AI suggested improvements and a couple bugs PLEASE READ

13. As I recall, the Orbital Terraformer and choosing a Neutral alignment will allow you to instantly improve worlds if you already possess the necessary technology.  Some of those Class 4 planets have a lot of improvable tiles.

What version of the game are you playing?  Patch #...

2. May be due to them not having the life support to be out that far.  Did they have ships out near that Torian ship?

8. The AI designs it's ships, it doesn't use 'core' ships as seen pre-TA

12.  They ally, if they get around to that tech (odd rarity, thus a bug inside your bug).

13. I figure you are talking about Planet Quality.  If you picked Neutral under Xeno Ethics and have learned the various terraforming techs, it is working as intended.  The same goes for if you got the Terraformer wonder/project.

14. That's messed up, refer to my first question as there may be a version bug at work there.

Loup....

2.  good point - they may not have had the tech but I had it loaded so it had extended range. Anyways - they just try to take their ships too far and not concentrate on what's nearby. I had some ships in Yor space that they could have destroyed but they went right past me and aimed for a VERY far away sector that , not surprisingly, had a starbase they wanted to destroy.

8.  I guess they need to optimize their research then so that they can have better defense on their ships. Or trade more judiciously.

the game is up to date as far as the patch 2.02

13. I think maybe you are correct - I picked Neutral and have all terraforming tech. But I built no orbital terraformer.

except for number 2.  The most annoying things are 1-6  AND the VERY long journeys they go on (from 2.)  I would really like to see them invade better with more transports.

I like to think that they are being protected by the fleet. If they have no weapons, then they have no reason to be on the front lines where they can get shot.

You need either neutral alignment, or the orbital terraformer to automatically terraform planets. Having both is simply over kill, unless you seek to deny your opponents the said advantage.

Divine -

Good point about #9 - It is logical. I guess I just wanted stronger resistance.

The not building improvements thing is specific to only some AIs in TA, and has been reported a number of times but has not yet been chased down.  They work well in DA, though, and if you change the AI of the AIs in question to a generic one, they will start building more improvements.  I'll edit this post or add to the thread if/when I can locate the specifics, as I don't remember which AIs may be affected nor which AI value works the best.

As noted, they may not have had the range necessary.  There's a hard cap on range at if memory serves 7 sectors, so if you're playing on the larger galaxy sizes they may not have had an option but to turn their ship around.

The AI doesn't use transports well; this is true.  They like to send them in with 1-3 firepower escorts, which doesn't work too well, either.  Their strategy works well enough when they're the Dread Lords, though-if you haven't yet played the campaign, I suggest you do so.  Based on your listed experience it seems you're capable of handling it as well, since the campaign is not a walkthrough by any means.  I agree improvement would be nice.

Their obsession with starbases has been addressed before, but very early along in the game's development (DL 1.1 or DL 1.2 I think), starbases were much more important, and as such they were revalued to the AI, which didn't prioritize them at all (as I understand it).  You'll notice this the most if you try to buy a base off the AI-it's not going to happen for less than about 8M BC.

Defense isn't that useful in DA/TA, albeit marginally more so in TA than DA.  Unless you're fielding sub-20 firepower ships, not putting defense on their ships isn't a mistake.  See combat mechanics.

The minor races are soft coded not to be able to colonize or invade.  They're doing the best they can with their one planet that they have.  Would you care to make suggestions, or are you just complaining?

True-the AI prioritizes making starbases, but not upgrading them.  But really, starbases are weak enough, even when maxed out, that adding modules to them, apart from mining/production modules, really wouldn't help them any.

The AI has access to the ship designer as well, and as low as Normal (back when I played that), they would get around to designing non-core ships.  Which AIs specifically are you seeing only using core ships?

You say this is on Crippling or higher-Crippling is only a 125% multiplier to its economy.  Are you including Maso in this as well?  The not designing new ships problem is something I personally haven't seen, and I generally play Maso.

The AI doesn't specifically target ships.  The automatic battle sequence targets the next ship based on how much of a threat it is perceived to be by the equation Attack / Defense + HP.  This, of course, means that an unarmed ship will always be the last ship to be fired upon.  Again, if you have a suggestion, we'd all be glad to hear it, but this has worked fairly well so far and a number of us are opposed to tactical combat.

No one knows really what the surrender formula is, and honestly it seems to change game by game.  Did your enemy build the hall of empathy?  That would double their chances of having them be surrendered to.  Basically, it's all chance.  Might be a worthwhile suggestion for GC3, but it seems too abuseable as is.

I have.  I notice them all the time.  However, it's possible this is TA-specific, as most of my games are still in DA.  And, as Loup states, they don't make yellow techs a priority, which Alliances is one of.

Explanation has been provided-you were neutral and had the terraforming techs researched, or you built the orbital terraformer.  If both of these were true, there's no additional effect, but it still explains it.

Haven't seen this one-if you can get it to happen on turn one it should be fairly obvious and you could zip up a savegame and send it into SD, but I'm not certain that them loading it there would reproduce the problem either.

Sole

Wow that's very informative - Thank you

I think maybe make the Minor races take a few planets and have some random possibility of them becoming somewhat Major would make them more interesting. Possibly even have them ally with each other on occasion. (confession)You picked up on my tone on that one as I was venting a bit.

I would like to know the best settings to make the toughest opponents WITHOUT giving them too much of an economic boost(too artificial - forgive the pun).

I must confess I don't know what Maso is - sorry but I haven't really investigated enough to know what that is. 

But what about those long journeys they take and ignore some easy pickings in the process ? 

I disagree about the starbase modules (not adding the defensive and offensive) - I wasted so much time rebuilding starbases before I beefed them up with those modules. And , as you agree with the AI obsession with destroying those starbases, it worked out all too well as fleet after fleet will die trying to destroy one starbase that is well-fortified even if I don't mine the resource.

Also, I have found that the defense points of my ships saves my butt. I rarely lose ships because of their strong defense. Plus they gain more power and HP as they fight and win more battles. Why not let them build their HP higher instead of letting them fall to one or two shots. Heck, I have some ships with over 400 HP because of this strategy. Of course I arm them to the teeth as well. Eventhough the Yor have Nightmare Torpedo, I can Kill their ships too easily with cheaper ships because of their lack of def.

I will try the campaign since you promise me a good fight. But I always preferred to let things just develop and unfold unexpectadely.

As far as the AI using core ships, I may have been mistaken. I assumed that is what they were using since their ships, for the most part were easy for me to dispatch.

Are you making a point that the AI will not pursue the yellow techs more because it does not fit well with the campaign ?

** I suggest the addition of mine-layers and mine-sweeper modules as this would help to keep your borders. One person I read mentioned that he objected to the fact that ships can just roam freely in and out of other races space. I have to agree that can be irritating when war has not been declared and suddenly it is. The human player should also have the option of warning off ships of the AI and based on perceived strength they might withdraw to their own space.

Please let me know what you think of my suggestions. Especially the mine-layer and sweeper modules.

Are you one of the games' designers/programmers ?  Thanks again for your information and attention.

Maso is Masochistic.  It's one above Crippling and the AI gets their economy, production, and research run at 200% of normal (so for instance they have a 50% research bonus, a xeno lab would normally give them 8x1.5=12, now it gives them 8x1.5x2=24, etc), whereas as I noted Crippling only gets an economic multiplier of 125%, which is basically a 25% bonus.  It stacks well with the econ racial bonuses, and the AI likes to pick them, but the AI isn't intelligent enough about its sliders or factory to lab ratio (planetary or civ-wide) for a mere economic bonus to be much of a challenge.

Upgrading the minors has been suggested in the GC3 thread.  For TA 2.x, they at least got shipbuilding AI-if you give them long enough, they can build quite a fleet now.  I did pick up on your tone, but that wasn't my point.  If you DO have suggestions, by all means, put them forth.

Well, you can select the customization points that the AI will use to make for stronger opponents.  You can leave out opponents that run into problems, such as those who don't build improvements on planets.  You can make custom opponents and use the tree, ability, customization points, and ethical alignment of your choice.

Re: Long journeys:
This is evident if you see the plague or disease mega event crop up as well.  The AI does not adapt quickly or well to change; it will finish researching in general not only the tech it was on but the entire tree it was on before it researches plague or disease cure.  The ships thing is an extension of this: It has priority targets set in its mind and forgets to account for distance.

If you disagree about the starbases, then I can only conclude you haven't made it past about 50-60 firepower ships, as that's the point near where they become worthless.  Beyond 100, they don't stand a chance, especially if the ships in question have some token defenses as well.

No; the AI not pursuing the yellow techs is just a generic flaw in the AI, which probably has something to do with yellow techs giving primarily diplomacy bonuses and the diplomacy stat unfortunately not mattering in AI-to-AI matters; just player-to-AI.  So since it deems it useless because it doesn't come into play it doesn't research it, which makes it easy to game, etc.

I'm neither a game designer nor a programmer.  I don't work for SD.  I code as a hobby, but I wouldn't consider myself a full-fledged programmer.

Barriers have been discussed before; mines are a decent way to impose them but the concept of barriers themselves as arbitrary has essentially been concluded to be a bad idea by the community.  I wouldn't want to simply borrow the implementation that Sins (Entrenchment, actually) uses, though, so that idea needs some elaboration-particularly as GC2 is turn-based.

If your ships get to 400 hp, then you're either using HP modules in TA or you're getting involved in way too many fights.  They don't level up -that- fast.  (I know-I did the research on how much experience they need for each level.)

The campaign is more of a fight since you start (generally) at a disadvantage.  It's definitely fun, though.

thanks again sir ( I assume)

the mine layer and sweeper modules could be laid by a specialized ship or just an add-on. The removal of said mines could take a certain number of turns to remove with a ship so equipped. The mines would explode based on proximity of course. They could even have some variety of effects, some damage of course, some dispersion, maybe even a black hole mine that could suck ships into it. All being said, the question of border fortification would be solved. Of course the tech tree would have to be modded.

I see what you are saying about the Maso setting if the AI does not manage its sliders well.

I think that if the starbase defenses become inadequate at a certain point then they should be augmented to match what they need to be self-sufficient.

You are correct about some of those HP's coming from add-ons but I have picked up a great deal from the battles. Why do you say I might be in way too many battles ? If I am the stronger, is this not the way ?

How do I get my suggestions considered for implementation ?

Thanks Sole 

I erred when I said I played on crippling, it was on painful.

Are there any plans to upgrade the AI ? especially those long journeys ignoring immediate goals just to destroy a distant starbase.

Not particularly; GC2 is essentially at the end of its life cycle.

You might try the GC3 suggestions thread we have going on here.

Well, the thing is, you need about as much experience (give or take) as you have weapons and defenses on the ship for your first level, which increases fairly linearly thereafter.  I think hp increased at a proportional rate from experience (at last check), so if you're getting huges to 400 hp it's not that big of a deal.  However if you're getting say tinies to 400 hp I'd guess offhand you're being involved in upwards of 75 battles per point of attack and defense your ships have, which at that stage of the game would be prohibitive at ~5000 battles per ship.  (Although it is important to note that since all the ships in a fleet get the experience from a killed ship it's easier to level up tinies since you can slap 20+ in a fleet with full logistics.)

I agree with a lot of the points Jabberjaws made.  This is a great game, don't get me wrong.  Some points can be explained away, but overall Jabberjaws lists some, what I consider, flaws.

This is probably the most frustrating part of the game for me.  Mentally retarded AI combat strategy.  And in my experience it had nothing to do with range limitation.  It's just that once the AI sends a fleet toward a target, it tends to be rather singularly-minded about attacking that one target.  Sometimes they adapt, but when they don't (which happens far too often) it's frustrating to watch. 

Case in point: the Torians were sending a fleet to attack a Drengin fleet.  The Torian fleet was in their own space, so range is not an issue.  Nearby, well within striking distance, was a single Drengin Troop Transport.  Unescorted, unarmed, unarmored.  Easy target, and it's heading for a Torian colony. The Torian fleet IGNORES IT COMPLETELY, and the Drengin transport captures the colony.

The AI needs to learn the value of attacking targets of opportunity better.

Here's another issue: Fleets stopping and doing nothing if their target is destroyed before they get there.  This happens a lot.

Example: The Krynn were at war with the Drath.  They send pretty much their entire fleet across the map to attack a Drath starbase.  The Terrans, also at war with the Drath, destroy the starbase.  So the entire Krynn armada just sits there in empty space, halfway to Drath territory or closer, doing nothing.  Keep going!  Attack something!  Make yourselves useful!

Or worse yet, they turn around.

But the thing that really annoys me is how LONG it takes.  A transport will stop moving toward a target if there is a ship in orbit, or it will choose a new target.  If the ship in orbit is destroyed, the transport will reaquire it's original target after a Turn or two.  This effectively doubles the time it takes for an AI troop transport to finally get somewhere as it is either continually "stopping and going" or "ping ponging" back and forth between two targets.

If it's possible to code, the AI should at least keep the transport moving toward its intended target as long as there are friendly fleets in the area that are capable of destroying that orbiting ship.  So, strangely, troop transports have sort of the opposite problem of attack fleets.  They DO adapt when they should be singularly-minded to a point.

This one's been discussed to death, so I'll leave it be.  But please, make surrenders logical.  I've turned off that option because it's so ridiculous how it works now.  Not just who they surrender to, but when and how.  I've seen races lose one ship, ONE SHIP, at the very start of a war and surrender.

Anyway, that's all I have to say.  Again, I think it's a great game.  Still some tweaks needed.

I found this situation most fustrating.

I build transports. No weapons and no armor. I send them to an ennemy plant and I leave it at it's doorstep. The planets as ships in orbit and notonce did I see the AI take one of their ship in orbit and attack my transport. Sometimes it take several turns before I have time to send a combat ship to destroy a planets defenses.

Why not break orbit and destroy the transports it makes sense it's not protected at all.

Oh well.

Has the new patch addressed any of the stuff we've complained about ??