AI Tweaks and Personalities and Other Thoughts

Talenn · #1 November 25th, 2000, 08:04 PM

Grifman:

I agree with you 110%. That is really my only gripe with SE4 (but a major one). The MECHANICS of the game are VERY good, but the AI/Diplomacy/Role-play atmosphere is sorely lacking IMO. You are right, all the AI races seem the same.

SE3 was far better in that regard IMO. The player could select the enemy races and assign a 'personality type' to them which triggered different Messages and different responses. I am REALLY sorry to see that go in SE4. In fact, I used varying shipsets and judicious selection of the personality types to create the MOO/MOO2 Races as well as popular Sci-Fi races. It really added so much to the game to run into the Star Wars 'Empire' and know that 9 times out of 10, they were going to be hostile (I had them set to 'Genocidal'). The same was true for all the rest, from my Version of the Darloks (Intelligists) to the Alkari (Marauders). They actually seemed like distinct personalities and responded accordingly.

The AI Races in SE4 are indeed VERY bland by comparison. This is especially disconcerting as its the same basic ENGINE as SE3 had, but without the simple ability to do the same things. Messing with AI files in SE4 is a major chore and there seems to be no way to really increase their aggressiveness or xenophobia etc. One thing that SE4 DOES do far better is varying the AI player's research and ship designs. SE3 players all had identical ships and that was silly after a while. I think a good merge of the two game's mechanics would be great.

Heres hoping that continued tweaks will be made or perhaps a major re-coding of the way the AI players function. I think if anything causes me to relegate SE4 to the shelf it will be this shortcoming. Multiplayer is fine and all, but its nearly impossible to get commitment to a long-term game and at any rate, its just that...long term. In a game like this, the Single Player experience is VERY important IMO. And in that regard, SE4 seems to be a step backwards from SE3.

Perhaps some details for how to edit and tweak the races will be forthcoming from MM and player created scripts will be available to alleviate the problem. We can hope.

Talenn

Grifman · #2 November 25th, 2000, 08:35 PM

Thanks for the feedback - nice to know I'm not the only one!

However, I do think you can do what you want under the "Players" option in the game setup. Under there, you can create a new race, and one of the options there under "Description" is "Demeanor". Under that you have options such as psychotic, serene, aggressive, violent, honorable, etc. I am assuming that these somehow modify created races' behavior?

Well, I guess for my next game, I'm going to have to move beyond the stock races shipped with the game and create my own - perhaps a reprise of some of my favorite MOO races, with the specialties - too bad I can't recreate a Silicoid race that can colonize everything - that doesn't appear to be an option

The only thing that makes this difficult is play balancing. If I create a Meklar like production oriented race, how do I know if a 10%, 30% or 50% bonus is enough or too little.

Hmm, maybe I'll create 6 psychotic races for my next game and see what happens! If I do, I'll let you know and post it here!

Grifman

ashbery · #3 November 26th, 2000, 04:32 AM

Grifman your Posts 100% correct,in the game you have loads of so called race traits but like you say it doesnt make any difference,a evil xenophobic race seems just as keen to offer alliances as a peacefull merchant,just as peacefull merchants wage the same kind of genocidel warefare as the evil xenophode.

The roleplaying side really suffers because of this,i hope that the developers sort this out,ive added a few of my own races and theres no difference,maybe you should email that bottom post to malfador see what they say because this is a major flaw in my view.

Tampa_Gamer · #4 November 26th, 2000, 03:48 PM

Just backing you up - I agree 100% with the initial post below. As a 4x fan back to the days of Ascendancy and MOO, I would like the design team to tweak the AI. I have started some mods myself, but you can only do so much with the AI files.

ksean · #5 November 26th, 2000, 07:15 PM

"- too bad I can't recreate a Silicoid race that can colonize everything - "

Actually you can ..
Create a racial trait that gives the Tech Area Ability. (use some value above that for Organic tech, I start at 255 and work down.)
Add a new Applied Tech "Universal Colonization," that requires that racial trait, then make a new component "Universal Colonizer" that requires Universal Colonization, has all three colonization abilities from the other colonization modules and give it a family number of 5004 (one more than the highest colony module).

Voila' a race that can colonize any planet from the start.

Jubala · #6 November 26th, 2000, 09:52 PM

ksean, sounds like something all neutrals should have imo.

mafia · #7 November 27th, 2000, 05:22 AM

Yes AI can be bolstered a bit but I think AI will never be up to human standars and improving the multiplayer aspect of this game is the *only* way to face a worthy foe. PBEM is a thing of the past. Malfador needs to focus on vastly improving the multiplayer. Until then we'll all be griping about the AI's stupidity.

-m