Giving the AI some of its defensive teeth back

[TechSY730]

Something that seems to have come up with the recent discussions is that the AI, even at 10/10, is rather lackluster at defense. There are many reasons for this (one major component being buffs to human economy without corresponding buffs to AI "economy")

Now, while Kieth has done a great job at giving the AI some of its offensive teeth back, the defense of the AI is, with some exceptions, not all that great, thus making attacking planets rather boring/grindy (especially mid game and beyond)

So, I wanted to start this thread so we don't derail other threads with this topic.

There is the obvious, give the AI even more buffs to reinforcements (which was done recently, but it doesn't seem to be enough)
However, it would be interesting to see some more creative ideas.

Just "toot my own horn" again, here are some of the ideas I have come up with/posted:
9080: Give AI planets nearish to an alerted planet a slightly boosted chance of getting reinforcements (Something like this was done for home planets, where home planets have a chance of getting reinforcements even if they are not alerted. This sort of generalizes that concept)
7496: Allow AI to use idle freed ships and special forces ships to aid defense (or a subset of this idea, like have this logic apply to special forces only)
1580: Ships on Perma-Guard duty
9079: Increase how much stuff the AI gets per planet, but make it harder to free AI defenders (read the post and some of my comments if you want to see how this is not just giving the AI "MOAR")



Any other ideas/thoughts?

[Martyn van Buren]

I'm wondering, would we like it to be harder to hold onto isolated planets?  Like, if the AI recognized "targets of opportunity" and had a higher chance of launching waves or organizing threat ships to go after lightly-defended outpost worlds that are harder to defend?  On the other hand, that might be far too style-cramping

[Faulty Logic]

I like those.
Here are a couple of my own:
AI Plot: Defence fleets Large groups of ships react to attacking, more so to blobbing.
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9137

AI Dynamic Defence Guardians: failure to kill these could be problematic.
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9088

Chris also had an HK-related idea which I love:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2112

[Varone]

Cross planet defence initiated: This happens with a timer similar to a cross planet attack. Happens inbetween cross planet attack waves.

Basically once the timer runs down ALL planets receive a number of reinforcements to compensate for having sent a large number on an attack.

Mini Avenger (plot) All AI command stations will spawn a Mini Avenger when destroyed with a MK level of the command station. This avenger has the same logic as the bigger avenger but when destroyed will let off an EMP burst similar to the EMP guardian.

[TechSY730]

Cross posting:

However, seeing the AI have bit more stratagy about which ship types to use for defense would be nifty. Right now, IIRC, it is mostly random, with a slight boost in chance to ship types already at a guard post (like if a guard post has lots more frigates than the other types at that post, the chance of it getting choosing a higher percentage of frigates goes up, though not by a huge amount)

It would be interesting if the AI could do some sort of stat tracking, like tracking which types have been giving that player the most trouble, and thus boosting the chance of choosing ships types on defense that have a favorable matchup. The chance adjustment should not be great (to keep humans from "training" the AI into stupid decisions easily), however, that could be a lot of work.

Maybe as a simpler form of this suggestion, give some ships a "UsefullnessInAIReinforcements" multiplier and/or chance of selection adjustment, and give things like fighters a >1 of that.