A pirates life for me...

[mac5732]

SJ, Is it possible for boarding parties to capture battlestations if the AI builds them either as a ship or as a base, (in regards to the pirate mod)Do you think this could be modded if not, into the pirate mod? I have never tried it in the regular game as the AI doesn't build many if any BS and to be honest I never even thought of it. In your mod would/could be possible to have AI build more BS's and use the ship capture routine? This would make for an interesting twist. How about capturing ftrs? Just some ideas,
mac

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

But what I know:
-The AI does build BassltStations, usually in orbit of the homeworld.
-I don't recall ever seeing an AI with boarding parties. (Plus I have never managed to capture a ship using Strategic combat)
-Fighters & sats are immune to capture vie boarding parties, but an allegiance converter may be moddable to target fighters & still work.
Hmm. Point defence Psychics anyone?
-AFAIK, the strategic decisions are hard-coded into a few styles.

[jc173]

You could probably get the AI to build more defense bases by fiddling with the settings in the *construction_vehicles.txt file. Just decrease the number of planets per item or increase the number of must have at least. Keep in mind though this may screw with the AI's strategy since bases are pretty expensive to set up. They are capturable though. I grabbed a defense base battle station and a battle station ship yard Last night from the EEE. Which was pretty ideal since the two stations orbited a world with a resupply depot and other goodies deep in their territory.

[Suicide Junkie]

How has Ground combat worked for pirates so far? I'm not sure if I should bother building the infrastructure needed for those operations.

How long do planets Last before they are glassed, and how much loot do you get from the average planet full of facilities?

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BTW, does the 1% reduction in value from remote mining happen evey turn? I think it is, and if so, at no maintenance, I should be able to get a total of roughly
(NumMiners x 5/2 x Value^2)
if I'm doing my integration correctly. Note that that will be more accurate at higher "Value" values

oh, man I've said value too many times recently, and value has started to lose all meaning

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If we don't allow Pirates to build resource facilities, it will be like a finite-resource game for them, and normal for the AIs. Cool!

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 18 March 2001).]

[DirectorTsaarx]

quote:

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(Originally posted by Suicide_Junkie)
BTW, does the 1% reduction in value from remote mining happen evey turn? I think it is, and if so, at no maintenance, I should be able to get a total of roughly (NumMiners x 5/2 x Value^2) if I'm doing my integration correctly. Note that that will be more accurate at higher "Value" values.

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You don't need integration; this is a simple sum of an arithmetic progression, multiplied by a basic mining rate.

The basic mining rate is:

NumMiningComponents*ComponentRate/100

I'm dividing by 100 to correct for the fact that the value is a percentage multiplier (i.e. 150% is really a 1.5 multiplier; however, we want to add the series from 1 to 150).

Sum of the arithmetic progression from 1% to Value% is:

(Value+1)*(Value/2)

So, if you're using a single Miner III (rate of 800 minerals per turn), you'd get:

8*(V+1)*(V/2) -or- 4*(V^2 + V)

For an asteroid belt with 150% mineral value, that comes out to 90,600 minerals. Obviously, any maintenance required for the mining ship needs to be subtracted from the total to get the actual net gain, but if you set the Pirates' maintenance to zero, that's not a problem

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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You don't need integration; this is a simple sum of an arithmetic progression, multiplied by a basic mining rate

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Of course, but thats the easy way.

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What do you think about not allowing Pirates to build resource facilities?
The remote mining giving you finite resources, after which you have to steal to survive?

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As for implementing that no resource facil thing:
If we have a racial trait "Not a pirate" that allows access to the racial techs "Planet resource Extraction" and "Colony Construction", then you will need to research level 1 in that tech before you can build.
Now, the AI will have a problem with that setup.
But, What if the starting tech level for "P.R.E." and "C.C." was set to 1?
If it is a racial trait, then the Pirates might not get even the starting level! Then, everybody else starts out like normal, while the Pirates can't build resource facils!

I'm going to test that in about 3 hours when I get home.

[Nitram Draw]

Have you been able to make the "is a Pirate" work?

[mac5732]

In regards to not researching facilities, for my 2 cents, I think this would be mistake. They would need a means of resources
at least in beginning in order to build their
remote miners, ships etc. in order to plunder and pillage. How about if they are limited to only reaching level 1 resource facilities. Everything else they have to plunder or steal. This way they would have capability of obtaining some resources to get started but never enough to exist without miners or plundering or capturing. If possible you could put this as an option that way you could try both and see which one works better or to your personal preferences. However, I don't know if the computer could handle this without changing the other players traits. just an idea mac

[Suicide Junkie]

Oh, YEAH! Works like a charm!

All I did was
-add a racial trait "Not A Pirate"
-add a tech area "Not A Pirate"
--> Starting level := 1
-linked racial trait to tech area
-Added requirement to mineral miner facil: Not A Pirate Tech Level 1

Started a game with 1 PIrates & 1 regular empire.

And the pirates started with no mineral miner facils on homeworld, no miner option on planetary build.
*end turn*
The normals: had miner facils & could build more!!!

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Nitram: Just did!

Mac:

quote:

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They would need a means of resources at least in beginning in order to build their remote miners, ships etc

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All the pirates need is to build an ES with a robo-miner.
OR.
All they need to do is build an ES with a pirate con-yard on it, which builds an efficient robominer base.

That is easy to do with your basic starting 50 K minerals, and you do get 200 resources per turn no matter what.

Once the first robo miner is operational, the pirates will build a ship to go and capture some stuff!
With no resource facilities on their homeworld, the pirates will have an initial research bonus over the other races, (even at 50% research racial trait). This will help them research ship capture early.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 20 March 2001).]

[Nitram Draw]

So you basically made that tech a trait tech? Thats cool. Do you have to choose not a pirate for all the AI races in the game also?