AI only builds small to medium size ships

posted on June 21st, 2013, 10:01 am

I usually have an instant game running with 7 AI opponents (all set to highest difficult, one of them in my team, the others in a second team) and it still seems way too easy. This is also because the AI is spamming me with small/medium ships only. Even if i set the resources to unlimited, i see a lot of delta flyers, BoP's and so on flying towards my base. Its very rare, that a galaxy class or similar is approaching. Can this be changed somehow? The map is full of small/medium ships and i am usually Borg. My cubes are set to assimilate everything in their way but i dont want an assimilated fleet of shuttles.

posted on June 21st, 2013, 2:14 pm

The AI doesn't care about ressource settings.

About AI strength: my personal experience (from hardest to easiest):
Romulan > Dominion >>> Borg > Klingon >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Federation
(yes, Federation AI is really that bad)

Try just Romulan and Dominion enemies, with normal or double ressources, on highest settings, it will be quite different. Rom and Dom both will come with large vessels btw.



Good luck!

posted on June 21st, 2013, 5:20 pm

Yeah you clearly have not played with Dominion opponents. They spam those V3 battle cruisers like no ones business. Ironically they seem to be the ONLY AI that is decent. All the other races for the most part just give up if you take out enough of their main base. The Dominion are the only ones I have seen that will rebuild their entire set up in another location. The Klingons are by far the wost, especially as allies. I have had matches with them where they wont' build anything but the small ships and the first large class ship with the special torpdeo attack.

I found the Romulans to be the most annoying race as they love to use those Serkas long range bombers which I have learned to HATE. But they have a tendency to park their fleet under cloak and sit there and do nothing far to often.

posted on June 21st, 2013, 8:21 pm

There are two possible causes for this:

- The ai will only progress this or that far into the techtree depending on their difficulty. Normal ai will try to kill you with bop's and shrikes while merciless will have no problem churning out dozens of battleships. unless...

- The ai doesn't have enough space to expand. From my understanding the ai works in a prescripted set of orders or "techlevels". The first set of instructions in a game might be to build two yards and a resource station. Only after this is done they will move on to the next set of instructions (research chassis 1/build 2 sabers and an extra scout/another mining station). If down the line the AI will not be able to meet the requirements for a stage for whatever reaon it will not progress any further and not build larger ships then it already does. It is noteworthy that ships that have been lost will be replaced, so those two sabers from the first batch will be rebuilt over and over again and eventually be joined by other ships later on.

correct me if I'm wrong. Also, AI is horrible. Join us in tunngle and/or ts for real multiplayer matches!

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 8:12 am

in fact, i have played against the dominion. at least one of my AI opponents is dominion and yes, they build battleship, but i dont like their ship design and i dont like to assimilate those. i never liked the dominion that much. i prefer to assimilate starfleet.

i will try today against 7 merciless dominion opponents.

would be good, if the fleetops team could do something about the AI.


edit: well, took me one hour or something:

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 10:12 am

i dont like their ship design and i dont like to assimilate those. i never liked the dominion that much. i prefer to assimilate starfleet.

i never knew the borg were so hung up on fashion.

"red hull with green glows? darling, the fashion police would beat us with their fabulous batons if we assimilated you."

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 10:39 am

i dont like their ship design and i dont like to assimilate those. i never liked the dominion that much. i prefer to assimilate starfleet.

i never knew the borg were so hung up on fashion.

"red hull with green glows? darling, the fashion police would beat us with their fabulous batons if we assimilated you."

LOL

"We add your distinctiveness to our own....provided it complies with this years fashion trend."

Back to the topic now...
Are you playing with the default settings? If you change the AI build cost and speed settings it'll get harder cause they will get through their progression faster and move up in tech quicker

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 1:43 pm

Did you play with unlimited ressources, or change other game settings, and which map?

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 2:54 pm

always Nirvana II, fashion police set to on, unlimited res. and most of the sliders to a bit harder

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 4:30 pm

Unlimited resources will also screw the AI up - they tend to not build properly when this setting is used .

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 4:31 pm

unlimited res.

afaik unlimited res confuses the ai. try increasing the difficulty of the ai if you want it to be harder, they don't actually do better strategy, they just get even cheaper ships when set harder. if you want unlimited res for yourself, consider using the in game map editor to give yourself a bunch of expensive ships to decom, or give yourself many extra moons at your base.

edit: ninjad by dom.

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 8:08 pm

There is a console command for giving yourself resources. Its "showmethemoney" without the quotes.

There is another one for leveling up your ships but I haven't used it in awhile so I forget what it is.


Regarding AI progress I noticed that AI won't build larger ships until a certian critical mass of small ships is on the field. Its weird to watch them but they will sit there with nothing but small ships but as soon as I clear the field for them and they get a few more ships milling about, all of a sudden they build three or more cap ships yards all at once and then start pumping out higher end ships. It would be nice if they had the resources and the necessary science/station prerequisite if they would do that right away.

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 9:27 pm

There is a console command for giving yourself resources. Its "showmethemoney" without the quotes.

There is another one for leveling up your ships but I haven't used it in awhile so I forget what it is.

levelup is the cheat to give all selected ships +1 rank. (doesn't promote to veteran, you still need to push the veteran button for that)

Regarding AI progress I noticed that AI won't build larger ships until a certian critical mass of small ships is on the field. Its weird to watch them but they will sit there with nothing but small ships but as soon as I clear the field for them and they get a few more ships milling about, all of a sudden they build three or more cap ships yards all at once and then start pumping out higher end ships. It would be nice if they had the resources and the necessary science/station prerequisite if they would do that right away.

the ai uses build lists, which as far as i understand are pretty rigid. ai isn't much of priority afaik.

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 9:38 pm

the ai uses build lists, which as far as i understand are pretty rigid. ai isn't much of priority afaik.

There is a section in the guide on modifying the AI build list, though it would take awhile to actually do it.

posted on June 22nd, 2013, 9:50 pm

There is a section in the guide on modifying the AI build list, though it would take awhile to actually do it.

i doubt simply changing the build lists would make an ai that is more fun to play against.

i guess you could skew the ai so that it wants to build big ships early on. and only needs a very small number of little ships before it's happy to go big. but that runs the risk of destroying the early game against the ai. you'd get your big ships, but you'd probably break the early game.