Problem with AI and Super Weapons.

Aside from going into the guts of the game and pulling them out, no. It would be nice if the devs put in a "no superweapon" button for the game options. For now just put up a starbase at the planet that is always being hit and put in the Auxiliary Government ability. You will lose health and population but not the planet and you can still keep building.

eye roll.

The number of these threads is pathetic.

Making a no-superweapons mod is one of the easist things to do.

what difficulty did you set the AI at? hard and above get income handicap.  super high level ai's get a research speed bonus.  And, last time i checked, the ai is the same across ALL DIFFICULTY LEVELS. 

Now, the reason why the ai is only attacking one of your planets (multistar... lulz), is because he only scouted one of your planets.  the superweapons firing before he found you? unlikely... he could have fired at the pirate base, or, had expored your planet without you noticing... ai tend to get long range jumps fast.

Solution: play against humans.

(1) play in single-star maps until you're halfway decent at fleet-to-fleet combat

(2) come onto ICO where you can meet and play with hundreds of other newbies

"Making a no-superweapons mod is one of the easist things to do." - Building a house is one of the easiest things to do.... can you do it? properly? from blueprints?without help? *eyeroll*

"what difficulty did you set the AI at? hard and above get income handicap.  super high level ai's get a research speed bonus.  And, last time i checked, the ai is the same across ALL DIFFICULTY LEVELS. " - The third hardest. The AI might not be the same across all  difficulty levels, . but lets say they are.. THE AI DOES NOT WORK. The AI never attacks even after several hours, they just explore and thats it. If they do attack its a small token fleet. This is something recent since they made the AI changes. The old AI actually would attempt to slaughter you. The new AI is laughable.

"Now, the reason why the ai is only attacking one of your planets (multistar... lulz), is because he only scouted one of your planets.  the superweapons firing before he found you? unlikely... he could have fired at the pirate base, or, had expored your planet without you noticing... ai tend to get long range jumps fast." - Multistar is funny?I am guessing you consider it noobish. I consider one system against AI to be noobish. I play multiple stars, over 200 planets, multi AIs typically set on the hardest settings. Sometimes i give myself a dumb  teammate that is locked behind several pirate bases so i can get pacts. Killing AIs in the same system as me is to easy. Having to travel through two stars is much harder to get a "beachhead" and keep it long enough to get  ship factories built to replace my fleet. Sometimes when i want it insanely hard i will cheat and put multiple enemies in a star system from start that way by time i take out one fleet i have another to deal with. I also fill the  map with pirate bases and since i use the Maelstrom Mod the pirates are a bit more active and a bit more deadly than they normal.

Same system is to easy for me. I can just build super weapons  and lots of culture/ dreads/caps and just keep bombarding the AI planets until i destroy all their structures and then let my culture over take theres. Pretty much take over a system from home. Not really a challange. Super weapons to me are a cheat. Its like playing in god mode. Its no fun. The AI never made it as far as my star. I would know if it did trust me. The weapons hit before the AI made it to my star.

"Solution: play against humans." - If i wanted to play against players( i am assuming this is what you meant) i would play MMOs like Eve and Black Prophecy. I am tired of playing against players and taking a break from it. I get tired of the childish behavior and the shortcuts/shady borderline exploit tactics they use so they can yell up from their moms basement that they won. 

I will have a modder help me fix the super weapon problem, but the AI really sucks now.

"Aside from going into the guts of the game and pulling them out, no. It would be nice if the devs put in a "no superweapon" button for the game options. For now just put up a starbase at the planet that is always being hit and put in the Auxiliary Government ability. You will lose health and population but not the planet and you can still keep building." - The super weapons used against me destroy structures. The Advent super "injects" culture. The rest just destroy structures. 

They are useless because they just attack the same planet over and over no matter what is done with the planet. The planet could be empty and they will still attack it. And the superweapon use is excessive. From 4 enemy AIs i have a constant stream of super weapons shooting one planet one hits about every 1-2 minutes.

Your assuming i am a newbie. I have owned Sins since Entrenchment came out. I have put probably several hundred hours in playing it. Its not that i am "new".

My problems are these:

1) the super weapons act retarded now. And i consider them a cheat regardless of it i or an AI use them. They just bombard the same planet over and over. If i ignore the planet they have no affect besides being annoying which they are anyway just more than normal. Also i dont want the AI wasting tactical building stupid superweapons and they build a lot of them. I rather them build hangers and turrets and such so when i try to take over the planet it is actually challenging.

2) The AI is dumber. I am not complaining about it being to hard. I am complaining about it being to easy. The pirates with the Maelstrom Mod are more of a challenge than the normal AI. Before all these changes messed my game up i was already fighting 4-6 plus enemies teamed up against me plus loaded up with pirate bases. I was getting constant large fleets thrown at me... now i dont even need to build any defenses because the token fleet that occasionally shows up  can be taken care of with another token fleet.

If you're playing a multistar map you shouldn't be surprised that games take a really long time and that the AI takes a very long time to attack.

If you're looking for an actual challenge, seriously, consider playing against opponents who actually have a halfway decent sense of strategy - that is, against humans. The AI falls to the same stupid predictable strategies every time and never learns, even with ridiculous income/research advantages

This.

JA, if you ever actually played online, especially nowadays, you'd find that troublemakers on Sins are few and far between. Nearly everyone's nice enough as long as you have some idea of what you're doing and aren't completely clueless. Even then, there are quite a few new players online due to Steam.

Trash-talking etc is quite rare, as are exploits.

You mean, like the newer player coming online won't get trolled, flamed, labeled smurfs, or whatever else as they have been since these so-called pros arrived on the scene?

I want to believe you. I really do. But knowing the human race like I do, I can't. It only takes a few bad seeds... you know the rest...

Someone made a post the other day about helping the newer players instead of doing the above... was after that star guy trashed me for giving my opinion.

If you give your opinion without knowing how things actually are on ICO, I can't say I blame him much.

Seriously, it takes 20 seconds to log onto ICO. Idle in chat or in game chat lobbies if you want. You'll find that most players are nice enough. I, for one, very rarely encounter troublemakers.

Correct. There are TONS of genuine newbies on ICO now, and the regulars all completely understand this.

Do the DT guys understand this? They've got some bad attitudes...

Besides, I know if I go online, I'll wind up playing... which I don't want to do... that's the competitor I am. Then despite my hatred, I'll probably get hooked on it, then I'll realize I don't have as much time as I need to actively get on there, and then I'll cry...

There's one of my reasons for staying away.

Another reason is I play DS mod. I don't like vanilla anymore...

Yes.

....

.......

I been playing MMOs for 15 years all the way back to when they were text based. No matter how people talk up how great a community of players are there are always ones that have to act like idiots. I dont want to interact with people period while gaming for a while.

I always customize my games so that they provide more a challenge for me. I stack the odds heavily against me play on the hardest settings and use mods or mod the game myself to make it more to my liking. Sins is the only stardock game i have never modded and that is only because other people already made mods that i liked and i didnt have the time to learn to mod it.

I understand that the AI is predictable. It is a feature of AI. It does not learn. It does not know how to counter changes in the way the player plays. However i am not looking for a game of chess right now. More like a bloodbath. I limit myself from using certain strategies that a player could easily counter but an AI will ignore. It requires some self discipline something i find lacking among human players.

Someone also mentioned that in a large game you have to give the AI time to get around to attacking. This is untrue. I have been attacked in less than an hour on a  large map and in some scenarios, i actually have had to use pirate bases as roadblocks to slow down the AI  otherwise i get steamrolled to early because the AI can build a large fleet much faster than I can. My most recent map which is the cause of this post.  I am about 5 hours into. The AI players have been mostly exploring the map. As i said all they do is shoot superweapons at me, send scouts, and small token fleets consisting of 1 cap and handful of frigs/cruisers.

 In contrast this use to be large fleets that use over 1000 supply and one AI would attack a couple of times an hour at least WHILE exploring. It seems the super weapons became the default  method for the AI to wage war.

I am the 8est troll it seems.

Find this file: Gameplay.constants

and adjust these:

playerAISharedDef
  table-Aggressive
   BuildShip 10
   BuildModuleTactical 3
   BuildModuleCivilian 1
   BuildModuleResearch 1
   UpgradeResearch 2
   UpgradePlanetArtifactLevel 1
   UpgradePlanetPopulation 1
   UpgradePlanetInfastructure 1
   MaxBountyBidCount 5
   UpgradeStarBase 1
   BuildMines 0
  table-Defensive
   BuildShip 5
   BuildModuleTactical 6
   BuildModuleCivilian 1
   BuildModuleResearch 1
   UpgradeResearch 2
   UpgradePlanetArtifactLevel 1
   UpgradePlanetPopulation 1
   UpgradePlanetInfastructure 3
   MaxBountyBidCount 5
   UpgradeStarBase 3
   BuildMines 2
  table-Research
   BuildShip 5
   BuildModuleTactical 3
   BuildModuleCivilian 2
   BuildModuleResearch 2
   UpgradeResearch 5
   UpgradePlanetArtifactLevel 2
   UpgradePlanetPopulation 1
   UpgradePlanetInfastructure 2
   MaxBountyBidCount 10
   UpgradeStarBase 2
   BuildMines 1
  table-Economic
   BuildShip 5
   BuildModuleTactical 4
   BuildModuleCivilian 5
   BuildModuleResearch 1
   UpgradeResearch 2
   UpgradePlanetArtifactLevel 2
   UpgradePlanetPopulation 5
   UpgradePlanetInfastructure 2
   MaxBountyBidCount 15
   UpgradeStarBase 1
   BuildMines 1

and if you want a challenge?

switch that agressive ai to a 0 on the tatical buildings, bump up the ship buildng to 15 or so, and do a 1v1. small random. highest difficulty level.

see you survive that.

Most importantly:

"BuildModuleTactical"

PBhead giving out the secrets of his cannon fodder training?  ;D

If you REALLY want a challenge, try Distant Stars Mod.

I get attacked more than vanilla, and battles last in excess of 20 minutes, usually.

I modded out the superweapons, and for my CPUs sake, decreased the fleet supply, but its still tough.

My understanding of why Distant Stars is "difficult" is because it has massive amounts of technology...

Compare a cheating AI that gets most of the techs rather quickly vs. a human player without any bonuses...the greatest edge the AI can possible gain over you is +30% (whether it be weapons, shields, hull, etc.)...

Compare that to mods like Distant Stars...with so many levels of technology, the AI can easily gain an edge in excess of +100%...that is huge, and can make even the unfair AI difficult to deal with...

This is not a bad element...it simply is not an element that affects humans and the AI equally...

Yeah... I've been having trouble with the Cruel AIs on DS, but I manage. Eventually, I'll work my way up to Vicious.

Whats the numbers represent?IE:Are they how much priority is dedicated to each? A multiplier? etc?

So i went ahead and decided to try modding. I modded the orbital cannons to 140 tactical and made a few other small changes.Only about 2 hours in the game but the AI seems to of came back ....mostly. Seems they consider shooting super weapons at me as "attacking" and thus didnt pay much attention to me with fleets. I got it set on vicious now with 4 races against and a teammate who is busy blocked in with pirates.

They seem to actually be trying a little bit now. They even sent pirates after me twice and managed to time their attacks both with the pirates ( on a separate planet) and two AIs attacking me together on a different planet. I of course won... but it was nice to see them fighting again.

After this game i might try the above edit and some other changes. I think the last version i played was V1.19 and never updated it until i bought the game again recently. So i want to get a feel for the changes before i go making big edits. One thing i might consider doing is toning down the number of strike craft that is available to each race. Way to many fighters and bombers zooming around the screen for my liking so will probably do that and then buff the ships themselves.

anotherone773, something to consider as well is that just like in Entrenchment where the AI spread out their 'building' and thus didn't spam ships as much as they used too, the same thing happened in diplomacy to a smaller extent. Hard became the new normal, so on and so forth. I haven't had any issues with the AI not attacking in my games either. I would also highly suggest checking out the Distant Stars mod as it doesn't change the game play so much as it enhances it.

If you think multi-star (where all you really need to control is a single grav well, albeit a massive one) is harder than single-star (where you may need to focus on possibly five or six grav wells depending on the map layout and all with the enemy only a few jumps away) then try even just 2 or 3 vicious AIs on a medium single-star allied against you. If thats too easy, try 5 or 6 vicious AIs allied against you. Im sure that will be enough challenge for almost any player barring the best of the best.

With that many resources pouring in and that many fleets against you, you will get the bloodbath you want  

Indeed this is the case. And once you figure out how to get past the tech increase you pwn the AI like no tomorrow. They are still stupid in their research selection.

Something I've always thought would be interesting is to set a prototype tech to have like 5 levels, and just see what the AI does with it....