AI weakness

[Sultan]

After I destroyed the spacestation and ground bases and bombing the home planet of a neutral power I landed too few troops to take the planet. While I waited for my next batch of troops I kept my ships over the planet and would buzz it to to see what the AI was upto.

Well it turns out that after 2 years of watching it the AI did not rebuild its ground bases. It didnt build any troops. It didnt even rebuild the research center that had been destroyed in the first attack. It also didnt try to drive off my ships with the other ships it had in the system. What it did build was two colony ships in that time. You think if it was going to build a ship it would at least be a warship.

This needs to be fixed. The AI should not let you hang around thier home planet at will. They should at least fix thier defenses before they do anything at all and you think they would repair destroyed centers. And if it looks like its going down the AI should be smart enough to fort up.

[Jubala]

This is yet another indication that bolsters my growing suspicion the AI doesn't have a very good situation analysis algorithm, if it has one at all. Like in this case:

If homeworld (or other important planet) blockaded:
* Mass relief fleet and drive away the blockaders. Do not send one cruiser against 20, wait for reinforcements (not next to the hw, preferably in another system)
* Build defenses on homeworld
* Try to get help by diplomacy (why not?)

My pet peeve example:
AI runs into minefield at same location repeatedly losing lots of ships, soon numbering in dozens, even scores.

What it does:
Keep sending colonyships, transports, carriers and whatnot into a known minefield to their death.

What it should do:
Build minesweepers and sweep the field. (Simple, not?)

Another one:
AI keeps sending colonyships into enemy held territory where they either run into minefields or get killed/captured. This (and the above mine example) to me indicates the AI have no concept of safe and unsafe locations. Like minefields are unsafe and only fit for minesweepers and/or big warfleets with minesweepers. And preferrably some repairships(which I have never seen btw) to repair any ships damaged by unswept mines.

And enemyheld systems are unsafe for colonyshpips and transports.

And what's this foolishnes of attacking a player fleet of 20+ Cruisers with 1 destroyer? It should be able to do a simple force comparison and realise those odds suck, get help there fast. A very simple way to do this a tonnage comparison. 20 Cruiser times 500kT = 10000kT, 1 destroyer = 300kT, 10000/300 = 33,33... Conclusion: Fleet outmassed by a factor of 33+, do not engage. This does of course not take into account relative techlevels of weapons and such but if the AI know the enemy designs it could calculate firepower, damagesoaking potential (how much beating a ship/fleet can take before ut goes down) and any bonuses (sensors). Might not want to take this to the extremes (no actual simulatorcombat) but if done properly (and who decides what's proper?) the AI won't do suicide runs anymore.

As a matter of fact, when I design ships I miss a simple way of telling how much damage it can take in shields(there), armor(not there) and components(not there). Get's kind of tedious to calculate it all the time. The same with firepower. A simple value for all weapons combined would help immensely imo.

I fear this post is getting long. Better stop rambling on. Been up way to long again. Damn children morning cartoons are on on tv.

[Danny]

What I'd do is add up total damage a fleet can take including armor and shields, then add total damage all weapons can do in 30 turns, do the same for it's own fleet, then have it attack only with a certain ratio of strenght.

For defenses I'd add a condition that if a planet is blocked it most build weapons platforms, troops, fighters, and shields until no longer blocked, or 'till all cargo space is full.

------------------
I AM Canadian.

[Jochen Schmidt]

Aha,

somebody else has said, what i wanted to post here.

Another question is - have you ever been attacked outside a warppoint, or Planet???

the AI fleets are massiv standing in their system, watching you outtaking every planet. In the next turn, the massiv fleet doesn´t exist anymore - perhaps two or three ships still on the same place, the rest went elsewhere.

I have the feeling, combat only takes place for planets, the Ai tries to conquer. Combat at warppoints do only come up, if the AI-fleet is warping to the other side, where my fleet is waiting. If they see my fleet waiting on the warppoint on their siede, they won´t attack. So, what i wanna say is, that battles in most cases only are starting if i wanna do so....

I can remember a game, called "Age of wonders", where the same problems with the AI came up. With the time, there was no fun to play further.

This should be no flaming to the coders, but should be understand as a wish or tip or anything else constructive.

Greetings from Germany

Jochen

P.S. This game still rocks - especially with the new patch - those fighters are now really powerfull ... and if the Ai will build minesweepers it would become a real challenge.

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, all of these problems can be summed up as a single phrase: attention span. The AI has no attention span, no memory of what is happening from turn to turn. If a ship hits a minefield, it doesn't REMEMBER this and build a mine sweeper, it just sends more ships. If a colony ship gets destroyed trying to reach a world that the colonization minister thinks needs to be colonized it just builds and sends another and doesn't even bother to send an escort with it. If you wipe out all the planets it held in a system it doesn't remember this and attack your fleets that have just wiped out its worlds with many millions of colonists... it suddenly decides that the fleet that was guarding those worlds needs to be someplace else guarding something important.

Somehow this AI needs some continuity in its actions, some DEPTH of planning and reaction.

[Jubala]

The AI has no memory? Damn, that's a dumb puppy!

[WendellM]

One rather hotly debated factor in Combat Mission (a WW II game from another independent developer/publisher) has been the ability of an AI tank (and one of yours, which is semi-AI) to remember where a recent threat (that has now become unseen due to moving behind cover) was and to keep its turret pointed that way, instead of being "distracted" by a minor threat from another direction and turning the turret toward it, thus being unprepared if/when the previous, major threat reappears near where it was recently seen. Some issues are how long to remember and what constitutes a "minor" threat. If a tank immediately forgets the old threat, that can be used against it. But, if it remembers it too long, or overlooks a fairly serious new threat because of it, that can also be used against it.

This is just one behavior of one unit type in a tactical game, not overall fleet-level behavior for galaxy-spanning one, which would be much more complex. While some memory is vital, if it's too powerful it can become a fixation that causes the AI a different set of problems. Balancing the two is the challenge.

That said, I agree with Munchausen's observations and examples, and also with the essence of Jubala's 27 Nov. post, that some basic memory is important. But properly implementing it could be tough.

[Jubala]

WendellM, this risk for a fixation you're talking about could be used in designing AI's with personalties. Some could have extremely long memories of wrongdoing and never forgive and always go gunning for you when they have a chance and others could forgive and forget overnight.

Still, I see the problem. But some memory is better than none. Just a simple thing like marking a sector with a minefield as unsafe until swept or a system with enemy fleest and bases as unsafe and not to be colonized and stuff like that.