Spacegal

Join Date 03/2010

10 yrs and AI innovations

Hi guys,

in these days I was playing - without too much enthusiasm I admit since I am an Advent fan - and I've just realized that after 10 years it seems that SoaSE2 is following more the road of a SoaSE replica instead of innovating on something. I would've expected a lot of innovations in game logics after 10 years, that's my point, but instead I've found the following (please note that I'm focusing on the AI and not on human vs human. Of course human vs human can put in place different tactics):

- Capital ships have the same abilities of the first SoaSE that'll limit to what we already know the possible arc of alternatives the AI could follow whenever using a capital ship;

- By playing 5 times vs hard and unfair AIs I've seen that the Dunov shields restore logic it's still here 4 out of 5 times (the other one AI used carriers). After 10 years I would've expected AIs would approach me with something new than with what I've already seen in SoaSE. It's fine in the end game battle to have Dunovs to restore Titan shields but that the first encounter with an AI is with the Dunov 4 out of 5 times at my eyes could even be a bug in the AI tactic algorithm;

- The huge number of heavy cruisers logic it's still a solid winning tactic used by the AI too: so in the mid game the AI aims to have a fleet with hundreds of heavy cruiser which is fine by the way but that logic is used also by human players and AI in the first game. It's fine to have this tactic but I would've added some evasive ability, some unexpected movement and similar. 5 times out of 5 AIs has done a fleet full of heavy cruiser and that remains a solid winning tactic from the first game. What I'm missing are the alternatives or the counter-actions not for humans players but for the AI;

- Concentrated fire: exactly as in the first game in a 20 vs 20 same ships battle the AI will spread the fire across your ships where you can concentrate the fire manually on one ship at a time. By doing this even in SoaSE2 the AI will lose the battle and will not put in place any counter-actions. I don't think to be the only one in the world to do this hence if something is consolidated from the first game after 10 years I would've addressed it in some way just to add something new... well anyway for sure that an AI while losing a clearly tied battle would do nothing it's not a good thing.

So I know SoaSE is strongly (humans) multiplayer oriented, I know, but well having an evolved AI or at least a responsive AI using some new tactics from what we've already seen in the first game in my opinion would give some fresh air to the battles.

sins of a solar empire ii

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wbino3556

Most of the games I have played, the AI comes at me with mostly 60+ light frigates, and light carriers. And usually only one Capital Ship. When they get Missile Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers they will send a dozen of those each along with the light frigates. But they hardly ever mass their capital ships. But for the most part they just swarm me with light frigates. If I had a starbase and a lot of defenses setup at a planet they have commited 60 light frigates, a dozen missile cruisers, and a dozen or so torpedo cruisers. With one or two Capital Ships. This one done on a map with no orbits. So it was a choke point planet.

I had a fleet of about 8-9 Capital ships but did not have the numbers of support ships. I probably had half of the total frigates/cruisers to counter them. I also had a garrison at the planet. But just one garrison mod. They steamrolled my starbase, and defense platforms. They did take some losses on their light frigates but they had so many it didnt matter much. I got my main fleet there and took down some of their numbers of frigates.

I had four heavy factories nearby and rebuilt my lost Caps, and had all my other light and heavy factories churning out ships. Gathered them together for a counter attack. In the end I never lost the planet, but lost all structures around the planet. There fleet was completely destroyed. Then I took that fleet I built and went on an offensive and wiped them out. They sent everything they had at me on that one planet.

I also noticed the AI doesnt try diplomacy at all. And it in this game I had all three AIs against me. The other two kept on trying to invade an asteroid base of mine which kept them busy. Two of the AI opponents sent two decent sized fleets there once, and even though they did some damage, being able to concentrate fire at the jump in point with the star base and defense platforms. They got decimated pretty easily. Then they would just send a capital ship in afterwards which got destroyed in 6 seconds after jumping in.

So I think their logic depends on what you have going on with your own empire. I try to get starbases as quick as possible and start building them at my planets. The AI will start sending more torpedo cruisers to counter them. When I didnt build them, I wouldnt see a torpedo cruiser but just light frigate swarms.

And to note, I beat 3 AI players with nothing but light frigates and corvettes. Never saw an AI titan, or starbase either.

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The game is still in its alpha phase AND they've said that they have barely touched the AI, so I have to assume that most of your concerns will be fixed at release, but are now not a problem at all. If you're aware of the game's state that is. They've also stated that the AI does not do any diplomacy yet either.

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Ok thank you Smarti12: I missed those notes but I think anyway it's good to report just to hope devs will remember to fix and improve

About larsoed4422 message: it happened to me too the Zerg like swarm I think at this time it's like Smarti said that they just replicated for now the first game AI algorithm.

So I'll get back to you both in some months in the meanwhile thank you again and happy playing!

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I've been playing Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion a lot lately, in singleplayer mode vs 5 or 6 unfair AI and I have to agree with a lot of your points. The AI is ok to play against up to a certain point, but I have noticed that it goes downhill pretty quickly if the AI throws a major offensive against me, and gets its fleet of ships wrecked, and often times, the AI seems to 'give up' pretty quickly. It doesn't rebuild its fleet quickly or doesn't change its tactic.

I have noticed that the E4X mod, the AI behaves slightly different in that, it feels a bit smarter. For example, it builds a massive fleet with a anti-squadron composition designed to fight against my fleet that had 660 bomber squadron Advent fleet. Dolynick's stargate mod where the AI also feels slightly "smarter" as well. It might just be that the AI behaves somewhat differently with the new content (ships, abilities etc) added to the game from the mod.

I think the main problem is that the AI is not challenging enough, and is not smart enough to change strategies if the human player creates different types of fleet compositions. And as soon as you destroy the AI fleet, the AI seems to have given up and doesn't quickly rebuild its fleet.

I hope to see the AI become a really challenging opponent where it's way smarter, can change tactics on the fly, don't become a mindless zombiefied npc if its fleet is destroyed, and perhaps have an "Insanity" hard mode level that goes beyond "Unfair" mode in Sins 2 where the AI is way harder to fight against.

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Quoting Gambit3689,

reply 4

Yeah so as I've said before, the AI got barely touched so far. Expect the AI to be a lot better at the 1.0 release. I think it's all good to report specific troubling behaviors and pose suggestions, but know that it's just not done in the slightest.

Also, there are two difficulties above "Unfair" already in Sins 2, which I guess would just have more resource handicap now but should still be a little bit harder to defeat.

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I'm so happy guys to see several people sharing in a constructive way their open points and doubts on the AI to me for a dev team is the best thing to work on Thank you all!

Today I'd like to report for you all this little wonderful site where users can vote the feature they like the most and even propose something: it's just for a matter of priority but it could be useful for us all to address some points and... well I like the idea of voting I'm a lover of democracy even though in the game of the survey I've lost because I didn't vote for the MP but whatever.

I do not know if the Sins2 devs will do something similar but I guess even for tracking user requests it may be good: just thinking to all the nice things we're reporting on the AI we could put those to voting and see what happens.

Here is the site: https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com

...and if you didn't know the game my advice to fellow Sins players is to give it a try

For sure in a Sins2 feature vote I'd vote for AI thingie and for a well deserved campaign which will gain something from a good AI

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Sins II is a whole new game. Written from scratch to be a core neutral, 64-bit game. Unlike Sins I which was essentially frozen based on its 32-bit, single threaded engine (pretty amazing that what it could do), Sins II has almost unlimited future potential.

So people expecting Sins II to somehow big massively different from Sins I: Rebellion are likely to be disappointed. But we are looking at the long-term here. So for instance, the AI in this game will get better and better unlike in Sins I where it was stuck at a certain level. In Sins II, we can keep improving it over time. In Sins I, the AI was literally limited by N milliseconds of a single CPU core.

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Just be carerful what you wish for. At it's core I really sins is a rock paper scissors game rather than a tactical game. There is very little to no randomness in anything sins1 or 2 will have. So the AI can play the game perfectly if it has perfect information.

Missing from sins of a solar empire 2 that would make for more interesting and less samish calculable games while making information less calculable:

- Morale - Ships \ fleets \ generals \ populations never break and run or surrender. At what stage do spacers know they are beaten and run and what happens when they do? Does AI enable you to take unlimited punishment without retreat or loss of effectiveness? Are their personalities which are holding your empire together that can die or run themselves? Devs hate Morale mechanics because they make games less predictable for the stats spreadsheet cruncher players and therefore less competitive and enjoyable for those people. For those who want more of a story game morale is often gold, bringing a human element to the game and the realisation that not everybody in your empire is made of iron all the time.

You might have the opposite of moral failure and have a ship motivated by a princess on the planet he is defending charge the enemy flagship intent of a scuttle. Impetuousness. Again players would hate to lose that control.

- Supply lines - Ships never run out of ammo and never need resupply. something that was interesting in the game conquest frontier wars. Bringing enough supply and protecting supply lines was important. Operations had to be planned properly. I know that game devs hate supply lines because they make games more admin intensive. But they do not have to be an "all the time" mechanic but especially if a whole planet is dedicated to supplying an orbiting starbase with factories and such, but a siege should be able to cut off that flow and if it does so for and extended period..... I think WARNO and Steel Division 2 are examples of supply done right. You don't need it most of the time but eventually you do.

P.S. I miss the retreat button in sins2

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 7

I think a more apt comparison would be StarCraft I to StarCraft II. When SC2 first came out, a lot of people were expecting a lot more "innovation" but that really didn't happen until later since, really, the goal of SC2 (wings of liberty) was really to bring the game to a whole new engine.

Sins II is a whole new game. Written from scratch to be a core neutral, 64-bit game. Unlike Sins I which was essentially frozen based on its 32-bit, single threaded engine (pretty amazing that what it could do), Sins II has almost unlimited future potential.

So people expecting Sins II to somehow big massively different from Sins I: Rebellion are likely to be disappointed. But we are looking at the long-term here. So for instance, the AI in this game will get better and better unlike in Sins I where it was stuck at a certain level. In Sins II, we can keep improving it over time. In Sins I, the AI was literally limited by N milliseconds of a single CPU core.

I agree that 64-bit game has a lot of potential but I'm wondering if some of the recent videos of the pre-release play through on youtube in certian instances showing stuttering is a result of hardware limitation or game limitation? https://youtu.be/kZK2hOtn6ag?t=1033

I'm hoping it's the former and that this youtuber just doesn't have a beefier pc.

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Volt_Cruelerz

Join Date 06/2008

+115

I imagine a fair amount of improvement can be brought to the game just by tweaking the priority heuristics, which are presently only defined for things like flak frigates.

    "ai":
    {
        "priority_bonus_per_attack_target_type":
        {
            "torpedo": 6.0,
            "fighter_strikecraft": 5.0,
            "bomber_strikecraft": 5.0
        },
        "behaviors": [
            "auto_attack_all"
        ],
        "auto_follow_target_priority": 4.0
    },

Just by making things actually aim at what their weapons can penetrate, I think we'll see a decent improvement.

Of course, I wouldn't complain if the AI learned how to focus fire.

Quoting Gambit3689,

reply 9

My own 1080 has been handling Sins II just fine on my 4k monitor, though I have no idea what resolution it's actually rendering at since that's not configurable yet.

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I can tell that it's handling way more entities than Rebellion could ever handle so it's definitely a massive improvement, and the youtuber is also using a recording software while playing Sins 2 which could impact performance but I just noticed that as soon as he zooms in to the massive fleet, it started to stutter alot.

It could be hardware related or it could be game performance related. I'm not sure but I hope having a powerful pc will mean Sins 2 will never lag?

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I'll repeat my answer on your dedicated thread;

There's a RTX 2070 (mobile) and i7-10875H in that rig. They're also on 4K and screenrecording. It seems likely that this is due to that situation and it being a laptop. 2070 (mobile) is not meant for 4K in general; perhaps thermal throttling?

But that's all just an opinion, I have a 3070, 12700 and play on 1440p, and while I haven't tried to push it, I did not experience any stuttering at all.

They also modded up the fleet supply btw. So far it doesn't seem like there are many stuttering problems, if any, on beefier rigs. But without further optimizations and the other two factions, it's a bit premature. Still, it functions so well compared to Sins 1.

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Volt_Cruelerz

Join Date 06/2008

+115

I've spent some more time digging into the targeting heuristics as I continue working on an AI mod, as well as a Sins II simulator, so I figured it was worth reporting here.

While an improvement to heuristics will absolutely help the AI, the biggest thing I've found is just how random the outcomes of encounters with 2 or more ships are because of the happenstance of whether or not they focus fire, and unfortunately, that's not consistent.

I think there's a pretty easy way to handle this from the devs though: each unit has a default target priority, but we could scale that to 200% as the ship approaches zero hit points. For example, a Kol has a priority of 50, but at 50% health, ramp that up 75, and right before it dies, it would be approaching 100. This would encourage focus fire on it with minimal computation changes.

There's also something weird with firing arcs affecting target selection, but I can't figure out what's going on without a more controlled environment.

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