ship designs in mid and late game

[vmxa1]

AoW2 is being called GOTY, by many. I have not quite had the full itch to keep playing and have stopped many times. Not sure why. I enjoyed the original one more, but this one is better in many ways. Better looking, harder to beat, but it has not hooked me so far.

[moomin]

AoW2: I think one reason it turns me off is that the new rules for retaliation (only once per turn) makes the überhero path impractical. So now you have to move around a lot of troops all the time.

[vmxa1]

Removing the Town Portal hurts, no more using a uberstack to defend every town and it takes longer to get around. By the time you can get teleporting in all your town you do not need it.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Aqa
Problem is that it's not the enough to anticipate most tactics, game designer should anticipate every tactic. As sooner or later, usually sooner, someone comes up with a tactic that can beat the AI every time. Good AI in games like MOO2 should be adaptive. How hard it is to make the game log what the player does("hmm, vmxa1 uses BS with disrupters and kills me, what if I make DS with disrupters and see what happens" or "hmm, this player likes to rush, maybe I should build up defences fast" or "hmm, this player techs up until it attacks and kills all, maybe I should attack first(with force)")? If you get what I mean. Like that super indestructible DS. What would you think if suddenly Psilons attacked you with it...

I think there's slight difference between 'Kasparov beating' chess and 'normal' games

BTW is AoW2 good?(off-topic, but...)

Yes, there is one slight difference; 'Kasparov beating' chess AIs are much easier to build. Chess is an inherently predictable game; there is no randomness, pieces are limited in both number and scope, and the laying field is a relatively small 8x8. All an AI really needs to do is crunch through all the possible move combinations and pick the correct one; the only real problem with this is having hardware fast enough and software streamlined enough to do it in the alotted time.

TBS games, on the other hand, is a different animal all together. Randomness plays a significant role, from the initial placement of the players to the results of combat; units change in number and scope all the time, and in some games the playing field itself can change over time. There is no way for an AI to 'crunch through all possible combinations', or even a significant number of them. We simply don't have the hardware for it. TBS AIs need to use 'rules' to direct their play instead, and the rules are only as good as the designer who made them; if he designs the rules for one style of play, and the human players come upon antoher playstyle that trumps it, the AI is SOL, since it can't modify it own rule set.

So, what we really need is a way to either have the AI be able to modify its own ruleset, or a way to be able to modify that ruleset ourselves, to fit our own metagame.

[vmxa1]

Yes what you say is true, but many improvements to the rules set could be done with ease, in most games. You often see games where the AI failed to do simple things that would be obvious. Experienced players could draw up the set of rules that they go by, many could be incororated. Most of the issues come from a lack of check offs that a player would be using to determine what the next step should be. As you say in some cases this could make for a system req that is too high for the masses. Other times it would add too much time to the creation and increase QA work. It mostly comes down to money, not programming skills.

[Garth Vader]

I agree true AI deviousness would be difficult, but most AI fail to do even basic infrastrucure building properly. Or basic optimization in building order, or weapons loadout.

I have always felt that a system where the computer monitors what you do and modifies a template for the AI based on your actions would work well. That way the computer would build infrastructure similar to the player, which would better match abilities.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Garth Vader
I have always felt that a system where the computer monitors what you do and modifies a template for the AI based on your actions would work well. That way the computer would build infrastructure similar to the player, which would better match abilities.

That may be a good idea, but I suspect that it would be a lot harder to implement. Also what if the player was using poor tactics?

[Garth Vader]

Also what if the player was using poor tactics?

Than the AI wouldn't need ideal tactics to beat him. By modeling it's play on the user it would get better as the player got better.

It would be harder to implement than the cheating that they do now, but not as hard as other options.

[vmxa1]

The way most programming is done, is to see that something is need and then to come up with any way to accomplish it, not worrying about if it is a good way, just quick and doable. I have done it a hundred times, what comes to my mind first, lets try it. Whoops that did not work, now what. This is because you are under pressure of time.

[xoham]

Some of my favorite late game doom stars.

One ship I make I call the Boarder or Grappler. I fit it with whatever will make it move the fastest, especially the sub space tele if I have it, then with a few heavy death rays, then with troop pods and the transporter. In a big battle, this doomstar will, on automatic, take over enemy doom stars in a single turn. It breaks the shield down, kills most of the crew (if not all), then transports over. If they enemy ships are any good, this really reinforces your armada quickly. Without the sub space transporter however, the AI doesn't seem to want to use the transporters much. It seems it doesn't want to use them unless it can get the ship close enough in one round.

For an all around ass kicker, I like energy absorber, damper field, and reflection field if I've managed to get them all from Antarans and/Orion. The ship barely gets scratched. In fact some enemy ships destroy themselves with their own plasma cannons which is really funny. I might also add any of the damage enhancers if they are available. I rarely choose repair technology because my super ships hardly die this late in the game and the biggest battles are over in only a few rounds. I assume a lot about what technologies are availble here. Last game, with an not-creative race, I couldn't make this ship. Most of my battles were with titans.

For weapons, my new favorite is a heavy disruptor with autofire. I find that plasma cannons and stellar converters do way too much damage to the planets' populace on auto. If I'm gonna bother taking the planet, I want all the colonists. By the late game, I have most combat done by automatic because I am in three fights a turn and the micromanagement starts to get irritating.

[vmxa1]

Disrupters with mods are a powerful thing as are phasors. AP phasors come early and chew up ships. You can design a DS that can take out the max number ships allowed in the game all by itself. I think it was described in this thread, not sure if it was this one.

[Sikander]

A few points...

1) Those ships with dampers, heavy armor, reinforced hull, energy absorber, and auto-repair units are tough to be sure, but there is one weapon system that will cut them into scrap heaps. That weapon is the Ion-pulse cannon. Without shields to protect your ship it goes right to work on the systems. Once it hits your drives, boom, your ship is gone and other's near it are damaged as well. The AI uses it, but by the late game it is usually completely phased out. Playing against a human you would have to worry about his little cruisers packed with Ion-pulse cannons, which could shred a large ship.

2) I like shield piercing phasors and armor piercing mass drivers (a lot). They are rendered less useful by hard shields (which negates SP) and heavy armor (which negates AP) respectively. The Achilles targeting unit is wicked, it bypasses armor (making Heavy Armor and Armor Piercing obsolete) and acts as sort of a mini-Ion-pulse cannon by increasing the chances that one of your shots will bypass enemy structure (armor is always bypassed) and hit your systems directly. If that system is your drive, goodbye.

Against the AI I usually use these designs:

Mid Game:

A Titan or BB with

Battle Pods
Battle Scanner
Inertial Stabilizer
ECM Jammer
High Energy Focus (if available)
Multiphase Shields (if available)
Structural Analyzer (if available)
Shield Capacitor

The main batteries consist of as many Mass Drivers as possible, all Heavy, AP, AF.

As few Ion Pulse Cannons as will destroy an enemy ship in one go. This will vary depending on what your typical opponent has, and whether you have developed the auto-fire option for your Ion-pulse cannons.

Any extra space is used for pd weapons.

This ship design does a fair job in most situations. The Mass drivers take down enemy shields and the Ion-pulse cannons destroy the ships. The mass drivers also do a fair job at shredding enemy star bases (which the Ion-pulse cannons cannot destroy, as they have no drives to overload). For planetary attack I simply use a few missle cruisers or destroyers (a fast missle rack, battle pods and as many fast, mirved missles as will fit) who fire their salvo in the first round and then run away. The missle barrage does enormous damage, and by the time it hits the BBs have destroyed the enemy fleet and battle station.

In the Late Game I tend to have these sorts of ships:

Titans with,

Battle pods, Achilles targeting, Structural analyzer, High Energy Focus, Multi-phase shields, Hard Shields, Shield Capacitor, Inertial nullifier and...

A whole heap of Heavy Automatic Fire Shield Piercing Phasors.

Two or three of these will be formed into a task group with a command ship, usually a Titan or a BB with:

Wide Area Jammer, Warp Interdictor, Phase Cloak, (and a bunch of other defensive stuff)

It's only weapon will be a Stellar Converter, which with to take down the planetary defenses. It does so two at a time. Two task groups could thus take down the planetary defenses in one fire phase. One thing that I haven't tried yet is to add hyper X capcitors to these babies, that might just make the whole thing better. It's hard to get this stuff crammed onto a BB, so I either have to build a command Titan from scratch, or use retrofitted BB hulls with less stuff on them (like a cloaking device instead of a phase cloak), and instead of th Stellar Converter, a ****load of bombs.

I don't use the time warp facilitator, as it seems like a cheat to some extent. If I use Death Stars at all, it is just in the mop up the game phase.

[vmxa1]

I have never use multiphase shields or hard shells, never had the need. I can not recall running into them from the AI. modded disrupters and phasors will take down any ship I have ever seen used by the AI. I have use hyper -x for fun in a DS. Normally I do not build them. I do it when in a huge uni and I want a converter to destroy planets so they will not be colonized again.
Anyway any number of ship designs can be effective. The beauty of phasors and disrupters is you will have them, some of the other items will not be available to non creative races. I never have Ion Pulse as non creative.

[Garth Vader]

I have used Hard shields, and the AI uses them if it gets them in my games.

I have often run onto AI's that use transporters a lot, and since I often play telepathic I have crappy GC, so I need hard shields.

[vmxa1]

It really does not matter what they put on their ships, when you go after them for termination you will smash their ships regardless of what they use. BB with phasors and disrupters are going to kill any AI ships it mets. The only thing that hanga fire is how many and how fast. I will often drop the AP mod in late game and not use HV either to get more guns in as I will close on them. If they are giving you trouble look at what they are using and go with the antidote. I mean hard shells is 3500 rp right, by the time any AI has it researched and implemented, you are just messing with them. I like to send my fleet out on a thinning out mission to engage all large fleets and eliminate them. Now the AI still has planets but has to build ships from scratch.