The new AI tactics

wow, I'm impressed

from Sins Forums
I was playing hard mode yesterday (still too easy, btw. it cannot be this easy in the final release) but I was impressed by how vigorously the AI attacked one of my planets. I was attacked by "yellow", initially they brought a tiny force of a few cobalts (this is before I capped the planet), but after I wiped him out the first time he followed up with about 4-5 waves of units after that. the first 2-3 waves were ever increasing numbers of cobalts (one time with his flagship mixed in, dominated that) the following wave was a massive assault with many cobalts and a strong light carrier backup, the bomber and fighter swarms were such a huge difficulty that, although I was able to wipe out all of his cobalts and some of his carriers, he was able to take out quite a few of my cobalts himself, did quite a number on my kol (I had to flee into his territory to let it escape) (I didnt realize it was in danger because they focus fired it. there needs to be some sort of warning when one of your cap ships is taking excessive damage, IMO) remnants of a bomber squad even killed my sova after he left, it was a rather devastating blow.

of course, almost all of this damage was caused largely by the fact that I didnt have the proper anti-air countermeasures in place at the time. needless to say I stocked up quickly on my anti-air.

anyway the final wave was the most impressive in size, although it failed rather miserably in effect. this time he brought carriers and cobalts in huge numbers (larger than last time) and also brought siege frigs. I was able to deal easily with this assault even w/out my cap ships, but it was a rather impressive tactic that he tried.

the numbers for each encounter number generally as thus:

battle 1:
me:
~7 cobalts
1 kol, level 4
enemy:
~7 cobalts

battle 2:
me:
~5 cobalts
1 kol, level 5
enemy:
~13 cobalts

battle 3:
me:
~5 cobalts
1 kol, level 6
enemy:
~22 cobalts

battle 4:
me:
~10 cobalts
1 kol, level 7
1 sova, level 1
enemy:
~30 cobalts
~15 carriers (roughly split 1/2 fighters/bombers)

battle 5:
me:
~20 cobalts
~7 anti-fighter
enemy:
~5 siege frigs
~30 cobalts
~20 carriers


this was all well within the first 40 minutes of the game.
oh, and did I note that the AI got much better at focus fire? the only real reason I was able to take them down easily was that I had far better technology and I did the focus fire chain tactic, which still aces the AI.

repelling the enemy was still by no means hard or taxing on my economy, but it wasnt something I could simply ignore like the pre-patch.
4,630 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Hey, nice work. It hasn't come before, but its really handy to read battle reports with this level of detail. It helps a lot with seeing where the AI has to improve. Thanks, Schem.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
There's a problem with having anti-air in space. Isn't space the ultimate anti-air weapon? Seriously. Who would you bet money on to win in a fight? Air or space?
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
hehe, I think he means anti-strikecraft
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
yea i think they need to improve thier fleet balancing, not soooo many carriers. more siege frigs more caps and they need more aa. They could do with less spending on bounty and more on reaserch cos i mow emm down cos they dont spend money on resaerch like i do.
anti-starcraft would be better
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I think the AI should start building cap ships at 1st opportunity. It relies to heavily on carriers, and strike craft right now. If it came in a mixed fleet of various Cap ships, and Frigs that stick together as a group then i think the AI would be much more of a challenge. It is an improvement over pre-patch, but like schem said it is still kind of a pushover.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
yes i agree they also need to cut down on the bounty spending and spend more on reaserch.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
A nice report to be sure. I need to do a few of these one day - soon...
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I only played for just over an hour (I'm waiting on those last parts to get here...) but nonetheless the dramatic change in strategy was impressive. I look forward to other similar encounters of the AI kind in the future.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
What was you Ai combo ? how many easies, hards, or mediums did you have ?

Quite impressive indeed, the only time something like this happened to me was when i complacently raided a dead asteroid field, only to find no less than 20 carrier stations, ALL armed with bomber squadrons (2) that meant i fought 40 bomber squadrons.

hm.. ended up losing a Kol, and to colony-capital ships. made me really pissed off !
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
By carrier stations I'm assuming you mean the cruisers? You would need I think 80 tactical points for that and I don't think they increased that, only logistics points.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
hm.. ended up losing a Kol, and to colony-capital ships. made me really pissed off !


Holy crap! What level was your Kol?
Was the dead asteroid field a chokepoint to his empire?
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
that nearly happened to me lol but i also do that to the bad guys at my choke points lol.  i love bomber sworms they look nice ill make a fleet with nothing but aa carriers (cap ship) and carriers (cruisers) and ill add screen shots off emm in action to my screen shot post   
The only reason ai is easy even on hard is that they use 2 many of 1 kind of ship. For example they brung a fleet of 25 carriers (cruisers) and i have 5 aa the 5 aa whiped the floor with thier bombers and i moved the rest of my fleet in 2 finish the job (easy win) But if they maby had 5 carriers and an asortment of diffrent ships it would have been alot harder. (make aa ships not as good!)
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
My first game with the new patch, an AI player came into my star system with a large fleet (sorry don't recall the composition) I took one look and new I was in trouble But... instead of staying together it split into three or four groups and attacked different planets enabling me to defeat them.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I have found this combo unbeatable no matter what fleet they send of any configuration as long as I am there to controll it.

On Asteroids: 5 Hangars and 5 Turrets, 7 Bombers and 3 Fighters. Have your fighters, turrets and bombers on seperate keys. Focus fire the bombers and turrets and use the fighter to take out their bmbers and fighters. If you use them all to focus fire it is less effective.

On Planets same mix of fighters and bombers but a lot more turrents. I dont even have to controll these battles to win every time. I just go through them every hour or so and rebuild the few turrets they manage to kill. The first teck I research every time is the one that makes my turrets fire faster.

I do this at the choke points initialy but I eventualy do it to every planet and asteroid I own. It is best if you station your bombers and fighters right where the enemy usualy comes out at.

You dont even need to station any ships in any of your assets and can keep them all in one big fleet to hammer through the other guys choke points.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I play on medium usually, and one thing i noticed is that they use about twice as many light frigates as carriers.
I mostly agree that they don't focus enough on research and capital ships.

I actually think that there should be some more research involved before you can get capital ships though, and possibly additional research for other types of them?
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
The AI does seem to focus too much on certain ships though. More than once I've thought I was about to have a serious fight on my hands, only to watch the AI charge its 30+ cobalts straight through the middle of my fleet just to take out a handful of siege frigates before running away, taking horrendous casualties the entire time. There's nothing wrong with attacking key ships, but if its going to do that the AI needs to split its ships so I don't just get a ton of free shots. If 20 of those frigs had engaged while the other ten slipped past my line to hit the siege frigates the fight would have gone much better for them.

The AI also seems to get confused sometimes, leaving large formations of ships just sitting around. I get the feeling this happens when the ship group is unable to accomplish its objective, such as when those siege frigates manage to get out of range.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
My fleet was chasing down an AI capitol ship, went through three planets then got to my home planet. With me hot on his tail the ship stops to fire at an extractor and my fleet destroyed it.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
I've seen this massing light carriers strategy, too. Only, in my game yellow likes to send fleets of about half light carriers and half LRMs. The ultimate static defense killer fleet. Oddly enough, yellow is the only AI I've seen using this fleet composition.

In the same game, in the beginning, I was in a system with only one other AI, blue. We allied, and had a very long and prosperous friendship. I had found the jump drive relic, so I was off conquering other systems very early in the game. After several hours of gameplay, blue and I were still allied, and blue hadn't left the system yet. At some point, pirates attacked my homeworld. As his fleet was only one jump away, he came to help, and together, we repelled the threat. I'm not sure if an AI can get lazy, but it seems that way, as he just left his fleet there. A while later, he decides to end our alliance, with his fleet still in orbit around my capital. Good move, you might think, except that instead of attacking, he then retreated. Two jumps away, I caught him with a newly built phase inhibitor and destroyed half of his fleet with his flagship. This loss could have been averted if he had retreated his forces before breaking our alliance.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Human players are far more skilled at taking out Capital Ships than the AI. So I am actually rather pleased the AI concentrates most of its fleet construction on Frigates and Cruisers. If they were Capital Ship happy like human players, they would be at an even greater disadvantage then they are now.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I do agree with one thing, the AI should have a much greater value attached to capital ships. I played on huge game about 10 stars and 30 planets per star and the AI kept a pathetic 3 battleships through almost the entire game, and a few races didnt even bother building new ones so endgame they had not capital ships. I had about 7 in my main attack fleet(took 3 star systems on its own). And as schem mentioned all they sent at me were cruisers and cobalts, sometimes with a few javelins and maybe a kodiak or three. I relied(and still do) on kodiaks, gardas, and Kols with a few Dunovs and an Akkan, so it was easy to take them out.

One planetary deffense they did though was particularly annoying, the last race built two kols and quickly leveled them at a few skrimshes with my defending forces while I was taking their system. They would keep one fighting while another flew to the next system, distracting my forces and eventually forcing me to bring a section of my main fleet back homeward.

I didnt see the first beta, and even the fact that the AI was smart enough to do strategical and tactical manuevers was impressive.