Save Our SOTS2 - A Fan Made Patch

[willdieh]

Rossinna, yes I think you nailed it. The energy based fleet was probably due to the counter-design logic as there wasn't any other option for such a fleet in the Hiver's logic that I could see.

As for the Hivers, I'm working on the weapon selection logic (which applies to all factions) and it's looking better.
I'm curious though, they always armor up to the teeth in my games - not sure why there's concern about that. As I mentioned earlier, I've added logic to the module selection process and the Adaptive Buttresses module is a highly preferred option with the AI trying to add 1 per section if possible. This should also really boost the armor of AI ships (if available to that faction). It's critical for Loa since they have to keep in cube limits and modules are cheaper than Armor.

I hope to have a new release tomorrow some time, once I've play tested a bit more.

[Slashman]

I'll suspend my own playtesting for a bit until you release a new version. I want to start a game without the Tarka. I pretty much know what they can do already. I'm curious as to what the other AIs can accomplish with the new patch.

[BlueInstinct]

Cant wait for the new release.
I wanna throw in some mor thoughts:
It would be awesome to see some hiver BR's as they have the best BR section if i recall corectly.

Also, id love to see more DN's. They are just epic and even though maas cruisers are more effective at times, in single player its more about the immersive experience rather than the most competetive one.

For max. competition, MP is the only way anyways, so if you could make the AI focus on getting DN's faster, that would be absolutely amazing.
Also the increased fleetpoints of the armada CnC is really a gamechanger if only 1 player has it!

And last, i do vividly remember from all of my sots1 games against the hivers, that they loved their heavy beam DN's wich they used with great success.
I apreciate every bit you change in order to make the AI better, i really do!

best regards!

[Slashman]

Cant wait for the new release.
I wanna throw in some mor thoughts:
It would be awesome to see some hiver BR's as they have the best BR section if i recall corectly.

Also, id love to see more DN's. They are just epic and even though maas cruisers are more effective at times, in single player its more about the immersive experience rather than the most competetive one.

For max. competition, MP is the only way anyways, so if you could make the AI focus on getting DN's faster, that would be absolutely amazing.
Also the increased fleetpoints of the armada CnC is really a gamechanger if only 1 player has it!

And last, i do vividly remember from all of my sots1 games against the hivers, that they loved their heavy beam DN's wich they used with great success.
I apreciate every bit you change in order to make the AI better, i really do!

best regards!

Hmmm...Blue I don't think Wildieh should make changes to a single race just so you can have your "epic battle' versus them.

Hivers and all tech should come as a natural progression of unlocking the appropriate tier and taking into account who is fighting who. I want a more effective AI period...not a more effective Hiver AI.

You may have to wait for Rossina-sama's Project Hiver to get what you want in that regard as I think the focus of this patch should be to improve performance across the board. If the Hivers need a buff to come up to an acceptable level then so be it...but I don't think they should prioritize tech based on your personal feelings.

[BlueInstinct]

Yeah Slash, iam totally with you, and i didnt want to suggest that hivers should priorize a certain tech, other than DN's maybe, which all races should kinda, dont you think?

[willdieh]

Okay! A new build has been released (3.6.2019)!

I re-wrote the ship design logic and weapon scoring.

Ships are now re-designed almost every turn instead of every once in a loooong while (presumably done to prevent Prototyping budget overruns). Prototyping costs are not an issue as re-designs are only successful if they're different (different armor, engines, class, weapons). I played with the idea of only triggering the re-design process when a new technology has been researched, but didn't feel like going that far (although it'd be more efficient and might help turn times).

As a nice side effect, AI can now finally build Biome colonizers. The game was checking for whatever section had the most ColonizerSpace. For some reason standard colonizers have more ColonizerSpace than Biomes... Since this made no sense to me, I swapped the ColonizerSpace values for all faction Colonizer and Biome sections. If anyone has a good justification for the original logic, I can swap them back and just invert the game logic.

Weapons now take into consideration the Armor Piercing level more heavily. Testing looks very good, with the only possible problem of Polarized Plasmatics having too high a score (they're the highest AP in the game). But other weapons have more damage and better accuracy so I'm not sure it's a problem.

Here are my new formulas for weapon selection... I'm not an engineer, so if you can think of better algorithms, let me know. There's no way to take into account a player's completed technology bonuses as these subroutines cannot access any game information other than what's in the weapon description so I couldn't add VRF, etc bonuses when scoring. Feedback is very welcome!

Brawler Score (distance is not considered in calculation):
EffectiveDamage * NumVolleys / RechargeTime / EffectiveDeviation * (1 - 1*VolleyDeviation) * (1 + ArmorPiercingLevel)

Planet Attack Score
PopDamage / RechargeTime * (1 + ArmorPiercingLevel)

Disabling Score
Brawler Score * (1000 * hasDisablingTrait)

Stand Off Score
MaxRange * MaxDamage / RechargeTime / (1 + maxDeviation) * (1 + ArmorPiercingLevel)

As for the requests about the Hivers and DNs and other stuff...
I'm not sure where that's coming from. With max research speed and income + Very Hard AI, I'm seeing DNs by turn 30 for all factions. Of course in a normal game, it might be longer, but all I can say is give me some actual in-game feedback as I'm just not seeing what you're saying is an issue. At any rate, this version should be much better!

[Slashman]

Thanks! I will test immediately!

[ZedF]

My understanding is that regular colonizers were supposed to be better at transferring population to lower hazard worlds to get them growing quickly, whereas biomes were supposed to be better at reducing hazard at high hazard world, at the cost of growing colony population more slowly, so that ideally you would want to use different colonizers for different worlds or at different stages of colony maturity.

[willdieh]

Yeah, I figured it would be something like that. Was it the same in sots1? Well I actually prefer it the new way as that tech isn't super cheap. This way you can say the biome tech includes suspended animation

Or I can change it back and change the logic to look at teraforming amount instead if people want.

[ZedF]

In SOTS 1 there’s only DD and CA colonizers, so there isn’t really the same intended dynamic of choosing one that’s better at low hazard worlds versus one that’s not. You use DD colonizers when that’s what you have available (which largely limits you to lower hazard worlds) and graduate to Biomes when you can afford to.

[BlueInstinct]

wohoo cant wait to give it a spin!

As for the DN's, i was referring to vanilla AI, so my statement is totally useless

I cant wait to see some propper ships from the AI

thanx a ton !

[BlueInstinct]

ok, here comes the first report:
Settings:

Duel map
Hivers very hard AI started with 6 systems, 10 techs and 1 million
Me playing sol force. At turn 50 i decidet to check a border system: they have 2 full colonizing fleets at work, all 4 planets setteled
An they greeted me with: 2 DN's !!!! Drone carriers of al things, equipped to the teeth with HE AP rounds !!

all i can say: WOW what a huge improvement to the Vanilla, its actually insane.
Now i dont know how they will fare on the strategic level but their fleets seem to kick ass!

Absolutely fantastic work.

i will report back once i am deep in war

[Rossinna-Sama]

As for the requests about the Hivers and DNs and other stuff...
I'm not sure where that's coming from. With max research speed and income + Very Hard AI, I'm seeing DNs by turn 30 for all factions. Of course in a normal game, it might be longer, but all I can say is give me some actual in-game feedback as I'm just not seeing what you're saying is an issue. At any rate, this version should be much better!

Depending on how you've got the tech tree set up, they may not be focusing on researching the two prior techs unless they are at peace or are preparing for war. Declaring war on turn 1 for example can often delay any work on getting towards DNs since this makes the AI focus more on the weapon research tag.

[willdieh]

Thanks for the report BlueInstinct. It's really hard to play against "Really Hard" AI... especially with research and economy turned up to 200%. They get a tech almost every turn and have highly boosted economy/pop growth.

I haven't done much with the strategic AI ... so you might find some areas of improvement there. If you do, please report them and I'll try to zero in on them. I've found specifically, unless the AI has tons of left over money, placing system defense fleets seem to have a lower priority that I think they should.

But let me know how it goes and we'll work from there.

[BlueInstinct]

Hey Willdieh, thnx for the reply.
So i have never seen any Hiver AI field a DN nor choose propper weapons or make good fleets in vanilla, so hats 3 HUGE milestones.
Regarding the strategic behavior there have been some pretty outstanding problems in Vanilla.
While the tarkas, liir and soloforce seem to behave well strategically, races with more complex FTL systems seem to suffer.

As you know, i have mostly been studying the Hivers, and their problems have been as follows:
Most notably they are just not sending out enough gate missions.
Secondly they seem to be very rarely willing to send any offensive missions against me (and their fleets, if any came at all, where utter garbage back than).

With your mod i start to notice some similarities. Even though its just turn 50 and i am still waiting to see how they react to massive assaults from me,
they have not send gates to the middle line systems on the duel map, which is not very far away at all! they could have gated almost every system by now.

I am waiting to see if they are willing to send offensive missions, their fleets are kick ass as it seems, and i assume they have enough.
I will swap slots with them today and see if thats really the case and if they have gate fleets ready.

If they where to send the 2 DN's they have right now, and iam assuming they have more, i would be in a world of trouble!

cheers and as always, much much apreciated!