Getting a fight out of the AI

[Michou]

Hello to you all

Another great improvement to the AI, IMHO :

In my current game, an AI which had recently declared war to me was in a process of accumulating a fleet. The only problem was that it accumulated his fleet directly beside my main battle fleet, which was waiting for reinforcement.
So on 4 consecutive turns, it put 6 ships directly beside my fleet. Each turn, I destroyed his 6 ships. Together, those 24 ships would have been a good challenge, however his potential big fleet was destroyed piecemeal.

My point is, the AI should recognized danger. I.E. It should recognized immediate danger

An algorythm like that could be implemented :

1. Spot all ennemy fleets within a single turn range of my assets.

2. If tonnage of ennemy fleet is 20 % greater than my defense assets tonnage (WP + Ship + Fighter+ Bases), than get out of range ! (to fight another day!!)

3. The % used to determined fleet behavior could eventually be different depending on the planet under risk of attacks (i.e. Never flee if homeworld or key mining world is under risk of attacks)

It is always better to flee than fight a losing battle because i.e. a 3 to 1 advantage usually means that the inferior fleet will be destroyed by the superior fleeet, at little or no loss to the superior one. It would also minimize the typical AI behavior of leaving single ship here and there just waiting to be destroyed.

My question to you guys is this one :
- Do you think it would significantly improve the challenge offered by the AI
- Is this improvement can be done by us (Mods) or Malfador.
- Would it be useful to send this to Malfador ?

[Daynarr]

You guys may be interested in a mod I am making. It will contain a lot of new techs and some changes for the existing ones.
Here are some new techs:
- 15 levels of Multi-phased shields
- Phazors
- Kinetic Studies racial trait (has kinetic weapons that do more damage on the longer distances, and kinetic technology that has inertial stabilizer and nullifier)
- Plasma Cannons (after Meson BLaster)
- Gauss Cannons (after Uranium depleted cannon)
- Quantum Pulse Torpedoes and Atom-x Torpedoes
- Laser Weapons and Laser Combat Sensors

These are just some of the things that are already finished, tested and balanced. There is lot more to be done, but I will wait for the MM to post new patch first (there are some important changes that will effect my mod). Also when I do all the techs, I will tweak AI to use them.
You may have noticed that lot of my techs so far are MOO2 oriented. I guess 100000+ hours spent on it got me.
When it is all finished, I will send a copy to Hadrian to post it on hyperionbase.com, so you will be able to get it there.

Feel free to give some comments or new ideas.

[Taqwus]

Michou --

Tonnage isn't that good of an indicator. Most of my LT designs aren't nearly as dangerous in combat as most of my CA designs; I'd rather fight against a fleet of my minelayers rather than just one of my DN warships. And power probably scales nOnlinearly with hull size even among warships due to better weapon mounts and more room for goodies (sensors, talismans, solar sails, etc).

It also doesn't necessarily know your fleet's speed, if not all of your ship classes have been seen before and it lacks a scanner. It should probably guess based on your known ship designs and engine constraints due to hull type, 'tho.

More importantly, it doesn't know what weapons, armor etc you have if you have unknown ship classes. Hull type doesn't tell you that much -- a BB could be a beamer, a missile ship, a spaceyard ship, a sweeper, an organic-armor-rammer...

It should definitely use LR scanners more, to compensate for the fact that people have a much better idea, through experience, of AI ship design (e.g. Jraenor implies missiles, Ukra-Tal implies organic weaponry -- often a mix of seeker and beam, and so forth) and don't forget that between games. If it doesn't have one available, but it does have fighters, it could sacrifice one to learn the ship classes. Alternately, sacrifice a satellite (e.g. at a warp point), an unimportant colony, intel points (if it can get through...), or an unimportant ship.

Once it knows your ship designs, it'll be MUCH better off judging how a fight would go. It could even simulate the fight

, but that's possibly a bit much. I'd suggest a win-loss matrix, except that combined arms can have a HUGE impact.

Exception: cargo. You still need an LR scanner to be sure of ship cargo (fighter design...), and I think the LR scanner doesn't work at all on planets.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Tampa_Gamer]

Daynarr - sounds great. But you should post it here as well (go to the Mod forum on this Board). The Hyperion site seems to go up/down frequently and is hard to download from.

[Michou]

I understand the tonnage is not the optimum way of judging of the outcome battle.

Personnaly I would not mind the AI automatically knowing the design of every human ships, because organic intelligence (humans) can figure the capabilities of the AI ships by our general experience in SE4. For the AI, every game is a new one.

If the AI knew the capability of every ship, it could run every potential battles in the simulator, and based on the results, decide how to move its fleet.

A potential battle should not just be a possible attack by the AI, but a possible attack by another player (i.e. Most ennemy fleet within immediate range.)

That would solve the problem of AI keeping inferior fleets right beside my fleet. Usually, in warfare, you pool forces behind the front-line, and after, you send them !

Right now, I am Mega-Evil, and there is know way my stretched fleets could withstand the blow of a single AI fleet, if it were to put up most of his ships in a single fleet. Right now however they are giving them to me piecemeal. I want to be defeated ! I play on hard, low bonus, no mines.

Mich