MERC. VS HARD? I know this has been asked.

posted on September 23rd, 2013, 9:13 pm

First let me apologize for making this thread but i can't find this info anywhere and i know its probably right in front of me somewhere.

What is the difference between the AI on HARD and MERC?

I can win an 8 player AI game with any faction now and i was wondering what does the Merc. setting change?
AI cost, build rate, strat?

I just don't want to fight hours of meaningless spam.

Thanks

posted on September 23rd, 2013, 9:21 pm

I just don't want to fight hours of meaningless spam.

then don't play on merc.

the ai doesn't become smarter, it just gets even cheaper ships when you up the difficulty.

all merc will give you is a spam. thankfully they won't try to coordinate any attacks, if you're lucky they'll form a single file queue at your base for you to get rankups from kills.

posted on September 23rd, 2013, 9:28 pm

balls.

posted on September 24th, 2013, 12:55 am

...
I just don't want to fight hours of meaningless spam.
...

Join the human PvP crowd, the AI will always spam, in pretty much every game. Though sometimes PvP ends up the same

posted on September 24th, 2013, 2:01 am

There is a difference in AI. Merc AI build many more defensive structures and bases compared to just Hard AI. They also seem more aggressive in rebuilding their lost structures at least the Dominion and Romulans are. Klingons seem to suck no matter what level you play them on as on many maps they build the basic structures but take forever to expand compared to the other races. On some maps though the Klingons do alright so it might be a map issue.

I much prefer the Merc AI with the exception that I CANNOT play a game of fed/klingon vs rom/dom because the rom/dom just spam ungodly amounts of ships. The klingons get the earliest start but the Romulans catch up very quickly and soon overwhelm the Klingons and once the Dominion gets rolling they will send wave after wave of ships. The Feds take forever to get to the point of several Euradi shipyards and they don't build nearly as fast as the Dominion or Romulans do.

I can play a 2 v 2 game of fed/kling vs rom/dominion but a 3v3 is a crapshoot and 4v4 is nigh impossible unless you pick a map with chock points which I don't like. Space is.........space............it doesn't have choke points.