The Rage Collective Version 1.0

Master Belisarius · #1 March 22nd, 2001, 07:20 PM

About your second question... well, I like more the competitive races, instead races with a coherent RP. Select the the "Mechanoid Race" will be a waste of points.

Alpha Kodiak · #2 March 22nd, 2001, 07:37 PM

quote:
Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
Why would they start asking at twice their enemy's score? I think the lowest setting for an AI to accept the surrender demand is 5x or 10x (i.e., they'll only surrender when the opponent is 5 to 10 times stronger). Maybe the setting for requesting a surrender should be higher, maybe around 10x or 11x...

I agree that it doesn't make sense. I'm wondering if I am reading the politics file incorrectly (didn't modify this part from the default). It has a score percent of 50 for sending a demand surrender message. As I understand it, that means it should send the message if the score of the target is 50% of the senders score. Before I change it, I wanted to see if someone could enlighten me on what is going on.

Q · #3 March 22nd, 2001, 08:06 PM

If I think about it, i can't recall that I ever saw the AI demand surrender! Did anybody else??
About your second question: I never choose the mechanoid trait, because I think it is rather easy to research the medical technology that protects you against plagues. But you must give the AI a ship design with medical bays, otherwise he will be helpless against plagues even if he researched the medical technology. But if the AI has a ship with a medical bay, he will send it to the plagued colony.

Daynarr · #4 March 22nd, 2001, 09:05 PM

1) You can't do it by modding. It is something that AI never does and is hard coded. I am surprised that you guys never noticed it before. I thought that you were flooding MM mail with these reports on AI that doesn't use about half of the diplomatic options even if they exist in their politics file.

2) My vote is 'no go' for Mechanoid. It is nearly useless for 1000 points and the people that really want to have RP before competitive game can change that themselves.
On the other hand, I have included 2 types of emp files for all my moded races. First type with the default roleplaying characteristics and the second with the settings for greater challenge playing with and without intel. You can try that approach as well.

Q · #5 March 22nd, 2001, 09:49 PM

1.) Daynarr it is quite rare that I get into a situation where an AI empire would reasonably demand me to surrender

.
But seriously: thank you for this information.

Baron Munchausen · #6 March 23rd, 2001, 04:40 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Daynarr:
1) You can't do it by modding. It is something that AI never does and is hard coded. I am surprised that you guys never noticed it before. I thought that you were flooding MM mail with these reports on AI that doesn't use about half of the diplomatic options even if they exist in their politics file.

2) My vote is 'no go' for Mechanoid. It is nearly useless for 1000 points and the people that really want to have RP before competitive game can change that themselves.
On the other hand, I have included 2 types of emp files for all my moded races. First type with the default roleplaying characteristics and the second with the settings for greater challenge playing with and without intel. You can try that approach as well.

Yeah, I've often wondered why the AI doesn't go begging for gifts when it's low on resources. It will occasionally ask for tribute, but it seems to only realize it can do so once. I'm guessing that it has a "level sensitive" check of some sort. When it sees that it has crossed the threshold it will ask for tribute. But if it remains above the tribute level it will not ask again. I've never seen it ask for surrender. And there is another opportunity for some trickiness here, too. Some AIs ought to pull the MOO trick and surrender to someone else just to spite you.

I must disagree about the value of the Mechanoid ability. The AI is just about clueless with Medical Bays even though I've added medical science to the research queue. There's no type for a "Medical Ship" and I don't want a bay in every ship of a class. So, when plague events hit or some nasty hooman uses bio-weapons, the AI is helpless. Admittedly, it should NOT be...

but it is. This makes an AI invulnerable to that particular trick. Not having to research medical science to defend yourself is an advantage, if a small one.

Q · #7 March 23rd, 2001, 11:37 AM

Baron about the second point: There are some ship designs that the AI does not really use (correctly) as create nebula ships. It is easy to modify their design to have a medical bay and let the AI build at least one. Then plagues should then be cured by the AI. I did not verify this until now, but I did see the AI use a medical bay ship I designed for him. He moved it directely to the plagued planet after the ship was contructed.

By the way to you know of a any plans, that would allow us to create new ship design types for the AI? This would greatly enhance the possibility to create more diverse designs for the AI.