Ministers

I've always wondered about this one. I never get around to finishing a game since I wind up micromanaging my ballooning empire to boredom. If I could somehow automate things more, I would. The only difficulty, is that ministers tend to be a bit unpredictable since I am unfamiliar with their habits.

If someone could come up with a good ministers solution, that'd be awesome. Like, is it possible to create a group of ministers that follow your style of game play?

Somehow automating game setup and rushes would be a good example. A design and research minister that actually remembers your previously used and popular techs and designs would be awesome.

A colonization minister that actually scouts out systems to the limit of a scout colony, and then sends cheaper colony ships to fill in planets from most habitable/valuable/largest to least, would be awesome.

Also a population transport minister that actually was smart enough to un-dome planets would be nice.

Finally also a Border Defense minister would be great at being responsible for a fleet of spacecraft responsible for maintaining the security of the borders of the empire with sats, mines, and even constructing a base here or there at a few choke points.

Just these types of ministers would probably free up about 30% of my gameplay.

If a fleets minister could be programmed to be responsible for building fleets to spec and having them mass at their home bases, and then notify you of their readiness-to-spec, I'd be in shock.

Also a resupply minister would be awesome at controlling resupply spacecraft, perhaps utilizing such techniques as creating supply satellite locations just beyond the reach of your territorial supply depots.

A scout minister would be great at being able to scout out the systems beyond your empire while also being responsible for evasive maneuvers and responding to threats.

If anyone has suggestions, I'm willing to listen.

If only I could develop a Minister AI that would learn my habits and employ them in the next game...

Actually your right about looking into the AI script files for what the ministers would do. You may have to bounce back and forth to 2 or 3 data files but you'll at least see the decision loops the AI uses in making its decision. You'll also see the factors/values it uses to compare and what it compares to make the decisions.

It was really enlightening to see how the computer script was making decisions, wasn't anything I would have thought to compare things to.

The csf files are the compiled AI/minister files, you can't open them. In the case of the Balance Mod, Kwok publishes the original AI scripts for reference as a separate download on his website.

Regarding successful usage of ministers, here are some of the things I have got to work in a useful way. These are based on the Balance Mod, I know Captain Kwok has put a lot of work into the AI scripting so some of these things may likely not apply to stock.

Ships - Colony Ships: Design a colony ship (it must have a colony component and must have one of the three Colony ship design types) then when one has been built, enable the "Minister Control" mode for the ship by selecting it and hitting Ctrl-T. You will observe a white face status icon appear for the ship, indicating it has been automated. Its orders will remain empty until the turn is ended. After that time, the colony ship will look for population to collect should it not have some, then for a planet to colonise. I haven't used it in 1.11 yet, but in previous versions of the Balance Mod it would prioritise closer planets rather than distant, higher value planets. It's useful for mass producing Colony Ships and filling in all the colonisable planet "gaps" in your territory. I've seen a couple of occasions where they arrive and fail because a treaty prohibits colonisation, but they tend to try somewhere else afterwards.

Ships - Survey Ships: Design a ship with scanners, give it a design type of Scout Ship. Once built and set to minister control, they will explore for you by warping to new systems and surveying them. This also works reliably, although they tend to hunt down every single hex in a system before moving on so don't always explore the most distant areas as fast as a human would. Still useful.

Colonies - Population: If this is enabled, then colonies will use the "Scrap Cargo" order to get rid of population when two populations exist on a planet and one requires removing to get the planet undomed. This helps the AI undome its colonies a great deal, and by enabling this option the player can take advantage in the same way. Should you get access to a second population that breathes a different atmosphere to your own (conquering/migration treaties) they will automatically migrate to places with the right atmosphere, then this minister will trigger and the planet will undome. All without your attention (although the pop removal appears in the log so you know it has happened) so it's very useful!

Several more ministers work too, I'll maybe post some more when I have time.

Ministers only know what to do with a ship by it's design type. So it won't use a Colony Ship to explore or a Mine Layer to transport population, even though a human player might do this.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Once you understand the scripting language, you can create your own ministers. This is how all the ministers I've added that deal with units came about, as I got tired of trying to micromanage a bajillion units on my planets.

If you add new typs of ministers, just keep in mind that the AI will use them too. So, try to design them to function with no input from the player, if at all possible.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

If you create new ministers and use them for your empire, is it possible to use them in a player v player game - or does the host of the game need to have the minister files in order to make them available to the player, and if so, are you saying that your classified, and highly-tested personal ministers would then be available for your human opponents to use too?

I think it would be cool if the game would allow you to modify minister rules in-game, and customize and save them for the player to use. Even the option to import ministers from other players would be an interesting option; and if there was a way the AI could be design so as to customize their ministers in accordance with changing game tactics... you just might have AI ministers that actually learn and try new solutions, and adapt!

Obsolete designs are deleted when there are no more designs of that type in existence. You can delete design types yourself because the game engine needs to reference them for a myriad of reasons.

Not sure how an obsoleted design gets added to the queue. I know that in my own scripts there is a specific condition to not add any obsolete items to the queue.

Like I said before, the Minister only knows what a ship is by it's design type (to be more specific, by it's internal ai design type). There's no scripts yet that analyze the components on the ship to see what it might else be suited for.

You can save your designs with your empire file.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

greywolf - for clarity on how to enable a minister, with your specific example of a colony ship:

1) Design a ship with a colony component on board.

2) Make sure in the design screen it has a Design Type of Colony(Rock) or whatever type is colony that is correct.

3) Build one or more of them.

4) In the Empire Options screen, go to Minister Settings page and enable "Ships - Colony Ships".

5) Go back to the main Sytem Display and select a colony ship by clicking in its hex. If it's the only item in that sector then you will see its details in the bottom panel, otherwise locate the colony ship in item list at the bottom and right click it to see its details.

6) Once just a single ship is selected like that, hitting Ctrl-T will tell that specific ship to be under minister control. This can be confirmed by the white face icon appearing against the details at the bottom of the screen, where the Status Icons are found (the tiny icons which represent things like Low on Supplies, Under Repair, Has Population in Cargo etc.)

With all that in place, the ship is under minister control and at the end of the turn should proceed with getting population and colonising.

In general (and not wanting to speak on behalf of C. Kwok) the ministers' primary function is to enable the AI to play the game. Some of the ministers can be useful to the player to automate some tasks (as above) but others individually might not do precisely what a human would expect. Also scripts are unlikely to rival the inventiveness and adaptiveness of a human player and relying on them too much takes fun out of the game!

Ministers are part of the AI files. As I understand things, everyone would have to be running the same mod, or there would be version conflicts.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

Oh, man...I had forgotten about the colony ministers in PI2...I wonder if something similar can be done in SE5? That will require a lot of thinking...

Yeah, if you don't have the time to invest in learning the scripting, and sloging through it, then you should definatly use mods and not bother with tweaking it yourself.

I know Kwok's AI is very good, and I know mine is getting better (still not as good or as all-encompassing as Kwok's, but I'm getting there). I'm sure there are other very good AIs (it would be hard for them to be worse than the stock game) around here in mods. Shop around.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

I only came to use the minsters recently. Reading through the AI Scripts that Kwok posts on his web site was extremely enlightening, particularly around ship and fleet orders. Seeing the script language has really fired my imagination, I'm quite tempted to learn the ropes and see what can be done...