Borg sphere and AI ship repair bugs (?)

posted on September 19th, 2009, 11:50 pm

I'm not sure if these are bugs or not, just odd ...

I noticed I can actually install several beam modules on a Borg Sphere, even though it says it only allows one.

And maybe its just because I'm too chicken-$#!t to try even Hard difficulty, so I don't know if this was intentionally nerfed for the regular AI to be dumb, but if my attack fleet is near their shipyard and I whale on a ship badly enough that its shields fail, the AI sends it to get repaired -- no problem -- except if I keep hitting at it when its trying to get repaired, the AI will suddenly cancel the repair and eject the ship from the dock!  Was that intentional?  I noticed my own ships stay in the dock if they're being attacked while in dock, which is fairly useful as they draw enemy fire and sometimes get that perfect balance of the dock shield restoration fortify versus enemy fire, so the enemy keeps wasting their shots that are recovered which continues if the shields never fully recharge in the dock.

posted on September 20th, 2009, 12:07 am

Hehe, the first is definitely a typo

The second must be an unintentional bug--and don't worry, I'm sure you will get to defeating the Hard and Merciless AI soon enough

posted on September 20th, 2009, 10:49 am

number two is a known Armada 2 AI problem. this is on todo to be fixed. (annoyed me a few times already, too)

posted on September 24th, 2009, 1:00 am

If I'm not mistaken, I think this is somewhat dictated by the retreated behavior of races. Back when I modified stock Armada II, each race has a value for the AI on when to retreat such as hull below a certain value or crew casualties. I think two things happens with AI Ships when they are near a repair yard. One issue is that they repair just enough to take their hull/shield/crew value above the retreat threshold and thus sends the ship out to battle because you are right there. The other is the AI most likely has a 'abort, we need to attack' but the ship they send gets hit the next AI cycle with 'I need to repair'.

posted on September 24th, 2009, 1:29 am

They don't repair it above a certain threshhold, they send it back out immediately, basically just passing straight through the shipyard, with no hull or shield repair.

posted on September 24th, 2009, 7:12 am

One issue is that they repair just enough to take their hull/shield/crew value above the retreat threshold and thus sends the ship out to battle because you are right there. The other is the AI most likely has a 'abort, we need to attack' but the ship they send gets hit the next AI cycle with 'I need to repair'.

mostly true. the only problem however is that the ai too soon leaves the shipyard when an enemy is nearby. the retreat the ai does when shields are low is absolutely intended

posted on September 27th, 2009, 2:36 am

They don't repair it above a certain threshhold, they send it back out immediately, basically just passing straight through the shipyard, with no hull or shield repair.

I was simply saying as one of the potentially possibilities of what is going on inside the CPU's 'mind' if you would. Most likely this would be the "Enemy near by, abort repair and attack...oh, we need to repair!"

mostly true. the only problem however is that the ai too soon leaves the shipyard when an enemy is nearby. the retreat the ai does when shields are low is absolutely intended

Yea, I know retreat is absolutely intended when the threshold is reached.

On a related thought, would it be at all possible to inject another type of threshold into system? Something like min shields recharged before allowing attack routines to grab ti?

posted on September 27th, 2009, 4:00 am

That could cause other problems.  Including, but not limited to, possible failure of Borg to ever attack, and damaged stations not attacking just as guesswork.

Additionally, if you blew up the AI's shipyards, the damaged ships may go into a 'stuck repair-ordering' loop.

Not a modder, though, so this is just blind guesswork.

posted on September 28th, 2009, 7:22 am

the 'flee'-code has already been adjusted as it wasn't taking shield-less vessels into account in the stock version. the attack code is another thing but should also be fixable to take shipyards into account, however i just didn't have the time yet to take a look in which functions this bug (or let's say unintentional game behavior) occurs and how to write a workaround for it.