IRM 0.99b is out.

Good to see another update

I see you added the small components. I know from my own experience that this change broke my 0.99a savegames (couldn't design new ships anymore, it claimed I used tech I shouldn't have). I could of course have messed up something else accidently, just wondering if you checked save game compatibility.

Aww and I was the closest to finishing a game ever, but it's too tempting to try out new versions =D.

How can you tell if you have the updated version? I did download it just a few minutes before making the post about compatibility.

Edit: just saw you posted while I was typing this. I'll redownload the mod.

Does the AI research colonising techs in this version? I noticed in my 99a game that for some reason the AI did not research those techs, compared to the .8 (forgoten which one in particular) which did. This ended up with me being #1 a lot faster than anticipated.

Glad to see the .9 series having the satellites not so close to the warp point.

Excellent, just a another question: With the better AI do warp points get satellites laid on them?

Greetings, Branimir.

I have tested one game, yes they lay satellites
on warp points fine.

Greetings, Branimir

I've been enjoying the new balance of seeker vs. direct fire and mounts in .99a, but it'll be good to see an AI better able to take advantage of all that - in my .99a game the AIs are still using unmounted DUCs on frigates against my heavy mount plasma shell cannons and fusion missiles on light cruisers.. they have the highest bonus possible and more total tech levels than I do, so it baffles me that I never see their technology put to use. Thanks for the update Fallen and bmaxa, here's hoping the new AI researches and puts its tech to use better.

Excellent turnover for new versions. Bad effect that I never get to see half the tech tree in any game I've yet played!

I always start at the bottom of the tree, because I love the researching through the levels feel. Eventually I WILL make an all tech game, but maybe after going through it one level at a time.

I will cherish the day savegames no longer need break.

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and will always long to return." ~Leonardo DaVinci

Haha WD, I know what you mean. I actually have my .99a game running and was just checking some websites in waiting for the 1 min turn progression.

I was wondering what's the purpose of getting organic ships?

The cost of organic colony ship is 210 minerals/225 organics/210 radioactive while regular colony ship is 225 mineral/52 organic/52 radioactive, its also like this for small freighter, I didn't check any other ships because I didn't research them yet.

Also, I used autocomplete for a medium troop, forgot whether it was organic or not, but somehow it got regular (ship armour) placed on it, like those 10kt armour, not small armour. It also got a medical bay placed on it, it was really weird.

However, those are all problems that I found in 0.99a so I'm not sure if you changed them.

EDIT: Also, what does warp points located anywhere in the system mean?

This used to trouble me too, I've played through the early techs far too many times, but I'd hate to play alltech and skip the research part of the game completely. Lately I've been starting games with "technology points for new players" to medium, that's a free 1,000,000 to spend in empire creation, basically jump starts your tech to what you'd have 30-50 turns into a game. Now hopefully the new .99b AI can figure out how to spend those points better, 5 turns into last game (.99a) my light cruisers were annihilating frigates loaded with boarding parties..

Ok I went back to my 0.99a game and tested out the troop autocompleting thing. I set the design type to "Troop" and I am using a Organic Medium Troop, it autocompletes with 3 regular ship armour (10kt version), 1 medical bay, 1 troop cockpit and 1 nuclear ground thruster. This only occurs for the organic medium troop though. I didn't put 0.99b onto this game or anything.

And I was designing some ships for 0.99b, it says that a "Requirement" for the ship is "At least one sensor must be placed" or something like that in the Selecting Ship Size screen, but when you go to the placing components on screen, you can successfully complete a design without sensor, it doesn't have that warning thing in the top right corner.

Corrected bug causing troop fleets not to attack planets
in shared systems. I hope Fallen will update files
later.

file at:
http://rapidshare.com/files/24722641/Script_AI_Orders_Ships.txt
just recompile scripts with this file and continue from
save game

Greetings, Branimir.

Another update. This time research script.
We optimized research loops,
but it produced uneven research.

Updated file at :
http://rapidshare.com/files/24744309/Script_AI_Research.txt

Greetings, Branimir.

How do I recompile?

You use the script compiler found in the Utilities\ScriptParser folder. Enjoy.

So the mod files do not contain the changes? We need to recompile the scrips?

Can't you just update the mod files and save us lacking tech skills the trouble and confusion?

Thanks,

Javaslinger

Alright, updated mod at:
http://rapidshare.com/files/24800126/Inter-Related_Conversion.zip

Fallen will update official link later.

Greetings, Branimir.

Supply generation is in my opinion wrong now.
Planets should be able to generate supply for at least
several frigates each turn and ones with sy or resupply
depot whole fleets in one turn.
It is not realistic that homeworld with resupply depot
needs 3 years (or 30 turns) to resupply fleet of 30 frigates.
As it is now this cripples ai too much.
Fallen has earlier increased supply usage of ships
rendering ai unable to survey or explore or even
transport population, but I have convinced him
too return back earlier usage. In order to pull out
limited supplies Ai must be able to build resupply network
and plan resupply points on route to target.
Until this is programmed, ai should have plenty of supplies.
I have found in facilities.txt in data folder
space yard and resupply depot,
values for resource generation should be much higher,
but can't find where to set natural supply generation
of planets? or planets without sy or resupply depot
don;t generate supplies? they should naturally generate
sup. at least for two frigates per turn.

Greetings, Branimir.

Planets are unable to naturally generate supplies innately. Multiple Resupply Depots on one planet and scrapping Supply Ships was what I had in mind for a human to deal with the supplies issue, but as the AI cannot deal with that, I guess we'll have to settle for boosted resupply depots for now.

Supply Ship = ship/base with nothing but bare minimum vehicle controls + engines and the rest being filled up with Supply Storage. This builds a lot of supplies that are then scrapped immediately - doing so will keep the supplies that came with the ship.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

As I see it this low supply generation thing is completely
unrealistical. Planets are able to build fully
supplied fleets, but 4 billion people planet can't
resupply single frigate in one month
Generating supplies by scrapping ships? That is not realistic, too. I think that there are rather more
important things to do with ai,then to cripple it with
limited supply system forcing it to waste space on planets
with supply depots and to build useless ships, which
will be scrapped for supplies, as somehow they are
magically fully supplied when built.
That's my opinion.

Greetings, Branimir.

Mmm very well, given that Supply/Ordnance storage prices on ships were brought back to something reasonably costly, it's not a big issue that planets would have a vast amount of supplies at hand. Still... don't forget the other side of the Realistic picture: a newly built colony should not be able to fully supply entire fleets by itself almost as soon as the resupply depot is built. A few frigates yes, but not 50 ships.

But yes, there are more important things to do with the AI than fiddle around with the logistics of supply generation. Resupply routes is one, as you pointed out.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Agreed. Supply generation should be tied to pop number
on planet not to some building.
This gave me idea to try something for next version.
Instead of using just supply depots, to program in
resource generation by planets.
How much supplies will be generated per
turn, should depend on planet population number.
In this way we could make supply depots generate some
low number of supplies, but large pop planets will
generate them in much bigger number. So supply depots
will be needed only on newly colonized planets as
low pop will generate almost non of supplies.
This will bring realistic supply generation system.

What do you think?

Greetings, Branimir.

I agree. Sounds like a swell idea. It possible, or no?

It is easy. There are sys functions that set supply and ordnance of any space objects (ships,planets, etc).
I have to add supp. generation minister, so human players can check in that feature and then code will be called
for them, too.

Greetings, Branimir.

Greatness to hear! Glad you make SEV much better game. Thanks you very much.

Hmm... that means the function of Resupply Depots would change to the transport of supplies (getting supplies to planets in same system) instead of the generation of supplies. That's fine too.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Hmm... Ok so I had an armed scout find some hostile territory (read: I decided to have no treaties at all this game) and it got into a couple of fights. I then parked this damaged, low-supply ship on top of an enemy planet to blockade them. A reasonable amount of time later, the enemy brought in a fleet to dislodge it.

So far, so good. Except... it was a troop fleet. Judging from their formation, the troop transport was the leader. This early-game troop transport then ran away and the other 3 perfectly-capable frigates with it also followed suit. This continued for a few turns. Then it sent a real Attack fleet to do the job and got it done immediately.

Hmm... a human would temporarily remove that troop transport from the fleet and then re-join it after the 3 frigates had gone to combat. A tactical human would break formation and tell that transport to sit still so it doesn't leave the sector. The AI is certainly looking good in that it knows it needs to kill my blockade, but it needs to avoid this "everybody retreat even though we can easily win" situation.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Which version do you play? Troop transports are escorts
in latest version, fleet shouldn't follow them?
Also, good treaties should be much more difficult to get
on first meeting.

Greetings, Branimir.

0.99b2 (well, 0.99b with your scripts compiled and cut/pasted along with the new component/facilities.txt files from b2 copied over)

Actually to my recollection, the game doesn't care whether the first ship is Core/Escort/Picket regardless of what the Formations.txt say. It just looks at the first ship and deems that as the leader. This is why I had to make a mirror image of my custom formation to factor in my lack of control over who the fleet leader is. In short: it's a core bug.

As for the treaties thing, it's just a personal handicap I'm applying to myself. I'm using a race that has -Population penalties that are slowing me down and declaring war on everyone at first sight. I'm still winning (same population, more resource generation, more research generation than AIs). This could be because of more efficient population management but I can't be sure. Starting positions I'm sure had an effect - some AIs started closer together and are squabbling whereas I'm in a peaceful corner, free to expand unhindered.

Actually, 2 of the 3 races I've met so far offered me migration treaties as soon as we came into contact with each other. The score-based Fear factor in action perhaps? My total score is more than double the best AI empire.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I think that this is the case when there aren't core
ships in task force. Fallen has put gunships
and missile ships in core, but it seems what happened
to you, is that no one of those were in core so game
picked up transport as leader and fleet
runned away. I've also noticed that fleets retreat
all the time if planet is defenseless (if there are
troop tr. they attack, but rest retreat) preventing ai blockades in such cases.
Since this is really difficult to test, it will
be very helpful if you could suggest fleet compositions
that work.

Edit: Confirmed that fleets that have *any* of unarmed
ships always retreat no matter if unarmed ships are
in core or escort position.
Exception is troop transport that attacks planets.
I'll have to put unarmed ships in separate fleets
and make them follow armed ones. This will complicate
things, but is workable.

Yes, we are working on more efficient facility management
of ai currently. In 0.99b2 it will do ok for average
player, but nowhere near good one like you
(I heard that about you from Fallen).

Edit: you are right, with lot's of ai's close to each
other, and you in peaceful corner they will be handicapped.
Try a game with medium size quadrant
and no more then 4-6 of them including neutrals.
Or large with 6-10 ai's.

Yes, that's that. I have set up for them to offer
migration treaties as well, so code for converting
domed into non domed should kick in.
But that should happen only if they are in good
relations between each other.
If they offer you treaties on first contact, that means
that you are really stronger then them. In that
case no point for ai's to be warmongers.

Greetings, Branimir.

Well, some tests I've made in 1.25 also showed that the task force order depended on what order the ships were built, and there was no way to change that order unless you manually changed the formation order in the .txt file. (I wonder if that works for multiplayer?)
Also, IIRC (but I might be wrong) there is always at least 1 core, 1 escort and 1 picket in the task force, regardless of roles assigned to your ships.

What would be an ideal game setup to exploit the strenghts of the AI in the current state of the mod? Specific "rules" for the player? (For instance don't be tempted to befriend everyone in the galaxy, or you're into a long and boring game.)

Task force order seems not influence what ships will do
regarding retreating.
Not completely sure but I set up 2 ships fleet, one
unarmed and one armed, and also added one unarmed
opponent to be sure. They always retreat.
Task force roles work ok (ships are in roles that are set
up no ghost pickets or escorts), but seems not influence whether ships will retreat.
One unarmed ship is enough for fleet to retreat.
Don;t know, perhaps this could be solved by placing
unarmed ships in different task force, but can't do
that with ai, since task force creation function
is broken currently.

Greetings, Branimir.

Sorry for making you repeating yourself. I didn't remember if it applied both to BM or also IRM...

NOTE: THIS WAS MADE USING AN UPDATED 0.99b GAME AT BELOW 100 TURNS AND WITH NO STARTING TECH.

As it stands now the AI does not seem to be able to design ships properly. I have a game giving the AI max bonuses and mid cost tech. Even though it had lvl frigate with 8 armour and lvl 7 DU weapons (compared to 4 of each on my part) I could still beat it with aabout 60% the amount of ships because my frigate size (tech lvl lvl 5) was larger and I placed a full amount of armour and shields, compared to their 50% amount. By the time I reached tech 9 on all and they had the same I could get a 20:60 ship attack and kill off 48 ships.

I think there is some code which stops the AI from checking the new sizes of ships and they end up just copying old designs (as it stated the size was 250kt on all models) whilst not using up the extra space for armour (as they had the same amount and type of equipment and had 6 armour whilst I could fit in 11 with an extra gun or 12 with just the three).

The AI also seems to ignore the prescence of other planets of mine in the same system and there is no attempt to invade those planets even though they are within their guarded areas.

Could a rioting planet have penalisd combat abilities (like population happiness giving certain percentage boosts or penalties to accuracy) to simulate how hard it would be to defend a rioting planet?

I still think that fighters are a bit too powerful without some more restrictions to stop a 50+ group from being parked at the end of a wormhole and wiping out ships (even though the most the AI has sent was 3 unit hunters so it may just be a question of time until it sends out a proper fleet).

A small bug report:
In my current game I have just encountered two alien empires, the Terrans and a neutral. In both cases first contact was a warp point battle. Both empires were quite displeased with this and immediately demanded a subjugation treaty, all treaty elements seem to be missing the name of my empire though, there's just a blank space. for example:

Share repair:
The shares repair with the Samod tribes.

From what I understand from other threads on the forum the treaty will not work as intended if I sign it.

Typo?
Race Loyalty Change Per Turn Mood Riot := -0.4
Race Loyalty Change Per Turn Mood Angry := 0.2
Race Loyalty Change Per Turn Mood Unhappy := -0.1
Race Loyalty Change Per Turn Mood Indifferent := 0.0
Race Loyalty Change Per Turn Mood Happy := 0.1
Race Loyalty Change Per Turn Mood Jubilant := 0.2

Ok, I have changed the Settings.txt accordingly.
(Default for IRM is:)
Minimum Computer Player Low Setting := 1
Maximum Computer Player Low Setting := 3
Minimum Computer Player Medium Setting := 3
Maximum Computer Player Medium Setting := 7
Minimum Computer Player High Setting := 6
Maximum Computer Player High Setting := 10
Minimum Neutral Player Low Setting := 1
Maximum Neutral Player Low Setting := 3
Minimum Neutral Player Medium Setting := 3
Maximum Neutral Player Medium Setting := 7
Minimum Neutral Player High Setting := 6
Maximum Neutral Player High Setting := 10

So it would now be something like (neutrals being 1/4):
Minimum Computer Player Low Setting := 2
Maximum Computer Player Low Setting := 3
Minimum Computer Player Medium Setting := 3
Maximum Computer Player Medium Setting := 4
Minimum Computer Player High Setting := 4
Maximum Computer Player High Setting := 7
Minimum Neutral Player Low Setting := 0
Maximum Neutral Player Low Setting := 1
Minimum Neutral Player Medium Setting := 1
Maximum Neutral Player Medium Setting := 2
Minimum Neutral Player High Setting := 2
Maximum Neutral Player High Setting := 3

It could be three reasons for that:
1.ai has enemies elsewhere so you are not on priority list
2. ai has problems supplying it's fleets
3. you are not using 0.99b2 (or updated ships orders script) which corrects troop fleet bug, that prevents them to attack planets in shared systems.

Greetings, Branimir.

Yes, that would be right for 0.99b2 and earlier versions.
But I'm playing quickstart with default settings,
and all ai's are better then me except neutral
ones;), but I had real bad luck in starting position.
Only thing that spoils game now is 1.33 bug with
retreating fleets (ones with unarmed support ships)
and perhaps ai supply problem.

Greetings, Branimir.

Ahh, then it would be that.

I really like how turn processing is like super fast now, keep up the great work guys!

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.