Hello

from Sins Forums

Just wanted to say hello and thanks for a nice game, bought this a few days ago.  Decided to register and patch it since some things have been rebalanced, and looks like more rebalancing in 1.1 whenever that comes out.  Even though I don't intend to play this online (or much of anything else anymore) it's still more enjoyable if the game is balanced properly and up to date.

The AI is good... and bad, in my opinion it runs away too much, seems to get stuck chasing trade ships, and oddly will fearlessly attack a trade port despite enough static defenses to render the attack suicidal :)  Other than those minor annoyances its a fun game to play, and I don't own any games where the AI doesn't do at least a few boneheaded things.

The one thing I'd really like to see added is a supercapital class, a unique unit that you could only have one of, perhaps a choice of several for each race, that is very expenisve in the end game.  At the end of long games you run out of things to spend resources on.

Just adding my 2 cents to things.

13,546 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Welcome to Sins ;) Yeah, the AI isn't perfect, but there's only so much it can do in a real-time environment and a game as complex as this :).

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not sure that its a limitation of how much is possible for the AI. Making the assumption that the AI uses some system of prioritizing its targets, I think it should not be difficult to make trade ships and ports be at least somewhat less of a target. After all, I've noticed no difference in trade income from trade ships being destroyed, only when ports are taken out, yet, the AI insists that trade ships are worth chasing down over other targets... like my defending fleet shooting them in the rear. :)

Running away on the other hand is obviously a more complex problem. You can make the AI more agressive at the risk of making it attack despite completely bad odds. I'm not sure what it uses or how it determines when to fight and when to run, but it runs far too often. Unfortunately this has become so predicatable that somewhere around the midgame, I've started to split my fleet between an attacking force, and another force that is waiting for the AI to run to it. Bear in mind that at any point if the AI decided to fight (roughly equal fleets, but mine split in two), I'd take serious losses before help could arrive... but the AI is too busy running away to notice.

Before I started to do that it was pretty frustrating, the AI would just bounce back and forth between two systems, jump, turn around, jump, and could seemingly do this as long as it wanted to. Eventually the small losses it took convinced it to head back through the wormhole from which it came... about an hour later.

To its credit, however, there has been a time where it showed up with a TEC fleet and taught me about taking out robotics cruisers first... my first time playing advent. Now Advent vs TEC seems a lopsided affair, but that's a different point entirely.

Another scenario of this is in a game that has gone on for about 5 to 6 hours, and at this point the AI has more credits than me, and a similar amount of metal and crystal... but is still running away, retreating, unwilling to take losses to inflict losses. It must have something that makes it choose to fight at its home planet, when I arrived there, the AI chose to fight a battle that it had zero chance of even inflicting losses, much less winning. In this case its home planet is by no means its last planet, on a large multi map at this point the AI controls about half of it and I control the other half.

This same game caused a minidump after saving and attempting to exit, though, admittedly a couple of my drivers may be a revision or two behind. That issue repeated itself in 1.0, and now in 1.5, and I'll see about updating drivers before submitting anything about it. Doesn't seem to happen in short games, only after about 3 to 4 hours has gone by.

The point I'm trying to make here really is I'd like to see the AI stand and fight -more often- than it does. I really in the end don't care how "intelligent" you make the AI, as the measure of that isn't what makes the game fun to play. It's the fighting... and the AI should do more of it.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I think it should not be difficult to make trade ships and ports be at least somewhat less of a target. After all, I've noticed no difference in trade income from trade ships being destroyed, only when ports are taken out, yet, the AI insists that trade ships are worth chasing down over other targets... like my defending fleet shooting them in the rear.


Technically, the number of trade ships determines the rate of income of the trade port, so as you lose them your overall trade income does decrease (though not greatly for just a few ships). Also, destroying hostile trade ships gives you some credits. On the whole, pirates are the only ones I see religiously going after trade ships. My own fleets, and the actual AI's, basically ignore them unless there's really nothing much else in the grav well.

I'm not sure what it uses or how it determines when to fight and when to run, but it runs far too often.


It's supposed to weigh the overall strength of your fleet vs overall strength of theirs (we don't actually know what weighting values are assigned to what, though) as well as the target desirability. If you're attacking, for example, it tries to see how much it wants to keep that planet (thus why it never runs from its homeworld). There are also a few other misc factors that I honestly don't remember now, because the explanation for this that we got was ages ago.

Most agree that it is is being overly cautious, but in regards to your overall point, it's a double edged sword. In Sins, once you research your fleet techs, you're stuck with the credit drain even if you have no ships. If the AI is too careless, it will basically get wiped out and it won't be able to rebuild easily, while you could essentially keep most of your fleet and then just stomp it. Arguably, that's less fun than chasing it a bit, since at least the final decisive battle tends to come in the end, not the beginning.