Planetary bombardment(genocide)

[Invader]

Change your computer player design creation files at Space Empires IV\Pictures\Races\<Computer player's race>\<Computer player's race>_AI_DesignCreation.txt and make the standard Attack Ship more like the troop transport and see what happens! (Must be the 1st ship in the list!)

[rkurschner]

I was invaded by troops occasionally in SEIII. That's how discovered how nice they were! Haven't played SEIV enough yet to know if that is still an option.

[Shadow99]

While I do agree that normal beam weapons (anit-proton beams, meson bLasters, & polarean beams) should do less damage to planets other direct fire weapons should not receive that kind of penalty. If we wanted to be realistic (like Commander G is implying) then other direct fire weapons (all high energy beams, graviton weapons, etc) would still inflict normal damage (after all they are weapons designed to do enough damage to effect palnets (& in the case of Quantum or Anti-Matter torpedo's would inflict more damage against planets).

I disagree about weapons platforms (& to a lesser degree satellites) & how they should be treated. For Weapon Platforms these things should require mega sized weapons (they do need to get into orbit after all) & they should (somewhat) have their power reduced, but Gas giants are inhabited near the edges of atmosphere & so aren't any worse than rock planets (to be honest all constructs on a Gas giant should be near space or float within the upper outer most atmosphere). As for Satellites they should also require larger sized weapons... After all who in there bloody right mind places itty bitty guns on satellites to defend their planets? (take a look at Bab5 to see who the satellite guns were near or greater in power than ship based systems, with only planet based guns being better.)

I'd suggest adding code so that planets are considered to have the type of armor plating that stops damage below a certain point & then set that point at ~50, 75, or 100 (based on planet size, larger planets being effected less).

[This message has been edited by Shadow99 (edited 17 November 2000).]

[James Sterrett]

The argument in favor of diplomatic penalties for the destruction of planets is that it makes the player's decisions in the game more complex. Do you take the easy, fast route, vaporizing the population, but annoying all the other empires? Or do you put in the work to make a planetary assault, deal with the unhappy population, and keep your diplomatic standing intact?

I don't know the details of how the system works in SEIV. In MoOII, the system essentially assigned you a permanent penalty to diplomacy every time you did something naughty. A similar system would probably work well for SEIV. Given the number of planets, it might even work best if you could eventually work off an early penalty?

Such a system doesn't preclude players from simply blowing away all in their path - but they need to orient their empire design on warfare to survive the diplomatic fallout (or, I suppose, be very good at diplomacy in order to counter the fallout). Either way, the decision-making becomes richer.

The downside is that it means more programming for Malfador, especially regarding the enemy empire AI.

[Tomgs]

Those of you that want to know if the computer will use troops to invade you I at least know that they do load troops into transports. I captured an enemy troop transport in one game using the intelligence operation. It only had 6 troops on it but I then used it to capture two of the enemy planets and gave myself a nice foothold in the system .
I haven't seen the AI actually using the troop transports but that is probably because I usually take the fight to their systems so they don't get much ofa chance to fight in my teritory. My guess is that if I just waited and didn't attack them first maybe made treaties with all of them till they turned on me that could happen.

[ashbery]

I still havent been invaded with ai troops,i dont think the a.i build them enough if ever.I wiped out most of an empire with a 1 troop ship,it was quite funny aswell because i invaded a a.i planet then left and invaded another and of course the a.i would wipe out the planet of there own people i did this to 10 planets in there own territory,so they ended up destroying there own empire when then only needed to invade.I think this bombardment problem needs sorting out with a patch so the a.i doesnt rely on just mass genocide.And like james said there should be diplomatic Penalties for destroying a planet population.

[Noble713]

Take a look at the Default_AI_Construction_Vehicles.txt file.

Of the 6 or so entries, only 2 of them even have transports listed (infrastructure and defense). For infrastructure, it is set to 1 transport per 10 planets and 1 troop per planet. Minimum requirements are 1 transport and 0 troops. For defense, it requires at least 1 transport no matter what, and 1 troop per planet with a minimum of 2 troops.

First , that's nowhere near enough troops to accomplish anything, and probably not enough transports either (not for the AI anyway, a human could probably do ok). Second, these things are so far down the construction queue the computer probably doesn't get to them anyway. Third, neither of the attack AI states has troops or transports listed. THAT's why they just come in and glass our planets. What's the good news? Each and every one of us can play around with this file and report his or her findings (HINT HINT).