Beric01 Beric01

[DEVS READ]The AI and siege frigates - messed up and irritating beyond belief

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[DEVS READ]The AI and siege frigates - messed up and irritating beyond belief

Couldn't the devs spare 5 minutes to do this easy fix?

from Sins Forums

I play a lot of LAN AI crushers with my brother. The AI is actually pretty competent. But it has a few distinct holes. Other than the obvious issue with the AI and starbases, as well as its completely arbitrary choices of capital ships, it seems like the main issue is with siege frigates. Since I play with the AI so much, I can't help mentioning the issues with siege frigates and the AI. Maybe, just maybe, the devs will read this and spend even 15 minutes improving this for us poor SP people. :(  

 

The AI LOVES siege frigates. It tends to get 5 siege frigates before practically any other ship in its fleet. Try going versus 3-4 AI's, and that's maybe 20 siege frigates.  And this poses a serious problem.

That's because in the current patch, siege frigates are worthless. All humans know that. But that's not the least. Siege frigates use up 14 pop apiece. They also cost more than a carrier or a heavy cruiser. And yet, with all those costs, they are significantly weaker than a light frigate. And they have a pathetic attack against anything that's not a planet. And to top that off, they give you 65 XP for every one killed. Talk about an advantage early on for your caps. But even then, one could argue they still have some use. But with the way the AI uses them, no way.

Despite siege frigates being both so weak and so expensive, the AI will often send their 5 at you from their planet, the instant your fleet leaves your planet on its way to theirs. This happens almost without fail. Alternatively, the AI will send their 5 siege frigates to one planet, and their fleet to another. But unless I'm a total idiot, those siege frigates are gonna bite the dust.

A third and final issue is the player experience (i.e. irritation and annoyance). One knows the AI has finally "got somewhere" when the first siege frigate is sighted. And one groans. Why? Because not only are siege frigates pathetic, they are annoying. Why? Because you have to send a little bit of your fleet to kill their pathetic siege frigates, or they will eventually kill your planet. Additionally, let's say you're defending your system against an invading AI. Suddenly, the AI's 5 siege frigates pop in (they were most likely busy elsewhere). And then, your entire well-micro-ed fleet suddenly sets off after the siege frigates, ignoring the huge fleet they were just engaged with. I don't WANT to engage them! Why do my ships insist on it? And to add to the annoyance, let's say you've surrounded your planet with defense platforms, and the AI's typical 5 siege frigates pop in. The AI's 5 siege frigates, all alone and without escort, will skirt your planet, until they find that one hole that is not covered by a platform. They will park their frigates one centimeter out of range, and proceed to bombard your planet. They will always find that hole if it exists, and park perfectly in it, forcing you to send your own 5 LRM frigates over to deal with them, or else lose your expensive planet. What's even worse is when 2 AI's each send in their 5 siege frigates. Then you have to send over a large portion of your fleet to kill them, or they will kill your planet first.

 

That's it for my rant about the AI and siege frigates. But I can't help thinking that instead of every siege frigate built, the AI could have had 2 LRM frigates, including both resources and pop.

96,616 views 63 replies
Reply #51 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting DirtySanchezz, reply 3
 (I apologize if I've offended anyone, but recommending online multiplayer is the only way to properly respond to a complaint about the AI's tactical and strategic ability, and playing against other people is the only way to get around it.)
End of DirtySanchezz's quote

Ah the good ol' days :P

Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top

Don't worry guys, the AI's use of Siege Frigates is changing for Diplomacy. Doubt the changes will be ready for beta 1 though.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top

I think a good question would be, "Would you defend all your frontline worlds if you knew the AI wasn't going to have raiding Siege?"

 

It is kind of funny how some complaints are because Siege cripples the AI, while other comlaints are what a pain it is to run around trying to defend your planets from all the siege frigs!  While siege is easy to counter, four or five of them can level a non-upgraded world pretty fast -- probably before help can arrive.  The AI just needs to be better at identifying when it shouldn't be using siege and when it actually has an opportunity to kill a world.

Bottom line, if Siege is making the AI too easy for you, you probably need to add more AI or up the difficulty on them.

 

I also don't use "Aggressor" AI's...I find they build more Siege than other AI's.   (maybe it is just my imagination??)

 

Reply #54 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Cykur, reply 53
I think a good question would be, "Would you defend all your frontline worlds if you knew the AI wasn't going to have raiding Siege?"

 

It is kind of funny how some complaints are because Siege cripples the AI, while other comlaints are what a pain it is to run around trying to defend your planets from all the siege frigs!  While siege is easy to counter, four or five of them can level a non-upgraded world pretty fast -- probably before help can arrive.  The AI just needs to be better at identifying when it shouldn't be using siege and when it actually has an opportunity to kill a world.

Bottom line, if Siege is making the AI too easy for you, you probably need to add more AI or up the difficulty on them.

 

I also don't use "Aggressor" AI's...I find they build more Siege than other AI's.   (maybe it is just my imagination??)

 
End of Cykur's quote

The problem isn't that the AI uses siege - the problem is that it uses unescorted siege, which is really easy to counter.

And those suggesting that I play multiplayer - give the names of people who will pause the game for 45 minutes without complaint while I go do other stuff, and are willing to play whenever I want to play, and I'll happily play online.  Until then, stop suggesting that as a replacement for AI.

Anyway, as long as they're working on it, the thread was a success.

Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top

Whoa, Blair replied! Sweet! Can't wait for the beta!

Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top

Told you they were listening :-P

 

Anyways, I'm happy to hear the news about the AI siege frigate use, and hope it's indicative of a larger improvement of the AI.

Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top


The problem isn't that the AI uses siege - the problem is that it uses unescorted siege, which is really easy to counter.
End of quote

Sometimes it is very well escorted.  Other times it isn't, when it thinks it doesn't need it.  By and large, it is pretty easy to trick the AI into attacking, so I totally agree the AI could be improved.

Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Maxpower179, reply 54
And those suggesting that I play multiplayer - give the names of people who will pause the game for 45 minutes without complaint while I go do other stuff, and are willing to play whenever I want to play, and I'll happily play online.  Until then, stop suggesting that as a replacement for AI.
End of Maxpower179's quote

That's a good reason not to play it online--lack of time or the ability to dedicate time.  It might be real hard to do that with a wife and young kidlins.  However, if you think you could put two uninterupted hours straight into it (like going to a movie) then you might be able to play it online.

Reply #59 from Sins Forums Top

If the game is sold for both SP and MP use, it should work well in either condition.  Those arguing that the 'solution' to weak AI is MP are implicitly accusing Stardock of misleading advertising in offering the game for SP use--a valid accusation if the developers won't or can't provide AI that can deal with the complexity.

I've only played 13-14 SP games so far (1.181), but I too notice that the AI's use of siege frigates is very far from optimal and that it seems to pick caps at random.  On the plus side, midgame+ it does well at choosing frigates and cruisers to mismatch whatever I've got. 

Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top

 

Is the Sins AI really that bad compared to other strategy games' AI?  It doesn't seem any worse to me.  AI is just AI and it will always be crippled compared to what a human can do (unless you're talking about a game like chess).  It can be tweaked a little bit, but even if the AI stopped building siege frigates and made a siege capital ship and some more LRFs instead it still wouldn't be much tougher (just a little less annoying).

I do think that there is some room for the AI's micro of ships and abilities in battle to improve, but I'm not sure how it could get much better on the macro-strategy scale.  We might say that it could build more LRFs or stop building refineries, but whatever it does, it will probably be easily counterable.  The macro strategic considerations in this game are just too complex for the AI to do them well, especially if having to deal with issues raised by having teamates in locked team games (or diplomatic issues in unlocked games) are considered.  That is not a knock on Ironclad, that's just the way AI is right now and it will probably be like that until we have artificial sentience.

What can you do?  Play 1 v 9 against the AI in locked teams at the hardest difficulty levels.  Play it on custom maps that are designed to be unfair for a certain team or at least for your starting location.  (Perhaps design one like that in Galaxy Forge.)

Sadly, AI technology just cannot compete against human intelligence and ingenuity at this point and it's unfair to accuse Ironclad of bad AI programming or fraud for that reason.  People can legitimately say that the AI could be improved as they can for any strategy game, but it's improper to blame them for the AI not being as challenging (or as interesting) as playing against human opponents.

It's AI and it is what it is.

If anything, what single players who are frustrated with the AI should do is to campaign for improvements to online multiplayer that would overcome the problems they have with online multiplayer.  Gaming companies have really neglected this area and it is an area that is wide open for innovation and improvement--in fact it's just wide open for a good, solid, polished online multiplayer product without any real innovation.

Have a system that keeps track of players' performance based on their CD keys and that calculates a skill rating for them, allowing for players to be matched up based on skill level.

Have some sort of a system that rates players based on their demeanor--I mean some sort of a system that gives players a "demeanor rating" based on how they talk to other people (having nothing to do with game play).  This way jerks could be teamed up with jerks and mature players with mature players.  Exactly how this would be implemented, I have no idea.  Perhaps some sort of a good/bad karma system could be worked out.  This would be innovative.

Implement some sort of a "hot seat" system where players can join a game in progress and take over for a dropped player.  This would also allow people who don't have the time needed for an online Sins games to come play it online from time to time.  This does have its downside, though--lack of strategic continuity and awareness of what's going on in the game, for example.  The hot seat ability could be made optional so that game hosts could chose for games ("locked games") to not have the hot seat option.

Sins could really use some sort of a way to shorten the amount of time needed to play it online.  Quick Start was a great idea, but perhaps there could be an improved quick start ("Quicker Start") where players start out with their home terran, a colonized asteroid, and another colonized planet or two.  We also need a speed setting that would be about 25% faster than the current fastest setting.

Allow for custom map auto-download.  Not only does this encourage people to create free content for the game--increasing the value of the game product at little to no cost for the developers--but it allows for a "free market" to emerge in the maps area.  The good maps will get played while the bad ones won't.  Some sort of a cache system would need to be developed with it being easy to move the maps to other areas.  Also, let players make their own map classification folders so they can have as many as they want.  For example, maybe someone wants to create a special folder or classification for "Good custom maps", "Good Team custom maps", "No Rush customs", etc.  Set it up so that if players have the map in any one of their map folders they wouldn't need to auto-download that map.

Consider allowing custom mod auto-download.

Set up built-in voice comm.  Allow team chat, chat to everyone, and chat to a specific player and also allow people to mute players from the opposing team and any specific players they want.  Also allow friends to chat with one another if they are on the network.

Improve the user interface so that people can have multiple (type) chat channels open and be able to switch to them while in game.  Also keep logs of the in-game chat.  For example, a player might press a button (say F7) to bring up the log of the in-game chat.  This makes it easier for players who were heavily occupied (bathroom, big fight) to see what the chat was while they were occupied.

Improve the "Join Game" part of the interface to reflect options in available games for all of these changes.  Let it show if there is a custom map, if there is a custom mod(s) and what it is, etc.

Come up with an online multiplayer tutorial.

Create a system that matches up new players with other new players.  Perhaps have an (optional) special area that only CD-Keys that have been online for 30 days can access.  Make another optional one for CD-Keys that have been online for 30-60 days, etc.

Come up with some sort of an unobtrusive system to politely invite single players to play multiplayer in humans v. AI games and noobies v. noobies game.  Perhaps, once every two weeks (after someone has had the game for 2 months), they could receive an invitation.  "Click Yes to Save your current game and to join other new players for a 5v5," or "to play a game with two human allies against 7 AI."

Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top

All these solutions for MP are good and nice. But I'l probably never even touch them, because I'll probably never play multiplayer. SP is what I play, and LAN vs. AI's. I don't play online games. I even tried to register an ICO account last night for the first time (I've only had this game for a year), and pressed "accept", but nothing happened. So I'll continue to ask for some of the more obvious improvements to AI, and enjoy it when they're implemented. In case you didn't read Stardock's report, based on the experiences of Demigod, they'll be focusing on singleplayer in strategy games, simply because it's what 95% of people play. I see no reason why Ironclad won't follow suit with SoaSE. Stardock's Galactic Civilizations was a great game, simply because it was made for singleplayer.

Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top

Nice Ideas sanchezz

Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top

 

You raise another issue Berico.  I'm glad you mentioned it.  It's so obvious that I missed it.  They also need to improve the way that people get online for this game.  Any button labeled "Multiplayer" should go to online multiplayer.  For LAN games they should just make a button titled "LAN".  So instead of "Multiplayer" and "Ironclad Online" those two buttons should read LAN and Multiplayer.  Then there should be more help for signing up online; it needs to be easier.

I definitely see your point about how if 99% of the people play in SP then they should focus on SP and that it makes economic sense to do so.  However, I think that there is also money to be made by putting out a good online multiplayer product and that it could lead to increased sales (both to MP and SP players) and increased publicity.