Raging monsters!

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Raging monsters!

#16 Post by Geoff the Medio »

MatGB wrote:Question for more experienced script writers: given the galaxy generation settings are findable through the interface, can it be considered in a script? ie. if the player is on "beginner" mode the Experimentors should start later and release fewer ships, but if on Manilacal the current setup is possibly even a bit easy?
No. Note that "AI Aggression" is not intended to equal "Game Difficulty".

That said, an actual difficult setting, and/or AI Aggression, could be exposed to the scripts. The aggression is already exposed to the AI interface.

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MatGB
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Re: Raging monsters!

#17 Post by MatGB »

Kaezar wrote:Just for curiosity's sake, how many stars do you tipically play on your map? Leat I have played long was 400. Just stopped a game and stopped after about 450 turns because game was won.

Game before that had 1000 stars and I won by research.

Take care
I tend to play on 350 system maps with low planets, I have a lower spec laptop and it can't handle really big maps (unfortunately), but on the occasions when I've played bigger (on other systems or when pushing this one past the limit) any increased size does, if anything, make it easier, once you've got to the top of the tech queue and conquered enough AI, victory is close to assured as you can outproduce and thus outgun the AI massively.

I try to avoid research wins, boring, but have done it a few times—and played on, it's not my objective, I want to control the galaxy. Even though I've now got a sitrep coded for experimentor defeat victory I'll continue playing if there's unconquered space.
Geoff the Medio wrote:No. Note that "AI Aggression" is not intended to equal "Game Difficulty".

That said, an actual difficult setting, and/or AI Aggression, could be exposed to the scripts. The aggression is already exposed to the AI interface.
AI Aggression is currently the closest we have to 'difficulty' even tho we both know it's a misnomer, I think, to make Experimentors playable, we might need a difficulty setting, I want them to spawn more, and earlier, for my normal gameplay, but a newer player doesn't want to see them turn up in numbers for quite awhile longer from the experience of these threads.
Mat Bowles

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brandy
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Re: Raging monsters!

#18 Post by brandy »

I also faced this monster issue

around turn 230
I lost fleets to "unknown" fleet
they were not visible on map, I jumped my fleet into an empty system, lost evryting to "unknown" fleet

constant bio bombardment on all my planets by not visible fleets until I lost most of my planets

around turn 300
game is pretty much dead
10 monster fleets with each 1k attack and 85k def running over the map killing all AIs and me as well

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MatGB
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Re: Raging monsters!

#19 Post by MatGB »

I think, aonsgt other things, in the patch I'm workign on I'll decrease the stealth for Black Kraken a bit. I know that you absolutely have to have Sensors by turn 200, but that's a big ask for a player learning the game. Neutron Scanner not so much though.

Brandy, Experimentor monsters hide fairly well, you need higher end Intelligence/Detection techs to be able to see them.
Mat Bowles

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Raging monsters!

#20 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
MatGB wrote:Question for more experienced script writers: given the galaxy generation settings are findable through the interface, can it be considered in a script?
...AI Aggression, could be exposed to the scripts.
This should be done in SVN. The following free variables can be used in scripts: GalaxyAge, GalaxyMaxAIAggression, GalaxyMonsterFrequency, GalaxyNativeFrequency, GalaxyPlanetDensity, GalaxyShape, GalaxySize, GalaxySpecialFrequency, GalaxyStarlaneFrequency. These will all return integer values corresponding to their settings: GalaxySize is the number of stars, and the rest are 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. corresponding to the galaxy setup settings None, Low, Medium, High; or the options in the order shown for age, shape, and max AI aggression.

Example use:

Code: Select all

            effects = SetEmpireTechProgress
                name = Source.OwnerTopPriorityEnqueuedTech
                progress = Value + CurrentTurn * GalaxyMaxAIAggression

szopen
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Re: Raging monsters!

#21 Post by szopen »

Hi there,
I am new to FreeOrion and the forum, though I played MoO a lot. I must say I do not get the whole "experimentator" thing. I started few games, I was losing each time, but each time I got better. Last time I was hoping for the first victory, with fighting three AIs at the same time, each of them sending huge fleets, but I was slowly preparing to finish them. Then 8 black krakens appeared right next to my colonies. They swarmed out and destroyed half of my empire and fleet within few turns. I thought it was a bug or something, but now,, when I see it as a design decision to allow satisfactionary game for really experienced players, I must say I do not understand why there is no big option with huge red letter "experimentators - for advanced and maybe intermediate players. beginners do not touch it".

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Dilvish
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Re: Raging monsters!

#22 Post by Dilvish »

So does anyone have an objection to Experimentors being gated by GalaxyMaxAIAggression of Typical or higher? And perhaps also the time of their first possible release of monsters should be keyed by GalaxyMaxAIAggression, like 200 + 50 * (5 - GalaxyMaxAIAggression),
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

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MatGB
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Re: Raging monsters!

#23 Post by MatGB »

Dilvish wrote:So does anyone have an objection to Experimentors being gated by GalaxyMaxAIAggression of Typical or higher? And perhaps also the time of their first possible release of monsters should be keyed by GalaxyMaxAIAggression, like 200 + 50 * (5 - GalaxyMaxAIAggression),
Objection? No, not really, except...

I'd rather have Experimentor Victory as a separate option with different 'difficulty' settings, none being default on a Release build and 'moderate' being default on a Test build.

Not sure what your maths actually does, but I'd rather if it's done that way to Maniacal being 150, Aggressive being 200 and then scaling up from there (I tend to be ready for them from turn 150 onwards or at least should be).

If it's implemented as a separate option that then gives Vexxra the ability to script them in for placement before empire homeworlds giving more stable positioning and better balance instead of the almost random nature of their appearance as is.
Mat Bowles

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Vezzra
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Re: Raging monsters!

#24 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:So does anyone have an objection to Experimentors being gated by GalaxyMaxAIAggression of Typical or higher? And perhaps also the time of their first possible release of monsters should be keyed by GalaxyMaxAIAggression, like 200 + 50 * (5 - GalaxyMaxAIAggression),
No objections, sounds reasonable. Perhaps with the numbers Mat suggested.
MatGB wrote:If it's implemented as a separate option that then gives Vexxra the ability to script them in for placement before empire homeworlds giving more stable positioning and better balance instead of the almost random nature of their appearance as is.
That can also be done if the AI difficulty setting is passed to the universe generation process (which isn't the case now IIRC).

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Dilvish
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Re: Raging monsters!

#25 Post by Dilvish »

Vezzra wrote:That can also be done if the AI difficulty setting is passed to the universe generation process (which isn't the case now IIRC).
It's part of the GalaxySetupData passed to the universe generation process; the boost exposure for it is defined in WrapGalaxySetupData() in PythonUiverseWrapper.cpp. It can be accessed in the python scripts as get_galaxy_setup_data().maxAIAggression
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Vezzra
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Re: Raging monsters!

#26 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:It can be accessed in the python scripts as get_galaxy_setup_data().maxAIAggression
Oh right, completely forgot about those.

Well, Mat, in that case the Experimentor setup can already be migrated to the universe generation scripts by content scripters. I won't get around to that soon, but feel free to take a crack at it - you mentioned several times that you want to delve into Python, didn't you? Could be a nice little project to get started with that... ;)

szopen
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Re: Raging monsters!

#27 Post by szopen »

I implemented an example difficulty settings. The thread for the changes (nto actual patch, though it is in form of a patch - just demonstration of things which can be easily added to freeorion) here:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9128

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