Couple of questions.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by LostCommander:
1: What is the difference between the Aggressive, Neutral, Defensive, Default, and Race Specific AI files? (i.e. does anyone know when which are used)?

Each AI has a set of files that determines what it will research, whot to use in its ships, and, how it behaves vs other races. Each race is different. Everyone uses the race specific ai files, expecially if the race is modded, for example TDM Modpack races are carefully written.

If you turn on ministers for your race they will use the info in the files for their decision.

Practically no one screws with this by selecting other AI behavior. If two races use the same AI setting, they behave exactly the same. Who wants that?

[LostCommander]

Thank you very much for the AI info. For my personal mod, I am making the AI as mean as I can. As part of that, I wish to simply make ALL the computer players always be happy, except a massive penalty for M.E.E. Since setting the game to "Team Play" makes all humans M.E.E., the AI will hopefully never fight with itself, always fight with humans, and in general act as a single, multi-factioned empire that will not interact peacefully with human empires and will not fight with itself, even if it still will not share tech with itself. As such, several of the files I wish to replace en-masse (anger, diplomacy...) to make my job easier, but then the name thing comes in and I need to make sure all of them have the right name ect.

No, I do not mean shift-clicking ships. Actually, I didn't know that did anything. Moves all of them at once, or just duplicate orders?

I mean, I have fleets, named, sometimes with experience, that will simply not be when my turn comes around again. Were in a fleet, now not. I suppose if it was strictly single-player, I could just reload the turn each time, but there are four of us and the time lost for even just one extra set of turns would be alot (4ppl, turn-based, hotseat). I would really like to know how to make it stop (even though it does not happen often).

[Fyron]

Shift clicking will move them all together for one turn. If the orders span multiple turns, they move separately after the first turn.

[capnq]

Have you been using named fleets in the Simulator? I've seen existing fleets disbanded when you leave the Simulator; it's one of the reasons I don't use it much. I don't see any mention in History.txt that it was ever fixed.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by LostCommander:
I wish to simply make ALL the computer players always be happy, except a massive penalty for M.E.E. Since setting the game to "Team Play" makes all humans M.E.E., the AI will hopefully never fight with itself, always fight with humans, and in general act as a single, multi-factioned empire that will not interact peacefully with human empires and will not fight with itself, even if it still will not share tech with itself.

Oh sweet, I gotta try that, peaceful ai's all allied against the human player

So wait, if I override the AI's default, will races like the Phong and the Ukra Tal not research their racial techs? That wouldn't be good.

[ February 01, 2003, 02:02: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[LostCommander]

Yes, if you edit their anger.txt file to have all 0's or less for EVERYTHING except MEE, then... Uh oh... Hehehe LOL. Hopefully by making most things negative, they will be friendly with each-other. I am leaving War declarations as positive anger, as well as Subjugation and Protectorate treaties ect. Editing / over-riding research.txt files would screw with racial techs. I am editing the design creation, construction, and research files for each AI individually.

[Krsqk]

If an event happens to a ship in a fleet (i.e., the random teleportation one), the fleet will be disbanded. I had this happen, I emailed Aaron, and he said that was how it was meant to be. That may mean it's a feature; it may mean it's the way it has to be because of code issues. There may be other events/causes which have similar results.