ok thanks... it clarifies things at least!
Why not disabling turret generation if the position would be under an enemy force field? This is not very logical currently? But I can live with that.
Well, it's entirely logical if you think of this as pseudo-3D space, which is one premise of the game. That's why ships are able to fly "on top" of each other without any problem, is that their Z axes vary. In this case, the turret is outside your force field, just "under" it in the sense of the Z axis.
I need to enemy side of the wormhole, because I want to have a sheltering place for some stuff without killing the enemy station and gate (too costly in AI progress). So in this case, sadly, I'll need to control both side of the same wormhole to be safe, either against the locals and a raid sent.
Avoiding killing the command station at a planet (and the warp gate) comes at the cost that the AI will still viciously try to defend it. And with Warp Gates, regardless of what else you leave on a planet with it, it will warp raids against adjacent planets (and the planet itself if you take over that planet but leave the warp gate), by design. That's the price you pay for saving some AI Progress -- if there wasn't a tradeoff, no one would ever kill these things on non-resource-bearing planets.
But I've certainly used your tactic in various situations (generally I kill the warp gate, though, which solves the one issue). But as far as setting up defenses at the AI wormholes so that I can send my ships through territory that I intend to leave hostile, etc. Often I'm doing that with the core planets around the AI's home planet, where they often have far too many high-level ships to combat them all directly.
Why removing all command posts is called neutering a planet? If a station is there, it can still receive reinforcements I believe?
Yes, the station can still received reinforcements, but its cap is much lower. Each guard post at a planet allows the AI more ships at that planet, so when you destroy them all the AI might max out at around 500 or 1000 ships instead of 4000 or 5000, for instance. Also, especially if the command station is out of the way, it can allow you really unfettered travel through the planet aside from those forces it puts at the wormholes (which you can lock down via the methods you are already using, though you have to keep a garrison there to keep them free).
You haven't killed the AI on a given planet when you do this, but you've severely muzzled/hamstrung/neutered/decimated/pick-your-word them, is the idea.
Also, can a warp gate allows reinforcements (not speaking of a wave), but the usual reinforcements.
If you look in the abilities listing (the purple text in the hover tooltip) for any unit, it will tell you if it functions as a Warp Gate (Wave Only), Warp Gate (Reinforce Only), or Warp Gate (Full), which applies to both reinforcements and waves. In the case of Warp Gates (the unit by that name), they are Full, which means both. So as long as they exist, or the command station exists -- or, for that matter, as long as a special forces guard post exists -- the AI can get reinforcements at that planet.
Last, is the AI gifted with a kind of reinforcement value, that it expends to place new ships or lost turrets? In this hypothesis, is a capital ships worths 1 reinforcement as any other ship, or you set also a kind of budget here (based on the worth in resources) ...
It's a bit more complex than that, and isn't a real linear resource system. Instead, it's more of a random population system (like the zombies in Left 4 Dead, for instance), using procedural generation algorithms that you might liken to Perlin Noise or similar, but heavily layered.
What the AI does get is "reinforcement points" in general, which it can spend on reinforcing any given planets it deems as needing a reinforcement. When it does the reinforcement, then that planet receives various ships that depend on:
1. The type of the AI (turtles get a huge number of reinforcements, for instance, but no offensive waves)
2. how many guard posts are at that planet (the fewer, the lower the AI's ship cap for that planet)
3. any special reinforcement-affecting ships at that planet (AI Troop Accelerators, etc)
4. A random factor
5. The tech level of the planet and the tech level of the AI doing the reinforcement (it uses whichever is higher).
That algorithm then goes through and populates ships at the command station (if it exists), at the wormholes (if the command station exists), and at each guard post. If there are fewer guard posts, that will "squeeze" more reinforcements into the remaining guard posts and the command station, so you'll see those reinforce faster.
There are separate sub-algorithms for things like starships, turrets, and mines, and for the other main mobile military ships. So different types of AIs have a different chance to built turrets of an appropriate level during each reinforcement, or to add more starships or mines, etc. The AI does not care about "rebuilding" per se, as it does not keep track of past events. But rather, it looks at the current scenario and builds more based on the needs and caps at the current time.
In general, the goal of the reinforcement portion of the AI logic at a given planet is not to be intelligent, but rather is to provide variety. This is the core of the "scenario building" part of the AI, and having variances is much more important than the AI acting intelligently at that time. Once the ships are down, the AI's goal is
then to act as intelligently as possible with the ships it has been given, following the rules of guards/special forces/planetary defenders/etc.
The AI in AI War is doing double-duty, in many senses: it is both your opponent, and it is also the map-creation/scenario-builder tool. In the case of which planets to reinforce, it is acting as your opponent. And in the case of how it then attacks you or defends against your attacks, the same as true. In the case of how a specific planet is reinforced once it is targeted for reinforcement, however, it is acting purely as a map-creator/scenario-builder.
These were great questions! I'm going to make sure and add these to the wiki.
