Title says it all. I'm quite tired of AI using +X% defense vs. type action cards while his fleet actually have ZERO defense modules vs. that type.



It's obvious that, for example, when you don't have any flak modules, your action vs. missile fire should be -% missile damage or -% enemy accuracy, but definitely not +% flak efficiency.

Please learn more about the way battle cards work, by looking into other discussion threads. First, because of the way blocking and countering works, this card can still be effective. Second, there is a random aspect of card selection, otherwise you would know the card the AI would select and you would pick the best counter.

davea wrote:
Please learn more about the way battle cards work, by looking into other discussion threads. First, because of the way blocking and countering works, this card can still be effective.

Always keep this in mind when choosing cards. For example, if I expect the AI fleet to play Tactics: Offensive Retreat, I can block their retreat with a card that blocks any Tactics card. Even if that card has no other useful effect on my fleet, blocking their retreat can lead to a very dead AI fleet.

I concur with davea. The AI (And even other human players if you play MP) won't always pick the card you think would be best in that situation. For example if I run a fleet filled with missiles, you would think my opponent's best card to play would be chameleon (let's say for the sake of argument that they do have flaks). Yet they can choose to go with barrier, nano-repair, adaptive tactics (or strategy whichever is called), overpower, or heck even with retreat.

davea wrote:
Please learn more about the way battle cards work, by looking into other discussion threads. First, because of the way blocking and countering works, this card can still be effective.

Excuse me, but I don't see how a, say Camouflage card (affects: flaks, kinetic weapons) can be "effective" if used on a fleet without flaks and kinetic weapons. This, in fact, is the most prevalent example, as I encounter beam-using AI almost every game, and as beam-techs go along with kinetic defense-techs, they almost always have heavy kinetic defenses, so I use missiles against them.

This common scenario have: AI with beam weapons and kinetic defenses; my fleets with missiles and whatever defenses. Fun fact: in such a situation, AI uses Camouflage way more often that EMP (or Weapon Disruption), up to the point that you can barely see any EMP (and Weapon Disruption) uses per entire game.

davea wrote:
Second, there is a random aspect of card selection, otherwise you would know the card the AI would select and you would pick the best counter.

Except that in my opinion, that random aspect should be still weighted towards giving the AI some proper battle bonuses. At the moment, in certain scenarios, it does the opposite.



PS: You also assume that I haven't read battle actions xml descriptors. Your assumption is wrong.

If picking the right card is supposed to involve more than luck, it's reasonable that the AI's card choice should have at least limited predictability based on their fleet composition. Otherwise, the only difference between the current system and a non-random autoresolve where you get a large bonus is the amount of time consumed.