For Backers Only: AI building stuff

Got a feeling the A.I. got very weak in the last builds... (even the absurd one! )
...but for me they are still conquering other planets!

And I thought the AI was better than ever in the last few builds!! Never had an AI so active in orbital. It even killed me by building teleporters and spamming huuuuuuuge armies trough it!!

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Same on the new pte

Galactic War AI gave up.
Wasn't stuck in anything or something like that. It was alone on a planet and just stopped building/moving and just... stood there.

I think he's having an internal debate on whether this is a just war or not.
Almost felt bad for smashing him with a moon.
Almost.

Could it be the new gas giants interfering with the AI going orbital? all the systems I've played on recently had one and despite me leaving the AI alone, it never went anywhere.

Naaa the AI just doesn't know how to mass up transports for it's armys yet.

Once it does (Along with a network of gates) the AI might actually be impossible to stop!

Why is the AI not focusing fire on combat fabbers?

Whenever a platoon consisting of fabbers + infernos is approaching, the AI always seems to favor the Infernos as a target.

Almost as weird as the behavior when the AI is attacking base defenses with Vanguards or Infernos - and the AI tries to RETREAT with these units when they are 1-2 seconds out of firing range, usually resulting in a TOTAL loss without doing any damage.

It's almost as if the neural net wasn't trained to attack/defend bases, only other moving platoons.

I spent a little time with the AI in PTE:

The AI is too energy happy while not getting enough metal. I think this is due to the way it assigns the jobs out. It will have its commander building energy, while one fabber expands and one usually stops to build a factory. I think this is a poor job allocation. It is much better to use your fabbers to expand while the Commander builds nothing but factories, adding an energy plant in between them as required. Right now the meta is such that if the commander isn't almost constantly building factories in the first 5-10 minutes, you're losing.

It could improve its platoon groupings. Dox are fast, they go underwater, they're micro heavy. They have no business being in groups with tanks and infernos or pretty much any other unit at all. Likewise, combat fabbers should only group up in platoons with high hit point units, like infernos, otherwise they're totally wasted.

Fighters often don't seem to react to ground units being bombed. I don't know if the AI didn't some threat analysis on this one, but once the enemy exposes their bombers without fighter support it should be roaring over, shooting them down and then bugging out to safety.

AI still seems to be having a rough time going to other planets and doing something useful with them. They didn't seem to really start developing them until I took a big chunk out of it's main base, but by then it was way too late.

Could it have something to do with the max fabbers stat? If all it's fabbers are in the main base, it can't expand very fast elsewhere.

This was a hard AI.

This would be nice, the game I did this morning I saw a small group of infernos driving by a pelter, barely out if range and getting destroyed by it. They were being chased (out of range) by my own tanks so it may have just been running from them, but ignoring the pelter just didn't make sense

It didn't exactly keep them away, it went all in. But once some auxiliary units in the second row (AA, tanks, combat fabbers or whatever) were destroyed, the entire platoon (or what was left, mostly only the infernos) tried to retreat.

IMHO, it's a generic conceptional issue. Both Inferno and Vanguard are designed to go all in, attack move, never retreat. Asking them to retreat - even when this makes perfect sense for any second row units left - is usually a total loss as it also makes them stop attacking at all. They just don't behave the same as the rest of platoon. Same neural net can surely manage both unit roles individually(!), but it can't handle mixed platoons when it comes to SELECTIVELY retreating only with those units which can actually be saved.

But that's not all. The AI also tries to manage them the same way it would order tanks or Dox around, meaning frequently reassigning targets (with no respect to proximity of the Inferno to targets which would actually be in firing range).

In summary:

• Having them in a moving platoon as a meat shield in the front row works perfectly fine.
• Having them move all in when there are only 2 opposing fronts works also fine.
• Being surrounded by possible targets doesn't work at all. The Vanguard/Inferno always tries to align with the new attack move and turns his back onto all other possible targets, even when he was almost in range already.
  
• Mixed platoons with Vanguards/Infernos don't work at all when retreating. The AI lacks the concept of "detaching" those units from the platoon when they are impossible to retrieve.
• The AI has no understanding of the action delay of the Vanguard/Inferno. Tanks and bots can switch target without much penalty. Vanguard/Infernos can't. They are designed to be given one target and to scorch everything by the way while crawling slowly towards that target.

Well, have fun. Personally, I don't think that the neural net can be simply trained in this case. You will probably need to split Vanguards/Infernos from their platoon once they approach any possible target, and have the neural net handle them individually, also dealing respect to their reluctant response to any order which would enforce a change of direction.

Just the way human players would treat Infernos. Move in together with the fire support to make use of the trinity (tank/DD/healer) while in open field, but then use fire support for well aimed snipes against high value targets (whatever the AI considers "high value") while the Infernos lay waste to everything else.

I've had a few experiences lately (most recent release build) where I feel like the AI is not really modelling orbital threats correctly. For example, the AI fled to an empty moon and started a base there and built deep space radar. So at this point they knew that I had sent in a bunch of Avengers to surround their orbit.

Unfortunately, they didn't build orbital or umbrellas or nukes or anything that could touch me. They just built out their mexes and a couple T1 factories and then seemed to not know what to do with itself. I had plenty of time to pummeled them safely with anchors and nukes.

Of course, at other times the AI is so vicious I need to go back to Chronocam to figure out how they destroyed me so quickly.

Both of the AIs in this replay were on absurd and acted... rather stupidly... 12170526154270794835

My AI's always have a tendancy to do this:



But out of range to ever actually shoot at me, or commit infernos at an attack.

heh, the hard ai is better then the absurd ai. because hard actually attacks and is aggressive, and more importantly, uses its infernos well.

Interesting...

What about relentless?

theres basicly no difference between relentless and absurd lol. The difficulty barely seems to change things compared to other games. easy medium and hard ai all feel the same to me but i notice that the AI is more timid with relentless and absurd.

not to mention AI is unfinished, it never goes for the gas giants....at all, nor build annihilasers....probably another thing to chalk up to Uber releasing the game quickly for PAX

The Hard AI is in no way better than Absurd. Maybe some of the micro behaviour needs tweaking, but Absurd builds more units, floats less, and is just generally better than Hard in most ways. Put them in a 1v1 against each other, see who wins. SPOILER: Absurd.

The AI does putter its troops around in armies that are way too tiny though. A big part of the problem I think is its lack of focus on anything, it just builds a bit of everything.