Any more bug reports?

[Baron Munchausen]

Another one that's annoyed me for a long time is the 'auto-cloaked satellite group' problem with sat Groups and warp points. If there's even ONE satellite with 'stealth' armor in a sat group at a warp point, something in the code always assumes that the entire sat group is CLOAKED when enemy ships come through, even if it is not, and they can just sail by your defenses. Weirdly, this does not happen with ships, only sat Groups. Since I don't use fighters I don't know if it also happens with fighters. You'd have to make a "small" stealth armor and put it in a fighter to find out.

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Master Belisarius:
- Cloaked ships can't remove mines. (If this is a feature, then, the AI must be fixed to decloak their cloaked minesweepers, before try to remove a minefield).

- The AI still want to lay mines, in a location with the max of unit allowed reached (in theory this was fixed in previous patches, but I'm 100% sure that it still happen).

- The AI never try to send population, to colonies that lost ALL the population (for example, after a random event, or after an enemy intel project).

- The AI never use the Resource Converters.

- The AI still want to colonize far away planets, without consider if the colony ship will have supplies or not (although some modded AI's have better colony ships).

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Minsweeping: This wouldn't be a problem if a cloaked ship was also undetected by the MINES it cannot sweep. Can we have consistency, at least?

The AI unit ministers are better than most of the other ministers, but still not very bright. I still wish there was a "maintain only" setting that would just restock mine fields or sat Groups that you created. This would let you keep control of your defenses but reduce the burden of maintaining your empire.

The AI population minister is still a joke in general. It loads up a half-dozen huge transports with thousands of millions population and sends them all to one medium sized planet, for example. Then they sit there full of 5 billion or more population for years of game time while other planets are nearly empty. There is just no internal planning going on. I've reduced the problem somewhat by capping population transport size at medium transport in my AI files.

The AI will build resource converters just like any other facility if you put them in the build queue. I don't know how to verify if they are actually used or not.

Colonyships: Yes, this is something rather easy to do. Since there is a special type just for colony ships we can mod them to be better, and it makes sense for a dedicated ship type to have a special ability that helps its function, doesn't it? I've added supply storage to the colony ship hull(s) in my custom techs to extend their range. It's much, much rarer for the AI to have hordes of out-of-supply colony ships crawling around a 1 move per turn now.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 08 October 2001).]

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Minsweeping: This wouldn't be a problem if a cloaked ship was also undetected by the MINES it cannot sweep. Can we have consistency, at least?

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I would much rather see cloaked sweepers be able to sweep then have cloaked ships be able to slip past mines undetected. IMHO

quote:

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Colonyships: Yes, this is something rather easy to do. Since there is a special type just for colony ships we can mod them to be better, and it makes sense for a dedicated ship type to have a special ability that helps its function, doesn't it? I've added supply storage to the colony ship hull(s) in my custom techs to extend their range. It's much, much rarer for the AI to have hordes of out-of-supply colony ships crawling around a 1 move per turn now.

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This is a very good idea Baron. Have you sent this idea to Aaron? What value do you use? It should be put into the stock game I think.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

Here's my Version of colony ships. Note that I've reduced the engine count to make them very slow like SE III colony ships as well as adding the supply storage. this means they use LESS supply per move, though, and combined with the integral supply capacity they now have very good range. They are blimps, though, and so I added the increased vulnerability. Oh, I've also modded my propulsion system sort of like the "newtonian" system discussed elsewhere, so that each engine produces 6 standard movement. The engines per move on these ships is different from what you'd expect. It would only be '1' and '2' in a standard game.

Name := Colony Ship
Short Name := Colony Ship
Description :=
Code := CY
Bitmap Name := ColonyShip
Vehicle Type := Ship
Tonnage := 400
Cost Minerals := 200
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 0
Engines Per Move := 6
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Ship Construction
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Supply Storage
Ability 1 Descr := Integral high-capacity fuel tanks extend a colony ship's range (1000 extra supplies).
Ability 1 Val 1 := 1000
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Combat To Hit Defense Minus
Ability 2 Descr := Large size and poor maneuverability makes this ship 20% easier to hit in combat.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 20
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Requirement Must Have Bridge := True
Requirement Can Have Aux Con := True
Requirement Min Life Support := 1
Requirement Min Crew Quarters := 1
Requirement Uses Engines := True
Requirement Max Engines := 4
Requirement Min Engines := 1
Requirement Pct Fighter Bays := 0
Requirement Pct Colony Mods := 50
Requirement Pct Cargo := 0

Name := Colony Ark
Short Name := Colony Ark
Description :=
Code := CK
Bitmap Name := ColonyShip
Vehicle Type := Ship
Tonnage := 600
Cost Minerals := 300
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 0
Engines Per Move := 12
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Ship Construction
Tech Level Req 1 := 4
Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Supply Storage
Ability 1 Descr := Integral high-capacity fuel tanks extend a colony ark's range (2000 extra supplies).
Ability 1 Val 1 := 2000
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Combat To Hit Defense Minus
Ability 2 Descr := Large size and poor maneuverability makes this ship 40% easier to hit in combat.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 40
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Requirement Must Have Bridge := True
Requirement Can Have Aux Con := True
Requirement Min Life Support := 2
Requirement Min Crew Quarters := 2
Requirement Uses Engines := True
Requirement Max Engines := 8
Requirement Min Engines := 2
Requirement Pct Fighter Bays := 0
Requirement Pct Colony Mods := 50
Requirement Pct Cargo := 0

[geoschmo]

Ok, I see what you've done here. It wouldn't directly translate to the stock game because of the different propulsion system, but adding supply to the ship type is clever. I remember suggesting a while back to add supply storage to the colony component. I heard that some people tried it but then some of the AI's were then putting colony components on attack ships then to get the extra supply. This should avoid that.

How much slower are you making them here? Aren't they having problems with black hole systems? Even with the extra supply, if it takes a year to get across a black hole system, you're going to be in trouble.

Geo

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
Ok, I see what you've done here. It wouldn't directly translate to the stock game because of the different propulsion system, but adding supply to the ship type is clever. I remember suggesting a while back to add supply storage to the colony component. I heard that some people tried it but then some of the AI's were then putting colony components on attack ships then to get the extra supply. This should avoid that.

How much slower are you making them here? Aren't they having problems with black hole systems? Even with the extra supply, if it takes a year to get across a black hole system, you're going to be in trouble.

Geo

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Look at the max engines, 4 and 8. So, speed 4. Just one slower than a transport, like in SE III. That's enough to escape a black hole if you are undamaged. You can work a solar sail into the Colony Ark anyway, and get real performance at the cost of further vulnerability. I've also modded the solar sail to increase 'to hit' probability since it's a big clumsy thing.

[capnq]

quote:

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map editor, starting positions. only the first one for each empire is used, multiple starting positions are ignored.

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This worked the only time I tested it. I made a map with three random start points in each of three systems, and my three starting planets were all in the same system, on the worlds I'd marked as start points.

------------------
Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Shyrka]

quote:

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Originally posted by Atrocities:
1. Stratigy "Capture Planet" does not work when fully loaded troop transports are present in the fleet.


[This message has been edited by Atrocities (edited 08 October 2001).]

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I had this problem too

More ones:
- Sometimes the retrofit minister tries to retrofit ships with more of the 50% difference cost. Of course, he can'ts and the warning window appears.

- The remote mining sats does'nt say the amount of resources that are mining. Ships do.

[Master Belisarius]

Baron: about the Colony ships, some examples of AI's that have better designes, but still use the standard tech, are the Vikings, Orks, Aquilaeian, Klingon, etc.

[Dragonlord]

Followup to what capnq said about the map editor: I can sorta confirm. I set 8 different starting positions for 8 races, give each race 3 planets, and the computer will give them those planets close to the marker. (could be in 1, 2 or even 3 systems). Attempts to lock the position of all 3 planets by giving each race 3 starting position markers (in the same system or in 2 systems next to each other) will fail.