Two Questions

Honestly, if you want a faster AI, you will have to sacrifice something, and the only something you can really sacrifice is the intelligence. The AI takes so long because that is how it thinks. Just like it sits and patiently waits for your turn, it too must sit and think. The problem with the current AI, is that unlike our minds, which can hold lots of useless information such as what we want to do next turn, the AI in game doesn't have alot of memory and much of it must be remade from scratch, that is what a majority of the processing is doing, is recreating where ships are, where planets are, what planets it wants to colonize, etc. its a pain but its the only way the AI can be smart.

As for Question #2, when you first open SE5 and that first screen shows up, hit options instead of play game, and look at the monitor, make sure it says "Primary Display" or something like that.

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

I think you can just drag the SE V screen manually to fit your screen.

Janster

At the moment the AI needs a lot of work. If you look back at the previous patches there are a number of AI issues where the AI gets stuck in (almost) infinite loops. I suspect that there are still a number of issues that haven't been sorted you.

Once all the AI bugs have been sorted it should run a lot faster.

Dragagon, that's a nice answer for AI. I think an AI built for a single game/task can be as good a human at that particular task. You could tackle that by having tiers of AI, the lowest tier would control the mundane stuff like factory building based on simple wieghted system (i.e not enough minerals -> build more miners)
Then you would have a 2nd tier which would control individual systems such as defence and colonisation. This would be slightly more clever as it would identify free colonizable planets and send ships to 'secure' them before colonisation and would block/satellite or mine warp points.
Then you would have the 3rd and final tier which would keep an eye on opposing ships and planets and act accordingly. This tier would also keep an eye on the empire production and allocate resources accordingly.

The tiers would then influence the lower tiers, so 3 would control 2 & 1, and 2 would control 1. That way if resources/ships needed to be allocated, tier 3 could pull them from other areas (but not the other way around).

And the way to make that work would be to allocate priorites to tasks and statuses to planets/systems. So internal systems that are heavily defended could have a low status so there would be few ships in those systems. The border systems would have a high status so most of the ships would focus there.
And task priorities would be low for system patrol in low status systems and high for warp point defence/offence in high status systems.

Those sorts of ideas are of course a nice thought but one could spend years trying to create an AI like that and even more years perfecting it.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I totally agree. I feel that same way about the tiered structure of the AI. And yeah, its gunna take alot of work. Which is why I've started understanding it now, rather than later. I'm taking various notes of the AI for now because there isn't much documentation in the stock AI. I've run entire turns with debug files turned on, just so i can understand how its doing things.

I'll give an example: I was in IRC within the last couple days and Fyron/Phoenix-D were trying to figure out how the events worked and why they weren't getting anything. Turns out that many events will not notify anyone unless someone is in the system the event occured in. secondly, events won't happen in the homeworld system or to a homeworld planet. It doesn't say that anywhere unless you run the turn and read the code and figure out that the calls explicitly restrict it.

Thats why I've been taking notes and emailing Aaron when I see some function gone afoul from what it looks like its supposed to be doing.

I guess I'll get around to posting my AI mod as soon as it does enough of anything to be called an AI and we'll see how much faster or better the AI can become. Its almost like a challenge to me, but its fun.

Christian

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

IMO the AI should build as many mines as possible - the clever part is figuring out how to cope when there aren't enough locations worth mining.

That is now officially my new favourite qoute! It's just me written all over it. Lazy!

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

The whole reason i have it, is because it fits me well.

The thing I've been keeping an eye on with the AI is how it is building up its empire. One time I took control of an AI and noticed that while it was supposed to be a mining colony, it had a shipyard and the rest of its facilities were research facilities. The only thing I can figure is there is something up with what happens when it takes over a planet from another AI because it did have mixed population on the planet. If this is the case, the AI is going to get worse as the game progresses and takes over more planets, because it will make the type according to the ColonyTypes script, but it will not change the facilities on the planet, which can make for some poor choices in the future.

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

Dragagon,

Based on what I have seen of the AI thus far, I don't think it is currently capable of capturing a planet from anyone. I think the AI is much more likely to glass a planet and recolonize. I certainly have seen no evidence of the AI building, transporting, and landing troops in my games.

I think the reason the AI had multiple races on its planet is due to migration. It probably has a migration treaty with another AI. If the planet was breathable by the other AI's poeple, they would migrate to the planet (although the planet will stay domed until only breathers are present on the planet).

My guess as to why the AI had insufficient mines is because of the building percentages. The AI will build facilities according to the percentages specified in the AI files.

I think a major problem with the way the AI builds facilities is that it selects bad locations as mining planets. If the best resource on a planet is 30%, the AI will still use it as a mining colony if it decides it needs more mining colonies. Gotta find a way to fix this... don't use a planet as a mining colony unless it's at least 80% or better.

The goggles... they do nothing!

Granted It’s only from the demo But I have never seen an AI lunch a capture attempt on a planet. They will attack planets and happily parking lot bomb them and recolonise which is easier to do. I have also noticed they seem to be very good at avoiding planets with defences on them regardless of them having scanners

I've seen AI fleets with transports loaded with ground troops heading towards my planets, but I tend to intercept them. This was in Balance Mod though, not stock SE5.