Space Combat - Observations and Questions (Aaron/Richard take note)

[God Emperor]

Thanks guys. Tampa_Gamer, I'll check out the mod pack but what threads are you referring too? I have read most but there are a lot posted now....

Also, just to clarify, I was not advocating arming the computer only with ships equipped with missiles and point defence, just that they have separate classes so that each type of ship (missile-PD, beam-PD) can operate more effectively. I do take the point though that the lack of control over the ratio of the two types of ship may lead to problems in some circumstances....

[thecyclemania]

This topic is very interesting, I have a question though :

Is there a file(s) that tells the AI what to do during strategic combat ?

I understand that the formation and strategy of the fleet will have an impact, but how do you evaluate (or guess) what the computer will do based on your design ?

For example, I read that if your fleet is using maximum range and your ship have direct fire/missile weapons, the fleet won't take advantage of its long range with missiles, it will move in to get within range of its direct fire. How am I supposed to know this ? What file dictactes this behavior ?

This is interesting because I recently was testing various design of ships with different weapons. The most successfull design had missiles weapons only and maximum range strategy. The moment you would add a direct fire, it wouldn't perform as good. I guess I know why now. But without this thread, I couldn't have guessed why ?

I'm tired of all this guessing...

thecyclemania

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by thecyclemania:
Is there a file(s) that tells the AI what to do during strategic combat ?

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The only file that does that is DefaultStrategies.txt located in 'DATA' folder. We (the moders) are hoping that this will change in next patch and that each individual race will have its own strategies file.

quote:

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I understand that the formation and strategy of the fleet will have an impact, but how do you evaluate (or guess) what the computer will do based on your design ?

For example, I read that if your fleet is using maximum range and your ship have direct fire/missile weapons, the fleet won't take advantage of its long range with missiles, it will move in to get within range of its direct fire. How am I supposed to know this ? What file dictactes this behavior ?

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This specific behavior is hard coded. It is defined by its movement strategy and we can't change them, just select them in DefaultStrategies.txt file.

quote:

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This is interesting because I recently was testing various design of ships with different weapons. The most successfull design had missiles weapons only and maximum range strategy. The moment you would add a direct fire, it wouldn't perform as good. I guess I know why now. But without this thread, I couldn't have guessed why ?

I'm tired of all this guessing...

thecyclemania

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We all learn by trial and error method. It is not easy, but it is the only way to go for now.

[Tampa_Gamer]

God Emporer-

The threads should be within the Last month. Do a "search" (upper right hand corner of page) and select this forum, within the Last month, with search terms of "ship" "design" and "ratio" - that should bring up some message threads with some good info.

[warp nine]

What settings can u use to make more use of boarding ships? The attack ships seem to destroy everything before they get involved, and boarding ships tend to stay away until shields are down (unless you put a weapon like a shield depleter on board). If default fleet strategy is set for 'capture enemy ships', the whole fleet flees into a corner and fires back at attackers until someone loses their shields. Then a boarding ship will pounce. I was looking for a more direct assault where the boarders stay close to the action and capture ships with shields down before they are destroyed.

[Tomgs]

The best way I have found to make this work is put weapons and heavy shields or armor on your boarding ships and let them fight with the rest. Another way used fairly often is have all larger warships carry boarding parties. That way your ships don't run to the corner and let the opponents ship die before they can get to the battle.

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
I also found that to make boarding ships work for the AI, you must reverse the current "movement types" so that board enemy ship is second. This way, they will attack (like you said) until the shields are down, then board. If you arm it with shield depleters, playtesting has revealed that it works rather nicely. Now if only the new patch will allow the AI to add these ships to their fleets

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Bingo! Now change the Borg to research ship capture and add boarding ships to their construction queue. Lots of them. You will be assimilated!!! I wonder if they will be smart enough to analyze anything they capture when it has unknown techs...

[Tampa_Gamer]

I also found that to make boarding ships work for the AI, you must reverse the current "movement types" so that board enemy ship is second. This way, they will attack (like you said) until the shields are down, then board. If you arm it with shield depleters, playtesting has revealed that it works rather nicely. Now if only the new patch will allow the AI to add these ships to their fleets