Idea for MM to improve AI's strategy

[jc173]

Some people have brought up the issue of the AI not being able to attack unless it considers a system to be contested. I was thinking of some ways to change this, and wanted to know what people thought about this. Most of this would have to be patched in to the exe file, but should require a large amount of coding though.

In addition to considering planets in contested systems as attack locations the AI should try to get reconaissance data on all systems within 2 or 3 warps of its border belonging to the enemy empire. Once it has the recon data it shouldn't be hard to run a recursive search of worlds with in range of its border.

Basically I think MM could add a new field in the AI_settings.txt file that would specify a point threshold, call it attack threshold for now, for a planet behind enemy lines to be considered for attack/capture. We could use a similar one for the AI to decide whether or it should try to capture a planet instead of just destroying it. Also in this settings file there would be several fields that specify what point value a particular characteristic would add to the attack and capture thresholds. People could mod the attack and capture point thresholds for each race to taste and they could also modify the points for each characteristic if they wanted to.

Things the AI should look at when calculating the attack and capture thresholds, MM could probably code this in terms of abilities and looking up certain settings from planet_size and the settings files in case people mode any of those settings. Also by refering to facilities in terms of abilities should allow AI's to consider destroying or capturing some of the race specific facilities that may be important to the other guy.

Presence of a resupply depots, big bonus to attack and capture points.

Presence of a space port , moderate bonus to attack and capture.

Presence of a space yard, big bonus to attack and capture.

Large population (maybe 80% of max pop for a large planet) plus small bonus to attack, moderate bonus to capture.

High resource value plus moderate bonus to attack and capture.

Presence of significant orbital defenses (large number of sattelites and or space stations) small penatly to attack.

Large number of resource extraction facilities moderate bonus to attack, large bonus to capture.

Large number of research or intelligence facilities: small bonus to attack, moderate bonus to capture.

Planet is a homeworld large bonus to attack and capture.

Also to support the Civil war idea if MM decides to implement that at a later date the characteristic of being regional capital or whatever could also be added in.

Just a few ideas, let me know what you all think.