AI Ship-Templates.

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 5:52:52 PM

The tonnage modules are such a bad deal for most races. I still haven't looked at the stats for all of the races, but the $350 price tag for 25 space or the $1000 for 50(?) is hard to swallow. It makes it worse when you use the %weight modules (power, armor, etc), because those modules grow in size. If you have 50% of your ship taken up by %weight modules, you'll only get effectively half of the tonnage module...

The Power modules drive me nuts too. The first 3 power modules all modify individual ship stats, but the 4-6 modules effect the fleet. You'd like to keep the 1-3 versions on your dreadnoughts and the 4-6 versions on smaller ships. The price tag of the level 6 module is also obscene.

Did you add the siege module change I proposed earlier in the thread? It makes their siege ships MUCH better because they choose the highest level module instead of the inferior ones.

I also noticed that some of your ship designs don't use the full special slots.

Know anything about Point Defense and how it interacts with Fighters & Bombers?

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 2, 2014, 9:31:24 PM

I don't use a generic template for all races. I too do look up what a specific hull benefits from and try to incoroporate that. It's just not so in-depth.

I think that for most races a kinda-generic approach is okay but the Harmony are really an exception where you made me thinking. For them CP-effectiveness does not matter, since they don't have upkeep.

It's a pity I'm so lazy. I really wanna be ready and start testing. ^^

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 3, 2014, 7:47:46 AM

My take on the UE v1.0.

Corvettes are speciality ships. Power/Repair/Siege.
Destroyers are pretty generic.
Cruisers are weapon module ships.
Battleships are carriers
Dreadnoughts are carriers, heavier cruisers, and double armor weapon ships.
Kept offence modules above 50% of weight.

ShipDesignTerran.zip

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 3, 2014, 7:58:28 AM

Vaulter Ships designs are just a copy of the UE ship designs. The ship traits are the same too. There was a note about changing them in the file, but they are still the same. A copy of the Terran ship design would also work if we are being lazy, although they won't get the 40% health bonus from Strong Alloys, so fewer armor modules may be justified.

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 3, 2014, 4:51:44 PM

My take on the Cravers.
ShipDesignSwarm.zip

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 3, 2014, 10:05:00 PM

Thanks for both the UE and the Cravers!

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 12:19:06 AM

So package them all together and post them so we can try them out.

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 1:25:26 AM

Well the Vaulters were still missing. But your post kinda set me under pressure so I quickly made their file aswell.

Unlike you I haven't bothered with the Invasion-ships at all, so I'm definately going to manually pick your two races to see if this makes a big difference in addition to the changes to the combat-designs.

The more people test, constructively criticize the designs or supply a greater variety of design-templates themselves, the better.

Enough-words, here's the file.

Installation-Instructions:

Unzip into (my documents)\Endless Space\Disharmony\Modding. This will create a new directory (my documents)\Endless Space\Disharmony\Modding\Small containing a file index.xml and several subdirectories.

In the main game menu, click the MODS button, find the mod "AISHIPS", select it and click load.

To keep the mod loaded: find "Endless Space" in the Steam Library, right click, select properties, and click the "set launch options" button. Add "+mod AISHIPS" to the game launch command line.
AISHIPS.ZIP

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 2:35:40 AM

Well, your United Empire is bugged.

Reason is pretty simple:

You did this:

ModuleCategory="LongRange" Weight="0.325"/>

Correct would've been this:

Your Craver-File does not appear to have this bug.

I'm gonna fix it...

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 2:40:52 AM

Here's the version with the fixed UE-ships.
AISHIPS.ZIP

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 4:06:13 AM

Okay, I definitely need to make changes to the targetting. Having a 6 vs. 7 battle of my glass-cannons vs. the AI's glass cannons and them using focus-fire is kinda stupid.

Not sure if it'll work but my plan now for this is that:

The idea is: If the opponent has more weapons than defenses use Spread-Fire, if he has more defenses than weapons use focus-fire and if it's roughly balanced use Guillotine.

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 9:30:43 AM

Oops.

Thanks for catching that.

Invasion ships are pretty easy.

1 all siege design.
1 max elite troops + siege design
1 max bombers type 3 + siege design

Nothing else worth having on them. Bombs may be the exception, but I don't know enough about AI bomb use to trust them (even if they can use them).

re: targeting

You know where I stand on the issue.

I'd like to propose a challenge, if you would be interested. See how far you can make it just using spread fire. And which battles that not using it make a difference. (make the AI do it too).

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 11:25:38 AM

Spread fire works very well against the AI because you'll rarely see them use any Dread-Only-Fleets. If my change works as it should, than it should use Spread-Fire almost exclusively in most circumstances but not all. That's what I gotta test. Slept till now but now will continue testing by repeating the same fight where the Sheredyn stupidly didn't use spread-fire with the changes that should cause them to indeed do it.

As for the invasion-ships: No doubt that that design is good. I'm more concerned that the AI will build too few invasion ships, if there's only 3 designs to choose from. That's what I gotta test. If it works, then I don't see why I wouldn't copy&paste your changes over to all AIs.

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 11:43:04 AM

Too bad. My change doesn't work as expected.

Apparently it doesn't check the tonnage/mp but just the existance of weapons/defenses. It played Guillotine because I had something of everything. So it killed 4 ships instead of 6 as it should.

Guillotine would've been okay with beams/Kinetics in this case. But they had missiles.

I will ad a fat positive modifier for missiles on spread fire and a negative one on the others. For missiles you really will almost never want to use something else because the lack of mid-round-retargetting.

Edit: something is weird. I'm pretty sure they should be using Spread-Fire by now but it's always that 2 more ships survive than they should.

I will now force spread-fire to see if it doesn't have to do with some kind of dodging-mechanic (2 of their ships seem to have missile level 2, but apparently less missiles, so probably those are missing). If that turns out to be the case, then that sheds a light on missiles that make them extra-bad in comparison to other stuff!

Edit 2: Assumption turned out to be correct:

They actually used spread-fire all the time but apparently 2 of the ships just miss due to the dodge-mechanics. So it's more of a balancing-issue than an AI-issue.

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 1:16:12 PM

I think you've been right about the tonnage module all the time. For a medium design it increases production-cost from ~400 to ~700. 25% more CP-efficiency certainly doesn't justify a 75% higher price.

It maybe becomes worthwhile at weapon-tier 3 and thus a general increase in cost or with a lot of Hexaferrum available due to the price-reduction... oh, wow, I already have 3 of them and it's still so expensive!

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 2, 2014, 9:01:51 PM

Using a generic template for all the races would be fine. But you know how I can't resist over complicating things.

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 4, 2014, 6:04:33 PM

Ail wrote:

Edit 2: Assumption turned out to be correct:

They actually used spread-fire all the time but apparently 2 of the ships just miss due to the dodge-mechanics. So it's more of a balancing-issue than an AI-issue.

Did they miss or did they get intercepted by the flakk modules?

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP

10 years ago

Jan 6, 2014, 3:21:03 PM

I am not sure what actually happened game-mechanics-wise.

All I can say is:

It was 6 AI-Ships who all had LR-Missiles as their loadout. 2 of them obviously used the Tier 2 missiles as they roughly had twice the MP in missiles.

I had 7 ships with 1 anti-missile-module each.

All AI ships did only 1 shot at the beginning of the long-range-phase.

My expectancy:

I kill all 6 ships of them and they kill 6/7 of my ships.

Result:

They killed 4 of my 7 ships.

My first thought was: They used Guillotine instead of Spread-Fire.

But I ruled that one out by making sure they use Spread-fire. Also in that case the expectancy would be 3/7 ships killed, not 4.

So second thought was: The Tier-2 missiles must've missed, probably because they are fewer in number and due to the weird dodging-formula.

But as I said: I don't know enough about the mechanics to be sure what happened here.

thuvian

Newcomer

thuvian

Newcomer

10 years ago

Jan 6, 2014, 4:49:53 PM

Were your ships that survived damaged at all?

Any idea what range type the missile modules were?

So, riddle me this.

If the formula for Flak Interception is:

#Flak Interception >= Missile Evasion * (1+ Turn before Reach) * Random]0;1

Then, you might calculate the expected defense success against a set of missiles.

Assuming level 1 flak modules we have InterceptionAccuracy="10".

Assuming level 1 missile modules we have InterceptionEvasion="28" (LRM), 21 (MRM), or 14 (SRM).

(Note: because all missiles were reduced to a salvo rate of 1, this means that SRMs are even worse than we had previously thought. They are twice as likely to die to flak modules as LRMs of the same rank).

Now, I'm not sure how many attempts each flak module gets, I'm guessing 4? Given our formula, I'm further guessing the value in the brackets would then be 4, 3, 2, & 1.

Plugging these into our formula:

10 = 28 * ([4,3,2,1])*Random[0,1]

10/[4,3,2,1] = 28 * Random[0,1]

[2.53.3510] = 28*Random[0,1]

[2.53.3510]/28 = Random[0,1]

[0.089285710.119047620.178571430.35714286] = Random[0,1]

So, how many numbers between 0 & 1 are less than or equal to 0.0892857? 0.0892857.

So to get the average number of missiles blocked in this situation, we just add up the numbers, which gives us 0.744 missiles intercepted per flak module. So a fleet of 7 ships with 7 level 1 flak modules, should, on average intercept 5.208 missiles (assuming 4 rounds of fire). However, if you are lucky, it could destroy 28 missiles.

Ail

VIP

Ail

VIP