AI construction queue problems (ship construction)

Baron Munchausen · #1 February 6th, 2001, 07:30 PM

quote:
Originally posted by HreDaak:
[b] Excellent! Send it to MM ASAP . The solution you've come up with the defense bases sounds reasonable to me. For now everyone should just remove defense bases from their vehicle construction.txt files and make sure that there is enough space on AI planets. This will let the AI build HUGE amounts ships and other stuff.

I have another test game running now in huge galaxy with 254 systems. There are 10 AI players with low computer bonus in this game and some of them are simply enormous. The first AI player atm is Cue Cappa commonwealth. It has score of 3.1M, 216 planets in 47 systems, 324 ships and over 3000 units. Second is the Xi'Chung hive with 2.1M score, 105 planets in 23 systems, 251 ships and over 1300 units. The third one is amonkrie with over 1.6M score.. and the other AI players are doing also pretty well except the cryslonite empire which is about to be wiped out by the Ukra'Tal. So far none of them has had any building problems. This is with the removal of defense bases and making sure that the AI does not run out of space on its planets. Oh and btw its turn 150 in this test game...

One thing i have also noticed is the fact that the AI does not take full advantage of its bonuses when you give it low/medium/high computer bonus. The bonus that does not get fully used is the production bonus. AI gets 2x, 3x, 4x the resources each turn it produces with the computer bonus turned on. But it's ship maintenance max is specified in each races settings.txt file and this is usually set to 80% of max resource income. By setting this limit lets say to 160%, 240% and 320% respectively you can get the AI build absolutely insane amounts of ships (without it having any maintenance problems)provided that you have also fixed those 2 other production problems...

In other words, there's a BUG with AI bonuses. The AI should be calculating its maintenance cost according to what it really has available to spend. If it doesn't "see" the bonus, it's as if it's not really there!

Glad to hear that this has been figured out, though. MM should credit many of you guys as Beta testers!

It sounds like after this next patch the AI is gonna kick ***! We may have to start using the "low" difficulty setting!

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 February 2001).]

Emperor Zodd · #2 February 6th, 2001, 07:43 PM

Great work guys!
This coming patch is going to be great!

Keep up the great work.

Mephisto · #3 February 6th, 2001, 10:24 PM

Right from the mouth of MM (regarding cargo and defense bases):

Thanks for the excellent observations. We had noticed these as well and
are working on putting in a fix for them.

HreDaak · #4 February 6th, 2001, 11:06 PM

Great news Mephisto

.

Just to bring a small update on how the test game is progressing. Its turn 206 and here are some stats: 1st Cue Cappa with 5.1M score, 286 planets in 70 systems, nearly 4000 units and 476 ships. 2nd Xi'Chung hive with 2.2M score, 111 planets in 29 systems, nearly 1500 units and 225 ships. Seems to me that Cue Cappa has captured a fairly large fleet from Xi'Chung as it now has nearly 50 Xi'Chung ships

. Uuups, just noticed that the Amonkrie has climbed to the second place with 2.9M score

. Hih.. this indeed is fun to watch

. The bastard Ukra'Tal made peace with the cryslonite and they now have military alliance.. so the cryslonite meanies are still alive.. barely though as they only have 7 planets left

.

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 06 February 2001).]

Emperor Zodd · #5 February 6th, 2001, 11:12 PM

Thanks Mephisto.

This patch is going to be huge!
Aaron has been telling me about alot more issues he is working on that will resolve problems with exploiting the AI and play balance.

I can't wait to see how much better the AI will play.

[This message has been edited by Emperor Zodd (edited 06 February 2001).]

Tampa_Gamer · #6 February 7th, 2001, 03:25 PM

Ok, for anyone reading this thread, but afraid to modify their \AI files. Here is the file everyone is talking about with the temporary fix until the patch comes out. I have removed the Infrastructure call to "Defense Base" and substituted in its place a call to "Defense Ship". I tested this Last night, and all appears to be working OK. Place this file in your \AI directory.

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 07 February 2001).]

Tenryu · #7 February 7th, 2001, 04:14 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
I have removed the Infrastructure call to "Defense Base" and substituted in its place a call to "Defense Ship".

Excellent idea Tampa! I will replace my file with this one. I just yanked the Def Base call and renumbered. I spent a few minutes thinking about putting something else in its place but, since I haven't really done much to the AI files, I wasn't sure what effect any replacement might have. The Def ship, however, sounds ok.

BTW, I also set almost all the Weapons Platform calls to 10,1. I left any 10,0 calls. Not really sure what the major difference is between these statements. If I understand it correctly, the 10,1 will build one per planet and make sure you have at least one of them( on each planet?) and the 10,0 will build one per planet.

Question: Does this mean if I have 10 planets and I have it set for 10,0 the AI may try to build 10 Weapon Platforms but might try and stick them all on the same world, whereas, the 10,1 would limit it to no more then 1 platform per world?

If it doesn't it probably should.

If the latter is true then, in line with some of the discussions here, we may also need to make sure there are no 10,0 Weapon Platform calls in the files.

Any idea?