Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[GuyOfDoom]

I am a little concerned to discover after playing a bit more balance mod that Depleted Uranium cannons have a distinct range advantage over other more "advanced" weaponry. This seems to detract from wanting to research other weapons.

[Baron Munchausen]

That's a very interesting thought. So the AI needs to be able to remember that its last attempt to go through a warp point ended with a bang? That's what the new scripting functions are supposed to enable. Whatever functions there are to check combat results need to be used and something needs to be done to make a note/record that tells the AI to send more ships next time. But simply accompanying colonizers with an warship escort would be a major improvement.

[Captain Kwok]

The AI does remember these locations sort of. They mark all their defensive locations, which include warp points that lead to enemy systems, each turn. There is a function in the orders script that does mark these as no go sectors, but I think it only nullifies orders if the ship's destination is the same. This wouldn't help ships that were ordered to colonize a planet in the enemy's system, nor an explorer ship sent to one of the unknown warp points etc. I perhaps could modify this check to the system itself, rather than just the sector.

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The DUC is a good early to mid-game weapon and even though it has decent range to some of the later non-seeker weapons, it's damage ratios are much less. It's possible to keep the DUC as your primary weapon, while rush researching a specialized weapon in the hopes you'll get that weapon before your enemy might get a counter in place.

[Raapys]

But how, exactly, does the AI know if a system is an enemy system, if it can't remember any colonies when they're out of sensor range? In SEV, isn't it who has colonies in the system that decides the 'system owner'?

And let's say that the above mentioned function does work, then isn't that actually a bad thing too? If a sector/system is marked as a 'no-go', then that'd mean that the AI isn't going to send any attack fleets through it either, or am I off track?

[Baron Munchausen]

Captain Kwok said:
The AI does remember these locations sort of. They mark all their defensive locations, which include warp points that lead to enemy systems, each turn. There is a function in the orders script that does mark these as no go sectors, but I think it only nullifies orders if the ship's destination is the same. This wouldn't help ships that were ordered to colonize a planet in the enemy's system, nor an explorer ship sent to one of the unknown warp points etc. I perhaps could modify this check to the system itself, rather than just the sector.

Well, that would make the AI start thinking more like a human. Isn't it possible for enemy ships to MOVE when they see your fat, helpless colonizer all alone? Sure, change the AI to consider whether the system is enemy occupied rather than the sector. That should result in a major improvement in AI strategy. Giving colonizers an armed escort whenever they are sent to a system with known enemy would be a huge improvement.

Captain Kwok said:

The DUC is a good early to mid-game weapon and even though it has decent range to some of the later non-seeker weapons, it's damage ratios are much less. It's possible to keep the DUC as your primary weapon, while rush researching a specialized weapon in the hopes you'll get that weapon before your enemy might get a counter in place.

The DUC has some major disadvantages, though. The requirement for ordnance is one. No other 'beam' requires ordnance, as far as I recall. Only missiles and torpedoes. For the sake of realism, it really ought to have an accuracy disadvantage, too. Slugs of metal (uranium or otherwise) are not going to travel as fast as particle beams or pure energy and so will be increasingly prone to miss at long ranges. I gave it this disavantage in my own minimal modding attempts. Instead I see it's about as good as the meson blaster in the Balance Mod. Since I'm not very good with math formulae "0 - ([%Range%] + ([%Range%] / 10))" is the best I can do for an 'asymptotic' curve. Anyone got a better formula?

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys said:
But how, exactly, does the AI know if a system is an enemy system, if it can't remember any colonies when they're out of sensor range? In SEV, isn't it who has colonies in the system that decides the 'system owner'?

And let's say that the above mentioned function does work, then isn't that actually a bad thing too? If a sector/system is marked as a 'no-go', then that'd mean that the AI isn't going to send any attack fleets through it either, or am I off track?

I think it uses the system list to check if it's owned by an enemy player when it compiles this data. I'll trace the script execution tonight so I can see exactly it proceeds.

Fleet orders don't have the no-go condition in their order script. The problem here is that they're probably not getting a chance to see the attack locations in the enemy systems. I see a lot more aggression in the AI-only games when more of the empires are intermingled than with a human player, who usually carves up a chunk of solely owned space.

[Raapys]

Alright. Shouldn't all "Attack Ships" skip the 'no-go' condition, though? Not just fleets I mean, since there are times when the AI uses a bunch of single ships instead of grouping them in a fleet.

And it would be interesting to know how it managed systems owned by more than one empire.

Think it'd be too hard for us mere mortals to add a function that stored which planets are colonized, by which player it's colonized, and perhaps even the colony's defence, based on the last sensor contact?

[Captain Kwok]

Non-fleeted stacks of attack ships are actually the result of an error really. What happens is multiple attack ships are giving the same order because their within a certain distance of a target... they all arrive together in the same sector and then proceed to be issued the same orders afterwards (usually) - which has also resulted in a decrease in attack ships available for fleets. This behaviour in v1.04 will be reduced by checking if another ship has the same orders first before issuing them.

[Solymr]

Baron Munchausen said:
The DUC has some major disadvantages, though. The requirement for ordnance is one. No other 'beam' requires ordnance, as far as I recall. Only missiles and torpedoes. For the sake of realism, it really ought to have an accuracy disadvantage, too. Slugs of metal (uranium or otherwise) are not going to travel as fast as particle beams or pure energy and so will be increasingly prone to miss at long ranges. I gave it this disavantage in my own minimal modding attempts. Instead I see it's about as good as the meson blaster in the Balance Mod. Since I'm not very good with math formulae "0 - ([%Range%] + ([%Range%] / 10))" is the best I can do for an 'asymptotic' curve. Anyone got a better formula?

To be honest, the DUC has horrible accuracy as is in BM. It misses more than it hits for me, until I get combat sensors decent enough to offset it's accuracy, or lack of.

[GuyOfDoom]

To be honest, the DUC has horrible accuracy as is in BM. It misses more than it hits for me, until I get combat sensors decent enough to offset it's accuracy, or lack of.

I wouldn't count that as a fault as a good tech level in sensors is pretty much required.