Remaining issues

eagleton · #1 January 1st, 2001, 05:47 PM

The AI should be able to:
- convert atmospheres in order to not become outproduced in the later game,
- use different races in an effective way to get the most out of its colonies. As soon as I have different races, I must turn off the transports minister becuse he can't deal with it. At the moment, AI players don't have much use from different races
- I would love to see the AI building ringworlds and dyson spheres - this would add much flavor to the game!

Daynarr · #2 January 2nd, 2001, 12:18 AM

A little add-on to these issues:
18) Level 10 in 'Ship Construction' contains no tech (Lvl 3. Shipyard Facility moved to another tech area) and should be maxed to level 9.
19) Graviton Hellbore is moved to Gravity weapons tech area. However Small Graviton Hellbore is in the Tractor/Repulser weapons area.
20) When a Polaron Beam damages a ship, and after that weapon that does normal damage hits a ship, some of the damage gets repaired in the first hit. This bug does occur in almost all situations where a weapon with a special type of damage (like skips normal shields or quad damage to shields) does some damage and then a weapon with normal damage type is used afterwards. Also, this happens only to ships that have shields (for what I know).

Some wishes:
9) A combat initiative where AI will not always move after human player. A MOO2 model could work fine here modified by ship experience.
10) Diplomatic actions like agreeing to the demand to break treaty to another empire should be automatically executed when empire accepts the demand.
11) AI that will offer trades to other empires (AI or human).
12) Ability to choose starting positions for static units before combat (SE3 style), where you would be able to position your Satellite Groups and Bases before combat. Also, an ability to rearrange unit Groups would be welcome.

Add-ons to Mephisto's bug list:
10) AI pathfinding is bad. When a unit has 2 paths to target with same range, it will show a course going one way, but will ALWAYS go the other way. The units too often get stack behind larger objects in tactical combat (like planets). When selecting the shortest route to target, in tactical combat, the ship very often selects the wrong one losing movement points.
15) My states.txt has 259 words (it is one of the largest)! Are you sure you have not erased most of the names in the file by accident)

Sinapus · #3 January 2nd, 2001, 03:40 AM

Re: graviton beam... If you do change that weapon to gravitational weapons, be sure to alter the tech levels. Tractor/Repulser weapons's top three tech levels are dedicated to those three levels of small graviton beams. So lower the level required for Gravitational Weapons, and reduce the number of tech levels in the Tractor/Repulsor weapon Category.

Something I've noticed is the new tech levels for space yards and planetary space yards. The computer should try to get ahold of level 2 yards as soon as it can. I think the AI research is still set to when getting Ship Construction 5 would get you a Planet Space Yard II. Maybe slip in an entry that will have the computer research Space Yards lvl 2 somewhere after some of the necessary levels are reached in other techs, since it'll be 200,000 RP to reach it. I have no idea where, though.

(I tend to slip big projects into the 2nd slot and move lower cost projects in front of it so I can get tech levels in those lower cost projects and have the excess points go to the bigger project. So I won't be lacking in some military techs while going for stuff like Research 2 or so.)

Snap Spelljammer · #4 January 2nd, 2001, 11:18 AM

Version 1.19

- A small bug with mine laying. If you use the "Launch/Retrieve Units" button then any mines launched will form a new group of mines. If you use the "Remote Launch" button then the mines will merge correctly with a mine group in the sector.

- A game crashing bug will sometimes happen during the AI's turn. No error message, the game just locks up and you must go to "end task". Running the game again and hitting the end turn button will cause the exact same result. This has happened in more than one game. A savegame is available.

- In "Constuction Queues" F7 menu "Name", "Number of Facilities", and "Construction Queue" will highlight and flash when you click on them, but they do not sort the list. This works fine in the "Colonies" F5 menu though.

Wish List:

- Add 3 columns to the Facility Queue. 1st shows number of built on planet. 2nd shows number of facilities built in system. 3rd show number of facilities in queue in system.
example:
010 027 003 Monolith III
This shows that there are 10 built on this planet. 27 built in the system this planet is in. 3 in the build queues of planets in this system.

- Ability to jump directly to a planet from the Construction Queues F7 menu.

- Add a button to the facility queue screen to list facilites on the planet and allow us to scrap facilities without leaving the queue.

Mephisto · #5 January 2nd, 2001, 06:53 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Daynarr:

15) My states.txt has 259 words (it is one of the largest)! Are you sure you have not erased most of the names in the file by accident)

Well, mine has only 50. I would bet you have a modified one (or I missed that the US has grown significantly in the past weeks)

Daynarr · #6 January 2nd, 2001, 10:39 PM

quote:
Well, mine has only 50. I would bet you have a modified one (or I missed that the US has grown significantly in the past weeks)

Well, maybe.

I have posted lots of dsgnname files in mod section, including my Version of states.txt (actually it has 234 lines, my mistake). You can use them to give all races their own dsgnname files to avoid those problems you mentioned before, about small ones.
Seems that you can't select same name for the ship, even if belongs to other empire. Putting separate name files for all empires will give them more room for selecting ship names (and give more variety). Also, seems that the most (ab)used file is ravager.txt - at least 3 empires are using it, and it is not large (104 lines). Animals.txt is the smallest and at least 2 empires use it.

Hope that this all will be of some use for someone.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 02 January 2001).]

Sessile · #7 January 2nd, 2001, 11:57 PM

More bugs, using the latest Version.

If you abandon a captured "Angry" planet, to get rid of the undesirable population, leaving the facilities, but the repopulate with your own people via a transport, the colony is still "Angry".

The "accept surrender" message a race sends you can be replied to. You can actually surrender to them after they have surrendered to you. I wonder what happens in multiplayer?

If you have in the production queue some "upgrade to facility II" orders, and you get "facility III", then go to the production screen and hit upgrade, it merely appends the "upgrade to facility III" to the queue, instead of replacing the old upgrade orders. Looks weird.

When you click on "launch units" in tactical and you've selected a fighter, you get a "bits out of range" AfxMessageBox. Also, strategic and "resolve combat" crashes sometimes with fighters. I can't reproduce it though.