5937 Feedback

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

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MiniMe
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5937 Feedback

#1 Post by MiniMe »

I've only played one quick game so far but already noticed this:

- AI seems to prefer colonizing planets with growth specials right from the start. But AI does not take into account the planet type.
Example: my two neighboring AIs colonized poor/hostile planets with their first or second colony ship, both had a growth special.
Since the focus setting for "dead" colonies was fixed, this behavior is hurting AI.

- AI did not attack with troop ships anymore, but nevertheless still entered my systems without battle-ship escort...over and over again.
This led to AI troop ships getting destroyed immediately by my planetary defenses. It didnt even need system mines.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Attaching AI logs or a game save illustrating the problem might help...

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Dilvish
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#3 Post by Dilvish »

MiniMe wrote:- AI seems to prefer colonizing planets with growth specials right from the start. But AI does not take into account the planet type.
Example: my two neighboring AIs colonized poor/hostile planets with their first or second colony ship, both had a growth special.
Since the focus setting for "dead" colonies was fixed, this behavior is hurting AI.
The AI should no longer (since before 5937) be trying to colonize planets it won't have a positive population for, no matter what's there. It also doesn't assign any value to growth specials that wouldn't currently apply to at least a portion of its empire. If the AIs were closing in on Solar Orbital Generation & those systems had good stars they might just be placing outposts there. AI logs would help evaluate whatever it is you're seeing. Also, I'll try to get myself set up with executables compatible with the saved game format of all our major installation packages -- which one are you using?
- AI did not attack with troop ships anymore, but nevertheless still entered my systems without battle-ship escort...over and over again. This led to AI troop ships getting destroyed immediately by my planetary defenses. It didnt even need system mines.
Again, AI logs would help evaluate/diagnose this.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

AndrewW
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#4 Post by AndrewW »

Related:

I've seen the AI not take advantage of a growth special on a planet they had colonizes (it was for their species type) and there wasn't another special of the same type in the galaxy.

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Dilvish
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#5 Post by Dilvish »

AndrewW wrote:Related:

I've seen the AI not take advantage of a growth special on a planet they had colonizes (it was for their species type) and there wasn't another special of the same type in the galaxy.
The AI doesn't automatically use any special it could; it calculates how much extra population it would get away from the growth special planet, and compares that to the effective population loss of dedicating the growth special planet to growth focus. I realize it could do a more involved calculation, but that's it for now.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

MiniMe
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#6 Post by MiniMe »

I've started several new games in the meantime so i'm afraid i cannot serve with a save game (i was trying out the different galaxy formations).

I'll post AI logs when i start a new game.

unjashfan
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#7 Post by unjashfan »

AI did not attack with troop ships anymore, but nevertheless still entered my systems without battle-ship escort...over and over again.
I've been noticing this behavior too. I still think that the AI makes too many troop ships. Troop ships are not as well armed, and they contribute to the ship upkeep cost, which means if there is a surplus of troop ships and there's nothing to invade, they're essentially dead weights. The AI should make more fighters and set aside medium sized fleets (4-8 ships depending on the location) for invasion/expansion to help ensure any new colony is properly defended without compromising the defenses of existing colonies. I recommend removing the OrbitalShield from the AI's arsenal because they are very easy to destroy (anything that has lasers will one hit kill, and a large stack of OrbitalShields is not a cost effective alternative), and have the AIs defend colonies with a group of fighters instead. Said fighters can also be redeployed later.

Overall, I think the biggest weakness of the AI right now is that they leave more and more weaknesses behind as they expand, and these weaknesses arise from the AI's fleet management. On the topic of fleet management, I often see the AIs group a bunch of fast ships with a single Mark I, Larval Kraken, Small Juggernaut, and the like. Having one slow ship slow down an entire horde of faster ships is a real drawback, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's probably wise to group ships by starlane speed.

Shields act as DR now! Shield stacking is really OP at the moment. Quick solutions: make them non-stackable or make shield parts internal slot only. For reference, the most extreme case of shield stacking counting internal slots only would be solar hulls with 9 multi-spectral shields, giving them 45 DR, which requires at least 60 hits from death ray 5 to kill.

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Dilvish
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#8 Post by Dilvish »

unjashfan wrote:[stuff]
I just spent a fair while writing a detailed response & then lost it when I pressed submit, due to login timeout -- Geoff, it is really crazy that I should get logged out in whatever periood of time it was -- I had spent that entire time responding to this post, nothing else, & its very frustrating to lose all that. When someone else recently ran into this it was suggested to them that they could hit the back button to recover what they typed, but that does not help in this situation, perhaps because of considering it a new session, when it put me back to the page of editing a response, it was lacking absolutely everything I had typed, trying to go forward and backward from there did not recover anything.

so, Unj, I'm not going to try retyping all that, but I'll redo some. One key point was to point out that you relly need to include at least some of [screenshots, logs, save files] or there's about nothing useful I can do with a comment that you think the AI is making too many troop ships. Also, if it's a dying empire, I know it may make too many troop ships, there's a little protection against that in the code but not a lot. My focus right now is on helping successful empires be more successful, not helping on-the-ropes empires stage a 1-in-a-hundred comback, or to die a less embarrassing death.

Also, the monster thing can't be dealt with as easily as you suggest, I wont get in to explaining the complications again, but the slowdown thing does bother me as well, one of the things on my 'someday' list is to exlcude monsters from fleet joinder and to restrict them to exploration (and possibly defense). I consider it a pretty low priority though. If your comment about AI expansion weeknesses getting worse as they expand, or somesuch, had to do with anything other than the monsters, then please clarify and document to the extent possible.
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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Geoff the Medio
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish wrote:...lost it when I pressed submit, due to login timeout -- Geoff, it is really crazy that I should get logged out in whatever periood of time it was -- I had spent that entire time responding to this post, nothing else, & its very frustrating to lose all that.
When logging in, select the "Log me on automatically each visit" check box. Otherwise, if you know some setting I can change to fix the issue, let me know, but I have no idea...

Might be related to your ISP changing your IP, which might mess up the forum's session tracking.

MiniMe
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#10 Post by MiniMe »

Here is an example of a dead colony, presumably colonized due to the growth special (system Nusakan, AI #2).
Granted, i do not know if this was their 1st/2nd colony, but it is relatively early in the game and that AI only has 3 colonies set up in total (including that dead colony).

Attached are the AI_logs.
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FreeOrion.zip
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AndrewW
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#11 Post by AndrewW »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Might be related to your ISP changing your IP, which might mess up the forum's session tracking.
I had it timeout on me one time, and I'm on a static IP so it wasn't an IP change. And have it set to automatically log me in.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#12 Post by Geoff the Medio »

AndrewW wrote:I had it timeout on me one time, and I'm on a static IP so it wasn't an IP change. And have it set to automatically log me in.
I think there is a 2 hour timeout after which it will say something like the form you entered is invalid, but it retains the entered post text and I've always been able to re-submit / click preview for the post and it will work. I've never had it actually log me out while posting with auto-login enabled, though every few months or so I do end up logged out unexpectedly.

AndrewW
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#13 Post by AndrewW »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
AndrewW wrote:I had it timeout on me one time, and I'm on a static IP so it wasn't an IP change. And have it set to automatically log me in.
I think there is a 2 hour timeout after which it will say something like the form you entered is invalid, but it retains the entered post text and I've always been able to re-submit / click preview for the post and it will work. I've never had it actually log me out while posting with auto-login enabled, though every few months or so I do end up logged out unexpectedly.
Well, wasn't 2 hours but did take a bit of time with some uploading some files at the time.

Forums can do that I have to relogin on occasion on various ones, though haven't had to yet on here.

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Dilvish
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#14 Post by Dilvish »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Might be related to your ISP changing your IP, which might mess up the forum's session tracking.
I'm travelling, not on my regular computer, so I had not wanted to leave it checked to always log me in. It's conceivable the ISP coincidentally coincidentally my IP address while I was typing a response, I have no idea what the ISP is here, but that seems pretty unlikely to me. Having us be hosed if we're not set to automatically be logged in seems like a lot worse security situation that letting us be logged in longer.

AndrewW, the invalid form happens when someone else makes a post while you've been typing yours, and so the post number or somesuch it had tentatively assigned to you is invalid. That can happen in any amount of time, even one minute. Yes, you do retain your post content in that situation. That is not what I'm talking about.
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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Geoff the Medio
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Re: 5937 Feedback

#15 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish wrote:Having us be hosed if we're not set to automatically be logged in seems like a lot worse security situation that letting us be logged in longer.
Fair enough, but I still have no idea what to do about it...

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