AI construction queue problems (ship construction)

HreDaak · #1 February 3rd, 2001, 03:31 PM

quote:
Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
Ok people,
your are absolutly right. I have just tested it again. I will delete my previous crap so noone is confused by it.

No no, all were valid points that had to be checked...

I think i now have another theory of what causes that elusive building problem. It must have something to do with different AI states. I think that the AI somehow fails to initialize it's build list when it changes it's AI state. The reason why i think that this might be the cause of the problem is that the AI is ALWAYS on exploration state until it makes contact to other races. This is the moment usually that these building problems start. I am now on turn 100 in my testgame (was on turn 50 in my previous post) and NONE of the AI players have experienced ANY shipbuilding problems. Changes in this games settings are:

1. Set the minimum empire storage capacity to 1000000
2. Set Empire Starting Percent Maint Cost to 0

Now with these settings there should be no limit on the number of ships the AI can build (except at game settings per player limit 2000).

Now, if you use the 'normal' construction.txt that has different lists for almost every AI state the building problems usually start when the AI makes contact to other AI empires (this usually causes the change in AI state). But if you modify this so that every AI state uses the same building list no problems appear... although this could use some more testing until one can be absolutely certain of this.

If someone else wants to test this please post your conclusions in this thread...

Mephisto · #2 February 3rd, 2001, 05:32 PM

My observations are that the AI is most of the time in "defense" so this should be the queue you should look for.
Can you attach a save game with the AI not building? This would make the whole process much easier.

Emperor Zodd · #3 February 3rd, 2001, 09:07 PM

I would advise you guys to e-mail Aaron whatever you discover immediately.

The patch will be ready soon, and I would like to see your discoveries added to it.

Q · #4 February 4th, 2001, 08:35 AM

Here it the savegave file Mephisto. All AI build very little, only one or to items per turn. The only exeption are the Sergetti! The Earth Alliance and Borg were also building not much until I turned the AI completely off and then one turn later on again. I use Mod Pack 1.01 plus the Borg race. I made some changes in the vehicle.construction.txt files of the Earth Alliance and the Borg, but not the other races. The Earth Alliance has now one identical list for all AI states, so I could better monitor the effects. But all the other race files are not altered. Maximum number of systems is 250. I made a few changes in some components (fighter bay, mine layer, satellite bay) but I don't think this will be important. Futhermore I use modified weapon mounts for weapon platforms and satellites. If you need them I could post them as well. Hope this works for you!
Thank you for your help.

Mephisto · #5 February 4th, 2001, 12:41 PM

O-ho! That are MANY systems.

I "solved" the problem for the EA in the game by building just one more mineral storage facility. They immediately begun to build fighters again.
For the Darlok it was sufficient to cancel their treaty with a neutral race to have them build their ships again.
I will have a look into this (especially the Last thing) but your game is so big that it takes forever to make one turn. Furthermore the Darlok use more ship classes then a "normal" race and your game is so big that even this can result in errors (I had a fatal RCE in the ship design menu with your game for example). So I can't pinpoint it exactly but I will have a look into it.

Q · #6 February 5th, 2001, 02:11 AM

Sorry for the many systems Mephisto, but when I started this game I never had in mind it may become something for others to examine!
It is very curious that you get RCE, because as you can see I played it for 200 turns (and continue to play it) without any error Messages. And I do definitely not have a super computer (Pentium II, 233MHz, 32MB RAM)!
But I am very happy that at least some points you could examine and fix. The most astonishing in this game for me is the Sergetti empire. They continue to grow and construct many ships, units and facilities and became number one with twice the score of number two. What do the Sergetti have, the others lack?? And did you realize, that the lack of construction is not confined to units and ships but also to facilities? Even if there is lot of empty space on the colonies left, no facilities (or very few) are built. These AI behaviour started about turn 150, but I don't have a savegame file from that time.
Thank you again for your work and help.

Tenryu · #7 February 4th, 2001, 08:45 PM

quote:
Originally posted by HreDaak:
Now, if you use the 'normal' construction.txt that has different lists for almost every AI state the building problems usually start when the AI makes contact to other AI empires (this usually causes the change in AI state). But if you modify this so that every AI state uses the same building list no problems appear... although this could use some more testing until one can be absolutely certain of this.

HreDaak,

This sounds like a major problem with the AI opponent.

I haven't done anything myself with the AI files. So I really don't trust myself to modify mine correctly to fix this problem.

I would greatly appreciate some advice from you on how I can fix this in my game. what recomendations can you make on what AI state build list to use for every AI state and how do I modify this.

Thanks