Attempting to improve the AI for Proportions 3.05

[dogscoff]

Like the thread title says, I'm attempting to improve the AI for Proportions 3.05

Having played a big single player game recently that gave me plenty of opportunity to observe the AI in (in)action, I have a pretty good idea of what they are not doing. Sadly I have something very much like zero modding experience, so it's not so easy for me to see how to fix them. Still, I've started tinkering nonetheless.

As far as I can tell, the changes in the tech tree from Proportion 2.X to 3.X have cut many AIs off from their traditional research paths, so they are reaching a certain point in tech development and then making no further progress. Simply bridging the necessary gaps in the _AI_Research files ought to allow them to build all the ships they ordinarily would.

A more advanced project would be to introduce them to some of the mod's new technologies, but baby steps, baby steps.

Anyway, just to dip my toes into the water, I've decided to try to give the Terrans back their fighters: In my solo game I observed the Terrans, (who started in my home system) for many hundreds of turns before they declared me MEE and I took their homeworld. In all that time they never built a single fighter, which is the Terran trademark tech. I think this is probably down to them having no instructions to research the fighter powerplant or fighter propulsion areas.

With all this in mind I've made some changes to Terran_AI_Research, but haven't playtested them myself yet, and probably won't get an opportunity to do so for a while, so I've no idea if it works.

The 'improved' Terran_AI_Reasearch file is attached, I'd appreciate any and all feedback based on either looking at the file or trying it out in an actual game. Your comments would be more than welcome.

Note that my objective at this point is simply to get them to build fighters and carriers (although I couldn't help tweaking some other stuff as well). Getting them to do so in a particularly competitive manner is beyond my current remit.