AI lacks targeting sensors

[Mark Dey]

Whenever I start up a game with high tech and run into an enemy ship, they always have ECM III but never have any sensors. Obviously, this allows me to run rough-shod over their forces since they can't hit me. Has anyone else noticed this?

-Mark

[Seawolf]

This get's fixed in later Versions. It is an AI preforence item I think

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Seawolf on the prowl

[Taqwus]

Check the Pictures/[race] directories -- there are text files there, which appear to deal with things like research preferences and ship designs. The Jraenor, for instance, are biased towards missiles, while the Phong are steered towards crystalline weaponry, etc. It looks like there's room for players to add in their own evil designs, for a tougher/stranger game.

Theoretically, were Malfador to be truly evil, they could have written an AI that looks at the player's designs and dynamically add templates based on them. I've not seen it, say, create a specialized Planetary Bomber ship (and I don't recall such a template in any of the race files), but it'd be interesting if it noticed my design, and then hit back with a similar one (For instance, towards the end of my Last game, my 'CA Vengeance' class Planetary Bomber resembled my 'CA Slayer' ship-killer with the same organic armor, shielding, a seeker, etc, but replaced the beam weapons w/ 4 large napalm bombs (total 4000 pts every 2 turns... good for reducing a 3-bar colony to ashes VERY quickly)).

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[General Hawkwing]

In one game I noticed a neutral empire reducing in score and turned it into a player empire to see why. One of of xeno AI was waging war on it. The neutral empire, having not expanded beyond 1 system, needed help. Since we were at opposite corners of the galaxy and not about to have contact, I flipped the ministers off and played them for a few turns. The computer had 8 ships with the same design only a different name and function. I made them obsolete, designed and built new ships. Took old ships just sitting around and cleared a few colonies off enemy planets and pushed some exploration and colonization of other systems. By then 1 of my allies turned on my original empire and it was enough to hold my full attention, so I turned ministers on and let it revert to AI.
Why would anybody (even an AI) have numerous copies of 1 design under various names?
Misdirection? "Sir, the fleet has three ships 1 class Danno, 1 class Denno and 1 class Dinno. We have no record of a Denno or Dinno class on file. Should we engage?" Which I would find interesting but I don't think the AI works on the kind of a subtle level.

[This message has been edited by General Hawkwing (edited 16 October 2000).]