AI modding?
Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:23 am
Hello
I have been modding MOOII ever since OCL became available.
I have only played off line humans + AI multiplayer games and haven't experienced many notable bugs (we don't cheat) or notable lag with w95 version (other than the 255+ ship combat bug), so my experiences are in modding 1.31, but it shouldn't make much difference from what I understand.
The original 1.31 AI even as super races and at impossible difficulty level made the game practically unplayable, because of it's chronic weaknesses.
It wasn't impossible to take down 10 doomstars with 2 Titans. The AI didn't take advantage of cumulative bonuses in ship design, whether defensive or attack bonuses. It didn't specialize in anything. All the ships were a bit of everything, cumulating in nothing. In the end you put together damper field, heavy armor, reinforced hull, structural analyzer and Achilles Targeting Unit with Disrupter or Plasma Cannon and with one fleet you could move from a star to another easily adding a whole civilization to your empire.
It is possible (as you probably well know) to mod this away with OCL. Make tech advancement slower, early fuel cells with longer ranges (but not by much) and early ship building quicker, almost instant, so there will be more battles with early technologies.
Disable all automatic repair for everyone else but cybernetic races and specialized leaders. Make battle stations and star fortresses multiple times more formidable. The same for planetary missile bases (hexedit). Combined with no auto repair this makes it more difficult to make these quick raids, in which you can destroy the AI in a few turns.
Make missiles and torpedoes relatively much much stronger, because AI will use them anyway. So strong in fact, that you might even consider putting a jammer or a few defensive lasers on your ship.
Use the exclusion flags to restrict cumulative bonuses, and/or/alternatively make the space demands vastly different, to more accurately reflect the impact of the different techs.
Make the ship drives stronger. to the extent of 5x The easiest way to destroy AI ships was to overload their drives with the right tech combinations.
Add in-built bonuses to later beam technology, to compensate for AI's refusal to use ATU or SA.
Humans will still be stronger, but playing with impossible, the AI will cheat by adding weaponry over the space limits to further compensate the off balance in cumulativity.
Artificially fast building (at Impossible) will compensate for the fact that the AI don't take advantage of early colony bases, outpost ships etc.
Blitzing can be restricted by radically altering the tech pick points. And by removing the droids (our preference) or making it more costly to build them. (Again cumulative bonuses with initial race picks)
And you can add a bit of variability by removing some of the keytechs from the tech tree and giving them to leaders with telepathy bonuses (so making it more difficult to steal them).
You may also consider race specific tech trees and removing the Guardian and placing the techs in the tree or giving them to leaders.
I also like to place Loknar and the Antaran into the leader pool and making the leaders more significant, with survival pods as an early must-build.
OK, there are other nuances and variations, but that should be enough to make the AI an interesting addition to multiplayer games with 2-3 human players and not just a helpless bystander waiting to be slaughtered.
*******
Yet... although it has made the game playable (and it still is years later, once or twice a year an 8 player marathon) it's far from perfect.
The AI won't ever use Damper field, Achilles targeting Unit, Structural Analyzer, Reflection field, Rangemaster Unit, High Energy Focus, Time Warp facilitator etc. which takes away from the importance of technological advancement and reduces combat variability.
Generally AI would put a scout lab on it's ships before any beam bonuses. Even if you remove all the other techs and make laser bonuses to take 1 space, it's highly probable it won't use any of them. So for some bizarre reason this is in the game code I assume?
I don't know much about coding really, but you might think it's simple on/off flags, or numerical preferences (AI loves security stations) which for some bizarre reason have been turned off for later game techs and beam bonuses?
If someone could find these in the game code with a couple of basic changes playability could be improved significantly. The same applies to a few colony techs, but at impossible, it's not equally important.
I have not been able to find anything on the net, but does anyone know how to get the AI to take advantage of late game keytechs and beam bonuses?
I have been modding MOOII ever since OCL became available.
I have only played off line humans + AI multiplayer games and haven't experienced many notable bugs (we don't cheat) or notable lag with w95 version (other than the 255+ ship combat bug), so my experiences are in modding 1.31, but it shouldn't make much difference from what I understand.
The original 1.31 AI even as super races and at impossible difficulty level made the game practically unplayable, because of it's chronic weaknesses.
It wasn't impossible to take down 10 doomstars with 2 Titans. The AI didn't take advantage of cumulative bonuses in ship design, whether defensive or attack bonuses. It didn't specialize in anything. All the ships were a bit of everything, cumulating in nothing. In the end you put together damper field, heavy armor, reinforced hull, structural analyzer and Achilles Targeting Unit with Disrupter or Plasma Cannon and with one fleet you could move from a star to another easily adding a whole civilization to your empire.
It is possible (as you probably well know) to mod this away with OCL. Make tech advancement slower, early fuel cells with longer ranges (but not by much) and early ship building quicker, almost instant, so there will be more battles with early technologies.
Disable all automatic repair for everyone else but cybernetic races and specialized leaders. Make battle stations and star fortresses multiple times more formidable. The same for planetary missile bases (hexedit). Combined with no auto repair this makes it more difficult to make these quick raids, in which you can destroy the AI in a few turns.
Make missiles and torpedoes relatively much much stronger, because AI will use them anyway. So strong in fact, that you might even consider putting a jammer or a few defensive lasers on your ship.
Use the exclusion flags to restrict cumulative bonuses, and/or/alternatively make the space demands vastly different, to more accurately reflect the impact of the different techs.
Make the ship drives stronger. to the extent of 5x The easiest way to destroy AI ships was to overload their drives with the right tech combinations.
Add in-built bonuses to later beam technology, to compensate for AI's refusal to use ATU or SA.
Humans will still be stronger, but playing with impossible, the AI will cheat by adding weaponry over the space limits to further compensate the off balance in cumulativity.
Artificially fast building (at Impossible) will compensate for the fact that the AI don't take advantage of early colony bases, outpost ships etc.
Blitzing can be restricted by radically altering the tech pick points. And by removing the droids (our preference) or making it more costly to build them. (Again cumulative bonuses with initial race picks)
And you can add a bit of variability by removing some of the keytechs from the tech tree and giving them to leaders with telepathy bonuses (so making it more difficult to steal them).
You may also consider race specific tech trees and removing the Guardian and placing the techs in the tree or giving them to leaders.
I also like to place Loknar and the Antaran into the leader pool and making the leaders more significant, with survival pods as an early must-build.
OK, there are other nuances and variations, but that should be enough to make the AI an interesting addition to multiplayer games with 2-3 human players and not just a helpless bystander waiting to be slaughtered.
*******
Yet... although it has made the game playable (and it still is years later, once or twice a year an 8 player marathon) it's far from perfect.
The AI won't ever use Damper field, Achilles targeting Unit, Structural Analyzer, Reflection field, Rangemaster Unit, High Energy Focus, Time Warp facilitator etc. which takes away from the importance of technological advancement and reduces combat variability.
Generally AI would put a scout lab on it's ships before any beam bonuses. Even if you remove all the other techs and make laser bonuses to take 1 space, it's highly probable it won't use any of them. So for some bizarre reason this is in the game code I assume?
I don't know much about coding really, but you might think it's simple on/off flags, or numerical preferences (AI loves security stations) which for some bizarre reason have been turned off for later game techs and beam bonuses?
If someone could find these in the game code with a couple of basic changes playability could be improved significantly. The same applies to a few colony techs, but at impossible, it's not equally important.
I have not been able to find anything on the net, but does anyone know how to get the AI to take advantage of late game keytechs and beam bonuses?