Newbie AI Writing Thread

[brianeyci]

Please keep this thread clean so I/others can use it later for reference.

1. Where are some good resources to find about writing AI in SE:IV? I looked in the Modding 101 Tutorial and couldn't find it. As well I searched on spaceempires.net and couldn't find it. Searched for AI on the shrapnel forums search, and too many hits came up.

Topic One : AI_Fleets.txt
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Fleets Num Divisions - I intepret this as the number of types of fleets the AI has. I do not see a need to make more than two types of fleets, one single ship fleet, and one max unit fleet.

Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Ships - For the max unit fleet, max. For the single ship fleet, one.

Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Planets - Planets can go into fleets?

Fleets Div 1 Num Fleets - For the single unit fleet, max units. For the max unit fleet, perhaps two or three. I do not want the computer making a whole ton of warfleets, perhaps two or three fleets at most. Concentrated firepower. For the single ship fleet - colonizers.

Fleets Percentage of Ships For Fleets - 100%, to take advantage of fleet training.

Fleets Dont Use For Num Turns - 0, so that the AI puts ships into fleets right away.

Fleets Default Formation - Wall

Fleets Default Strategy - Optimal Firing Range

Percentage of Fleets to use for defense - For now, 50%. What does this setting actually accomplish? I was thinking of setting it to 0%, so the AI is incredibly agressive. What would happen if I set this to 0%? Would the AI no longer be able to take advantage of fleet training facilities? How does this interact with the percentage of ships in fleets setting, will colonizers be hanging around "defending" planets if I set the percentage of ships in fleets to 100%?

Thanks,
Brian