How a newbie is losing the war with NPR ... :)

[Jorgen_CAB]

Is it possible to use off-the-shelf components in the production of fighters?

Only if you produce them in a shipyard which you can do if you like.

[Entaro (OP)]

An amazing thing happened. I don't know how this can be understood - either I "found" a bug, or something broke, or there are some logical reasons why this happened ...

In general, the enemy fleet from the very ships that destroyed my automated colony about a year ago - arrived in the solar system and headed to Mercury (where there is a civilized mining colony).
I sent my fleet towards them.
The enemy fleet arrived at Mercury, stopped, and did NOTHING. Nothing at all! My fleet flew up to the range of fire of my missiles (70 million km.) And just shot the enemy fleet, it was like shooting at targets in a shooting range!
The surprising thing is:
1. The enemy did not begin to move (neither in the direction of my fleet, although it is difficult not to detect it - there are ships measuring 60 tons of tons, and the most powerful active sensors, nor to run away).
2. The enemy did not try to shoot down my missiles (although this is the same class of ships as the one that destroyed my colonies with energy weapons).
3. The enemy did not start attacking my colony (although in response to my hostile actions it was logical for him to show hostility).

Is this a bug and you need to write in "errors and suggestions"?
If you try to find a logical reason for this ... perhaps the enemy ships were not equipped at all with sensors capable of detecting my attacking missiles, and were not able to notice ships measuring 60 thousand tons at a distance of 70 million km.
But even if this is so, they had to do at least something - or immediately fly in the direction where the missiles came from, or at least start to run away ...

[Jorgen_CAB]

An amazing thing happened. I don't know how this can be understood - either I "found" a bug, or something broke, or there are some logical reasons why this happened ...

In general, the enemy fleet from the very ships that destroyed my automated colony about a year ago - arrived in the solar system and headed to Mercury (where there is a civilized mining colony).
I sent my fleet towards them.
The enemy fleet arrived at Mercury, stopped, and did NOTHING. Nothing at all! My fleet flew up to the range of fire of my missiles (70 million km.) And just shot the enemy fleet, it was like shooting at targets in a shooting range!
The surprising thing is:
1. The enemy did not begin to move (neither in the direction of my fleet, although it is difficult not to detect it - there are ships measuring 60 tons of tons, and the most powerful active sensors, nor to run away).
2. The enemy did not try to shoot down my missiles (although this is the same class of ships as the one that destroyed my colonies with energy weapons).
3. The enemy did not start attacking my colony (although in response to my hostile actions it was logical for him to show hostility).

Is this a bug and you need to write in "errors and suggestions"?
If you try to find a logical reason for this ... perhaps the enemy ships were not equipped at all with sensors capable of detecting my attacking missiles, and were not able to notice ships measuring 60 thousand tons at a distance of 70 million km.
But even if this is so, they had to do at least something - or immediately fly in the direction where the missiles came from, or at least start to run away ...

Either a bug or they did not longer consider you an enemy as the diplomcy status had improved enough, then you go and start a new war by attacking them for no good reason...

[Entaro (OP)]

An amazing thing happened. I don't know how this can be understood - either I "found" a bug, or something broke, or there are some logical reasons why this happened ...

In general, the enemy fleet from the very ships that destroyed my automated colony about a year ago - arrived in the solar system and headed to Mercury (where there is a civilized mining colony).
I sent my fleet towards them.
The enemy fleet arrived at Mercury, stopped, and did NOTHING. Nothing at all! My fleet flew up to the range of fire of my missiles (70 million km.) And just shot the enemy fleet, it was like shooting at targets in a shooting range!
The surprising thing is:
1. The enemy did not begin to move (neither in the direction of my fleet, although it is difficult not to detect it - there are ships measuring 60 tons of tons, and the most powerful active sensors, nor to run away).
2. The enemy did not try to shoot down my missiles (although this is the same class of ships as the one that destroyed my colonies with energy weapons).
3. The enemy did not start attacking my colony (although in response to my hostile actions it was logical for him to show hostility).

Is this a bug and you need to write in "errors and suggestions"?
If you try to find a logical reason for this ... perhaps the enemy ships were not equipped at all with sensors capable of detecting my attacking missiles, and were not able to notice ships measuring 60 thousand tons at a distance of 70 million km.
But even if this is so, they had to do at least something - or immediately fly in the direction where the missiles came from, or at least start to run away ...

Either a bug or they did not longer consider you an enemy as the diplomcy status had improved enough, then you go and start a new war by attacking them for no good reason...

Well, of course there was a message that they "stopped considering the enemy", despite the fact that the relationship is -2000. But, I thought they would change this status right after my attack
P.S. Built carronade ships and found out something interesting. Namely: these enemy ships are rather strange ... and they are not very much. I don’t know what exactly is the matter - but I don’t know how they could design such ineffective ships.
They are armed with something that fires 68 shots every 20 seconds, each shot deals 3 damage, but ... But these shots are terribly inaccurate. At a distance of 25 thousand km, at the speed of my ships - 6500 km / s, they did not hit me AT ALL.
At a distance of 0 km, and a speed (following) of 4500-2500 km / s, they hit about 6-7 times, i.e. chance of hitting 10%! Some very strange weapon The only thing they are capable of is to destroy defenseless colonies and transport workers.
Oh, yes, I have Level 4 electronic countermeasures installed on my ships, maybe this is so effective ...

[ArcWolf]

Well, of course there was a message that they "stopped considering the enemy", despite the fact that the relationship is -2000. But, I thought they would change this status right after my attack
P.S. Built carronade ships and found out something interesting. Namely: these enemy ships are rather strange ... and they are not very much. I don’t know what exactly is the matter - but I don’t know how they could design such ineffective ships.
They are armed with something that fires 68 shots every 20 seconds, each shot deals 3 damage, but ... But these shots are terribly inaccurate. At a distance of 25 thousand km, at the speed of my ships - 6500 km / s, they did not hit me AT ALL.
At a distance of 0 km, and a speed (following) of 4500-2500 km / s, they hit about 6-7 times, i.e. chance of hitting 10%! Some very strange weapon The only thing they are capable of is to destroy defenseless colonies and transport workers.
Oh, yes, I have Level 4 electronic countermeasures installed on my ships, maybe this is so effective ...

sounds like they have 15cm rail guns. And ECM4 is very strong, it effetely reduced their accuracy by 40% if they have no ECCM.

[Entaro (OP)]

Hmm ... I'm somewhat disappointed with NPR. They fight completely ineffectively and use completely useless ship templates. At least my current opponent ...
It feels like the ships I'm at war with are the very ships that I discovered in his system 30 years ago. Why their accuracy is so bad is not clear, but that's not even the problem.
I have not met any of their ships with missiles, or with anti-missile missiles. Their most popular class of warships has 17 * 4 railguns and 5 armor, with 21,500 tons of tonnage, but they do not use these ships effectively - they split them into many small fleets, which I destroyed one by one. The only thing holding me back from immediately attacking their capital is the fact that I spent most of my missiles on destroying most of their fleet, but they did not even try to combine their fleet and deliver a powerful blow to me.

Why these ships do not fire back with their railguns is also absolutely not clear.
Hopefully the next enemy will be better.
I set the difficulty higher, I think to include the "intruders" ..

[nuclearslurpee]

Hmm ... I'm somewhat disappointed with NPR. They fight completely ineffectively and use completely useless ship templates. At least my current opponent ...
It feels like the ships I'm at war with are the very ships that I discovered in his system 30 years ago. Why their accuracy is so bad is not clear, but that's not even the problem.
I have not met any of their ships with missiles, or with anti-missile missiles. Their most popular class of warships has 17 * 4 railguns and 5 armor, with 21,500 tons of tonnage, but they do not use these ships effectively - they split them into many small fleets, which I destroyed one by one. The only thing holding me back from immediately attacking their capital is the fact that I spent most of my missiles on destroying most of their fleet, but they did not even try to combine their fleet and deliver a powerful blow to me.

Why these ships do not fire back with their railguns is also absolutely not clear.
Hopefully the next enemy will be better.
I set the difficulty higher, I think to include the "intruders" ..

And now you know why so many players play with multiple player races. 

To be fair to the poor NPRs, Steve is making some changes in 2.0 to help the AI including adding some logic to combine their fleets before giving battle, which should at least help with the whole destroying-them-piecemeal problem that makes them so easy to kill. Still, as long as NPRs lack tactical cleverness or any ability to adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield, they will be easy for a seasoned player to beat - or even a new player in cases like this.

[Entaro (OP)]

And now you know why so many players play with multiple player races. 

To be fair to the poor NPRs, Steve is making some changes in 2.0 to help the AI including adding some logic to combine their fleets before giving battle, which should at least help with the whole destroying-them-piecemeal problem that makes them so easy to kill. Still, as long as NPRs lack tactical cleverness or any ability to adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield, they will be easy for a seasoned player to beat - or even a new player in cases like this.

Yes, now I understand
Although I don't really like playing "with myself".
In general, there are 2 problems with AI: the separation of fleets (and their behavior ...) and ship templates. I got the feeling that the enemy had a template from somewhere when I found it (or from the very beginning of the game) and has not changed since that time. I cannot explain otherwise such weak railguns ...

The game provides a huge number of options for waging war, from long-range missiles (as in my favorite space opera by David Weber "Honor Harrington") to clouds of fighters, but against NPR any, the most clumsy tactics will do.
Maybe there are some ways to complicate the game in terms of military operations?

I really liked the concept that you need to predict, study the enemy, adapt to his technologies (which are unknown), try to achieve maximum advantage - and in order to understand how, you need to conduct battles during which the capabilities of the enemy are revealed. But alas, the logic of NPR behavior and the templates of their ships definitely need to be improved.

[Steve Walmsley]

I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.

Regarding the NPRs actions. It sounds like the relationship recovered enough to make them neutral again (the -2000 is your view of them, not their view of you). Some NPRs will not attack populations without STO (usually those with low XEN) and will use ground forces instead. So if they were railgun-armed they couldn't respond to missile attack and their philosophy prevented planetary bombardment. When they engaged, the ECCM bug would reduce their effectiveness against ECM-protected ships.

[Droll]

I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.

This explains so much why ECM dominates massively. I think this fix alone is going to have a large effect on generated NPR difficulty moving forward.

[Entaro (OP)]

I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.

Regarding the NPRs actions. It sounds like the relationship recovered enough to make them neutral again (the -2000 is your view of them, not their view of you). Some NPRs will not attack populations without STO (usually those with low XEN) and will use ground forces instead. So if they were railgun-armed they couldn't respond to missile attack and their philosophy prevented planetary bombardment. When they engaged, the ECCM bug would reduce their effectiveness against ECM-protected ships.

I wrote in the topic about errors, about all the illogical manifestations of AI that I noticed ...
The main problem, I suppose, is not in ECCM, but in the fact that the AI ​​in my game:
1. Did not replace templates of my ships with new, improved ones.
2. Did not include in fleets with the most massive warships - ships with anti-missile point protection.
3. Did not use railguns as missile defense.
4. After all the battles with me, I am unable to assess the threat posed by my fleet.

I'm not sure how this can be programmed (I guess building the AI ​​in this game is a very difficult task), but something like
1. "If the enemy fleet possesses 3 ships of the Kruiser mk1 type and it destroyed 20 of my ships without loss, then do not send less than 50 ships against fleets with 3 ships of this type" (accordingly, the number depends on the number).
Well, this is the simplest thing.
Perfectly:
2. "If the enemy fleet fires missiles":
A) To add anti-missile ships to the combat fleets.
B) If 1 enemy salvo inflicted 400 damage and destroyed 2 ships:
 - calculate the approximate maximum stock of enemy missiles based on the tonnage and the number of rocket launchers (salvo size)
 - calculate, taking into account the speed of the AI ​​ships and the speed of the missiles, the time required to approach the player's ships.
 - If it is possible to create a fleet that is EITHER large enough to survive all the enemy's volleys, or, taking into account the speed, is able to reach the effective range of fire while retaining ENOUGH ships - create it and attack (ideally, combine all warships).
 - If it's impossible, avoid the fight.
At the same time, to activate the program for the construction of anti-missile ships, so that they are able to shoot down the entire maximum salvo of the enemy.
C) In principle, it is possible to simplify the life of the AI, and provide it with information about weapons, stock of missiles, etc. ships that participated with him in battle - directly. This way the AI ​​can adapt more easily.

[Steve Walmsley]

I wrote in the topic about errors, about all the illogical manifestations of AI that I noticed ...
The main problem, I suppose, is not in ECCM, but in the fact that the AI ​​in my game:
1. Did not replace templates of my ships with new, improved ones.
2. Did not include in fleets with the most massive warships - ships with anti-missile point protection.
3. Did not use railguns as missile defense.
4. After all the battles with me, I am unable to assess the threat posed by my fleet.

I'm not sure how this can be programmed (I guess building the AI ​​in this game is a very difficult task), but something like
1. "If the enemy fleet possesses 3 ships of the Kruiser mk1 type and it destroyed 20 of my ships without loss, then do not send less than 50 ships against fleets with 3 ships of this type" (accordingly, the number depends on the number).
Well, this is the simplest thing.
Perfectly:
2. "If the enemy fleet fires missiles":
A) To add anti-missile ships to the combat fleets.
B) If 1 enemy salvo inflicted 400 damage and destroyed 2 ships:
 - calculate the approximate maximum stock of enemy missiles based on the tonnage and the number of rocket launchers (salvo size)
 - calculate, taking into account the speed of the AI ​​ships and the speed of the missiles, the time required to approach the player's ships.
 - If it is possible to create a fleet that is EITHER large enough to survive all the enemy's volleys, or, taking into account the speed, is able to reach the effective range of fire while retaining ENOUGH ships - create it and attack (ideally, combine all warships).
 - If it's impossible, avoid the fight.
At the same time, to activate the program for the construction of anti-missile ships, so that they are able to shoot down the entire maximum salvo of the enemy.
C) In principle, it is possible to simplify the life of the AI, and provide it with information about weapons, stock of missiles, etc. ships that participated with him in battle - directly. This way the AI ​​can adapt more easily.

The AI designs and builds ships with newer technology as it progresses. There are other options for missile defence besides railguns and not every AI fleet will have effective AM protection because some have different roles.

The AI looks at every shot you fire and everything your ships do and adjusts accordingly, using same tactical intelligence information that is available to the player. It is a LOT more sophisticated than your suggestion above. However, as with any AI, it is never going to come close to a human player in a tactical situation because a human can weight different factors in a given situation and plan accordingly. Also, the more complex the game, the more difficult to create an AI that can adjust to any situation. If I made Aurora much simpler, the AI would handle it far better.

Consider how basic the rules are for Chess or Go or Poker and consider how much effort and how many years were required to build an effective computer opponent. I suggest playing the game longer until you have encountered a lot more situations and then think about the AI code that would be required to handle all of them given the huge variety of different factors and potential systems involved.

[Steve Walmsley]

I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.

This explains so much why ECM dominates massively. I think this fix alone is going to have a large effect on generated NPR difficulty moving forward.

If you want to do a hot-fix, go into DIM_AutomatedClassDesign and ensure there is a 1 in the ECCM field for every design that has a 1 in the ECM field, except for the military tanker and scout.

[Droll]

I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.

This explains so much why ECM dominates massively. I think this fix alone is going to have a large effect on generated NPR difficulty moving forward.

If you want to do a hot-fix, go into DIM_AutomatedClassDesign and ensure there is a 1 in the ECCM field for every design that has a 1 in the ECM field, except for the military tanker and scout.

Thanks, this is the query I used to help find everything (could probably make an update query instead):

Code: [Select]

select DesignID, ECCM
from DIM_AutomatedClassDesign
where (ECM = 1 and
      (not DesignID = "Scout" and
       not DesignID = "Military Tanker"));
Question regarding this hotfix for Steve but it has to be spoilered:
The invader scout has ECCM set to 0, since it is a type of scout I left it at 0 but do the invaders have special armed scouts that should have ECCM?

[Entaro (OP)]

The AI designs and builds ships with newer technology as it progresses. There are other options for missile defence besides railguns and not every AI fleet will have effective AM protection because some have different roles.

The AI looks at every shot you fire and everything your ships do and adjusts accordingly, using same tactical intelligence information that is available to the player. It is a LOT more sophisticated than your suggestion above. However, as with any AI, it is never going to come close to a human player in a tactical situation because a human can weight different factors in a given situation and plan accordingly. Also, the more complex the game, the more difficult to create an AI that can adjust to any situation. If I made Aurora much simpler, the AI would handle it far better.

Consider how basic the rules are for Chess or Go or Poker and consider how much effort and how many years were required to build an effective computer opponent. I suggest playing the game longer until you have encountered a lot more situations and then think about the AI code that would be required to handle all of them given the huge variety of different factors and potential systems involved.

I understand. Sorry, I didn't want my error message to sound like a rebuke to you personally! I understand perfectly well that Aurora is a very difficult game, and it is almost impossible to make an adequate AI in it that would be comparable to a human in abilities.

Off-Topic: show

I previously played Gary Grigsby's War in the East - a game about the Second World War, where each support division / regiment is a separate unit with many parameters, and a map of the Second World War (Eastern Front) where every 10km (+ -) is a separate hex with its own parameters. It is also a very complex game, and there it was also almost impossible to create an AI even approximately comparable to a human.

Simply, specifically in this situation, it seems to me that we are talking about some kind of error in logic. I'm sure it doesn't have to be that way. I understand that AI is not perfect, that it can be stupid, separate its fleets, not calculate forces, design ships not in the most optimal way ...
But when the AI, after the conclusion of a truce, does not react to the fact that I destroy its ships with missiles, or when it sends fleets that have no anti-missile defense at all (despite the fact that it has separate missile defense ships!) - to my ships with missiles - this is very strange.

The point is that the AI ​​has designed a certain type of ship:
having: 17 Railgun DMG 3 * 4 80904 km ROF 150.
And almost all of its combat fleets consist only of ships of this type.
I don't know what kind of equipment they have inside, but they are definitely not capable of firing at my missiles. Even on slow (16000 km / s).

Either there is a mistake that the AI ​​does not install anti-missile sensors on these ships, and therefore is simply not able to see them, or the AI ​​does everything correctly in terms of ship templates (having separate missile defense ships - I also do this, and do not put sensors 1 on my main warships), but does not add ships of the main combat class - missile defense destroyers to its fleets.