First Game is Over: Weird AI Behavior and possible bugs
Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:50 pm
I just finished my first sandbox game, Version 1.00.06, and achieved a Conquest Victory on Turn 362. Played Terran, average size galaxy, with opponents Kala, Guardians of the Seed, and Okli-To Consortium. Basically I took the default parameters on everything. I chose the attributes Ancient, Peculiar, Creative, Collectivist (-2) which allowed me to select another +2 characteristic, Predator.
Some of the comment below might be incorrect because I overlooked something or misinterpreted something. Please feel free to correct me.
Weird AI Behavior and possible bugs
1. Kala, an ally and much stronger than me, breaks all of our treaties, but then pays me tribute and gives me all of their star systems except the Home World. They gradually withered and died. (I finally took their homeworld).
2. If you drop enough bombs the population can go to a negative number. I did this twice—a homeworld went to -6 and one of the colonies with to -1. Bug or feature?
3. A large, very important fleet just disappeared. Quitting and restarting didn’t get it back. Rolling back to an earlier turn did.
4. I attacked a ship guarding a world and it retreated. However, when the screen came up after the battle it was still there. I went through this about 3 times: attack-he retreats-he is still there. This sounds identical to the problem Bersercker posted (see above). The problem was solved when I quit and restarted.
5. There seems to be something very wrong with auto resolve of combat. Several times my fleet, 3x the size of the orbital forts I was attacking, destroyed them for the lost of 3-4 frigates. When I used auto resolve (just to see what would happen) my entire fleet of 27 ships, including 3 Titans was completely wiped out. This happened at 2 or 3 other worlds with other fleets. It seems to me the outcomes shouldn’t be so drastically different.
6. Splitting fleets is very complicated and confusing. When you click on an individual unit you are actually deselecting it. In other words if you have 10 ships in a fleet and want to send a frigate some place else, clicking on the frigate and then moving will do the opposite; 9 ships will move and the frigate will stay behind. To carry out this operation correctly you would have to click on the other 9 ships (deselecting them) and then move. This is counter-intuitive and very confusing. Developer?
Minor Gripes and Nitpicking
1. Graphics display at top right (victory conditions) obscures messages on data net.
2. I never could figure out what the “stardate” was for—adding flavor I guess. I tried to use it to tell me what turn we were on, but it is incomprehensible. I wish there was a turn # somewhere on the display.
3. The weapon mounts on the ship designs are hard to distinguish, especially on the larger ships that have a lot of them.
4. Heroes you don’t want won’t go away no matter how many times you hit the “retire” button.
5. Ship designs you don’t want won’t go away when you hit delete.
6. How to calculate score and might is not explained.
7. How big is a sector? Ships can go X sectors. Black holes affect 10 sectors. How far is this? A grid overlay might help.
8. If something is scuttled to pay your bills you aren’t told what just got deleted.
9. When an enemy ship parks at one of your worlds, blockades are announced but the effect is unspecified. Production halted? Freighters can’t come or go? What exactly?
10. My homeworld kept getting renamed to the name of the world I had just attacked. If I attacked Corvus II, now my homeworld was named Corvus II. It was easily renamed, but very annoying.
11. The priorities in the research queue would sometimes change without my permission.
Some of the comment below might be incorrect because I overlooked something or misinterpreted something. Please feel free to correct me.
Weird AI Behavior and possible bugs
1. Kala, an ally and much stronger than me, breaks all of our treaties, but then pays me tribute and gives me all of their star systems except the Home World. They gradually withered and died. (I finally took their homeworld).
2. If you drop enough bombs the population can go to a negative number. I did this twice—a homeworld went to -6 and one of the colonies with to -1. Bug or feature?
3. A large, very important fleet just disappeared. Quitting and restarting didn’t get it back. Rolling back to an earlier turn did.
4. I attacked a ship guarding a world and it retreated. However, when the screen came up after the battle it was still there. I went through this about 3 times: attack-he retreats-he is still there. This sounds identical to the problem Bersercker posted (see above). The problem was solved when I quit and restarted.
5. There seems to be something very wrong with auto resolve of combat. Several times my fleet, 3x the size of the orbital forts I was attacking, destroyed them for the lost of 3-4 frigates. When I used auto resolve (just to see what would happen) my entire fleet of 27 ships, including 3 Titans was completely wiped out. This happened at 2 or 3 other worlds with other fleets. It seems to me the outcomes shouldn’t be so drastically different.
6. Splitting fleets is very complicated and confusing. When you click on an individual unit you are actually deselecting it. In other words if you have 10 ships in a fleet and want to send a frigate some place else, clicking on the frigate and then moving will do the opposite; 9 ships will move and the frigate will stay behind. To carry out this operation correctly you would have to click on the other 9 ships (deselecting them) and then move. This is counter-intuitive and very confusing. Developer?
Minor Gripes and Nitpicking
1. Graphics display at top right (victory conditions) obscures messages on data net.
2. I never could figure out what the “stardate” was for—adding flavor I guess. I tried to use it to tell me what turn we were on, but it is incomprehensible. I wish there was a turn # somewhere on the display.
3. The weapon mounts on the ship designs are hard to distinguish, especially on the larger ships that have a lot of them.
4. Heroes you don’t want won’t go away no matter how many times you hit the “retire” button.
5. Ship designs you don’t want won’t go away when you hit delete.
6. How to calculate score and might is not explained.
7. How big is a sector? Ships can go X sectors. Black holes affect 10 sectors. How far is this? A grid overlay might help.
8. If something is scuttled to pay your bills you aren’t told what just got deleted.
9. When an enemy ship parks at one of your worlds, blockades are announced but the effect is unspecified. Production halted? Freighters can’t come or go? What exactly?
10. My homeworld kept getting renamed to the name of the world I had just attacked. If I attacked Corvus II, now my homeworld was named Corvus II. It was easily renamed, but very annoying.
11. The priorities in the research queue would sometimes change without my permission.
You are not told, but you do get shown it's icon on the notification.