New AI

posted on January 4th, 2009, 11:35 am

Well 1on1 on I now manage to beat hard AI on smaller maps. That said though, me and hypercube got absolutely hammered a min ago on Eraudi map vs 2 Hard AIs (they were Rom).
I even got so desperate that I built the hyperspace arty , it barely scratched the D'deridex and Norexan ships tho

posted on January 4th, 2009, 12:08 pm

just as a test, i played on 5 hard AI FFA, and set myself to observe.

OMG, within about 5 min the screen was full of ships and the game crashed.

So i tried again only this time the game didnt crash and i had anough ships in one battle that it brought my 9800 GX2/ 4b DDR3 ram/ Q6700 Quad to a crawl.

The point being is that those fleets build so damn fast it wasnt funny. Im talking Tavaras in under 10min.
a steady stream of powerful ships coming from both bases.

I did like the feds use of the ship call in though, even if it pailed in comparison to 20+ sovvys.

posted on January 6th, 2009, 6:14 am

I find the Medium AI to be not smart enough, I did Federation, VS Dominion, and compeltly wiped them out.

More They wiped them selves out, I constructed 14 Outposts, and 37 Tortpeod Turrets, in 5 Bases and the AI repetadly attacked my bases, targeting the outposts first, they were however overwelmed by torpedos, before they could even reduce the shields by 35% or so, every thime, wahts more they spent sufficent time fro the shield to recharge before attacking again.

I also used fleets to overwelm their resourse base, which had limited defsenses, and replace it with a hevarly defened base of my own, i.e. a few outposts, and several torepdo turrets.

also by put one mining station, and 4 frighter per 4 of each resoures I end up using I had a contiounse stream of resourse alloing stations gto be maxed out.

Finaly I sent a fleet of about 125 ships off on search and destroy, near the domions primary base.

the whole game when for less than 40 mintues

The AI , needs to stop try to rebuild a captured base, rather tryt to replace it with a new one at another location, build better defenses for its bases, and attack other base with battle ships rather then cruisers and destroyers, also it should target turrets first then outposts, as this stragites is far more effective, as the turregts have weak defense, but strong weapons, compared to outposts, and are the fast to netulise defenses. the AI should also build say 5 to 8 outposts at it primary base.

posted on January 6th, 2009, 7:20 am

I have noticed some of what the above poster has mentioned.

The AI does seem to have odd priorities when it comes to attacking, and the fact they ignore everything on their way to their target makes them very vulnerable to picking off at whatever chokepoint they come through.

They still build at ridiculous rates however, but I have found a value of about 1.1 for both AI build time and cost seems to balance them out while still keeping them challenging (on medium at least).


That said, I also noticed the AI will try forever to rebuild a destroyed mining base, without first trying to clear out whatever is guarding it.

Anytime I manage to kill an AI mining base, then park a fleet where it was, they send wave after wave of unescorted construction ships my way.

Seems all you need to do to kill the AI is to blow up 1 or 2 of their mining bases and they will waste all their resources sending endless construction ships your way. Unfortunately, winning this way feels meh.


While we're talking about AI, I have a map that has several routes through the center, two of which involve travel through nebulae, one is all fluidic nebulae (the blue ones) the other is several kinds of nebulae, including some damaging ones (but nothing a cruiser or larger size fleet couldn't handle). The AI however refuses to use these paths, and only comes through the top of the map where there is no nebula.

Is it possible to make the AI use paths that contain nebula, at least occasionally? It would help mix things up a little bit.

posted on January 6th, 2009, 8:23 am

im kinda simmilar, the AI avoids nebulas like a bad smell.

posted on January 8th, 2009, 11:33 pm

The AI definately needs some work on. Too many spammed units and cheating. I was playing feds vs dominion (me as the feds) on a 2 player map, after 15 mins into the game I had managed to conquer all his moons(except the ones in his base) and 10 min later he out-numbered me more than 2 to 1. WTF? The AI was much better in the first release, this patch makes the game almost unplayable because the AI is a fucking cheater.

[Emperor81]

posted on January 9th, 2009, 12:24 am

Last edited by Emperor81 on January 9th, 2009, 12:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

i disagree, i think the AI in the initial release was far too weak unless you faced several of them at a time, and while facing a 1v1 you have to lower the build time/resource calculators to .75 or .80 to get any challenge out of it, however with the new patch it causes you to play a near flawless game to win, and it is possible to win, makes the game very enjoyable from a challenge standpoint due to the lack of many multiplayer games, but i do agree with the fact that the AI needs work when it chooses a target from across the map and ignores everything in its path to get to it, as well as the facing arcs of the ships you control as some especially the ones that use forward firing pulse weapons dont always react to an enemy right near them without you personally moving them in the general direction of the enemy

posted on January 9th, 2009, 10:23 am

The problem is not that the AI attacks in waves, it's the fact that it cheats like hell on Hard setting and sometimes even on medium setting. Even when he has less resources he can build more ships than you can and upgrades them very very fast. There's nothing I can do that will prevent him from overwhelming me in 4 or 5 waves of attack, even if I tech up as much as my resources allow me. This is the aspect that should be corrected IMO.

posted on January 9th, 2009, 11:47 am

The AI also builds fully experienced ships. Tavaras for the AI are instantly 130 offensive and 169 defensive.

Now that I've figured out how to smoke the AI as it comes through chokepoints I have been able to kill the AI off, but it feels cheesy.

Their rushing and build rates are fine (set to 1.1x the normal), but they are stupid, and unintuitive. Unfortunately I don't know if that can be fixed.

Also the hard AI is still a cheating bastard.

posted on January 9th, 2009, 2:58 pm

What does IMO mean?

posted on January 9th, 2009, 3:03 pm

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/IMO

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

What does IMO mean?

I gather - In My Opinion -

[Drone]

posted on January 10th, 2009, 8:50 pm

Last edited by Drone on January 10th, 2009, 8:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

me and a friend played a game. 4 players: we two, a borg ai and a dominion ai, both hard. at some point of the game we lost control of the map (not sure but i think it was 2 seconds after launch ). nevertheless my friend was the first who was vanquished, then the borg got wiped out and i am was the third one. we were kinda shocked as we have seen this in the end..



i think the ai hard is a little bit to hard. you should reduce the cheating power of the ai hard and add a new difficulty "impossible"

posted on January 13th, 2009, 7:01 am

yeah ive seen this exact same thing, cept it was a 3 vs 2 hard ai, and i coudld take 2 hard ai before the patch, but jeez,we held them off for a bit, i got some mirandas sovys defiants, intrepids and akiras oit, even reserched weapon and defense upgrades, got 3 pairs of two  moons up, my borg alli had some spheres and stuff, and a cube with more on the way, and the dominian alli had some stuff to, first my one mining outpost fell, and then i collapsed, had to pull all my ships back to my allies base
, where i proceded to constrct a shipyard, and build(i had lots of resources) whiule this was going on, my borg allies cubes and spheres were being worn down, and we collasped, overun, overwhelmed, the last attack, and our last stand, with cubes and dominiuan battlships, and some of my leftovers, there musta been 100 enemy ships just in that, when we finaly all died, the map was just a swarm of red and orage enemies, it was unbelivable, i think hard is more like imposbbile

posted on January 17th, 2009, 4:15 am

yeah ive seen this exact same thing, cept it was a 3 vs 2 hard ai, and i coudld take 2 hard ai before the patch, but jeez,we held them off for a bit, i got some mirandas sovys defiants, intrepids and akiras oit, even reserched weapon and defense upgrades, got 3 pairs of two  moons up, my borg alli had some spheres and stuff, and a cube with more on the way, and the dominian alli had some stuff to, first my one mining outpost fell, and then i collapsed, had to pull all my ships back to my allies base
, where i proceded to constrct a shipyard, and build(i had lots of resources) whiule this was going on, my borg allies cubes and spheres were being worn down, and we collasped, overun, overwhelmed, the last attack, and our last stand, with cubes and dominiuan battlships, and some of my leftovers, there musta been 100 enemy ships just in that, when we finaly all died, the map was just a swarm of red and orage enemies, it was unbelivable, i think hard is more like imposbbile

Yeah the hard AI is wwwaaaayyy hard. But i did beat it once, this is what i did.

I was the feds, i was against the klingons, and i had read about how impossible the AI was, so i attacked from the start, a non stop stream of ships for there home base. I also rushed all the available resources and built up huge defences. Once i could spam sovvies i did and attacked non stop. At the same time i built up a huge attack force and hit hard, the AI then seemed to only build its basic ships in groups of five or less.