AI Tweaks and Personalities and Other Thoughts

[Talenn]

Grifman:

I agree with you 110%. That is really my only gripe with SE4 (but a major one). The MECHANICS of the game are VERY good, but the AI/Diplomacy/Role-play atmosphere is sorely lacking IMO. You are right, all the AI races seem the same.

SE3 was far better in that regard IMO. The player could select the enemy races and assign a 'personality type' to them which triggered different Messages and different responses. I am REALLY sorry to see that go in SE4. In fact, I used varying shipsets and judicious selection of the personality types to create the MOO/MOO2 Races as well as popular Sci-Fi races. It really added so much to the game to run into the Star Wars 'Empire' and know that 9 times out of 10, they were going to be hostile (I had them set to 'Genocidal'). The same was true for all the rest, from my Version of the Darloks (Intelligists) to the Alkari (Marauders). They actually seemed like distinct personalities and responded accordingly.

The AI Races in SE4 are indeed VERY bland by comparison. This is especially disconcerting as its the same basic ENGINE as SE3 had, but without the simple ability to do the same things. Messing with AI files in SE4 is a major chore and there seems to be no way to really increase their aggressiveness or xenophobia etc. One thing that SE4 DOES do far better is varying the AI player's research and ship designs. SE3 players all had identical ships and that was silly after a while. I think a good merge of the two game's mechanics would be great.

Heres hoping that continued tweaks will be made or perhaps a major re-coding of the way the AI players function. I think if anything causes me to relegate SE4 to the shelf it will be this shortcoming. Multiplayer is fine and all, but its nearly impossible to get commitment to a long-term game and at any rate, its just that...long term. In a game like this, the Single Player experience is VERY important IMO. And in that regard, SE4 seems to be a step backwards from SE3.

Perhaps some details for how to edit and tweak the races will be forthcoming from MM and player created scripts will be available to alleviate the problem. We can hope.

Talenn