Problematic AI with Capital Ship mod

from Sins Forums

I created a simple mod where the capital ships were beefed up to make them more capital ship like. When going capital against capital, I had them fairly balanced between races. The damage was relatively high with high shields and hull, but varying between the different caps. On the other hand though, when a single capital ship took on a fleet of frigates, especially light frigates, the capital ship decimated the fleet without breaking a sweat. I then decided to up the capital ship crew and fleet points in hopes the AI would take advantage of it and create more capital ships. (A little side note: I play 99% of the time with TEC and made it so I only had access to one ship at first and would have to research the rest. Also, my ships were more expensive than the AI's..the AI's being 1000, 100, 100 cost.) But instead of creating more cap ships, the AI just made more frigates. In response to this, I decided to just make frigates inaccessible, so I deleted the frigate factory from each of the home planets and replaced it with a capital ship factory and deleted the frigate factory from each of the player files.

I figured this would be flawless and I would be facing much stronger fleets. I decided to go all-in and played a 4-player medium map. 3 locked-team unfair difficulty, random AI against me. I started off by conquering 4 or 5 close planets and then building up my fleet and researching defenses, etc. After a while I had a strong enough fleet that I decided to attack some of the AI's outer colonies. One-by-one i made across the map, not a single colony being colonized by the AI until i came upon each of their homeworlds where they had a couple research stations, a trade port, a few defenses and one single capital ship (the free one). Each of the three unfair AI had nearly the exact same thing. This was after about 2-3 hours of gameplay, so you can only imagine my disappointment at having spent 3 hours looking forward to a huge endgame fleet battle to face one ship.

In summary here are the changes I made:

1. Capital Ships weapons damage, shields and hull all increased in order to last longer.

2. TEC(my race) has one ship until research at the fifth combat tier.

3. Advent and Vasari capital ships all cost 1000 credits, 100/100 crystal/metal.

4. No more frigates.

modding
8,756 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I have long wondered why the AI build as they do, and it appears you have inadvertently discovered they build CapShips as a percentage of other ships. ie, 1 CS per 25 regular ships.

An interesting experiment: Make the frigates near free and see if they build more CapShips as a result. You cap ships will max out on levels due to swatting so many, so it shouldn't be a question of survival.

At least it would be a little fun...

T
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I had a thought the other day. What if I were to copy the capital ship files, rename them and classify them as frigates, then have those available to build from the frigate factory? They would have all the same stats as regular capital ships but just be classified differently. I figured I would get some input from here before going through the trouble of actually doing it.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Wouldn't work :(. The entity contents between capitals and frigates aren't compatible to my knowledge (mainly, exp/leveling).
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I figured...o well. Thanks.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I don't think Annatar11 is correct. Uzi has made capital ships into normal ships with his mod. They don't have any of the special abilities or level gaining ability but they're still capital ships. I'd check his mod out and see what he did to make them like this. If he can make capital ships into derelitcs you can take over you should be able to make them into frigates you can produce from a frigate factory.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I don't think Annatar11 is correct. Uzi has made capital ships into normal ships with his mod. They don't have any of the special abilities or level gaining ability but they're still capital ships.


Right, that's what I meant. ;) You can make frigates that look like capitals and that shoot the same way and all, but the things that really make capital ships stand out is the leveling and leveling-based abilities, which frigates are not able to have.

So yes, you could make beefed up frigates that are tougher to destroy, but you can't directly make capitals into frigates while keeping the same attributes.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I see. I think I will just beef up the frigates some more so it won't be shooting fish in a barrel and hopefully the AI will pose a threat at some point.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
What about the frigates that have anti-matter... they all seem at some point to have a "special" ability. While not necessarily making a Capital Ship, would it be possible to take a CS ability or weapon that is anti-matter dependent and bring it into the frigate?

As an obvious example, and one I wouldn't want to do: The colony Frigate for the TEC. Instead of having the colony ability, could it have the targeting or restore shields ability? Or, a Gauss Gun add on to give it some big time fire power?


Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Yep, you can do all of that. ;) Your limitation would be that either the frigate would have to start with all of the abilities right out of the shipyard (FixedLevel0), or be unlocked by research (which would be a lot more work).

Capital ship abilities are "Intrinsic", and tied to their level. Since frigates can't have levels, that wouldn't work and you'd pretty much have to use FixedLevel0 unless you really want to add stuff to the tech trees :P