Romulan Ai issues

posted on August 30th, 2012, 8:09 am

Every time i play against the Romulan ai, they have norexans and warbirds way early in game and destroy everything ive got. Why is that? Will the AI be tweaked in upcoming releases because the Feds get destroyed by everyone, the Klingons always rush, and the romluans destroy everyone within 10 - 15 mins . I know it is all balanced for multiplayer but try and make the AI at least somewhat interesting to play against and not predictable, terrible, or WAY too good. However, I dont know how far you can go in this engine so if the AI is as good is it can get, I understand.

posted on August 30th, 2012, 12:24 pm

ai is far from perfect, as you have identified, the game is mainly for multiplayer. building an AI that doesn't have unfair advantages but isn't thick as shit is time consuming. the devs are spending their limited time on multiplayer.

a hint, the ai is still currently dumb, it can't handle turrets, spam turrets and the ai will fail. feds make this easy as the phaser turret is amazing.

welcome to the forum.

posted on August 30th, 2012, 4:12 pm

For playing against Feds, if you want to make it tough play against 3 Merciless AI. Pick your map wisely though (blue amber probably best and easiest bet). Or many maps can be challenging against 2 Merci Ai.

For Romulans, the key (or one point) is your expansions. Certain maps are probably more hopeless than others. But you want to be able to expand and get resources quickly. Don't waste time creating ships that are weak and will just be destroyed. Invest in a few good turrets, and start with solid medium ships. None of this sabre, bug and brel cr@p. Because you are right, all those norexans will just crush 8 sabres in no time. Instead of 1500 spend on worthless vessels, find a good place to take root, and plant a star base and hunker down for a fight. Best way to fight AI is with station and ship combo. Build yards close by to turret/SB formation, and slaughter hoards with combine fleet and turrets. Then counter attack retreat and repeat.

Klingons put up an early tantrum with many early units, but if you can survive the early aggression, it sort of mellows out, and once they reach vorcha they sort of go from 200% growth rate to 25%. Just survive, again turrets and solid vessels. Nothing weak. I did write a little blurb about shooting klingons down somewhere recently, maybe in strategy section under a help request for ai/new player.

posted on August 30th, 2012, 5:06 pm

I hesitate to answer as I'm so new here and still learning stuff, but you could try your own modifications to the AI/Buildlist/RTS_Config files? The AI cheats heavily, so you could change the mining/build/cost modifiers in the RTS_Config to 1.0 so they build/mine at the same rate you do? Doing so would probably bork the AI though unless you also alter the build lists properly to compensate?

I've learned a lot by asking lots of questions and plenty of experimenting with the game files. Just my 2 cents.

posted on August 30th, 2012, 6:51 pm

I hesitate to answer as I'm so new here and still learning stuff, but you could try your own modifications to the AI/Buildlist/RTS_Config files? The AI cheats heavily, so you could change the mining/build/cost modifiers in the RTS_Config to 1.0 so they build/mine at the same rate you do? Doing so would probably bork the AI though unless you also alter the build lists properly to compensate?

I've learned a lot by asking lots of questions and plenty of experimenting with the game files. Just my 2 cents.

hi, hate to rain on your parade, but if you take away the AI's cheats, it's really weak, and puts up very little challenge. making the ai better by just changing config numbers is going to be very difficult, and would require hours upon hours of testing.

the ai cheats especially on supply, the ai currently can't mine/buy supply, so it gets given loads for free.

posted on August 31st, 2012, 2:51 am

The Romulan Merciless AI does spam the warbirds, it's true. I can beat it consistently as Federation when I handicap its build rate to 1.15, but it takes some effort. Your primary goal is to be defensive while preserving the fleet as best you can in the build-up to crushing them.

Intrepids will soak a lot of damage for you with their ADAI as almost all of the Warbirds are medium range, and if you're fast enough you can get some of them off to repair. Expect to be constantly replenishing them though, and bear in mind the AI sometimes attacks targets outside of what you might expect its priority list to be.

Akiras are your bread-and-butter line-of-battle ships. Get their special and hit it on a ship you're about to retreat. Preserve them as much as possible as the AE effect they get at Officer ranks is devastating.

Bite the bullet and buy three Newtons, and upgrade them fully. It'll cost a King's ransom in resources, including pretty much an entire supply buy, but they'll help preserve your assets, which is essential.

Get Starfleet Command for Warp-ins, but recycle almost everything other than Ambassadors, Galaxies and Yoyodyne Nebulas. Centaurs, E1s, and Rhode Island Novas are either too fragile or too vulnerable to pulse fire, especially from Norexans, costing you vital supply. Rigel and San Francisco Nebulas have decent defensive density, but aren't really strong enough offensively. The Rigel's special is rubbish, too.

Try to capture a Romulan constructor as it means you'll be able to build mixed-tech Defiants. Defiants make taking on Tavaras a lot less painful. The AI builds the Tavara at rank 5 with all upgrades, so it's vital to disable them quickly. Use Critical Shot to take out their weapons (and cloak), fling some Remora shield-draining specials at them, then turn up the pressure. Be sure to hit it again with Critical Shot if the guns come back online, as otherwise their 1 second advanced cloak lets them slip away.

Serkas are a royal pain in the backside. They're fragile, but punch way above their weight. Keep your formations moving when they're on the field and their AE torpedoes will be much reduced in effectiveness.

When invading the Romulan home base, a priority target will be the cloak generator. Without it they can't cloak their stations. If you need to bash in a Romulan starbase before reaching the cloak generator, then remember that the Defiant's Critical Shot works on stations as well. And don't forget to hit Critical Shot on the cloak generator before attacking it.

posted on August 31st, 2012, 6:25 am

Thx for all the help guys. Ya ive played this game a lot i just havnt really been a participant in the forums until now. I already can play against most other factions cept the romulans, who destroy me instantly, and the dominion, which destroy me after a good while. I guess a solution for the romulans would to be put a starbase at my first expansion to play defensively. I just wish the feds had a stronger AI and the Ai tried other tactics per game than the same ones over and over, actually adapting them to their environment.

Also a side note, are they going to develop a better soundtrack for the game?. I just use my own, which has star trek music of my picking atm. Also whens the general time they might release the next version of FO but ik release dates for mods tend to be very fluid.

posted on August 31st, 2012, 4:22 pm

Yes, the longer a game goes against a dominion merciless ai the worse. You can let them get to large yard, but you must be prepared.

When dominion are still in small yard, their as easy to deal with as the federation. Ships are plentiful but fairly weak overall, and you just rank up.

When they hit large yard you have a small window before they start spamming everything.

Defensively you have some advantages and disadvantages. Their turret structures can actually be pretty strong, many star bases with perimeters and groups of 8-10 plus turrets depending how long they've been building.

I've noticed that often the outer most structures are often large or small yards rarely guarded. So those can often be taken out slowing down their ship production drastically. Or sometimes, they will have two star bases that you run into before you can get to any other stations, yards, mining research or otherwise. This is when you bring down a huge fleet wipe out the star bases, and generally you've left a huge gash you can tear into. So this is what you have going for you. Generally, they are spread out and often when you create a weakness, entire yards structures etc can be wiped out in one blow. Then you retreat, restructure your fleet and come back for the finishing touch.

Yeah, the best fed combo is phaser turrets with akiras in my view. 10 Akira, 10 long range e2s, 5 avalon, 5 sovereign, 5 phalanx, and however many defiants you can build. Will generally be the size of two fleets that utterly demolishes most AI's. And research those weapons/shields upgrades. Sensors I don't really care about.

To afford this, build a couple extra constructors, and have a mining station at every moon pair you can get to.

On an average map, spamming from one or two antares yards and at least three eraudi yards should be an objective. Omitting small maps where it just cannot be afforded.

posted on August 31st, 2012, 4:34 pm

[/quote]
hi, hate to rain on your parade, but if you take away the AI's cheats, it's really weak, and puts up very little challenge. making the ai better by just changing config numbers is going to be very difficult, and would require hours upon hours of testing.

the ai cheats especially on supply, the ai currently can't mine/buy supply, so it gets given loads for free.[/quote]

That's why I suggested experimenting. I'm not new to Fleet Ops but the way it's set up is very confusing for me to follow at times and I feared speaking to something I didn't know anything about and sounding like an idiot. One question regarding the AI, you know how you click to rank up your unit, does the AI get that rank up as well?

posted on August 31st, 2012, 4:36 pm

Also a side note, are they going to develop a better soundtrack for the game?. I just use my own, which has star trek music of my picking atm.

The team has an opening for a musician. Also, the developers have made a "media pack" available in the past, with music from several of the movies, but the current defensiveness that copyright holders have around such things I can imagine that any future distributions would have to be approached with care.

posted on August 31st, 2012, 4:58 pm

One question regarding the AI, you know how you click to rank up your unit, does the AI get that rank up as well?

Veteran rankup is just another replaceweapon weapon, which the AI seems to be able to use. I've seen them activate them before. They mostly just build ships as veterans, though.