Busser

I did some test runs on the map you suggested, all results are taken after +/- 1 hour and 30 minutes of gameplay (sped up offcourse ) . The first three runs with 3 active Unfair AI. No human interference. 1. One player had colonized 6 additional planets, the other had colonized 2. High-Tech planets did not appear in unfavorable positions and did not hamper expansion. Some heavy bidding did result in a very large and crippling first pirate raid, which explains the struggling third player. The lack of expansion from the second player was due to the fact he was surrounded by planets with a very large defending fleet. 2. One player colonized 7 planets, the other 4. No players were halted. The difference n development was due to the fact the map heavily favored expansion for the first player. 3. All players colonized 5 or 6 planets. The last one was slowed down by consecutive pirate attacks and the bad luck of being surrounded by asteroidfields and a positron storm. This was perhaps the most balanced game of all. Now for some test runs with 2 active Unfair AI. No Human Interference. 4. The first player colonized 6 planets, the second only 2. The second player did spawn very close to the pirate base and was targeted several times. By the time the first player encountered a high tier planet, he was able to quickly build the remaining civic lab and colonize it without a slowdown. 5. The green player spawned right next to a Large Volcanic Shipyard planet and had only two other neighbouring dead-end planets . One of which was an asteroid with 8 logistical slots. After colonizaition logistical upgrades and civic lab building followed. This took such a long time that the red player was able to take control of this industrial planet’s gravity well and effectively isolating the green player from the rest of the galaxy. Resulting in the red player having 7 colonies and the green player only 2. 6. First player colonized 6 planets, the second 3 (wormhole and ion clouds). Seeing as Random maps tend to be . .euhm Random, it’s pretty hard to predict how the AI is going to react. The Medium – Random map with 33 planets and 3 active players is rather small, so the numbers I noted aren’t that bad. Especially when you subtract the uncolonizable gravity wells. On such a small map, small anomalies will have a large impact on the gameplay. I suspect that implementing the changes on larger maps will give more steady results. Perhaps the amount of ion clouds, worm holes, dead moons on small maps can be lowered ? Only one game was doomed from the start due to bad planet placement (5). Slow starts in other games did not give the impression of giving a definitive advantage to the opponent. (the slower players in game 2 and 3 were hampered by bottlenecks that cut of their starting positions. These bottlenecks would become huge defensive advantages later in the game. Much like Australia in RISK) On a side note, sometimes planets are placed right next/on top of each other. This results in gravity wells that run through each other and makes controlling units/zooming in awkward.   In conclusion I would say that there is improvement. The 3 previous tests all had at least one AI struggling with this problem. The 6 current tests show only 1 game so job well done !

I've had 9 minidumps since the beginning of this month, all of them the types you mentioned. When starting the game, loading saved games, starting new games or navigating the menu. I did notice that running task-manager when doing this sometimes unfreezes the game and avoids a mini-dump. I Also make sure that nothing excessive is running in the background while starting. I actually try to avoid doing anything when the game is loading. No minidumps during the actual gameplay however. . . which was the real gamebreaker in the previous versions.

The buffer-idea is brilliant and it would solve this problem quite easy. My gut feeling tells me that as soon as 4 planets are colonized everything starts going smoothly so a buffer like you suggested would work as long as high-tech planets are at least 2 jumps away. The maps I used were: a) Random - Medium (Enlarged), 1 star, 4 players max, 37 planets. I played a 1vs.1 game. The first time I encoutered the AI getting stuck at 4 planets. [letting the game run at top speed for some time did brake the gridlock] b) Random -Medium Large (Enlarged), 1star, 6 players max, 60 planets. (the revision 576 test) c) Random -Medium Large (Enlarged), 1star, 6 players max, 60 planets. (the revision 577 test) Would it be helpfull if I did a comparative test of the other random maps tomorrow ? Or some maps in particular ? edit: Like you said, lowering the research requirements for the colonization techs would not be needed. They are good as they are now.

In retrospect I think pirates are not the deciding factor in AI slowdowns that I have made them out to be. Looking at the following figures from two almost identical test runs, one with revision 576 and one after revision 577. (I have an excel file in case you’re interested) Testgame 1; revision 576. After 13 minutes of gameplay all 5 AI players had already built 5 or 6 military labs. After 1 full hour of gameplay only 3 succeeded in building 5 civic labs and it took the other two another half hour. After 1hour and 30 minutes of gameplay 3 players had only colonized 3 extra planets. One was slightly hampered by pirates but the other two were stalled at planets that required the bureaucratic tech. After 1 hour and 30 minutes two AI players dominated the map with respectively 8 and 11 planets colonized while the others were still stuck at 3 additional colonies. Testgame 2; revision 577. After 15 minutes of gameplay all 5 players had built 6 military labs. Afyer 45 minutes of gameplay one player had built 6 civic labs and the others had built none. Most of the players caught up at 1hour and 20 minutes of gameplay. 4 AI players showed comparable levels of expansion in the first hour, all colonizing 4 planets at the same pace. One did not colonize more then 3, again stopping after 48minuten of gameplay and idling at a planet that required the Bureaucratic tech. 1st: the AI tends to build a lot of military research labs early on in the game. I’m not sure why this is but it puts a significant burden on early development. 2nd: the AI does skip over enemy/uncolonizable planets so the assumptions I made in the earlier post were incorrect. The real problem however is that the AI tends to idle at planets that require volcanic exploration or bureaucratic efficiency research tech. I assume they wait for the relevant tech to develop and continue colonization. The fact that military labs have already taken up a lot of logistic slots slows down this progres. Thus I am convinced that the real deciding factor in slow AI expansion is the proximity of planets that require high tech levels. Although the problem is not as big as I thought it to be, I think it is at heart a simple map issue. I suspect the Sins AI has been developed with constant colonization in mind and not with this selective type of colonization. Maybe one of the following changes could be possible - Lower the tech level of volcanic/bureaucratic techs and let the AI take the negative financial impact. (can the AI handle negative planet income ?) - Prioritize civic lab building over combat lab building. - Make Shipyard planets/High Terran Planets/ Volcanic planets appear more at the core of the maps, and not in the outer sectors. Again, I have tested this in only two games, both of them single star systems with 60 RANDOM planets.

I have not yet tested the mod on unfair but if these problems do not occure on that specific difficulty level you could possibly just advise players to stick to that difficulty. Several mods from other games I've played did this and it could be a huge timesaver for you guys. (some Hearts of Iron 2 and Rome/Medieval 2: Total War mods spring to mind iirc). Balancing the game for all difficulty levels with the amount of current gameplay changes that have been implemented could prove rather time consuming or even impossible. Also, is there a way of playing the game in an observer/neutral-mode ? For example playing as pirates you could speed up te game and watch AI behaviour or interpret the post-game graphs and would speed up testplaying a lot. Tomorrow I plan to do some testing with inactive pirates and see how the AI handles.

There seems to be a problem with the combination of the following elements; 1. I did mention before the AI tends to expand very slowly. When faced with neighbouring Volcanic planets (which require 8 research stations) AI expansion seems to grind to a definitive halt. They seem to be unable to 'skip' planets as human players would do. 2. When playing a game with active pirates, pirate fleets seem to accumulate very fast and linger around planets they've just raided. I have found this to be a verry large burden on my CPU and causing lagg early on in some games. More pirate-raids are launched but no pirates are destroyed (inactive AI) resulting in a considerable number of piratefleets. ==> [Combine slow AI expansion, pirate accumulation + pirate raids that cripple the enemy AI early on] you have an enemy AI that is just incapable of expanding. i have had this happen now in 3 large games (on all difficulty levels except unfair) and in my opinion the AI is unable to cope with the current gameplay changes.

The AI on Easy/Normal difficulty seems to struggle a lot with the rebalanced ship and structure costs. Tested on a 37-planet map 4 players free for all. Took a full hour before AI started producing scouting ships, after 2 more hours still no significant fleetbuilding on the AI side. Higher difficulty levels seem fine though.

Interesting, so you can jump between planets as long as both of them have Broadcast Centers ? That's some creative modding concerning the "attack-stats sum"; I tried to bundle all the offensive capabilities of the ships (aver. laser dam., aver. phase miss damage, . . . ) into one figure so i could easily see which units gave the most bang for your buck, or have more attack power relative to their supply cost. Doing this I struggled with how exactly i should add in the squadrons some ships carry. About the reworking of ship costs. Would'nt it be easier to scale the numbers down a bit ? Since the amount of resources has increased a lot and so have planetupgrading costs. Perhaps it would be easier to scale things down a bit , say divide everything by 10 instead of increasing supply and ship costs ? Are there any specific things/situations/elements you guys would like the béta-testers to focus on ? Thanks for the fast replies.

Thanks for the reply, The new approach to defense did become much clearer. The weaker turrets and the space-mine limit make room for more creative defensive setups. In 1.0E it was possible to create impenetrable fortressworlds of minefields and turrets that made planet sieging by the AI almost impossible. Turrets indeed become much stronger after research but the larger gravity wells make it very time/money consuming to attempt to create such a fortress. All in all i agree that no type of static defense should become unsiegable and should only be a factor in slowing down advancing forces or could possibly be bypassed. The larger gravity wells do make this type of WW2 style "island hopping" campaign more feasable and negates the potential power of chokepoints. Furthermore i applaud the addition of extra phaselanes on the new maps. This makes for a more canon-style gameplay in accordance to the Star Wars hyperspace jumps and makes surprise attacks possible. (suddenly seeing a CIS fleet arriving at my homeworld Clone-War style out of nowhere made my day) However i did notice that some of these phase-lines are not visible on the map, is this intentional ? Now for the non-NU related questions. When a unit-info card displays the laser and phase missile damage what does the order in which they are listed mean? Is it the damage vs. different shiptypes or something completely different ? I've read several posts about the AI preference for building frigates and i was wondering if it was possible to change these to a more correct setup ? I don't mind the rebel scum using that much frigates but i would prefer the Empire (for example) to use more SD's. Perhaps even make them use smaller squadrons of SD's and other formations as in listed on Wookiepedia for example. I do realize that making the AI focus on certain ships could result in very monotone gameplay. This brings me to the CIS faction which uses far to little lucrehulk battleships. Is it possible to make a "cruiser" variant of the Lucrehulk ship so we could se more of them? Like you guys did with the Venator, Imperator class, Providence SD, . . ? I could not find info on the Trafed Carrier and the Trafed II FG and I was wondering what they are based on. Last but not least, a while ago I compiled a small file that combined unit stats etc. and attempted to look at figures like attack/supply, attack/cost. The new maps and the abundance of resources make the last formula outdated. However, the attack/supply gave me a lot of thought. Is a sum of all attack-stats enough ? How should I incalculate squadrons ? Perhaps a reference file like this is allready floating around on the net or in the game-files ?

Some very early thoughts on the béta after a few hours of gameplay. I had a lot of reading and catching up to do so forgive me if I mentioned some things that are already known. First game: starting with the Vong (not the best starting choice) and got immediatly overwhelmed with the drastic changes this mod has made in comparison to SOGE 1.0E. - the stronger pirates and pirate bases work very well. (perhaps some other models for the pirate bases in the future ?) - the custom planets add an amazing strategic depth to the game, especially the extra costs affiliated with colonizing and the more "realistic" spread of resources. - noticed the return of the typical "bobbing" of ships, present in the original Sins but not in SOGE 1.0E. Ships clustering together en masse and moving close to each other barely touching. - some eratic frigate behaviour; frigates moving suddenly backwards for a considerable distance. - the relative weaknes of defense turrets and the considerable decrease of the space-mine limit makes a huge difference. What is the motivation behind this and in what way are they, or defences in general, supposed to be used now? - Construction frigates seem to freeze/idle when given the build order for Hangar Defense and do not respond at manual orders. They only respond when the building order for the hangar(s) is cancelled. (had this happen in two consecutive games.) I'm currently in my second game playing as the empire on a lager map. some minor remarks: - the market prices seem to be very volatile, to say the least - noticed allied AI idle for a considerable time in the beginning of the game (I suspect this is supposed to be this way). - a considerable increase in memory usage and some lag when trying to use abbilities (using the "capture neutral" abbility in a huge gravity well with 10+ mines = massive lag when the grid comes up ). - minidump on gamestart followed by a minidump when i restarted the mod. (unable to recreate) These are some things i've noticed after a combined 5-6 hours of total gameplay. In my second game I was able to experience the mod's full potential. Epic scale, graphical improvements, more strategic depth, . . . Truly the first time an rts game has captured the true essence of Star Wars for me. I must add that this mod is actualy the sole reason I even bought Sins.

Greetings, I have been playing this mod for quite some time now and I'm interested in participating in the Bèta. Mantis: Busser