I've uploaded game_975 - a (relatively) massive battle between Marauders and Phidi (both AI). 54 Command Cruisers and 23 Scout Cruisers have lost to 32 Heavy Carriers, killing only 2 (!) HC in the battle. Yes, they've had ineffective weapon (missiles), but they could at least focus fire, keeping "in mind", that depleting a shield takes more than one turn (or the concept of recharging shield itself).
Are there plans to significantly improve the tactical AI?

bjg wrote:I've uploaded game_975 - a (relatively) massive battle between Marauders and Phidi (both AI). 54 Command Cruisers and 23 Scout Cruisers have lost to 32 Heavy Carriers, killing only 2 (!) HC in the battle. Yes, they've had ineffective weapon (missiles), but they could at least focus fire, keeping "in mind", that depleting a shield takes more than one turn (or the concept of recharging shield itself).
Are there plans to significantly improve the tactical AI?

Yes, I'm going to do at least one more pass through the core tactical AI logic. And as you say, it wouldn't take much for them to get significantly better -- as their current strategies are sometimes pretty terrible. The AIs will also never use multi-ship moves, which both deprives them of supportive PD fire, and also makes their turns take much longer to animate than they really need to.

Speaking of "longer" - the silent (!) auto-resolve (I've clicked "ignore") took about a minute. I thought the game had crashed. Some basic animation could help in the cases like this.

bjg wrote:Speaking of "longer" - the silent (!) auto-resolve (I've clicked "ignore") took about a minute. I thought the game had crashed. Some basic animation could help in the cases like this.

Yes, this is *also* on my TODO list. In many cases, the underlying combat logic is fast enough that we can resolve a battle in less than a second -- but, your combination of laptop + very large galaxies represents a kind of worse-case situation for most of the end-turn / auto combat logic. And I do think we're going to need to start showing a "processing" screen of some sort in these kinds of cases.

That said, would you upload the game that had the very long autocombat battle? Even allowing for huge fleets, 1 minute is much a longer processing time than I'd like.

This is the battle I'm talking about in the topic. Is that upload not sufficient? I'd have to rollback (to get before it) anyway.

bjg wrote:This is the battle I'm talking about in the topic. Is that upload not sufficient? I'd have to rollback (to get before it) anyway.

Ah, I didn't realize it was the same battle. In that case, the current upload should be sufficient. Thanks.

sven wrote:

bjg wrote:This is the battle I'm talking about in the topic. Is that upload not sufficient? I'd have to rollback (to get before it) anyway.

Ah, I didn't realize it was the same battle. In that case, the current upload should be sufficient. Thanks.

Nm. It looks like game 975 may not have completed it's upload successfully. Could you try sending it again? (The same game at a later date should be fine -- I can rollback myself to find the battle.)

edited by sven: Actually, I think I'm good. game 974 appears to be in the same galaxy, and I can get to the problematic Phidi/Marauder battle by just clicking next-turn a few times.

On the plus side: While an Orthin strike fleet was attacking one of my colonies.
I had a beefy beam weapon planetary defense and thought "come at me bro!", but the orthin brought only missiles to the fight.
They stayed way out of range and fired their missiles until depleted and than retreated. Luckily it was a draw and I only lost the planetary battery, but staying out of range and long ball it with missiles was absolutly the right decision on their part.

Would it be possible to make the turn order a little bit more "interleaving" ?
Currently side A moves all his ships, then side B moves whats left after the pummeling.
Maybe divide the combat turn into phases by hull sizes:
First A moves his scouts& destroyers, then B.
next phase escort/light cruisers A, then B.
And so on, until the deathstars do their thing.
Then the actual combat turn is finished and begins anew. If nobody brought a certain class to the fight, the phase is quietly skipped
Not as riggid as the late MoO2 initiative system, but still leaves some chances at retaliation/regrouping while getting punched by the enemy.

Ships moving in sequence from smaller to larger would be very welcome, and give a valid reason to produce smaller hulls.

Chasm wrote:Ships moving in sequence from smaller to larger would be very welcome, and give a valid reason to produce smaller hulls.

Can't be just size, but rather tactical speed. They are related, but you can make your ship faster by installing additional engine(s).
The initiative partially breaks "moving in group" feature (valuable to developers) though.

bjg wrote:

Chasm wrote:Ships moving in sequence from smaller to larger would be very welcome, and give a valid reason to produce smaller hulls.

Can't be just size, but rather tactical speed. They are related, but you can make your ship faster by installing additional engine(s).
The initiative partially breaks "moving in group" feature (valuable to developers) though.

Thats why I would use broad categories for the movement order. Even if some details like extra engines or propulsion tech gets overlooked.
E.g. If you cluster it by hull size (defined by the infrastructure needed to build the ship),
then you still have some valid ships for the group-move feature.

An easy visiual representation which ships are still "active" or have already acted would be helpfull anyway

I do agree that it would be helpful to have more UI assistance in the area of moving between one ship and the next, and identifying which ships have already moved.

Altering the system so that ships move one at a time based on individual ship initiative (regardless of side) I don't think is really a possibility.

Arioch wrote:Altering the system so that ships move one at a time based on individual ship initiative (regardless of side) I don't think is really a possibility.

Even the broader initiative by hull size would be a major change on all relevant aspects like GUI, AI, balance of power, etc.
Yeah, not really an option to inject such game changers this late in development.

Maybe with an expansion pack in the future
(jk, but I would totally put money down for a Civ IV or Sword of the Stars style expansion with added mechanics, new races, techs, etc)