This seems to be based on them having no scouting information for that planet´(if they do, they only send lone engineers in asterus rather then lone commander. Simplest solution is to go scout them yourself. In GW I often use astreus as emergency spy sats.
I have seen this many times in skirmish, it just want to land the commander on a enemy planet with no intel, and then its game over. And its not because it dosent have a base anymore/ or trying to escape.
every problem said except that ai also totaly ignores gaß-giants. it doesnt build resources there, it doesnt in any way attack enemy installations there (by nuke or sending fighters there). for interplanetary invasion : it builds stargates, but still doesnt send its armys through it. only some lone units or fabbers to try to build a base or simply build resources if any left.
It also happened to me with this last PTE. Which makes me think pathfinding is still WIP since the very last re-engineering which was made.
Another game against Absurd AI with 1.0 resources, this time on a R1000 metal planet, no other planets. AI only expands a little bit, builds ground units and air units, doesn't really send them to attack me. I did see AI ground platoons halfway between my base and his, but they were acting noticably cautious, when I approached with a bigger force they mostly retreated. AI isn't really attacking anymore, something's very wrong guys. I also had 100+ land units trying to cross the metal planet trenches like they weren't there, just pushing against the edge instead of taking a bridge to the other side, they were on full-planet area attack. When I selected them and gave a move order to the other side of the trench some of them used a bridge to get there, others just kept pushing into the edge. At some point the game crashed (local server) not sure why, I noticed the client .exe jumping up and down rapidly in memory use, went up to 10 gigs while during the normal game it was using 3, at this point the client was hanging and I had to end the proces.
Well that was from a server perspective first. Basically, a single 1300 radius desert planet, with a single AI (which was really, really lazy at producing stuff), I managed to have ~2500 mobile units (2000 bots and 500 airplanes ) with server simulation at 10FPS (which is the highest for the server). Over 2500 ..... This is on my Core i7 (hyperthreaded) + 32gigs of memory (Yep all PA processes ended consuming 8gigs of memory). From a client perspective, i have to admit my 770GTX is not limited. Obviously CPU is still the bottleneck and it all ends with 10/15 FPS. I'm impressed especially when watching these massive flows of units. To me it's really never seen before in the RTS genre. I like how nervous the action is.
I've played a few AI games with this build and have the same issue of feeling I'm winning when I shouldn't be. The AI has these 'platoons' as you call them, that's great for general harassing and expansion. But it's forever in a state of having them all over the place and coming in one at a time when it attacks whilst the others still mill around in the open or the air units just endlessly cluster over the base. I'm still convinced that there are plenty of times through out a game where if the AI just selected everything it had and attack-moved my base I would lose for the sheer amount of units it had: even better if it grouped them into some kind of giant deathball-platoon prior and even better again finally if it timed it's air attack to coincide with it's ground. That would see the AI become a genuine challenge as even if it lost it's units in the attack and I survive, I'm almost certainly going to be in the position of having to rebuild my base / my own units for the AI have it's breathing room to also rebuild and keep expanding. That would provide pressure and the thought I can lose at any time, rather than the current setup where all I have to do is be able to take on the current rather small platoons and know if I can I've won.
hmmm i see what you mean and i agree that the game is still very very heave on the CPU load. but the latest AI and pathfinding was a huge upgrade indeed! now in my AMD 6350 the hyperthreading is way better than an Intel i7, and my 6870 radeon 2g, with 16GB of DDR with about 1.000 units which again is i think a "crazy number" of units to achieve in any game match 1vs1, my FPS was arround 30. when i get some time i will try some PvP games even thought i am noob, i would like to see how it goes....
Please @sorian make the AI build more Anti Nukes, its just to easy late game, even with a big eco buff to the AI.
AI updates are on the list, but there are other higher priority things that need to get worked on first.
I get that there are other important things and features which are better finished at one piece (the symmetry-thing indeed looked pretty damn neat) or even might break AI until it's adjustment. It's just this, for PvE an functioning AI is the most basic functionality needed to enjoy the game. Please mind i'm not trying to tell you how to make a game, but frankly, I can't play PA for now, there is no real point with the number of AI issues.