddenly vanishing, so that proabably wouldn't be easy.

Actually, it would be simpler to test the part of the theory about the bonus having the effect, by running a game with no AI bonus, and see if it happens.

Of course, you can't prove it doesn't happen - only prove that it does, unless it happens very frequently or predictably.

Another theory would be that maybe the AI scraps when it can't retrofit a design to the new design it likes, but I don't think that is the case. Hmm, unless the BSY design has something at higher tech levels that won't fit on the BSY hull - a 500kT space station only has 50kT space left after standard control components and the spaceyard. It has only 40kT after upgrading to cheap life support. Maybe then it has its design set to try to include other junk that would be over 40kT?

PvK

oleg · #3 May 31st, 2003, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Q:
But this might be the cause! Did you check the empire status to see if the resources balance is negative? I believe when you switch to human control the empire looses its resources bonus and the minister therefore immediately starts to scrap ships before you start your turn.
I see the same thing too when I control the AI's but when I leave the AI undisturbed there seems to be no scrapping. However it's hard to be sure about this.

I am pretty sure this is not the case. See, I have several save games in row. Say at turns 10,20 and 30. Now I load turn10 game with my control and check statistics. Then I load turn 20 game, which progressed through turn 10 under AI and compare ships. What I see AI scraps all shipyards when it was fully independent.

oleg · #4 May 31st, 2003, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
You could test the theory about the switch to human control by running the game as a human player but turning on all the ministers. Of course, that wouldn't prove that it didn't do it when under complete AI control.

....

PvK

I did see it when I ran my empire with all ministers on. After a while, AI starts scrap ships when income is negative. I can live with this for sure. BUT, when I monitor detached AI with bonuses, it start scraping ships at about the same time !!! That means it either still do not "see" bonuses when scraping is concerned or it is indeed related to the upgrade issue. In any case, AI is still not performing well

Q · #5 May 31st, 2003, 08:35 PM

Oleg I think you are right.
I did some observation in a simultaneous game, where you can login into an empire without turning it to human control. And indeed there were some empires thar scrapped the same type of non obsolete space yard base while building a new one of the same type. Without the AI bonus the resource spending exceeded the income which probably caused the scrapping. However the game had a high AI bonus (= 5x production) which was shown correctely in the empire status window.
My conclusion is that the AI indeed still does not take the bonus into consideration when he has to decide if scrapping is needed.

oleg · #6 June 1st, 2003, 12:24 PM

Thanks, Q.

We all are very smug about how buggy is Moo3. But look here - after 3 years and many patches (thanks MM, I really appreciate your continious support of the game ! But still..) there is an apparently simple but devastating AI bug

To the best of my knoweledge, there will be no new patch any time soon if ever. Then question is what can we do. What effect has "maintanence percent of resources" in AI_settings on AI ? Does it count when AI decides to build ships or when to scrap ? Or both ? It is important to know if I want to make it, for example >100% or alternatively very small.
Any ideas ?

Q · #7 June 1st, 2003, 04:15 PM

I tried a value >100% for maintenance limit in the settings.txt file for the race I observed. No effect.
The problem IMHO is that the beta-testing for SE IV works suboptimal. I do not criticize the beta testers - they do a great job - but the system. If you make a fix like the one of the maintenance limit, MM should give a couple of beta testers the precise job to check it. As far as I know (please correct me if I am wrong!) nobody coordinates what the beta testers actually test. It's open to everybody what they do and therefore some features are never really tested and bugs persist for years. Another example is the "change bad intel chance" ability that never got to work.
For SE V this should be changed IMHO.