Do Pirate raids ruin the AI or hamper them?

The AI handles pirates perfectly well, and continues to produce a sensible mix of fleets. I often use the pirates to try to occupy one strong AI while I tackle another one. It holds them back a bit in the early game, but later on they can shrug off pirates almost as well as humans can. Humans do a little better because they can use fixed defenses, which the AI is very sparing with.

As for the AI producing only siege ships... that simply doesn't happen. Never happened in my games at all. I suspect that if it does happen for some players the AI is reacting to a weakness in their defenses. I can imagine that the people who play 2 humans on a team vs 2 AI might have one player with no real fleet and that could probably tempt the AI into going for their planets with a siege force.

Have you ever seen this siege-only behaviour in your own game, Nameless?

not entirely true about the AI handling pirates well.
I have ruined the AI with pirate raids... got them to go to his homeworld, they took out EVERYTHING... i just came in, wiped the pirates, and bombeb the undefended planet.

The AI however does NOT produce seige fleets.. it produces 10% of its ships as seige, and then it makes two fleets.
1. A fleet of most of its combat ships
2. A fleet of ONLY seige frigates that bomb undefended planets and jump around all over the place... so either you are fighting his main fleet, or you are hunting the seigers...

It can however be dealt with easily..
place 3 turrets near each border planet, the seige frigates see them and run away (or charge and most of the die... and they are MUCH more expensive then the planet they destroyed...)

The AI is pretty good at last second outbidding on pirate raids, and if everyone has 0 bounty the pirates go for the human... so the AI is mostly safe from pirates unless your economy is much more powerful.. and the more you bid, the stronger the pirates become.

there have been games where ive been hit with a fleet of just sieges at first and times ive been hit with a mixed fleet.....and this is just early on when i havent really started my assault into their space. all games were with pirates and they attacked the ai and myself (me when i wanted to up my xp some >.<). i tend to notice i get the siege fleet though when the outlying planet doesnt have adequate defenses yet shortly after one of their scouts passes through the area. so it could be some type of circumstances that you are providing the ai to allow it to respond in such a way to your actions.

(and the ai is indeed a pain when it comes to keeping them outbit on bounty when you are trying to focus on a battle)

10%?

i saw lots of times the AI with around 50% of their fleet wasted in siege frigates.

Sure, yes. I agree that sometimes you can get the pirates to take out an AI that's in difficulties - but I don't see that as any different to when they take out a struggling human player. My point is that the AI does try to combat pirates and does use a combined arms fleet. I'd be happier if it also fortified key systems with guns and fighters like a good human player would. Even a handful of carefully placed guns near a pirate flightpath can turn the tide (once you know which of your worlds they find most attractive, sometimes you know that the pirates will pass another system you control first - and they are much more vulnerable in transit systems).

OK. Do you have replays? Can we find out whether some of the other players lacked a fleet, or whether the siege frigates were survivors of a large fleet that got routed? Those are both situations that could make it reasonable for the AI to have a large number of siege ships. I would be concerned if the AI overbuilt siege frigates, but the reason why would be important.

same problem with me

everytime i play with an AI he has a small fleet made up of 10 light frigates and 1 (sometimes 2) capitals, and 1 fleet made up entirely out of siege frigates (record so far is 35 in 1.5 2 hours)


i'm eager to find out why the AI makes this choice, since by then my fleet consist out of 25 light friagtes 25 lrms 5 or 10 antifighter and 1 or 2 capitals

more then enough to take down his siege friagtes, but the hit and run tactic is pretty annoying ....... i've been chasing him for over an hour last game, and in the end i killed 7 out of 10 siege friagtes (wich he just rebuilds)

I have a replay actually and the AI just focused on building seige ships with cap ships. Granted when I started pushing back his borders he started building just 1 heavy cruiser but after he was on the run he just built seige ships. BTW where's the replays and screenshots located?

I wonder if it's just up to randomness.

In the beginning of my games I have noticed a fleet with quite a few siege frigates. However, as the game goes on I start to find some pretty big fleets consisting of 3 to 4 caps and a ton of frigates/cruisers. I have seen the siege fleet you guys are talking about. But its just a beginning thing. But all my games are big 4 player or more maps so that might have something to do with it.

Tried out a new game with 3 Hard AIs but this time they are set to aggressive, Economic, and fortifying at Solar war systems map. Note we had pirates here.

Interestingly, for the first time I actually fended off an AI fleet consisting of 12 light frigates and a cap ship(Still early in the game). The other AI sent a seige fleet against me which I was able to beat back. Weird. Maybe it's better to set the AI down rather than randomising it.

I played a 2v2v2v2 game on hard. I was vasari and my computer ally was advent. So, as my species progressed across the galaxy, my ally started changing his fleet. (By this time I was using the dark armada fleet, so it gave me whatever random ships it wanted to, no siege ships - probably because i never bothered to research them). My ally must have picked up on my complete lack of siege ships because he had a TON of them. By a ton, I mean about 75% of his almost maxed out fleet capacity. I wish I had a replay to show you, it was truly hilarious. I would raze a fleet outside an enemy planet, and skip to the next while my ally came right behind me with countless siege frigates and wasted the planet. At the end of the game, the ally had actually managed to secure more planets than I had by doing this!

I've never fought against an AI enemy that had so many siege frigates, but it is a possibility that it was a component to his own ally. IE, like my ally complemented my weakness.

I did however fight against a TEC enemy in a 1v1 game that used nothing but carriers and repair ships with his cap ships. Utterly wasted me as I had no anti-air defense except hangers, which his fighters took down fairly quickly.