AI construction queue problems (ship construction)

HreDaak · #1 February 1st, 2001, 07:23 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Daynarr:
There are 2 things you need to know:

1) AI ministers mostly work after you press the end turn button. That means that when you take control of the AI empire you will see only things he didn't finish building in 1 turn. The queue gets filled only after you press the end turn button (same goes for the research). You can see what AI has built Last turn by checking log at the beggining of the next turn.

Yes, i know this, i've checked it.

quote:

2) In AI_Vehicle_creation file is specified what the AI will build. If the AI has completed queue it will stop building. Note that the number of things AI will build depends heavily on the number of planets it has - Bigger empire has bigger fleets.

In my testgames AI will never run out of something to construct, i've made sure of it... (call to build 10000 Attack ships at the end of each states queue). Also i've made sure that it cant run out of resources due to maintenance costs by setting maintenance percentage to 0%. Still its queues are empty. Though they are empty only after AI has made contact to other AI empires, and even then they are not empty 100% of the time...

Of course, AI_Vehicle_creation file can be improved significantly by moding, and we did that in our mod pack.[/b][/quote]

Yes, i've used your mod pack, great job by the way

, but it does not fix this problem...

Q · #2 February 1st, 2001, 07:35 PM

Daynarr you are certainly right about these two points but
1.) When you check the log and see that e.g. only five items have been fished construction Last turn and you have 20 empty construction queues, then 15 must have been empty the Last turn.
2.) Your modification sure did make a big improvement but even with your modification pack 1.01 I see many empty construction queues in Earth Alliance, Sergetti and Darlok when they have several 10000 resource points left in all three catogeries, that can't be stored and therefore are wasted. This occurs only later in them game, after about 100 turns.

Tampa-Gamer you might very well be right, that the AI considers only a limited number of lines in the construction list per turn. This would explain, why in the early game the empty construction queues are not so evident than in the later game, where you have much more resources to spend.

Mephisto · #3 February 2nd, 2001, 12:05 AM

You need to have some storage facilities. Even if you have plenty of resources left and the ship/unit to build is no problem at all the AI will still stop building anything until you give them some storage facilities.

[This message has been edited by [K126]Mephisto (edited 03 February 2001).]

Daynarr · #4 February 2nd, 2001, 02:08 AM

quote:
Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
I can think of 2 possible reasons for this:

1.) You need to have some storage facilities. Even if you have plenty of resources left and the ship/unit to build is no problem at all the AI will still stop building anything until you give them some storage facilities.

2.) You describe the problem as partial using of the queues. The AI will only process 1 line at a time no matter how much resources are left for building the second or later lines. A good example are colonizers:
If you make the AI build a large number of colonizers the Ai is nearly stuck in this build line as colonizers are often destroyed or reach their target. The AI will then try to reach the specified number of colonizers again so it is stuck at this build line. A solution is to build only a few colonizers in the first line (to make sure their are always some colonizers), add a second line for some warships and make a third line for some more colonizers.
This concept is true for warships, too. If you tell the Ai to build 1 ship per planet the AI is virtually stuck at this line as it is very hard to reach that many ships (to many are lost for some reason or another to get this number of ships). Hope this helps.

You could consider forwarding this to MM, if you haven't done so already.

Mephisto · #5 February 2nd, 2001, 11:16 AM

I did.

I think MM will get to this once the have squished all the other nasty little bugs.

Q · #6 February 2nd, 2001, 11:32 AM

This is a very useful information Mephisto. It explains the problems I have encountered when trying to modify the construction.vehicle.txt files. Now I will try again!
Thank you very much.

HreDaak · #7 February 2nd, 2001, 12:13 PM

quote:
Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
I can think of 2 possible reasons for this:

1.) You need to have some storage facilities. Even if you have plenty of resources left and the ship/unit to build is no problem at all the AI will still stop building anything until you give them some storage facilities.

Yes, this can cause AI building problems, but AI usually had enough storages... (500k,250k,250k)

quote:

2.) You describe the problem as partial using of the queues. The AI will only process 1 line at a time no matter how much resources are left for building the second or later lines.

Hummh.. do you mean that AI will process only 1 entry from the construction.txt file each turn? I made a testconstuction.txt file that contained 30 emptry entries, all the stellar manipulation entries from the infrastructure state and at the end was a call to build 5 colonizers. AI had NO problems building those colonizers each and every turn. So i dont think this could be the reason. There seemed to be no limit how many lines it could process each turn.

quote:

A good example are colonizers:
If you make the AI build a large number of colonizers the Ai is nearly stuck in this build line as colonizers are often destroyed or reach their target. The AI will then try to reach the specified number of colonizers again so it is stuck at this build line. A solution is to build only a few colonizers in the first line (to make sure their are always some colonizers), add a second line for some warships and make a third line for some more colonizers.
This concept is true for warships, too. If you tell the Ai to build 1 ship per planet the AI is virtually stuck at this line as it is very hard to reach that many ships (to many are lost for some reason or another to .

Yes, i was very careful to avoid this problem in my testgames. The only entry that was impossible for the AI to build was the LAST entry at each AI state. While being in the exploration state (AI seems to always be on exploration state untill it makes first contact) AI's were building just fine. Then after they made contact, some of the AI's stopped building. Then the AI's that did not stop building started to whack those that did stop building. Even though the ones that stopped all building were losing huge amounts of ships they were not trying to replace their losses. They had enough resource production (maintenance was 0%), enough storage facilities and every AI state in the construction.txt file should have been screaming for them to build more ships.
But they didn't... this is the problem that has been bothering me.