Fighter grouping question

[The Puke Empire]

I was attacking EA's home planet (latest AI files from memphisto's mod), my fleet had 2 escort carriers carrying 80 fighters and a few warships armed with PD IIs and Is(no combat sensor).

In its defense EA countered my fleet with over *300* fighters! I thought I was gonna get wacked but I deployed my fighters in Groups of 5, one grid ahead of my fleet in a line formation. EA sent its fighters in group of 5 too and soon it was running out of space around the planet so the fighters, were arriving in waves. I thought I was going to lose but I ended up destroying all of the fighters, its two starbases, ground cannons and the entire population... only losing 37 of my fighters and one of my carriers crippled.

My fighters Groups were mixed of 4 different classes, about 20 old desgins that were armed with L1 DUCs, 50 top of the line fighters armed with dual L3 DUCs, and 10 'multirole' fighters armed with single DUC and L2 rockets. EA's fighters were all armed with a single L1 DUC. Even so, I think if EA had actually grouped their fighters in 20s, it would have kicked my ***.

So my question to memphisto or any other mod makers is: would it be possible to make the AI smarter in regard to fighter groupings? and maybe the EA has some flaws in its AI? They certainly produced alot of fighters (over 600 destroyed in my campaign against em).. but it was more than 70 turns into the game and their fighters had nothing better than DUC Is???

[The Puke Empire]

Forgot to mention.. with all those fighters I didn't encounter a single EA carrier. The EA invaded me first but with a bunch of destroyers that were quickly destroyed by my carrier based fleets.

I did run into this green worm race (forgot its name), we both have one carrier but the AI's fleet has light cruisers with PD 3s and their fighters with shields, my fleet was destroyed. But I thought EA was supposed to be fighter strong?

[Tomgs]

The probable reason for the EA having an old design fighter is that when a planet is filled up with units or it reaches its build limit (whatever that is set to) the old designs are not scrapped or moved and new ones built. You will see this with almost all the AI races if you look at their weapons platforms. On the edges of their empire they have new design weapons platforms but on their homeworld it is full of their first design. There should be some setting in there to say scrap a certain percent after a certain time and build new design units. But so far the AI doesn't seem
to do this.

By the way since the patch I have actually seen the AI do some retrofitting of some of its ships. I don't know how often but I know that at least it is capable of it now.

[Mephisto]

Tomgs is right in his assumption: The AI does not scrap old units so you probably will find the oldest fighters in their core systems. There is no way around this (look at my "remaining issues" list)
The EA would use 20 fighter Groups if only the EarthAlliance_AI_Strategies.txt would work. As I found out all the AIs are using only the Default_AI_Strategies.txt. As all the races uses these files I did not alter this. But if you have a closer look you will find that the EA already has the EarthAlliance_AI_Strategies.txt and will use altered strategies and fighter group once MM fixes this bug.
And for the DUCs: The EA will concentrate on energy stream weapons and does not develop DUCs any further. If the AI in turn 70 only has DUCs it probalby had a bad start resulting in low research or low minerals.
The same is true for carriers. If the AI picks a bad start/starting point then it is just tough luck. But I'm constantly modifying the production scripts (there is already a new one but not tested enough to be released) so watch out for the EA carriers.
The problem is to balance the AI in the start, middle and end games as the AI is using the same scripts all the time. With a few more ships of one type you will do great in later games but choke the AI in the beginning. It's much try and error, thought and testing, testing, testing.


[This message has been edited by [K126]Mephisto (edited 02 January 2001).]

[Sinapus]

Oh, didn't you know? When you attack the EA homeworld, you're supposed to destroy nearly all of the fighters, but surrender just before you win.

(Yes, it's a Babylon-5 joke. If you don't get it, go watch the show.)

Anyone make a Minbari bitmap set?