AI can't design units

4X strategy game from Proxy Studios

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Megas
Corporal - 5 cm Pak 38
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AI can't design units

Post by Megas »

I played a game after a long break to see 1.4.0. (I played 1.0 before). Lot of things have been improved.
However there is still problem with AI designing terrible units. They do have a few good units but 95% of their stuff is complete crap that just feeds veterancy for my units. I was playing on hard.
AI was spamming tons of terrible units and use a good unit from time to time. If it was using best design it can it would be more challenging. Right now AI just can't handle combat at all. It just sends endless waves of units against you but it's hopeless. They all die to artillery. One time my arty levelled from level 3 to level 15 in one attack because it wiped out a whole group of like 15 colonial troopers
Why the hell does the Ai use designs from the start of the game on turn 200+? Just make it use best armor and chassis on ALL units it produces. I was seeing T3 innfantry with T3 weapons and armor alsongside T1 dudes with T1 weapon and armor. And the ratio of shit dudes vs good doodes is like 10:1. Sometimes they have a T2 or T3 weapon or armor but it's still no threat at all.

Making AI use only the best armor always shouldn't be hard. Same with chassis and weapons. Only use the best tier for each type.

All enemy AI factions used nits like that. I guess some of them might have been built before the new tech was researched. However the AI factions were constantly at war with each other so the old units should have been dying a lot. It doesn't explain all the old and obsolete units AI was using. I could count the good units it sent at me on both hands amongst hundreds that I destroyed. AI had better tech than me at some points but they didn't use it. Why?
boulugre
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by boulugre »

This alongside the broken diplomacy system are the 2 biggest problem in the game IMO.

Pandora main interest lies in the cool combat system, but the inability of the IA to keep up with tech available in their unit production just makes the game boring after mecha era as you will systematically have a ridiculous advantage of unit quality, and slaughtering hordes of colonial infantry is just not fun.

Its is a point that has been risen many times and discussed to death. There was a couple of patches where the dev mentioned they improved the AI on that, but it seems the colonial infantry spam party is still going on strong....

Dev's, please, fix the diplo system and AI unit building selection, the game desperately need it.
Megas
Corporal - 5 cm Pak 38
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Megas »

I wonder where exactly is the problem? Just make it so that AI ALWAYS uses the best armor. There is no reason not to. Same with unit chassis and weapons. When the AI gets new tier it just stops using the old ones at all. This would still give AI some inefficient units but most of them would be pretty decent. Why is the AI using old technology at all?
ErissN6
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by ErissN6 »

Megas wrote:make it so that AI ALWAYS uses the best armor. There is no reason not to. Same with unit chassis and weapons. When the AI gets new tier it just stops using the old ones at all. This would still give AI some inefficient units but most of them would be pretty decent. Why is the AI using old technology at all?
Why? maybe the AI does like me: I try to not search for military techs, until I reach to the better technologies.
Military research is to be obsolete until the very last one..
Megas
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Megas »

It's not a problem of AI not having thech. I saw them using biosuits with flesheaters and zortium armor. The problem is they still use old colonial troopers with flamethrowers alongside those.
stiefelss
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by stiefelss »

Megas wrote:It's not a problem of AI not having thech. I saw them using biosuits with flesheaters and zortium armor. The problem is they still use old colonial troopers with flamethrowers alongside those.
This is it. The AI seems to think that colonial troops with lance guns and steel armor count the same as assault troops with volcano flamethrower and gauss armor. I'm guessing that it's because they have the same maintenance costs (hence why I usually just disband units that get too far behind in tech)
boulugre
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by boulugre »

The devs mentionned once the problem was that the AI considered the cost of high tech units too high compared to the production rate of their cities, so it elected to build cheap unit instead. Not sure if this is the root of problem...?

Could a dev tell us if they are looking into this issue? To be honest this is the main reason why I stopped playing at the moment, games just get uninteresting because no real challenge from AI.
Rossthegreat
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Rossthegreat »

If cheap units is numerous enough, they can bring down transcendence era units by sheer weight of numbers. I still remember my tachyon tanks dying one by one to colonial trooper human wave. They was all sent to death by a certain ahem fanatical leader. >.> It worked until I started to stack the tachyon tanks in small stacks and spammed stack repair as they attacked it.

Another thing i'm not sure when I got back I remember sending Lance armed Avenger tanks up against serenity cannon armed avenger tanks and got hurt badly despite the fact I out leveled them by alot.
Did the weapon design start to matter? After that happened I don't send up lance guns against serenity guns anymore unless I have to xD
boulugre
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by boulugre »

Rossthegreat wrote:If cheap units is numerous enough, they can bring down transcendence era units by sheer weight of numbers. I still remember my tachyon tanks dying one by one to colonial trooper human wave. They was all sent to death by a certain ahem fanatical leader. >.> It worked until I started to stack the tachyon tanks in small stacks and spammed stack repair as they attacked it.
Spam of weak unit is a poor strategy because :

- It cost a fortune in term of maintenance
- They get wiped out by orbital strike / nuke / artillery
- It burdens the game, with huge stakes of dozens of colonial inf running around the map
- Even if 10 colonial inf manages to take down one mecha era tank, they will lose 9 unit in the process to do so, while one powerful unit could survive if it wins and repair to full power to fight another day

Once superior units get available for production to a faction there are very little reason to keep on producing older less powerful units and this should be reflected in AI behaviour.
Rossthegreat
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Rossthegreat »

boulugre wrote:
Rossthegreat wrote:If cheap units is numerous enough, they can bring down transcendence era units by sheer weight of numbers. I still remember my tachyon tanks dying one by one to colonial trooper human wave. They was all sent to death by a certain ahem fanatical leader. >.> It worked until I started to stack the tachyon tanks in small stacks and spammed stack repair as they attacked it.
Spam of weak unit is a poor strategy because :

- It cost a fortune in term of maintenance
- They get wiped out by orbital strike / nuke / artillery
- It burdens the game, with huge stakes of dozens of colonial inf running around the map
- Even if 10 colonial inf manages to take down one mecha era tank, they will lose 9 unit in the process to do so, while one powerful unit could survive if it wins and repair to full power to fight another day

Once superior units get available for production to a faction there are very little reason to keep on producing older less powerful units and this should be reflected in AI behaviour.
How much does a tachyon tank cost in maintenance compared to avenger tanks?

And how much does each colonial trooper cost in maintenance by transcendence era?
Zak0r
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Zak0r »

The maintenance costs for each unit class don't change. Only production costs are rising with higher tech. In the 2nd era you even have a device that halves maintenance costs and does not cost any additional production since one of the last patches.
Megas
Corporal - 5 cm Pak 38
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Megas »

If the AI uses some algorithm and determines that top tech units cost too much then the algorithm is bad.

How to improve the AI design process in a very simple way.

- ALWAYS use best armor on units
- ALWAYS use best version of every chassis/weapon
- ALWAYS only use mods from the newest era.

While there are some situations where you wouldn't want best possible armor/weapon/chassis they are so rare that it's not worth considering them.

Those simple fixes would force AI to use only the best units so that it would actually pose a challenge.

If the AI thinks it doesn't have enough production for those then give it higher production bonus from difficulty.

Just do something so AI on very hard poses even a little challenge.
mrowka
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by mrowka »

Megas wrote:If the AI uses some algorithm and determines that top tech units cost too much then the algorithm is bad.

How to improve the AI design process in a very simple way.

- ALWAYS use best armor on units
- ALWAYS use best version of every chassis/weapon
- ALWAYS only use mods from the newest era.

While there are some situations where you wouldn't want best possible armor/weapon/chassis they are so rare that it's not worth considering them.

Those simple fixes would force AI to use only the best units so that it would actually pose a challenge.

If the AI thinks it doesn't have enough production for those then give it higher production bonus from difficulty.

Just do something so AI on very hard poses even a little challenge.
Apart from armor what is the best weapon and device ?

This two are selected by situation, you wouldnt make a tank with serenity cannon to engage enemy troops, you wouldnt equip you airplanes with assault device if they are ment to be used as scounts.
Its not easy to make this stuff especialy for a tactical game when you need to play almost entire game just to check few changes you did actually work.

In my opinion what they should do is to write a separate checks for each of factions not shared ones, apart from science guys each faction can be played with atleast 2 quite unique tactic by the ai.
Megas
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Megas »

Best weapon means that if the AI has flesheaters it shouldn't be making units with flamethrowers. If it has precentor trooper it shouldn't use colonial marines.
It should always use only best weapon/chassis from each category and not obsolete tech from two eras before.

Making units that have right weapon/chassis/module combo is the next step. Right now the AI needs to be fixed so it can design decent units at all. If it has ineffective combination that's still miles better than using ancient obsolete tech.
stiefelss
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by stiefelss »

The more I read the posts on this forum, the wider my eyes are opened to just how fucked up this game is right now. Devs, I beg you to do something to actually make your game better! No more gimmicks! You've heard all the criticism and suggestions already, so I won't rehash them here. This game has very real potential to be a truly worthy successor to Alpha Centauri, but it's not quite there yet. It just feels unfinished to me.
Xilmi
Pandora Community Developer
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Re: AI can't design units

Post by Xilmi »

I made a mod that fixes this issue among others:

viewtopic.php?f=279&t=50873
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