AI didn't move, bug or feature?

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defaultuser
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AI didn't move, bug or feature?

#1 Post by defaultuser »

I'm playing v0.4.4 (Windows). I had a spiral configuration, normal AI aggression, with four AIs. I worked down one of the arms. At the very end, I found the homeworld for one of the AIs. It had moved a scout out a few jumps to a deep space spot, but nothing after that. At the system, there was a conglomeration of various ships and it had obviously been researching as indicated by the shields, defenses, buildings, and the kinds of ships.

Is going completely "hoarder" one of the possible outcomes, or did something glitch? It certainly made things easier for me as I was able to grab all that territory for nothing and only had one "front" to worry about.


Brian

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MatGB
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Re: AI didn't move, bug or feature?

#2 Post by MatGB »

Just checking a couple things.

When you say "normal" AI do you mean "Typical" as the setting?

You're also playing with the 0.4.4 stable release?

If both those are true, then I suspect what's happened is the AI couldn't find anywhere to colonise within scouting range ordered it's scouts back to the edge of its supply limits then just sat there. This was a known bug in the AI in the last release (it wasn't known at the time of release) and was fixed in the test builds a few months ago.

If you're enjoying the game, that's great, you'll probably find it better to start using the weekly test builds whenever you start a new game as we make a fair bit of progress over time, we're (very) close to releasing 0.4.5, the Release Candidate is here, if no bugs are found then it will be announced as the next stable.

Having said all that, it's possible that you've found a different bug than the one we worked through, if so it's not been observed in more recent games by others so might have been fixed anyway, but it's worth keeping an eye out.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

defaultuser
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Re: AI didn't move, bug or feature?

#3 Post by defaultuser »

MatGB wrote:Just checking a couple things.

When you say "normal" AI do you mean "Typical" as the setting?

You're also playing with the 0.4.4 stable release?
I believe those are both correct. I'm not at the machine where it is installed.
MatGB wrote:If both those are true, then I suspect what's happened is the AI couldn't find anywhere to colonise within scouting range ordered it's scouts back to the edge of its supply limits then just sat there. This was a known bug in the AI in the last release (it wasn't known at the time of release) and was fixed in the test builds a few months ago.
That sounds like it. There was a series of deep space nodes (not sure of your official term) between the last star system I found (which was an independent homeworld) and the AI homeworld. Some ships could not make it all the way from the end of my supply line to the AI system, depending on whether they had extra fuel tanks or not.
MatGB wrote:If you're enjoying the game, that's great, you'll probably find it better to start using the weekly test builds whenever you start a new game as we make a fair bit of progress over time, we're (very) close to releasing 0.4.5, the Release Candidate is here, if no bugs are found then it will be announced as the next stable.

Having said all that, it's possible that you've found a different bug than the one we worked through, if so it's not been observed in more recent games by others so might have been fixed anyway, but it's worth keeping an eye out.
If possible, I will try to check it. Would setting up a game with same parameters and seed value give similar results with a newer build? If so I could check to see what the AI did. I'm guessing that the save files wouldn't be compatible, but that might not be the case.

Brian

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: AI didn't move, bug or feature?

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

defaultuser wrote:Would setting up a game with same parameters and seed value give similar results with a newer build?
Most of the galaxy setup settings will work the same or nearly the same, so having few starlanes and low planet density would help set up that situation. But the specific galaxy you get will be unrelated to what v0.4.4 produced.

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MatGB
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Re: AI didn't move, bug or feature?

#5 Post by MatGB »

defaultuser wrote: If possible, I will try to check it. Would setting up a game with same parameters and seed value give similar results with a newer build? If so I could check to see what the AI did. I'm guessing that the save files wouldn't be compatible, but that might not be the case.
Under normal circumstances it would give similar setups but...

As part of the 'fix' for the problem we (well, the Python devs) redid the way the universe is generated so that you're guaranteed to have at least some planets around your homeworld as, even if you teach the AI how to deal with it, as a player starting and not being able to use your colony ship for ages makes for a deeply unfun game under most circumstances.

So in this case, specifically, not, because the game's been changed to stop that from happening ;-)

There's an ongoing project to make the game setup more stable and reliable so that the same seed gives the same results across platforms, and hopefully at some point it'll give stability over the dev cycle as well, but it can't do that at all until it's finished. And even then new content is likely to skew things, getting an identical setup when we, for example, introduce a new species or special, will be unlikely due to the way the galaxy is made.

And yeah, savegames are frequently incompatible week to week, let alone from one major Release build to the next, that's why I try to say to update after you finish a game.
Mat Bowles

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defaultuser
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Re: AI didn't move, bug or feature?

#6 Post by defaultuser »

MatGB wrote:And yeah, savegames are frequently incompatible week to week, let alone from one major Release build to the next, that's why I try to say to update after you finish a game.
Sure. Now that I'm home, I made a screencap. You're right, the scout is out at the end of his supply line.

Brian
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MatGB
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Re: AI didn't move, bug or feature?

#7 Post by MatGB »

Yup, that's a nasty setup, very glad the generation systems were redone to stop that sort of thing.
Mat Bowles

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