When AI scrap ships ?

[oleg]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
.emp files don't store any AI information- just race setup.

Wrong - it stores strategies for example and does not read them from AI_strategies file. This is the reason for infamous complaints about TDM Orks' - the supplied emp file was generated before author added new strategy selection to AI_design and AI_startegies files. But AI reads only design but not strategy and spits Messages !

I am pretty sure same goes for settings file - SE reads it only once, when race/player is generated !

[Q]

Originally posted by oleg:
How exactly did you test it ? remember - AI does not read settinds.txt file during the game. Moreover, it is stored in .emp file (I think - but may be wrong). Thus, file changes will not affect games in progress and you may have generate new .emp file too !

I changed the value in the running game, but I am 100% sure that the settings.txt file is read at least for some values during the game: I increased recently during the ongoing game the number of drones per target in the settings.txt file of a race and the effect was seen almost immediately.

[Suicide Junkie]

That would be your problem, then.

The racial stats cannot be changed during the game.

EMP files are essentially a script for quickly filling in the racial trait choices during the game setup.

[Q]

I did the following check in the simultaneous game I described before:
- picked a race that did not scrap (because maintenance was only about 60% of the income without AI bonus).
- lowered the maintenance limit from 80% to 10%.
- next turn this AI race scrapped a ship!

Conclusion: the maintenance limit is read during the game and low values will increase scrapping.
I do not know why values higher than 100% don't work, but it might be a hard coded limit.

[oleg]

Ok, how about this test :

Set "largest hull" for first 10 turns = 300.
generate the empire with this setting. Start a game. AI will make design only destroyers, transports, etc.
Now, exit the game, edit AI_settings to mke ai design larger ships, sey up to 1000. Start SEIV, with the old emp. file. - AI still designs small ships only. Changes in AI_settings are ignored !

[Suicide Junkie]

Ok, I thought you were referring to settings.txt, and the maintenance reduction limits, along with the racial trait choices related to it.

Since you are talking AI_settings.txt, that is completely different.

[Q]

Originally posted by oleg:
Ok, how about this test :

Set "largest hull" for first 10 turns = 300.
generate the empire with this setting. Start a game. AI will make design only destroyers, transports, etc.
Now, exit the game, edit AI_settings to mke ai design larger ships, sey up to 1000. Start SEIV, with the old emp. file. - AI still designs small ships only. Changes in AI_settings are ignored !

Oleg did you save the ship design in the emp file?

PS. Repeated your test with an empire file that had no ship designs saved: the change in the maximum ship size in the AI settings.txt file worked perfectly.

But back to your original topic: I agree that this bug is extremely bad for the AI performance because it annihilates almost completely the AI bonus effect for resources. I had the impression that even at high bonus AI empires had not that much more ships than I, if we had more or less the same empire size. But I blamed it on imperfect contruction files and trusted that the bonus worked.
I mailed this now to MM and asked for a fix. Even a mini patch with nothing else would be great.

[ June 03, 2003, 10:21: Message edited by: Q ]