Author Topic: AI Ships Aggro  (Read 1316 times)

Offline Philature

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AI Ships Aggro
« on: January 23, 2012, 08:53:54 am »
I have noticed that all ennemy ships at wormhole attack me as soon as I come in, is that a normal behaviour I remember it was not like that in the past and the behaviour had little to no impact early on but really stopped me in the later games where the AI ammassed larger amount of ships around each wormhole.

I also notice that ship defending guard post also tended to have a larger aggro range then I remember. I played with it early on against but this made the game progression much harder later as suddenly the forces were stronger and better reinforced, making all planet attack all out drawn out battle. It now impossible to end the game as well because I don't know how to counter large amount of core AI ships running at me when I attack the core AI homeworld. Is my only option is to run very specific raids but how I will i'll be able to run up enough forces to destroy the fortress and last shield at the ennemy AI which will still have a large amount of mark V ships around.

I'm playing with the latest beta patch. I'm wondering if the changes in the aggro rules were caused by one of the beta patch; does the official version 5.x versions have these issues as well and if not how do I roll back my version? Or is it only the choice of the ennemy AI, i've been doing a few test and it does seem consistent with most moderate AI that I've tried but not all easy AI (i've never really played against hard AI, I play difficult 7.0 or 7.3).

Philature

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI Ships Aggro
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2012, 09:13:24 am »
I have noticed that all ennemy ships at wormhole attack me as soon as I come in, is that a normal behaviour I remember it was not like that in the past
I forget when it was introduced (or, rather, fixed to actually work) but free ("threat") AI ships will typically blob up around the wormhole leading to the planet they want to attack until there are enough of them that they think they have a good chance of winning, and then they go through.  The other ships guarding a wormhole guard post are typically in low-power-mode and generally don't come out of it unless you fire on them or their guard post or another guard of the same post fires on you.  But the threat ships are not in low-power-mode and will fire on you immediately.

Either way, the difference shouldn't be significant; the guard post fires on you pretty quick too, which wakes up the guards.

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It now impossible to end the game as well because I don't know how to counter large amount of core AI ships running at me when I attack the core AI homeworld.
If they're all running at you it's probably because you brought in so much firepower (2x theirs) that it "woke up" the entire planet.  Starting with smaller attacks may help you.

Alternatively you can try various approaches to dealing with a lot of mkV ships; once they're all freed they'll probably chase you back through the wormhole you came through (unless there are multiple good paths back to your territory; they might even split up), and you can have a nice ambush waiting for them.  There's a bunch of different units that are great for spreading out fleet ships (engine damage from riot starships, slow from grav turrets, immobilization from tractor turrets, physical displacement from forcefield generators, etc), and various ways to kill them.  The guardians that come with them will still be very annoying, of course.  And if you aren't able to hit the homeworld shortly after dealing with the freed ships it will have reinforced enough that you'll probably be back where you started.  This is indeed one way to lose the game, but it doesn't sound that dire yet.
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Offline Philature

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Re: AI Ships Aggro
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2012, 10:08:45 pm »
Hello,

Now I understand some of the AI response a little bit better, thx.

I started sending down troop in small group via transport taking away the guard post one by one which have been very effective and reduced the AI fleet to a more manaegable size for my final all out attack. Thx for the advice,

Philature

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI Ships Aggro
« Reply #3 on: January 24, 2012, 09:43:19 am »
Glad I could help :)
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