Remaining issues

[Mephisto]

Here is my updated list of remaining issues that I found during my games:

1.) ECM/Combat Sensors broken. This is caused by a "misspelling" in all design files. It momentarily reads "combat to hit add" or "combat to hit dec" but should read "combat to hit offense plus" and "combat to hit defense plus".

2.) Subjugation-Treaty-Bug: Every time you form a subjugation treaty with a neutral race your research points are stuck at 50.000 points no matter how many research facilities are available. Breaking the treaty brings everything back to normal.

3.) An error was encountered when installing the latest patch over a modified game (the VehicleSize.txt was changed). The patch reported a not patchable Version. Simple “overwrite” should solve the problem.

4.) The RaceName_AI_Strategies.txt are not working, the AI will always use Default_AI_Strategies.txt even so a RaceName_AI_Strategies.txt is placed in the race folder.

5.) The AI constantly tries to upgrade some cargo units but fails to do so because it contains cargo. The AI should unload the cargo first (easy for fighters) or should not upgrade the cargo but instead use the ship. At the moment the ship hangs useless above a space yard and does nothing productive.

6.) The Supply Minister should take over ships without supplies from other ministers. At the moment especially colonizer are running short of supplies and try to reach distant planets (I had a colonizer with a 250 turns route!). As the AI is only producing so many colonizers and these are out to settle in the next millennium, the AI fails to colonize free planets in the vicinity if they became available (due to attacks for example).

7.) Generally, colonizers should not travel farther than Supplies + 1 system for example.

8.) The AI is ignoring the "avoid system" even if told not to enter these systems.

9.) The AI should not channel its space traffic through disrupted warp points. The AI throws away whole fleets this way.

10.) If a warp point is blocked by enemy forces, the AI should not try to move around them and spent all their movement points this way.

11.) The AI should attack satellite Groups above warp points and empty planets. I watched the AI several time to throw colonizer after colonizer without ever colonizing the planet. A combat fleet stand in the adjacent sector but never intervened.

12.) If you upgrade a damaged ship, all damaged components are repaired instantly, only the upgraded components need to be repaired after the upgrade.

13.) There seems to be a memory leak. The engine increases in memory size every time you hit the “end turn”-button until the program become 105 MB. After a while it will drop out with “out of memory”.

14.) “Range Check Error” present, a save game file is available. There seems to be an error with the troop transport.

15.) The name file (at least the “states.txt”) is to small. The AI runs out of names and stops building new designs altogether. Just increase the design name addendum from 10 to 20 and it should work again (or just add more states :-)).

16.) When the design AI should fill up with shields, it will do so with shield generators every time but should use phased shield generators if available.

17.) There seems to be a problem with the AI focusing on an attack when more then 1 enemy is present. In a test game, the AI would not wipe out the Amonkrie in 2 systems within 500 turns (but did battle them once in a while). More enemies were present on other borders.
After surrendering all other empires to the Phong (i.e. only 1 enemy empire left) the AI went straight into an offensive in these old “Amonkrie”-systems, wiping out colony after colony ASAP (I could not have done it better), clearing the 2 systems in no time. All parameters were the same except there was just one enemy race left instead of 4.

Wishes:

1.) Add a line “use master computer if available” in the design files. At the moment you cannot prevent the AI from designing ships with bridges, life support and crew quarters.

2.) The empire AI should scrap old units (fighters, weapon platforms) to gain cargo space making room for the new designs.

3.) Atmospheric Converter: The AI should check if the planet already has the desired atmosphere and skip building the facility. It should also scrap the facility if the desired atmosphere has been produced.

4.) The AI should use all remaining points between the maintenance max. and the actually income to build units (if storage is already full). At the moment the AI stops building units if it has reached its maintenance max. even so there are resources left and units don’t cost maintenance.

5.) When assigning orders from the AI_Construction_Vehicles.txt, the AI should try to assign as many as production facilities and resources allow. I.e. if the AI should build 10 cruisers and has only 5 space yards it should order 5 cruisers and go on searching for a unit production and assign them in effect building both, cruisers and units, at the same time.

6.) One shoot of a weapon should only kill one fighter, overkill should be lost.

7.) Count the damage of each weapon separately. At the moment all fire in a salvo is solved as one salvo, not as individual hits rendering emissive armor almost useless. This is especially true to fighter Groups.

8.) When engaging in strategic combat the report will not show fighters launched in combat. This way it is only guessing what fighters were lost. If going into strategic combat with a fleet that already has spaceborne fighters and launching additional ones in the fight the launched fighters are correctly added to the spaceborne one. Please add a line in the combat report to show the launched and destroyed fighters.

[Grognard]

The AI does not reevaluate the situation each turn.

The AI currently is sending a warship ahead of its colony ships, when coming into my sector. When the warship comes into range of a nearby fleet, the warship is taken out. The following turn, the now unescorted colony ship will continue its death run seemingly unaware it is no longer protected.

Similar situation with diplomacy. I brokered a non-intercourse treaty with the AI. But AI ships already set to attack my colonies or colonize new planets, in a sector already containing my colonies, continued toward their targets.

Both instances indicate the AI gives orders to ships and can never retract those orders due to the changing situation.

The AI knows I have 12 destroyers guarding my home system. Why does it continue to send in a colony ship guarded by only one light cruiser.

The AI should be fired from its job.

Also, the tactical battle formations are crazily inflexible. If my leader does a 180 degree turn, pandemonium occurs amongst the wingmen, instead of doing simple 180 degree turns themselves. Currently tactical battle is such a headache, I just use strategic battle. My poor results in strategic battles indicate a problem with this AI.

I could go on and on. It is too easy to find problems. The game has tons of features, but very many features have been poorly implemented. The list we have here is but the tip of the iceberg of needed improvements.

An AI can be judged by how many house rules and cheats have to be used to make an effective AI.

Enough said but I can still hope,
Grognard
Give me Gameplay or give me death

*Editted: I will be more specific on strategic battle. The battle contains one AI light cruiser fighting 12 of my destroyers. The AI ship weapons are DUC's with a range of 4. My ships have range 10 Capital Ship Missiles. No ship in my fleet should even be scratched with this kind of range advantage, yet they are damaged using strategic battle. Looks like individual ships, trying to maintain their rigid formation, do some incredibly stupid and suicidal maneuvering.

By the way, can formations be turned off?

[This message has been edited by Grognard (edited 01 January 2001).]

[eagleton]

The AI should be able to:
- convert atmospheres in order to not become outproduced in the later game,
- use different races in an effective way to get the most out of its colonies. As soon as I have different races, I must turn off the transports minister becuse he can't deal with it. At the moment, AI players don't have much use from different races
- I would love to see the AI building ringworlds and dyson spheres - this would add much flavor to the game!

[Daynarr]

A little add-on to these issues:
18) Level 10 in 'Ship Construction' contains no tech (Lvl 3. Shipyard Facility moved to another tech area) and should be maxed to level 9.
19) Graviton Hellbore is moved to Gravity weapons tech area. However Small Graviton Hellbore is in the Tractor/Repulser weapons area.
20) When a Polaron Beam damages a ship, and after that weapon that does normal damage hits a ship, some of the damage gets repaired in the first hit. This bug does occur in almost all situations where a weapon with a special type of damage (like skips normal shields or quad damage to shields) does some damage and then a weapon with normal damage type is used afterwards. Also, this happens only to ships that have shields (for what I know).

Some wishes:
9) A combat initiative where AI will not always move after human player. A MOO2 model could work fine here modified by ship experience.
10) Diplomatic actions like agreeing to the demand to break treaty to another empire should be automatically executed when empire accepts the demand.
11) AI that will offer trades to other empires (AI or human).
12) Ability to choose starting positions for static units before combat (SE3 style), where you would be able to position your Satellite Groups and Bases before combat. Also, an ability to rearrange unit Groups would be welcome.

Add-ons to Mephisto's bug list:
10) AI pathfinding is bad. When a unit has 2 paths to target with same range, it will show a course going one way, but will ALWAYS go the other way. The units too often get stack behind larger objects in tactical combat (like planets). When selecting the shortest route to target, in tactical combat, the ship very often selects the wrong one losing movement points.
15) My states.txt has 259 words (it is one of the largest)! Are you sure you have not erased most of the names in the file by accident)

[Sinapus]

Re: graviton beam... If you do change that weapon to gravitational weapons, be sure to alter the tech levels. Tractor/Repulser weapons's top three tech levels are dedicated to those three levels of small graviton beams. So lower the level required for Gravitational Weapons, and reduce the number of tech levels in the Tractor/Repulsor weapon Category.

Something I've noticed is the new tech levels for space yards and planetary space yards. The computer should try to get ahold of level 2 yards as soon as it can. I think the AI research is still set to when getting Ship Construction 5 would get you a Planet Space Yard II. Maybe slip in an entry that will have the computer research Space Yards lvl 2 somewhere after some of the necessary levels are reached in other techs, since it'll be 200,000 RP to reach it. I have no idea where, though.

(I tend to slip big projects into the 2nd slot and move lower cost projects in front of it so I can get tech levels in those lower cost projects and have the excess points go to the bigger project. So I won't be lacking in some military techs while going for stuff like Research 2 or so.)

[Snap Spelljammer]

Version 1.19

- A small bug with mine laying. If you use the "Launch/Retrieve Units" button then any mines launched will form a new group of mines. If you use the "Remote Launch" button then the mines will merge correctly with a mine group in the sector.

- A game crashing bug will sometimes happen during the AI's turn. No error message, the game just locks up and you must go to "end task". Running the game again and hitting the end turn button will cause the exact same result. This has happened in more than one game. A savegame is available.

- In "Constuction Queues" F7 menu "Name", "Number of Facilities", and "Construction Queue" will highlight and flash when you click on them, but they do not sort the list. This works fine in the "Colonies" F5 menu though.

Wish List:

- Add 3 columns to the Facility Queue. 1st shows number of built on planet. 2nd shows number of facilities built in system. 3rd show number of facilities in queue in system.
example:
010 027 003 Monolith III
This shows that there are 10 built on this planet. 27 built in the system this planet is in. 3 in the build queues of planets in this system.

- Ability to jump directly to a planet from the Construction Queues F7 menu.

- Add a button to the facility queue screen to list facilites on the planet and allow us to scrap facilities without leaving the queue.

[Mephisto]

quote:

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Originally posted by Daynarr:

15) My states.txt has 259 words (it is one of the largest)! Are you sure you have not erased most of the names in the file by accident)

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Well, mine has only 50. I would bet you have a modified one (or I missed that the US has grown significantly in the past weeks)

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Well, mine has only 50. I would bet you have a modified one (or I missed that the US has grown significantly in the past weeks)

---

Well, maybe.
I have posted lots of dsgnname files in mod section, including my Version of states.txt (actually it has 234 lines, my mistake). You can use them to give all races their own dsgnname files to avoid those problems you mentioned before, about small ones.
Seems that you can't select same name for the ship, even if belongs to other empire. Putting separate name files for all empires will give them more room for selecting ship names (and give more variety). Also, seems that the most (ab)used file is ravager.txt - at least 3 empires are using it, and it is not large (104 lines). Animals.txt is the smallest and at least 2 empires use it.

Hope that this all will be of some use for someone.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 02 January 2001).]

[Sessile]

More bugs, using the latest Version.

If you abandon a captured "Angry" planet, to get rid of the undesirable population, leaving the facilities, but the repopulate with your own people via a transport, the colony is still "Angry".

The "accept surrender" message a race sends you can be replied to. You can actually surrender to them after they have surrendered to you. I wonder what happens in multiplayer?

If you have in the production queue some "upgrade to facility II" orders, and you get "facility III", then go to the production screen and hit upgrade, it merely appends the "upgrade to facility III" to the queue, instead of replacing the old upgrade orders. Looks weird.

When you click on "launch units" in tactical and you've selected a fighter, you get a "bits out of range" AfxMessageBox. Also, strategic and "resolve combat" crashes sometimes with fighters. I can't reproduce it though.

[Nyx]

(I sent this list to MM recently)

#1A In Strategic Combat, if the fleet leader has its bridge damaged and goes out of control, it is not removed from command, but instead all the other ships mill about moving randomly trying to keep in formation with it.

#1B If the lead ship is damaged and moving slowly, it is not removed from command and thus the whole formation moves slowly. I'm often unable to engage in strategic combat at all because of these two.

And to answer an earlier question, you cannot turn formations off, but you can turn the grouping off in tactical combat. I can't figure out how to turn it off for a fleet as a whole though.

#2 An emergency resupply pod and a repair facility is as good as the quantum reactor for supplies, and still repairs ships.

#3 The anger files make the AI get angry if you send ships into an AI's system to protect the AI with whom you have a military alliance or partnership.

#4 Ships in a fleet cannot use any of their special components (emergency move pods, emergency supply, stellar manipulation, etc.) without leaving the fleet first.

#5 In Finite Resource galaxies, planets actually have infinite resources.

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