yea i suppose your right... Typically, multi-weapons are done on larger ships to fend off smaller ships, but the way you have shields set up, it kinda takes care of that already
*shrug* was just a random speculative thought, no need to do any great effort to change the engine
I suppose (random musing alert) the fact that most ships are here is more because you can; At this point your great work is indeed the AI (and by all means a spectacular achievement), the fact that more ships can be added is merely a byproduct of the simplicity of the engine the governs the AI (and to a lesser extent, the player)
From what I understand, the AI uses ships to do tasks they are bonused for - For instance to take down a forcefield, the AI would send bombers. However, if there is a forcefield protecting the target, it seems they would prefer (with non-bombers at least) to engage anything else...
Well, for an AI to shine it has to have a rich decision space, which means lots of units and mechanics -- that's one of the downfalls of many traditional RTS AIs, is that their game is too narrow for there to be many interesting paths to victory. In that sort of model, the only way the AI can win is by playing better on one of a few variants on the main strategy. By contrast, this is not a problem with turn-based games, because the opportunity cost of each move is so high; Civ IV, and especially Chess and Galactic Civilizations II are all known for having AI that is usually far superior (in terms of Chess, far
far superior) to that in an RTS context.
Adding more pieces to Chess would be stupid, of course, and would just be a distraction and no benefit to the game whatsoever. But, with a game like AI War or Empire Earth or Age of Empires, I'd argue that significant new game mechanics brought about through new units are the key to extending the life of those games. The problem comes when the new units are too similar to existing units, or otherwise don't create new decision points. So my goal with most new units that I introduce through free DLC or through the expansions has and always well be to keep it a foremost concern to add new mechanics that lead to new situations and new sorts of decisions. Some units are "just for fun" or because people like a certain style of play and want to see more of it (MicroParasites are a good example of that), but those are more bonus exceptions to the rule than anything else.
I guess my point is that the AI can't continue to do innovative things and surprising you and such if it doesn't have a big enough toolset to do that. Granted, the base game is large enough that the AI is quite suprising and interesting with that alone, and can last you hundreds of hours at least -- the expansion is just about extending that even further.
Now, a question; Perma-cloaked units. are they supposed to be emp-able? I lost a mk4 scout because he was too close to emp-immune ships when I lit up an emp. Also I note that wormhole guard posts become visible when you emp them; I can only assume with enough planning you could strip a given planet of wormhole posts, leaving it free to travel through...
Wow, that's pretty crazy, I had not realized that. While that is completely unintentional, it also strikes me as extremely cool. The bit about being able to reveal wormhole guard posts (and thus destroy them) is particularly cool. That means that if you need/want to use an emp, you can actually clear those off if desired, which I think is a fair tradeoff (and really, not one that I'd expect players to take if they weren't already planning to blow an EMP there, because of the AI Progress cost). That was accidental, but it seems cool enough that I'm going to leave it in place for now unless an exploit is found. Thanks for posting about it, I think a number of people here would probably like to experiment with that!
