Okay, here's a new version with a variety of stuff:
http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,134.0.htmlThe AI needs to give more of a priority to targets it has already engaged over harvesters. Four IV bombers make it through my mines and take out a crystal harvester then head into my swarm of Mk I snipers and assorted turrets ready to wipe me off the face of this planet... then my crystal harvester replacement finishes building and they turn around and head back for it allowing me to continue to snipe them to death, even though they would be the snot out of 8x MLRS 5x short range and 18 snipers, now they're placing themselves in danger of dying for the cost of one crystal harvester. This is not a good resource trade.
I delayed in responding to this because I wanted to have an idea of what I might really do before addressing this. I've implemented a new AI prioritizing logic set in the new version which should remedy this, I think. There are some other ideas too that I have had and can combine in later if need be, but this should address the problem for the most part. Bombers were one of the few ship types that would consistently exhibit the behavior you describe, because they always use a single, more aggressive code branch and not the wider emergent code branches. Now I've added a little more structure into the aggressive code branch, but I may need to fuzzify that logic to an even greater degree to get more emergence out of it.
I haven't had a chance to test this new logic too thoroughly, though it does seem better than before, so I wanted to just make this one change and see what happens with more playing before going with another change. Making too many AI logic changes in one go can be dangerous, even with the methods I'm using, so I prefer to do those in steps. If you have any feedback on how they act now, please let me know!
The AI raiders are all too often fooled by this tactic of rebuilding harvesters, which lures them back to the harvester and away from vulnerable snipers and command centres. If they took out the command centre then I couldn't keep rebuilding the harvesters and the raid would be much more effective.
Yeah, the AI will now prioritize things a bit differently than before. They should put more weight on stuff that is harder for you to replace, though of course hitting the harvesters can be an effective tactic at times, too. So you should see them mixing their strategies up more now, though with the emergent nature of it I will have to see more of it in action before I know if more is really needed to that, or if it has been resolved by this round of changes.
EDIT: Those 18 snipers fired for so long at one Taychon Mk II fighter that I think I lost the sniper sound.
Really? That shouldn't be possible, and I haven't ever seen that before. I can't duplicate it yet, naturally...
EDIT2:
Those ships in the bottom right are failing to return to position after the raiders were destroyed. All the cruisers shown are part of the same free-roam order.
Yeah, that was also related to the "non-dancing" fix in this version. It's late and I'm a bit too weary to go through the full explanation on this one, but suffice it to say it was a minor glitch in 1.007H that is now fixed in 1.007I. Thanks for the catch!
