Idea for MM to improve AI's strategy

[Barnacle Bill]

Q:

Does the "turns to wait for next attack" make them assemble a fleet, or just control how often they will send in a lone ship?

I'd like to see the AI take what it knows (i.e. has already seen about the target's defenses) and assemble a fleet that can take them, and not come back until they have that big of a fleet. Otherwise, they are just wasting ships. If I hit an enemy planet, and it was defended by several WP's, I certainly wouldn't go back there without a fleet that could take those defenses. Of course, the defender could further beef up the defense while I'm gone, but it is assuredly not very likely to weaken them. I'd use single ships to probe for recon, then assemble a sufficient force to take the defenses I detected before I launched an actual attack. If I sent a single ship in to an enemy planet and found it too heavily defended by immobile forces (WP's, satellites, bases), I'd just sit outside their weapon range and click "end turn" 30 times, then go home & get some friends It should be a simple set of rules to make the AI do likewise.

[Daynarr]

BB, the parameters that are most critical for AI to make fleets are located in fleets.txt file. Here are some specifics:

quote:

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Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Ships:= 20
Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Planets:= 0
Fleets Div 1 Num Fleets:= 3

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These lines tell AI how to distribute its ships in fleets. By moding these lines you can make AI build few large fleets or lots of small fleets. Good races to compare here are Narn and Xi'Chung. Mephisto has made Narn create lots of fleets with less number of ships in them, which suits their defensive strategy quite well. OTOH I have made Xi'Chung build only few large fleets, which they need in order to be successful in their attacks.

quote:

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Fleets Percentage of Ships For Fleets:= 85

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This line tells AI how many of existing ships to put in fleet. By reducing the percentage you can make AI have lots of 'freelancers' going around with their own individual orders.

quote:

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Fleets Dont Use For Num Turns:=30

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This is the line that, most likely has caused AI to attack you with single ships. It tells AI not to use fleets for the specific amount of turns since the beginning of the game. This line must be carefully balanced because if you make AI use fleets too soon it will have problems with exploration and colonization (Sergetti had this problem for a while). This is because AI will position all its fleeted ships above some planet and try retrofit them all the time, so no ships will be doing the exploration. What value to use here depends greatly on AI research; if AI researches quickly some low-cost weapon (like DUC), it will design and retrofit more often, so larger value is better. OTOH if AI researches something like Missiles at the start, lower value should be safe.

In order to make AI use fleets like it should all these values need careful tweaking.

[dogscoff]

quote:

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Originally posted by Barnacle Bill:
Q:
...I'd just sit outside their weapon range and click "end turn" 30 times...

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Does anyone else think MM should include a command in the tactical combat to do this automatically - ie "resolve combat peacefully" or something. The existing resolve combat button destroys ships and planets I might otherwise want to capture in a later attack, as well as putting your own ships at risk.


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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but we'll never get a monkey to use dental floss!"

[Nitram Draw]

I agree that this would be a good option. If you fight only in tactical you could change all you fleet orders to "don't get hurt" and then when you clicked resolve combat you would run to the corner. I usually fight tactical but if the combat is overwhelmingly in my favor I use strategic and switching the fleet orders is a pain.

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 01 May 2001).]

[Barnacle Bill]

Daynarr:

Have you all ever considered creating a modder's database collecting what everyone has learned about the effects of the various game settings. Most of them seem kind of cryptic, and it looks like a number of individuals have learned some of them through experimentation. It would be great if all that knowledge could be collected into a single document!

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by Barnacle Bill:
Daynarr:

Have you all ever considered creating a modder's database collecting what everyone has learned about the effects of the various game settings. Most of them seem kind of cryptic, and it looks like a number of individuals have learned some of them through experimentation. It would be great if all that knowledge could be collected into a single document!

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Well, Tampa has made something like that in his article. I think that will help moding community a lot. I personally just don't have time and linguistic skills (English is not my native language) to attempt something similar.