ThorTillas wrote:
Nope, currently, we use a "Random" to choose the ship. And I agree that we should use something else...

Odd... normally, siege ships are not used by the "military" part... I define the ship utility by comparing the Military power to the invasion power. If the invasion power is greater than 0.5f (not sure if it 0.5 or 0.8) then I don't use it as military...

Did you have a save with can describe this odd behavior?

Perhaps the siege fleet was just "gathering" on the system when you attack it... so it was not a "defense" but an "attack" which has been intercepted...

Ail wrote:
"

• Did you figure out how exactly "FleetWeight" works?"
  
  

Would it probably help to make copies of the designs of which I want the AI to use more, so that the random picking has a higher chance of picking one of them?

Say I have 6 Small designs but 10 Medium and 15 Large, would that probably lead to the AI building more large designs?

Much better would be if FleetWeight would just work.

"

What are you using as the AI targetting plan? What can I do to convince you (and Meedoc) to make it spreadfire 100%?"

Well, I disagree with Spreadfire 100%...

It should really depend on what you are up against.

One can't make it overly-complicated but some often-applicable rules of thumb might suffice.

Maybe something like this:

if(Enemy fleet has small ships in it)

use Spread-Fire

else if(my fleet has more ships than enemy)

use Guillotine

else

use Nosebreaker

Marcelo_0 wrote:

• Added variety in the AI attack targeting
• The AI select the best formation & targeting; not anymore randomly one from 3
• Lowered weight for Retreat and Offensive Retreat
• Updated weight on formation & targeting for the AI to choose
  
  

Making AI-Ship-design-templates is no rocket-science. So every modder should easily grasp how it's done. I'd think it would be great if different people would make different races with different approaches that are known to be better than what the AI does. This would even add some flavour to races when you know that it's different stuff they like most.

At the end we can throw them all together, have Meedoc/ThorTillas/ourselves review them for potential mistakes and get them into a patch... Now that sounds like what Games2Gether is all about.

thuvian wrote:
Well, I actually find ship optimization to rather challenging. Creating templates that are universal enough to work for all tech levels, economic developments, and enemy fleet designs is complicated. Engines Modules are a good example. Who needs engines? Power Modules is another example, under what circumstances do you use power modules?

• I think you are missing the negative weights to the things that would make the fleet stay (e.g., Short Range should be -0.4).
  
  

• I tried out a experimental game with the start of my modified Harmony Fleet Designs. I never had a chance.
  
  

• Long Range
• • BASIC - You are outgunned.
  • BASIC - You ships are low on health.
  • MODERATE - Enemy Fleet has few Long Range weapons relative to Short & Medium Range Weapons
  • MODERATE - You do not have many Long Range weapons and the enemy has many Medium and Short Range Weapons.
  • ADVANCED - You can survive running away.
• Medium Range
• • BASIC - You are outgunned.
  • BASIC - You ships are low on health.
  • MODERATE - Enemy Fleet has few Medium Range weapons relative to Short Range Weapons
  • MODERATE - You do not have many Medium Range weapons and the enemy has many Short Range Weapons.
  • ADVANCED - You can survive running away.
  • ADVANCED - You have many Long Range weapons, the enemy is still strong, he does not have many Medium Range weapons, and he has many Short Range Weapons.
• Short Range
• • BASIC - You probably shouldn't.
  
  
  

• The AI SuperDefender class ships start around 600 Industry. That's a massive speed bump if it builds any.
• ShipDesign.xml needs to be update in addition to the individual AI profiles.
• The Ships in ShipDesign.xml are hardcoded and leave much of the ship empty.
• The AI ship designs feature engines, power modules, scout modules, repair, and tonnage modules. Very rarely are they good choices.
• Just fixing these things lets the Harmony AI out expand the other AIs.
• The siege module weights need to be fixed as I mentioned previously in the thread.
  
  

• No Engines, Power, Scout, Repair, or tonnage modules on small or medium ships.
• Maybe use Engines, Power, Scout, Repair, or tonnage modules on large ships, but I doubt it.
• I don't have good ideas about large ship design, perhaps 1 power: 1 repair: 1 armor: 25 defenses: 50 weapons?
• Put enough weapons on a large ship to kill a medium/light ship in each combat round per range phase.
• Special Slots are a trap. I'm not sure they are useful for combat ships.
• Fighters/Bombers should belong on small ships, so you can maximize percentage bonuses on large ships.
• Except for the Harmony2 hull which gets -75% fighter/bomber weight, which is an okay deal.
• Combat ship Fighters/Bombers should always be battle designs.
• Three designs of siege ships, 1 with elite troops, 1 with siege bombers, and 1 with only siege modules.
• Limit the number of possible siege designs, otherwise they will end up dominating fleet composition. This results in game states where there are tons of siege ships, and none with guns. Potentially just design hybrid ships for the AI.
• With an equal chance of building any ship and equal numbers of variations of each ship class, the AI will end up dominating its economic fleet composition with large ships. Example: If you have 1 of each class of small, medium and large, you'll end up with a fleet consisting of one of each. However, that small ships cost 200, the medium 500, and the large 3000. So the majority of your AIs economy is nested in the big ships. This means that you either need to work on weighting the ships better, or designing really good big ships.
• Hard coding kinetic long range modules and laser medium range modules, sounds like a good idea, but then AI can't switch them to something else if the player builds his ships to account for this. I suppose we could design the three different versions of glass cannons and then the ai will build equal amounts of each. That might work.
• I need to setup a system so I can watch the AI develop after changing templates.
• Not sure what to do with Scouts (which currently have minimal weapons) or Scouts & Colony ships (which have engines).
  
  

Ail wrote:
Had a look at your changes and there's some points that I found questionable.



In Battle-Cards you kinda forced to use spread-fire all the time.

I can imagine that it works very well against you because you said you only use small ships all the time and consider the big ones a waste of ressources. Against a 4-Dreadnough-fleet with high defenses and repair-modules this would be a totally awful choice!

It should use a sophisticated logic that probably is not doable with XML.

I'd say:

DefaultFleetTargeting should get these modifieres:

myWeaponMissile 1 (since you can't reatarget)

BiggerFleet 1 (if I'm bigger I'll probably eliminate the opposing fleet anyways)





FocusFireFleetTargeting should get:

myWeaponKinetics 1 (I can retarget often enough to switch target after each destroyed vessel)

SmallerFleet 1 (if I'm smaller I want to try to kill at least one of the enemies)



StrongFireFleetTargeting I would leave it blank so it can randomly be taken when none of the other conditions meet (which will rarely happen)

In ShipDesignHarmony.xml you took out the Tonnage-Modules of all ships. This might be okay for small glass-cannons in order to make them cheaper. But on the medium and big-ships I would try to get as much stuff on as possible and definately not leave out tonnage-modules.

• The weights per module type are based on mass used, not number of modules.
• The sum of all non-negative weights is somehow related to module distribution. It isn't straightforward. As a rough rule of thumb, start with a total summed weight of 1.
• You can use -X to add X of a specific module. (I've confirmed this for 1,3,4).
• You can specify weapon module type and range.
• You can specify troop, fighter, and bomber type.
• You can add modules that AI does not have research access to. (In ShipDesigns.xml they build the modules without access. In ShipDesignRace.xml they design the ship with the module absent).
• You can design ships that exceed the ship's weight (in ShipDesigns.xml they build them anyway, in ShipDesignRace.xml they won't. You might be able to make them do it via hard weighting (i.e., -10))
• The AI will use new templates in saved games.
• You have to restart Endless Space in you want to see changes in AI template use.
• The save files are in .bzip2 format.
• I use 7zip to open, modify, and save them.
• Delete number string from your savegame and resave it to load as an AI.
• Ship design template names are based on your locale language files.
• Ship design templates without names are given the ship class name.
• I don't know what triggers the AI to redesign ships. However, if you delete all the ships the AI can build, it will redesign them.
• You don't have to end a turn to make the AI design ships. Load a saved game as another player. Wait until the AI is done, save, remove SteamID from the file, and then reload as the AI of interest.
  
  

• I find that bullet points make my posts easier to process.
• I've found that much of the accumulated knowledge is lost in the forum or when individuals stop visiting the forum. This was a contribution to preserving the knowledge, so that those that come after us have an easier time.
• Anyone know if the AI can use siege bombs?
• Early on the AI builds tons of ships. Sometimes it sticks with some of the predesign.xml ships. I'm not sure what circumstances that occurs under.
• Syntax errors in your xml files will prevent the file from loading, and may not even generate an noticeable error. I've resorted to an online xml validator. I should get a offline program to do it, but haven't gotten around to it.
• Dreadnoughts are proving harder to design. Sometimes the ships I create have missing modules and extra free space left over. I'm not certain what is causing it. I do know that going over a summed weight of 1 causes some problems. I'm not sure how the -X weights fit into the picture.
• One of the early Ai successes was a 200/200/0 armor/shield/flakk design (on the -50% weight of defenses cruiser). That was a vicious surprise. It took down my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation glass cannons with ease. It suffered virtually no damage from them. The solution was to build ~$50 missile glass cannons (just tech 1 with massive discounts). It was great.
• I've under-weighted the economic bounces of the resource monopolies, getting 60% off from resources and and additional 50% off from racial traits from construction costs makes things really cheap. Missile destroyers get a ton of bonus from that (as well as lasers). It may even be worthwhile to stick with just level 1 missile destroyers. Possibly even using focus fire (probably not though).Against a normal ~3k dreadnought, you can send 30-60!!! of them and still be at an economic advantage. Level 1 and 2 Kinetics don't have the resource cost reduction, so that reduces their cost effectiveness. I'm not sure if that is a typo for the level 2 kinetics.
• The experienced ship argument doesn't hold up as well as portrayed. It is because the disposal ships also can be built to start with the same bonus xp (due to buildings). For the tougher ships to get more of an advantage they have to get a ton of experience, whereas the little ships.... Well, let's just say that they really enjoy life.
• Metal Memory gives the Harmony a truly terrifying bonus once they get going. It does make up for not having heroes.
• The +1% FIDS per strategic resource is horribly abusive, especially once you build the +1 strategic resource exploitation on planets.
  
  

• Next version of my Harmony Ship List. This one fixes some of the dead space, hard sets many weapons to long range, fixes armor module addition, and adds some alternative dreadnaught designs.
• Still need to determine how module priority is determined.
• Still need to evaluate a good armor/defense ratio.
• Still need to test how to deal with more dead weight with larger ship designs.
• Still need to find out if the AI can use bombs.
  
  

• +40% Health
• Armor is a better investment
  
  

• Transport 40% seed
• Corvette -25% support module weight
• Destroyer -5% ship cost on star system
• Cruiser -25% weapon module weight
• Battleship -15% ship cost on star system
• Dreadnought -30% ship cost on star system
• 
  
  

• The Corvette may be able to support 2 armor modules, instead of 30% weight it is 22.5%. This combines with the +40% health bonus.
• The Corvette may be the fleet support module ship with power, engine, and repair modules.
• The Cruiser will trend towards being a heavy hitter, with -25% weapon module weight.
• The remainder of their ship bonuses are generic cost reductions. This makes their ships relatively cheaper, but does not encourage certain lines of module development. However, the savings increases as the hull size increases, so we should trend towards bigger ships. This is contingent upon the cost bonus actually working, which it did not in previous versions. A quick test on the destroyer suggests it works.
  
  

• They have a laser based theme in weapons.
• This is flavor, because I don't see anything in their racials to suggest they are better at lasers.
• 
  
  

• The UE have no important to utilize specific racial technologies.
• Armor6terran has +50% health compared to other races. Very late game, probably not important.
• Armor3terran is in the module list, but is not present in the tech tree.
• ModuleSupportInvasion5Terran is a high level seige module that is pretty standard.
• Fighter/Bomber4 have Terran unique stats. Very late game, probably not important.
  
  

• Add some Corvette variations that use 2 armor modules.
• Arbitrarily pick hulls for specializations (seige, carriers).
• Focus Cruisers on weapon designs.
• Take advantage of the Strong Alloy Bonus by building ships that have extra health compared to baseline ships or add more armor modules to getter even tougher ships.
• The Economy of the UE would allow for more expensive ships or pay the upkeep on more cheap ships.
• Tonnage modules are too expensive $350 for 25 or $1000 for 50 even for the UE.
•