Idea for MM to improve AI's strategy

[Daynarr]

BB, the parameters that are most critical for AI to make fleets are located in fleets.txt file. Here are some specifics:

quote:

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Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Ships:= 20
Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Planets:= 0
Fleets Div 1 Num Fleets:= 3

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These lines tell AI how to distribute its ships in fleets. By moding these lines you can make AI build few large fleets or lots of small fleets. Good races to compare here are Narn and Xi'Chung. Mephisto has made Narn create lots of fleets with less number of ships in them, which suits their defensive strategy quite well. OTOH I have made Xi'Chung build only few large fleets, which they need in order to be successful in their attacks.

quote:

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Fleets Percentage of Ships For Fleets:= 85

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This line tells AI how many of existing ships to put in fleet. By reducing the percentage you can make AI have lots of 'freelancers' going around with their own individual orders.

quote:

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Fleets Dont Use For Num Turns:=30

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This is the line that, most likely has caused AI to attack you with single ships. It tells AI not to use fleets for the specific amount of turns since the beginning of the game. This line must be carefully balanced because if you make AI use fleets too soon it will have problems with exploration and colonization (Sergetti had this problem for a while). This is because AI will position all its fleeted ships above some planet and try retrofit them all the time, so no ships will be doing the exploration. What value to use here depends greatly on AI research; if AI researches quickly some low-cost weapon (like DUC), it will design and retrofit more often, so larger value is better. OTOH if AI researches something like Missiles at the start, lower value should be safe.

In order to make AI use fleets like it should all these values need careful tweaking.