Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Captain Kwok]

There are no bugs with mines, just simply that it's taking the AI some time to get to Construction II and then Mines after that. I really need to go through the AI research pathway and knock out tech areas it doesn't use.

[Raapys]

At my current game the turn # is 103

Sergetti Empire, Crystalline race: Has needlessly done 6 levels of Missile and Projectile weapons and 5 levels of normal Armor research even though racial technology is well developed and exclusive on their ships. Has a few warp points protected by groups of satellites no bigger than 5. Main fleet consists of Destroyers, light cruiser researched.

Phong Confederation, Crystalline race: As Sergetti Empire, but no fighters or satellites at warp points. Main fleet consists of Frigates, light cruiser researched.

Cue Cappa, Psychic race: Researched Energy stream, Projectile, and Missile weapons, in addition to the Psychic weapons. Uses APB and Psychic weapons. No satellites or fighters protecting warp points. Using destroyers, no light cruisers researched.

Uktra-Tal, Organic race: Level 9 missile and projectile weapons, Level 6 normal Armor. Using only organic weapons and armor on ships, so the regular weapons and armor research is wasted. Destroyer fleet, light cruiser researched. No satellites/fighters at warp points. Destroyer/frigate fleet, no more than level 2 light cruiser researched even though he has 150k research points( 3 times what the others have).

Xi-Chung, Organic race: Basically the same as the other organics, but this one wasting research points on Energy pulse weapons and High energy discharge weapons in addition to missile and projectile weapons. No warp point defenders. Fleet of frigates/destroyers, light cruiser researched.

Norak, Religious: Slight warp point defense. Frigate fleet, light cruiser researched.

All races are also using shields. While not a bad thing by itself, they're not researching it enough for it to be worth the big amount of space it requires.

No AI is using mines, that I can see.

One might consider having to change the 'Don't get hurt' strategy. The problem with it right now is that if a fleet with non-combat ships are dragged into a long combat, the non-combat ships will pass the retreat border( since they try to put as much distance as possible from them to the enemy), splitting that fleet into two hexes.

Not sure if it's possible to do anything with this, but the AI also ends up with hundreds of outdated units.

The 'Defense Ship' type appears to only carry a missile weapon.

All AIs using Point-Defense Cannon level 1.

That's all I could bring forth in my sleepiness, for now.

[Captain Kwok]

Thanks Raapys for the detailed description.

The AI is setup to research 1 tech in each area (cultural, theoretical, applied, weapon), so it goes for normal weapons until it opens up the racial weapon area. In other cases, the racial AIs research some of the normal techs for unit weapons like Rocket Pods. Some times its just on purpose, for example the Cue Cappa are intended to use the APB in addition to its Psychic weapons - its a part of the attempt to differentiate the races.

Early defense ships tend to use missiles until the race opens up other weapon areas. Since defense frigates are small, they are only able to add a single missile, but will a pair of weapons if possible.

I have plans to design a ship scraping minister to get rid of ships/units that are over X age. Not sure on the time frame though.

[Captain Kwok]

*sigh*

The lag in Point Defense was due to a typo. Rather than calling for "Point - Defense Weapons" - I had cut and paste "Point-Defense Weapons".

[Q]

Regarding mines: I have seen AI empires use them in order to protect their colonies (Abbidon as an example).

[DrewBlack]

hI Kwok
Does this mean we have to change a file in the balance mod or do we just wait for your next up date in PD's

Drew

[Raapys]

How about moving more of the total research points spent from weapons into applied? Would both help alot with getting the AI to increase ship sizes faster, and prevent him from wasting too much research points in regular weapons that he wont be using. There's obviously something going a bit wrong when the AI end up with Level 6 or 9( that's alot of research points) in regular missiles and weapons, when he's only using racial based ones.

Perhaps remove regular armor and weapons completely from the GlobalResearch file and instead add the desired weapons and armor to each empire's setup file, to ensure they research and use what they should be.

I think tight focus on a specific strategy will be the key to having the AI perform better, instead of having a general 'spread out' strategy for all AIs where they all basically just build the same mix of ships and units and use the same play styles.

I mean, we'd all love if we could get the AI to use all the neat weapons, make perfect fleet combinations with fighters, drones, attack ships, etc., but I really think it has to be easy and relatively straight-forward if we're gonna get anywhere near acceptable performance.

I also think, based on the non-existing ability the AI has to defend itself, that attacking has to be the AIs way of defending. Let's face it; the tiny amount of fighters that the AI keeps to protect his colonies aren't gonna stop any fleet determined to attack it; they need a real fleet for that. And where is that real fleet? It's usually in a system on the other side of the galaxy, flying around doing nothing and leaving their colonies free for the taking, unfortunately.

By the way, could you bring in the latest AI files(0.98) to the page?

[Captain Kwok]

Armor and Weapons are not listed in the shared research pool - they are only called by the individual empire scripts. Anyway I dropped the levels of some normal techs used at the beginning by racial AIs to help direct points to racial weapons. In some cases I had called for level 3, but in other cases it was level 6.

Not sure what is going on with the Xi'Chung - they have no references to Energy Pulse weapons. I wonder if it is a by-product of the fact that I stuck 0% for cultural tech for them?

The AI does build some good defense bases - but probably not in sufficient numbers and not always in the right places. I've started to reduce fleet sizes for the AI, so they have more fleets with fewer ships per fleet. It should give them the ability to cover more area. Fleets do not wander aimlessly though, they are set to patrol the frontier warp points most of the time.

---

I'll probably release a v0.99 update today without the revised diplomacy but with a few fixes and updated AI files.

[Raapys]

Armor and Weapons are not listed in the shared research pool - they are only called by the individual empire scripts.

In the 0.95 scripts there's definitely references to call 'Armor' in the Script_AI_GlobalResearch.txt file. There's also calls for the racial weapons, although no calls for any other weapons.

You're right, I can't find any references to Energy Pulse weapons in GlobalResearch or the Xichung main script, nor can I find the High-energy discharge weapons which he has also been researching. Perhaps the AI does random research if he runs out of 'calls' in an area before a new age is reached? I'm not entirely sure how the research system works yet though, so I could be way off.

More fleets would be a good move I think; the AI loose a bit by spreading the ships out, but they loose everything by not being there when their colonies are being destroyed.

Shields should probably become a bigger priority; they're just tonnage wasters the first few levels.

Not sure if you've already fixed this for 0.98/99, but in the 0.95 scripts available at your site, the GlobalResearch file is missing the 3. age indicator( 3: ). Instead it goes straight from 2 to 4. Unsure what the exact result of this is, if any.

[Captain Kwok]

Script_AI_GlobalResearch.txt is used only for startup tech selection and so in most cases *in theory*, the AI setup files more or less use up most of the available research points and that file doesn't end up being referenced except for figuring out the prerequisites.

Yeah, I caught that age 3: thing a couple of weeks ago.