Found a flaw in the AI's use of orbitals

from Stardock.net Forums

(vs Normal AI)

I had taken and heavily fortified a region--it was a chokepoint, the AI behind it could be ignored until I had dealt with the others.  My guns just reached to the center of the next region.  The AI of course kept engaging in futile attacks.

What was surprising is the number of times I saw it fire orbitals at it's region.  Apparently it saw all the dying units as an indication that I was attacking the region and it was attempting to nail my forces.  The thing is, it was my fixed defenses, I wasn't actually threatening the region at all.  (And it was an exercise in futility anyway--the region was one of the linking ones without resources of it's own and I owned all the downstream regions it linked to.  The AI shouldn't waste orbitals on defending a region that isn't currently useful.)

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Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top


(vs Normal AI)
(And it was an exercise in futility anyway--the region was one of the linking ones without resources of it's own and I owned all the downstream regions it linked to.  The AI shouldn't waste orbitals on defending a region that isn't currently useful.)

I think from the AI's perspective (And frankly, even mine more often than not), it's better to do the fighting in a region where collateral damage is irrelevant, than to let it progress to your own base, and to let the opposition collect territory unopposed. Obviously in this particular instance, things didn't exactly go as planned (With it registering your artillery as a ground-attack), but the base logic of "throw tons of quanta at a resourceless node about to fall" makes sense.

Reply #2 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Perhaps in general, but I certainly would have preferred to defend the next region in the chain rather than the one it was obsessed with.  (The difficulty of dealing with the next one was why I had walled him off that way.)  The next one had gobs of terrain advantages for the AI, while the one in question gave me gobs of terrain advantages.

 

Anyway, my point in posting it is that the AI is apparently looking only at losses, not what it might gain from the orbital strike.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Yes, the AI will cast certain orbitals on top of a power generator (i.e. nuke).  It's the same no matter the difficulty.  There were changes to orbital strikes, I think the range got reduced, maybe the AI still uses the old radius in determining if it should drop a strike if that is the case.

Reply #4 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Just hit it again in a different situation.

I had a couple of juggernauts that smashed an AI force near a region center.  Kaboom.  The thing is the region was not my objective and the juggernauts never entered the area the weapon hit, the force that got smashed simply happened to be in range of their rockets.  (Not that the AI's mistake mattered--I didn't care about the region because I was going for his nexus.)