The AI.

[JJaffray]

I love this game and I love the work you've done on the project. I would be happy to make a donation if I have not already done so. 

Since there doesn't seem to be a working multiplayer yet? the quality of the AI is of the utmost importance. I have a large amount of suggestions when it comes to the AI to improve it. I would really like to see the AI become much better and I would like to help out with this in any way I can.

Before I go suggesting detailed changes, I would just like to draw attention to some key issues with the current AI.

1. I was just watching an AI game and my planet Earth got to near 70,000 population and what happened is the planet became full of buildings and when the planet started to require more food/police etc the AI was just freaking out constructing 2 different nuclear power plants over and over, upgrading them, demolishing them, constructing them, upgrading them... demolishing them. There were many inefficient buildings like prefab housing and hydroponic food farms that could have been destroyed to create space.

2. I have never seen an AI attack in fleet vs fleet combat.

3. In the early stages of the game they will create an equipment factory before they could ever possibly use it. Some kind of rule such as "never build equipment factory until destroyer/cruiser >= 10" could be useful here.

4. Their aggression does not increase the more resources they have. I feel a rich AI should be looking to attack somewhere/rebuild using all this extra money instead of just hoarding it.

5. Sort of going back to #1. The AI will construct many, many nuclear power plants without upgrading them sometimes. It will also create nuclear when it could be creating solar or fusion.

Anyway, I will leave it there for now and see what you think. I hope this is useful.

[Dávid Karnok]

Hi and thank you for your interest.

Part of the deal with the copyright owner was to not take or accept money/donation for the project.

Multiplayer is planned but requires so much restructuring in the code that I did not have enough spare and continuous time to make it happen.

The AI has deficiencies due to its rule-based nature which is currently quite convoluted. There exists better AI methodologies but I was unable to adapt them yet. As for the individual issues:

1) This is quite odd. Do you have a save with this issue?

2) Most of the time, they can't see your fleets unless you park them next to the AI's planet.

3) Building factories is a high priority task because if delayed too much in a money-limited situation, they won't be able to build any fleet equipment until enough tax is collected.

4) Hard AI tries to attack every 2 days, but it attacks only when at least one fleet is fully equipped. Since equipping fleet is done in a round-robin style, having multiple fleets slows things down.

5) Money is generally an issue for the AI, therefore, it will build the cheapest available power plant sometimes. Generally, it mixes power plant types, but eventually, it should start replacing power plants and upgrading them especially when there is no more room.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
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További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

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Best regards,

David Karnok

[JJaffray]

1) This is quite odd. Do you have a save with this issue?

Yes I can email it to you but I don't know how to find it.

2) Most of the time, they can't see your fleets unless you park them next to the AI's planet.

I will try to experiment with this more but I have shadowed enemy fleets with vastly superior firepower and radar and they just don't attack me.

3) Building factories is a high priority task because if delayed too much in a money-limited situation, they won't be able to build any fleet equipment until enough tax is collected.

Is there a way to easily modify building priority? This could be the key to improving the AI. I just played a hard game against every race all allied against me, all hard AI, opening condition war, I had every negative trait and I gave them all the best positive traits and I conquered the entire galaxy in less than 1 game year. 

4) Hard AI tries to attack every 2 days, but it attacks only when at least one fleet is fully equipped. Since equipping fleet is done in a round-robin style, having multiple fleets slows things down.

Would there be a way to make the AI attack any time their fleet is fully equipped, and also to make sure they don't create a second fleet unless they already have a fully equipped fleet?

5) Money is generally an issue for the AI, therefore, it will build the cheapest available power plant sometimes. Generally, it mixes power plant types, but eventually, it should start replacing power plants and upgrading them especially when there is no more room.

Space and efficiency of workers is the most important thing. If the AI would create economic buildings as a priority after civil buildings and before factory buildings they will have plenty of money coming in each day. In my experience there is never a situation where building anything but the best is worthwhile. If you need to wait an extra day, that's fine. If I can get that save to you then you'll see that the AI is not replacing buildings properly, and if it always made the best building it wouldn't have to worry about doing this anyway.

I would also like to ask how exactly does the auto battle feature work?

[Dávid Karnok]

I'll see what I can do the next time I make refinements to the AI.

Basically, It uses the firepower of each fleet and divides it with the other fleet's hitpoints. This gives how much time would it take to destroy each other. The smaller time wins and destroys the other fleet, then that fleet's damage during this time is applied to the winner fleet. Unfortunately, this seems to be problematic because once planet defenses are up, AI's can't seem to be able to conquer any planets. My plan is to introduce a 5 on 5 micro-simulation, similar to how ground battle is simulated. This may give better results.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JJaffray]

Thanks for your responses. I look forward to any changes you can make to the AI. 

If you want that save or anything else just let me know.

[Dávid Karnok]

Could you send me a save where the AI constantly rebuilds a power plant?

2014. szeptember 15. 0:43 JJaffray írta, <jonathan...@gmail.com>:

Thanks for your responses. I look forward to any changes you can make to the AI. 

If you want that save or anything else just let me know.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JJaffray]

Sorry for such a late reply...

Please instruct me how to find the save. I have kept it just in case you asked but I don't know how to locate it on my computer.

I'm very pleased to see an update with the AI! :) I am going to play a game right now and test it out. Thank you.

[JJaffray]

I also wanted to mention something I think is quite important that I forgot to mention previously.

If you set technology level to 0 as a starting condition then the AI does not have access to Phood TM factory and non-human AI are never able to construct Hydroponic Farms, perhaps unless they conquer a human planet, I'm not sure on this.

Regardless, if you use the default settings the AI is completely hindered and perhaps yourself and other users will not have realised this yet.

If you are using the default settings of 3 planets per player in the game it is absolutely essential that you use technology level 2+ as a starting condition to avoid this. I recommend anyone playing the game to use technology level 2 as a minimum unless you are deliberately intending to handicap the AI.

I am certain this was not intentional, it may be advisable to create a restriction in the initial game settings or to grant non-human AI players Hydroponic Farms always to reduce this unnecessary handicap as the AI is already demonstrably lacking in difficulty.

That said.... I have not played the new update yet so I will give it a try now.

[JJaffray]

Sorry for the 3rd post in such short time but I also wanted to suggest removal of the positive traits cap. I would like to give every AI every positive trait to increase the difficulty as much as possible but am not permitted to do so by this cap.

[JJaffray]

My planets are auto-constructing military spaceports even when auto-build is off. This is crippling my early game but I will see if I can survive :P

[Dávid Karnok]

Hi and thanks for the update.

The game saves are located in the directory where you installed the game in save/default.

In the campaign, aliens got the PhoodFactory because they have them built on their planets. In a recent update, I changed some skirmish initialization parameters and it seems I forgot about this effect. The best thing you can do is to enable "Allow all building types to be built by anyone" on the Other settings page. I'm considering setting this on by default to avoid complications.

I'm quite interested of the spaceport problem with auto-build off, which shouldn't happen of course.

2014. október 22. 2:44 JJaffray írta, <jonathan...@gmail.com>:

My planets are auto-constructing military spaceports even when auto-build is off. This is crippling my early game but I will see if I can survive :P

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JJaffray]

imperiu...@yopmail.com

I have emailed this address with the saves, there is no password on the inbox so you can go and access it whenever you like.

I am pleased to say that I was overwhelmed very quickly last night multiple times trying the usual settings I use, those changes to AI you've made have really worked. I am now trying without trait modifications.

[JJaffray]

I will need to try experimenting with the traits to create a difficult but achievable game. 

So far I have created scenarios where I beat the AI easily or I am easily defeated which is still a definite improvement from this update.

I hope those save files prove useful.

[JJaffray]

Also, technology level 3 is required for Phood TM factory on non-human AI players, not level 2. I am allowing construction of all building types anyway but just for the record as I reported that incorrectly before.

[JJaffray]

Okay so I modified my opening build to be more efficient. 

I played a game on hard difficulty with one of each race all allied against me, I gave them all master scientist, banker and fertility and I took every negative trait. I conquered the galaxy in 3-4 months. I was never attacked.

The problem with the AI is twofold. 

First of all, they construct factories and units before their economy is fully developed, in fact from what I can see they never fully develop their economy. Planets should have double upgraded traders spaceport, bank and multiple morale buildings allowing *like* or *supportive* while on slavery taxrate before a single unit is constructed.

Secondly, this attack once per day is a needless limitation which the human player does not suffer. The AI should not have this kind of artificial restriction. 

I created a fair game and did my opening build and had an absolutely dominant position, I allowed full AI control of my empire and it fell within a week, simply because the enemy would attack, steal my planets, and my fully equipped fleet would just be exploring the galaxy because it was only permitted to retake 1 planet per day and the planets were being taken faster than that.

I should imagine instructing the AI to be on slavery tax rate always, and always create economic buildings to full upgrades before doing *anything* else should not be difficult. I should also imagine changing 1 attack per day to 50 attacks per day if it has the necessary resources should not be difficult either. The resulting change in the competency of the AI would be astronomical.

Let me know if you require any further testing/saves but I hope this demonstrates clearly the issues with the AI and also clearly poses the necessary solutions. Any other way I can help, please let me know.

[Dávid Karnok]

Thanks for the testing. I had no time yet to look at the saves.

I've noticed some other problems, namely overbuilding on planets and having lots of idisabled buildings due lack of workers.

So to summarize the heuristics:

- build morale buildings

- increase tax

- build economy buildings

- max out economy buildings

- build factories

- strengthen main fleet

- attack-reequip loop without waiting.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JJaffray]

Yes. To be precise on the economy:

The default and only tax setting the AI will ever use on any planet is slavery.

Any resources are to be devoted to constructing morale buildings on the planet with the largest population, if such a target is necessary, that does not have sufficient morale buildings to maintain a *like* status while under slavery tax rate. Once no planet meets this criteria, any resources are to be devoted to constructing a traders spaceport and a bank and upgrading them both fully. 

Then

- build factories

- strengthen main fleet

- attack-reequip loop without waiting

I don't know how the AI prioritizes research and colonization compared to construction of fleets, tanks, weaponry and equipment but I don't see any reason to change what it is already doing. The two key problems are definitely poor economy and limited invasion capabilities.

[JJaffray]

One more thing springs to mind though it's not really to do with the AI.

I just use auto battle pretty much all the time now but something you may be interested in is that if you stack a bunch of ships together and fly off the top of the map while keeping them selected a large number of them will simply vanish forever as if into a black hole. You can fly off the bottom of the map a little bit, the same amount as the top, but the ships are preserved and you can fly back into the screen without losing them all.

[JJaffray]

Hmmm.... the AI cannot research UV pulse lasers. The only requirement is UV lasers and even when they have these researched there is still the red X and it cannot be researched. As a consequence, the AI can never research Space Base 3 either.

[JJaffray]

I'm running some pure AI games at the moment and changing variables. Dargslan have been dominant so far. Free Traders are winning somehow this game and they have many, many planets but are not building a research facility on each. I thought the AI was usually quite good at this but obviously not, so I would definitely add priority to research labs too.

[Dávid Karnok]

Thanks. It seems a good heuristic is to pick a fleet or planet and max it out, then pick a second etc.

If you move the ships to the edge, the flee routine might overtake and the ships get removed from battle. Do you loose the ships from the fleet after the battle as well?

I'll check the UV laser.

JJaffray <jonathan...@gmail.com> ezt írta (2014. október 26., vasárnap):

I'm running some pure AI games at the moment and changing variables. Dargslan have been dominant so far. Free Traders are winning somehow this game and they have many, many planets but are not building a research facility on each. I thought the AI was usually quite good at this but obviously not, so I would definitely add priority to research labs too.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JJaffray]

I am not sure how to edit a post so I am just copy/pasting and deleting.

The ships just stack perfectly, this was something I thought I'd observed on the campaign but I was unable to reproduce it now. I think I was mistaken about this. Sorry!

Yeah, so non-human AI can never research UV pulse lasers and consequently space base 3. That's definitely not my imagination.

If you mean like this:

first planet morale buildings -> second planet morale buildings -> third planet morale buildings -> first planet tax buildings -> second planet tax buildings -> third planet tax buildings -> first planet research lab -> second planet research lab -> third planet research lab -> first planet factories -> second planet factories -> third planet factories

then yes this will be very good.

If you mean like this:

first planet morale buildings -> first planet tax buildings -> first planet research lab -> first planet factories -> second planet morale buildings -> second planet tax buildings -> second planet research lab -> second planet factories > third planet morale buildings -> third planet tax buildings -> third planet research lab -> third planet factories 

then this is not so good.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, the first method is simply more efficient. Secondly, the AI only seems to construct 1 building on a planet at a time so it would seem necessary to make sure that it develops multiple planets at once.

With the fleet, yeah for sure. No need to create a second fleet until the first is fully equipped and on it's way to attack something and you have resources spare that cannot be spent on anything else.

[JJaffray]

The reason I asked about automatic battle previously is because I had a gut feeling there was something very wrong with this function and now I have a save game to prove it, which I can email you if you wish however I will briefly describe the issue here:

The Sullep have conquered the entire galaxy except for one stubborn Ychom planet which will soon surely fall. The last Ychom fleet guards the planet. On automatic battle, a fully equipped Sullep fleet attacks the planet/fleet and is completely destroyed and the Ychom suffer minor fighter casualties and none of their flagships or destroyers are lost. 

If I take off automatic battle (I am ctrl+p playing as the Ychom/Sullep so I watch the combat, although I do not interfere) the Sullep fleet completely destroys the Ychom fleet and all planetary defenses.

[Dávid Karnok]

I've noticed this autobattle anomaly too. If two plain fleets battle, the outcome is similar to a regular battle. If planet defenses are involved, the attacker loses in autobattle but wins in regular battle.

If you have interesting saves, don't hesitate to send them to me because they give valuable debug material.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JJaffray]

On the recent update:

The military spaceport fix has resulted in one planet creating a military spaceport almost immediately. One planet will create an Arcology, then a Military Spaceport, which takes a long time to build, and only after this will it create a power plant. This is a huge drain on resources and population for no benefit.

The AI is still setting tax rates to very low etc at the start which is absolutely crippling. I cannot stress enough the importance of using slavery taxrate always from t=1 and fully developing the economy before doing *anything* else.

To demonstrate:

I created a game on Hard difficulty. Hard-AI will control Morgath player.

August 13, 3427 is start date.

October 7, 3427 total income reaches more than 500,000. (514,892)

Tax income : 300,769

Trade income : 214, 213

Spare money: 21,191

The AI has constructed no vehicles, no research facilities or attempted any research.

The AI has constructed 7 fighters, 3 light shields, 18 lasers.

The AI has one of each factory type.

The AI still does not have double upgraded traders spaceports + banks on every planet, though it will soon.

This is still *very* early game.  No AI is even close to considering combat or expansion. All other AI in the game are of course at almost exactly the same stage, some a few days ahead/behind because of starting planet growth rates and a strange behaviour I have not yet mentioned where the AI will sometimes not colonize quickly and will just fly around for ages before taking a planet.

I loaded the same game, but now I will control the Morgath player from the start. I will try to replicate the AI as closely as possible; I will construct only 1 building at a time, I will create Arcology and Fusion Plant wherever possible instead of Prefab Housing and Nuclear (which is more optimal early game).

I'm basically going to play precisely in line with the suggestions I have made while not performing more impressively than the current AI can do. I construct morale buildings like this : 1 church, 1 bar, 1 recreational centre, 2nd church, 2nd bar etc. I think this is pretty close to what the AI would do? Once all these morale buildings are complete I build the traders spaceport and banks + upgrades using auto-build: economic buildings, again to replicate the AI as closely as possible.

To make this a good comparison, I will construct the same Military Spaceport before power plant which is surely a bug.

August 13 3427 is start date.

October 7 3427 (same time frame as above example) total income reaches almost 2,000,000 (1,972,765)

Tax income : 1,593,481

Trade income : 379,284

Spare money: 754,708 

I have constructed no vehicles, no research facilities or attempted any research. 

I have constructed 15 fighters, 38 light shields, 246 lasers. 

I have one of each factory type.

I have had double upgraded traders spaceports and banks on every planet for a long time.

Again I would still suggest the AI should only ever use slavery tax rate, create morale buildings before economic buildings, create all economic buildings and fully upgrade them before even considering the construction of a military spaceport or any kind of factory buildings or research buildings.

There is simply no need for these buildings early game. I have chosen this arbitrary point where the AI achieves more than 500,000 income total because it is still incredibly early game. There will not be combat or expansion for weeks to come. I wanted to demonstrate that the changes I am proposing do not make the AI vulnerable early game in any way and the positive effect of these changes is absolutely huge. 

With the amount of extra resources accumulated by following these simple guidelines the AI could have begun to colonize multiple planets, research multiple technologies and begin constructing an impressive force in the time it achieves:

No vehicles, no research facilities, no research, 7 fighters, 3 light shields, 18 lasers....

That is even with the most recent improvements! (which are 100% a step in the right direction by the way) 

The changes you have made look great and I look forward to testing them in AI vs AI games to see how it changes the way the game plays out.

Playing human vs AI however is in my opinion still completely redundant until these economic issues are resolved.

[JJaffray]

Another strange behaviour is that the AI is fully upgrading police stations very early. This is very expensive and inefficient. I think it may be as a result of trying to raise morale? It is November and every non-human AI has a fully upgraded Police Station on every planet! haha :) The human AI are not doing this however...

[Dávid Karnok]

The AI builds 1 of each morale building and upgrades the police station because that is the only morale source in the campaign. I've been thinking about putting an end to spamming morale buildings like you do either by limiting them to 1 per planet, adding diminishing returns so subsequent buildings give less and less or increasing the morale degradation for high level tax.

2014. október 28. 5:07 JJaffray írta, <jonathan...@gmail.com>:

Another strange behaviour is that the AI is fully upgrading police stations very early. This is very expensive and inefficient. I think it may be as a result of trying to raise morale? It is November and every non-human AI has a fully upgraded Police Station on every planet! haha :) The human AI are not doing this however...

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JJaffray]

Yes, the tax system is obviously broken, because there is no point in doing anything apart from slavery. I wasn't sure how much further time you intended to put into this so I suggested the solution to treating the symptom, not the cause.

[JJaffray]

The Pirates conquered a couple of AI planets which is pretty cool, although I've never seen it happen before. (campaign) They made about 40 Arcologies on each planet. They also produced way too many Phood TM factories. Most buildings were offline, including meson projectors which I was nowhere near researching so I got those for free, I took the planet with no combat, though I don't use planetary defenses anyway. I got the pirates conquering a planet achievement for this, even though they didn't conquer my planet. They did this when I was on the second or third promotion and I was nowhere near discovering these planets.

[JJaffray]

Also, not AI related but the incredibly useful function of pressing the +++ button to equip all necessary stuff onto your fleet which also equips tanks becomes unavailable once all fighters/ships are fully loaded. So I have a full fleet, plenty tanks to recruit but I have to recruit them manually unless I sell 1 fighter then I can use the +++ function again to fill my ships up with tanks and equip that single fighter.

[JJaffray]

The recent update is fantastic! I think it will be impossible to defeat more than a few hard AI in skirmish now. I will test soon.

Some other stuff I think is worth mentioning...

1. The ship, fighter and flagship research structures and options between the different races vary in number and quality, creating a range of imbalances between them. Not just between humans and non-humans, though this is the most obvious difference. There are differences between each of the alien races too because of how strong their race specific ships are.

I think the way it is now means either all human races are better than all alien races, or vice versa, and then different aliens have a slight advantage/disadvantage over each other. I don't know what your intentions are with the races whether to balance them through similarity or to deliberately add diversity so I won't make any suggestions on this one but I feel it's kind of a big deal either way.

2. Each race grows differently on each type of planet. As it stands at the moment with races using all buildings if you are Morgath or Sullep on a desert planet you can create and upgrade a water vaporator and end up with some pretty insane population growth. Again, I'll just point this out.

3. There are still simple ways to improve the AI outside of complex stuff. Just the order that it researches, accumulating money when it could be colonising empty planets faster, etc ... so the AI doesn't spend it's money *that* well, but at least now it has plenty of money and even though it is being spent a little bit inefficiently it's not really a big deal. 

Also, the AI spends money fine early/late game but there is now a period in the early-mid game where the AI accumulates a little bit too much money when it could be expanding/developing colonies a little faster. Not a huge issue though, the AI is 100x more competent than it once was. I look forward to getting beaten for a change :) Thanks again!

[Dávid Karnok]

That is quite odd. It means the planets lost a lot of morale. Could you send me a save?

2014.11.05. 1:58 ezt írta ("JJaffray" <jonathan...@gmail.com>):

The Pirates conquered a couple of AI planets which is pretty cool, although I've never seen it happen before. (campaign) They made about 40 Arcologies on each planet. They also produced way too many Phood TM factories. Most buildings were offline, including meson projectors which I was nowhere near researching so I got those for free, I took the planet with no combat, though I don't use planetary defenses anyway. I got the pirates conquering a planet achievement for this, even though they didn't conquer my planet. They did this when I was on the second or third promotion and I was nowhere near discovering these planets.

[JJaffray]

Sorry I didn't keep a save and I just played through the campaign again on hard with all negative traits this time, hoping to replicate the mass arcology pirate planets while beating the hardest possible campaign which I wasn't sure I had done yet.

Well, unfortunately, the pirates never took any planets this game, or if they did they were retaken before I found out about it, which is doubtful. Maybe the increase in money you gave to AI solved their morale problem and this didn't happen.

I am wondering though, if there has been some adverse effects. In the game I just played I was never attacked once except for by the Garthog, and once I had colonised empty planets, researched everything I wanted and constructed my uber fleet ready to take on the Dargslan..... they were almost dead. No race except the Garthogs became extinct, and although I took a few Dargslan planets to speed up the process I'm pretty sure I could have just let the other races win the game for me.

Because the game was so hard at the start I meant I achieved Admiral promotion later than usual, I'm not sure what effect this will have on Dargslan vs AI interactions, but I remember in the past that if you play too slowly the Dargslan have almost conquered the entire galaxy by the time you reach Admiral so I don't think it's a big deal.

That's why I suspect it has something to do with giving the AI extra money, or maybe be the other AI improvements? I don't know. Anyway the Dargslan need to be stronger or the other races need to be weaker or something because this definitely isn't how it should play out. With all this campaigning I still haven't tested skirmish yet but I will soon.

Here's the save for reference.

[Dávid Karnok]

Thanks, I'll look into it.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Dávid Karnok]

I've checked your save and I see two problems:

- Some aliens have skirmish technology available to them offsetting the power relations.

- The background battles are heavily biased towards planet defense. 

- Some aliens have high tech: Space base 3 and meson ground defenses, which can withstand a full strength dargslan attack quite easily: such defenses have 4x the HP the dargslan have even though the firepower is 3x lower. There were some balancing way back when I guess the space defenses received their strength against a fully equipped human fleet with around 33k firepower. I think I need to add some extra parameters to the strenghts to distinguish between campaign and skirmish.

[JJaffray]

That sounds like a good idea.

I haven't mentioned this in a while but I'm sure you've noticed now that fleets never deliberately engage? The *only* fleet combat that *ever* takes place is when a fleet attacks a planet and there is another fleet guarding the planet. It's 100% accidental every time. 

Another reason the Dargslan were so terrifying is that you can't beat their fleets until the late game. Nobody can. They just fly around destroying fleets and and conquering planets and get completely out of control and it's you racing vs them to reach a point where the other cannot hold the other back.

Even if you have further changes in mind, it would be nice to see the effects of the Dargslan engaging enemy  fleets in the campaign on the current settings. This would also make skirmish more interesting because at the moment it's simply a lacking aspect of the game which was most definitely a serious factor in the original.

By destroying enemy fleets other races are unable to retake planets or invade the Dargslan which in my opinion contributed greatly to their superiority. 

This could however easily be achieved through other means, and I was never super keen on fleet vs fleet combat, it's something you want to avoid at all costs really unless you can crush the enemy. In the campaign you would just reload and not fly near the Dargslan fleet because losing an entire fleet was instantly game over. So.... it may not be necessary to fix fleet vs fleet combat. Just putting this out there.

[JJaffray]

Another thing is that when playing the campaign and you attack a Garthog planet with a fleet on top, their fleet will just sit there guarding the space bases and planetary defenses instead of advancing towards you. I guess this is fine but the problem is you can move your cruisers into ion cannon range and destroy all their ships and they will just sit there doing nothing unless you move into laser range. I suspect this would apply to all races/skirmish as well. I will force myself not to abuse this in the mean time.

[Dávid Karnok]

That is odd. They should attack your ships. Do you have a save?

2014.11.08. 6:26 ezt írta ("JJaffray" <jonathan...@gmail.com>):

Another thing is that when playing the campaign and you attack a Garthog planet with a fleet on top, their fleet will just sit there guarding the space bases and planetary defenses instead of advancing towards you. I guess this is fine but the problem is you can move your cruisers into ion cannon range and destroy all their ships and they will just sit there doing nothing unless you move into laser range. I suspect this would apply to all races/skirmish as well. I will force myself not to abuse this in the mean time.

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[JJaffray]

If there are fighters defending the planet equipped like tanks are equipped on a planet then they will aggressively attack the fleet. However, if it's an actual fleet guarding the planet, all the ships lay dormant until they are within firing range.

For the flagships, this is okay. They have ion cannons. You come close, they shoot ion cannons and begin attacking aggressively and move into their laser range.

For the destroyers and fighters it's a problem. If you stay out of laser range they will just sit there and allow themselves to be destroyed by your ion cannons. Just move into ion range and press guard.

The save is ready to go.

[Dávid Karnok]

Thanks. They stand still because there is an exception rule for hard battles where they don't move so the player has to come closer to them and the planetary defenses; which doesn't really work.

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