capital ships only

from Sins Forums

why is it that the AI doesn't like to build capitals ? I'm playing as TEC against Vasari..and I want to have a capital ship only game...so I took out the vasari frigates and cruisers (except scout and colony), I made the capitals half price (1500), I modified the capital ship slots research so that after research 1 the AI gets 10 capital ship slots...and still the AI builds only one capital ship..I destroy it and the AI builds another one..only one at a time..and that kinda just kills the game for me...Is there another way to make the ai build capitals?

modding
10,602 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

You could try reducing the price even further, the AI rarely saves up for expensive ships or research. Heck just to test it make them free and see if that works.

Was the AI building other things (structures) just fine though? If it wasn't doing much of anything you probably took out too many ships causing the AI to get "stuck".

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Welcome to AI modding hell ;)

I've found my Plague Race that has auto-leveling capital ships does a good job with spamming capitals.

However, the problem you "may" be running into is the AI is confused because it can't build frigates it expects to exist. Possibly some build order is causing an issue here.

 

Feel free to look over these recent conversations and post back if you make any progress.

[SotF] Improving the AI

How to make the AI "cheat fair", tips for balancing mods for the AI

 

 

Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

AI only builds one cap? The ones I play against build them in mass quantities. Another one of the those AI oddities I guess.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

be careful what you wish for

 

 

 

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

after about 15 minutes I had 5 capitals and 3 planets colonized and I wanted to see how the ai was doing so I surrendered just to see the whole map..and it was doing just fine..with one capital..it also had 3 planets colonized, and on each planet it had a lot of structures and turrets.so it wasn't stuck..maybe it just didn't feel the need for another ship..yet..also in my mod the capitals are much stronger starting from 7000 hull. I'll try to lower the price even further to about 500 just to see what the ai does

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I sort of cheat and lower the price significally: Example

basePrice
credits 0.000000
metal 0.000000
crystal 0.000000
slotCount 0.000000
BuildTime 1.000000

 

researchModifier
modifierType "CapitalShipMaxSlots"
baseValue 16.000000
perLevelValue 1.000000

I'm usually get swarmed by Cylon Basestars. But that's the only way I've been able to get the AI to actually build a large number of caps. But my computer usually slows down (lags).

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Aaaand bump

 

I've played with this a little too. I had the AI on aggressive unfair difficulty and it's capital ship production was keeping up. I didn't modify the ships at all. I just removed combat frigates and made every lever of capital ship capacity 3 time higher to a max of 46. I'm going to finish a whole game on a economic hard AI and see how that goes.

 

I'm thinking of making it a legit mod, I plan on giving capital ships their respective frigates abilities and trimming the research down later.

 

I'm playing on SoaSE: Trinity so maybe that's why it works for me.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting radu1, reply 6
after about 15 minutes I had 5 capitals and 3 planets colonized and I wanted to see how the ai was doing so I surrendered just to see the whole map..and it was doing just fine..with one capital..it also had 3 planets colonized, and on each planet it had a lot of structures and turrets.so it wasn't stuck..maybe it just didn't feel the need for another ship..yet..also in my mod the capitals are much stronger starting from 7000 hull. I'll try to lower the price even further to about 500 just to see what the ai does
End of radu1's quote

 

One thing I noticed is that the AI never builds any capital ship factories, aside from it's home planet. Also When I had the torpedo cruiser still in-game, the AI would build fleets of 100s of them, I had the supply set to zero. I set the cost and slot for Cap factories to 0 but it still refused to build any.

 

What I think we need to do is trick the AI into thinking that it's building frigates and not capital ships. I put the price of a Sova carrier down to zero, and made it's lasers instant kill, and the AI doesn't build them, no more than one or two.

Details of my mod: TEC only for now.

- No combat frigates except for Krosov. scout, siege, envoy, and colony frigates take zero slots and have no weapons.

- Gauss turrets damage 3 times higher, +2000 range, and 3 times more expensive. Hanger twice as expensive, carries 2 more strike craft.

- Capital ship capacity research yields 3x more slots per research level to a max of 46 (ideally the max you could build with Vasari fleet tech with 2300.) Fleet capacity left untouched.

- Capital ships left untouched. Star-bases removed. All unnecessary tech removed.