The Cheaters v1.3 released

[Urendi Maleldil]

Oh yeah, The AI follows completely different rules for ship design than the human player. I'm not sure about some of the other things, but it sure would be fun to find out.

I think it might be possible to put cargo bays on weapon platforms giving planets cheap extra cargo space. The extra engines and double spaceyards are absolutely confirmed. That was the first thing I tested.

[Fyron]

The AI ignores every single restriction in ship designing you can imagine. You can even get it to upgrade ship-only components to troop-only components if you are not careful in setting up a mod (overlapping family numbers are the bane of modders everywhere).

[NullAshton]

Interesting. So the AI could have a dreadnaught filled with ground cannons...

[Fyron]

If the ground cannons are more advanced than some sort of weapon you add to the ship design that the AI can place on the ships in the first place, yes.

[Slick]

I wonder if a "cheater" race already exists, unknowingly.

I also wonder if a "cheater" race would be allowed in any future "AI Deathmatch" tourneys.

Imperator Fyron said:
The AI ignores every single restriction in ship designing you can imagine. ...

I would think that if the AI doesn't need to obey any of the construction rules, then they could use multiple spaceyards on a ship/base, maybe even a planet, to really have a significant construction advantage.

[NullAshton]

They could possibly go over the facility limit. A planet with 200 resource facilities...

[douglas]

Empires created from AI_General files can ignore the minimum and maximum values for characteristics, but cannot spend more than the allowed number of points.

Anyway, since the whole point of this race is to exploit bugs that are available only to the AI, why stop at 0 with physical strength? Negative values generate points just fine, and don't have any worse effect than 0 does.