odd 1.30 observation

[Possum]

Heya, guys

This is a rather complex issue, I fear. I mean, it's easy to underestimate the complexity of the decision-making process that we, as human players, go through in playing SE4.

I'm not really much of a programmer, so I hesitate to criticize Aaron too much on this.

On the one hand, one can look at the Q3 bots, and the incredibly complex fuzzy logic they use to make their fighting decisions. And one can look at the AI in Homeworld, and that seems to behave pretty intelligently.

On the other hand, those games do not really involve the same complexities of long-range planning; both are essentially tactical situations only.

But the gripping hand is, the SE4 AI does work, if not always quite as well as we might wish it would

Just as Aaron never stopped supporting and improving SE3, I think we can confidently expect him to keep refining SE4 for a long time to come.

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tomgs:
Actually this can be modded away. The reason it happens is simple. Each world has to have some facilities and these are scripted by what is needed and the order they are scripted in. The Last scripted world type for all AI states is a mineral miner world so it is the catchall for whenever they colonize a world that doesn't fit any other catagory. So any world that is colonized and, either doesn't fit the classifications, or they have already colonized enough of the specified colony type that that world fits, then it will become a mineral miner world even if it would be perfect for something else. The "fix" is to make some other type of world the catchall. But you could have the same problems with that type of world becoming too numerous and/or being perfect for something other type that has already been built up to its current quota. I believe some mods address this area already but I don't know if a perfect fix has been made yet.

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What Arralens said is correct, when AI runs out (has higher maintenance then income value) of some resource like organics, he will make next colonized world Farming colony no matter what resources the planet has and no matter what the AI files contains. In ModPack all my moded races have Last call for research compound instead of mining colony and this still happens to them. Sergetti and Xi'Chung don't have ANY Mining colony call for any planet with value below 101% and still, when they run out of minerals, they build mining colonies on mineral-poor planets.

However, it seems that since the 1.27 patch the following line is not used by AI anymore: Maximum Maintenance Percent of Revenue := 80

This line used to make AI stop building new ships and bases when it had maintenance at 80% of total income and that way AI wouldn't run out of resources and would not stop building facilities and units. However since the 1.27 (and 1.30) patch it appears that AI is simply not using this line anymore.

I don't think it is intentional since it causes AI to run out of resources and brings his production to a standstill (or worse, it makes AI scrap its existing bases and ships), so this has to be reported to Aaron to fix it.

[Marty Ward]

If the AI is not paying attention to the maximum maintenance line that would explain a lot of what I have seen.
I my current game the AI has huge fleets but I think it has reached a level where it can't build any more facilities or add new designs because all their minerals are used for maintenance.

[tictoc]

Daynarr.
So does mephisto's modpack 1.61 address this problem or is it hard coded and therefore inherent in the mod as well?

tic

[This message has been edited by tictoc (edited 18 March 2001).]

[This message has been edited by tictoc (edited 18 March 2001).]

[This message has been edited by tictoc (edited 18 March 2001).]

[jc173]

It's likely a problem with the engine itself. Some of the modpack races have ending queue entries that tell the AI to build multiple attack ships per colony world. In particular in my new game Earth Alliance and the XiChung which both had maybe 15 or so planets but had 50-70 ships each. They were of course running massive losses on their resources. Hopefully they'll fix it so that max maintenance cost flag works again. Not really sure how you else you could ensure a big military buildup without destroying your economy since the sitiuation is very dynamic and varies from game to game.

[Daynarr]

AI decision to make a mining (or other) colony when he is lacking minerals (or other) resources is hard coded and is a good thing actually. It is still much better for AI to make a colony on a planet with 40% when it has no minerals then building intelligence center or something else.

However, the fact that AI is ignoring that is hurting it VERY much (and is hard coded also). There is nothing we can do at this moment but to report it to MM and hope for quick fix.

[Jourin]

In the settings file for the AIs, I noticed some blank Tabs at the end of the lines. Sometimes blanks have hidden characters that can case failure when uploading a text file into another program like C++. I deleted them and will see if this is better. Maybe somebody else could try the same.