New AI

posted on January 1st, 2009, 3:46 am

First let me say I'm loving Fleet Ops 3.0. Just downloaded the patch today and am enjoying the fixes and changes as well.

However, I have some concerns about the new AI.

I played two games today, both of which myself and my room-mate got utterly stomped by medium AIs. This is ok, I like it when the game is challenging.

However, in the second game, we had a 4 on 4 going, 2 of us and 2 friendly AIs vs 4 enemy AIs.

Near the end of the game, our friendly AIs appeared to "break'. They had not lost their starting starbases even, but they stopped building ships, and as such, we quickly got overwhelmed.

What happened? The two remaining enemy AIs were quite able to build massive fleets (at one point the dominion had at least 30+ V13s), but our two allies built nothing useful, and they had plenty of resources.

Our two allies were fed and klingon, the federation built nothing but 2-3 sabres and called in starfleet command support occasionally, but never expirmental support.

The klingons were a little more active, they built a few vorchas and small fleets of b'rel's... but this obviously helped very little against 30 V13s, 4 tavaras, and a host of other romulan and dominion support cruisers.

My main concern here, is the AI nerfed if it's allied with the player? Because the enemies we faced were quite deadly, but our allies were useless.

posted on January 1st, 2009, 7:01 am

Have you downloaded and installed the 3.0.1 patch yet? The AI is supposed to be tweaked. I just played a game against the Federation and noticed they were building more shipyards.

I do have strange thing to report. The AI built a Sovereign Class starship from the Antares Yard. I have only seen this happen once in the 20 min game I played so hopefully its just a fluk. However, it may still be worth investigating.

posted on January 1st, 2009, 10:23 pm

First let me say I'm loving Fleet Ops 3.0. Just downloaded the patch today and am enjoying the fixes and changes as well.

Yes, I've downloaded the patch.

By "new AI" I'm referring to the new AI in the patch.

posted on January 2nd, 2009, 10:40 am

Hmm. That's strange.
I must say I like the New AI, because it builds now much more defences . Nevertheless I also realized a problem: When the AI attacks it does not react on enemys, even when they blockade their way and fire everything on them. Yesterday I played against Dominion and the AI always sent their ships towards my Base, but on the way I could kill Battleships with a fleet of B'rels, because they did not defend themselves, did not fire back.

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 5:00 am

I have also witnessed the AI ignoring ships while trying to get to a base somewhere.

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 5:56 am

well i did a 4v4 with the en,y hardf ai today and a 2v3 with 2 hard ai today, and both times we got untterly slaughtered, it was unbelivable, before the patch i could take on two hard ai, and 3 hard ai with a easy allie ai, and now even with these two pther people, we got totally slaughtered

[Majed]

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 8:12 am

Last edited by Majed on January 3rd, 2009, 8:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have also witnessed the AI ignoring ships while trying to get to a base somewhere.

Yes, I've witnessed this, too. As an observer, I've set up several games several AIs vs AIs. The AI does not explore anymore. They build up massive bases and huge fleets. The fleets remain in the base. At a certain point, they ships will all start attacking enemy bases. Usually the federation kill the enemies bases nearly instantly. And, usually the game crashes after the attacks...

I did like the AI settings from before the patch. A little exploring, some random fights before the real party started. But now the AI build so many ships, that there is nearly no chance to survive any attack.

But, I do like that now the borg start to build cubes and speheres earlier. Just the collective uplink which is build by the AI needs more hitpoints. Any destroyer can kill it within a few seconds.

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 8:20 am

After more testing, (and watching the AI build) I've come to the conclusion that the AI build rates and costs are utterly fuxxored.

The hard AIs were able to build 5 (yes, 5) tavara classes before I as the feds was able to build a single sovereign. I lost that one completely.

After reducing their build times and increasing the costs a little bit it seemed to balance out a bit, I used a setting of about 1.5 for each, but the AI seemed to stall out with these settings.

I'm also still wondering if the AI is intentionally nerfed when it's on your team, as I have yet to see AIs on my team be worth a damn in a fight.

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 8:49 am

After reducing their build times and increasing the costs a little bit it seemed to balance out a bit, I used a setting of about 1.5 for each, but the AI seemed to stall out with these settings.

The only difference between the difficulty settings are these build costs and times (if I'm not completely mistaken). And these settings did not change compared to 3.0.0.

My opinion, why the AI can build there Fleets so fast now: They do not have to rebuild destroyed ships. Because no ships get out of the base before the major attack, no ship will be destroyed and in result no ship needs to be rebuild. And rebuilding ships would slow down the AI development

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 10:47 am

aye, thats one of the tweaks that had been added to the ai. it can now even ignore older ships, which makes it a bit more human-like

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 5:48 pm

the new ai is really nasty
and if you can get rid of the "flying through to the enemy base, no matter whats in the way firing at us" mentality it has right now, it gets even better

posted on January 3rd, 2009, 9:39 pm

aye, thats one of the tweaks that had been added to the ai. it can now even ignore older ships, which makes it a bit more human-like

And I like that about the new AI, it is truly nastier.

However, the build times are a little borked imo. Even a medium AI, one on one, you stand no chance of keeping up. The AI will out-build you and quickly rush and destroy you, no matter what you do. And don't even get me started on hard AIs... me and my roommate couldn't even stand a chance against a hard AI 2v1. He tavara rushed us with FIVE tavaras maybe 10 minutes into the game, while we were still stuck building cruisers and were just starting to build our advanced shipyards.

posted on January 4th, 2009, 2:02 am

the hard AI was ment to be a real hard challange, something to play with its actually possible to beat her, just very difficult. you have to gain control of the map as fast as possible, cause thats what the AI tries to do.

we might tune it down a bit in the next patch, thats under observation at the moment 

posted on January 4th, 2009, 2:42 am

don't do that. i'm actually having fun playing against the AI. i'm 3 wins of 15 games on a 4p map so it's possible to beat it as Optec said.

posted on January 4th, 2009, 11:09 am

the hard AI was ment to be a real hard challange, something to play with its actually possible to beat her, just very difficult. you have to gain control of the map as fast as possible, cause thats what the AI tries to do.

we might tune it down a bit in the next patch, thats under observation at the moment 

I understand that, but the medium AIs are next to impossible even 1v1. As even if you resource grab the map as fast as possible, they will just steamroll you using resources they seemingly generate out of nowhere to build 3x the ships you have.

That said, I have been enjoying games against medium AIs with the build costs/time set to about 1.25 the normal amount. They still pose a threat and will still build up their fleets nicely, but they don't seem to pull 30+ battleships out of their ass 10 minutes into the game.

I'm all for hard AIs, but having them just be arbitrarily hard because they build 10x faster than you and have 10x more resources isn't fun at all.