Zerogman

Join Date 03/2006

Unfair Player and A.I. advanteges

Kinda odd

I am sure I am not the only to figure this out, but their is an exploit for ship experience. Granted, it's not a true exploit since it is working as intended.

Player advantage:

When going against reletively weak fleets, I will put one unarmed (no weapons or defense) massive ship in the fleet. Why? More experienced by weaker ships taking out stronger ones. So an unarmed/undefended ship in a fleet with armed ships will gain a level each battle, unless destroyed obviously! The A.I. won't shoot at it though until all the other ships are destroyed, then you can later upgrade it and have a really strong ship off the bat!

Upgrading any non-transport ship to a transport ship will magically give it one free colonist or troop. 2 are possible if the ship contains a colony module and troop module.

A.I. advantage:

How the heck do they stuff 2 Ultra Supports, 2 HwMk3 engines, 3 B.H.G.s, and 1 Doom ray on a Tiny Hull?!? (This is on masochistic difficulty)

How the heck do they have 49 logistics worth of ships in a fleet with only 42 points available?!?

How the heck do they make fleets out of single ships?

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hmm, did you look at what the fleet is made of? the second part about the AI advantages could be from a racial bonus and possibly one of those buildings that increase logisics.

the thing about the bunch of stuff on a tiny hull. with enough miniturization, a racial bonus like the Yor have, and probably a few of those buildings that increase miniturization, and maybe alot of those random events that give you extra miniturization capability could allow that to happen. Under the right conditions that could happen.

the second one may be a bug and the third one is either a bug or that you aren't looking at something right.

as for the player advantage, the AI ain't perfect and its known that the AI doesn't always make the right decisions for combat (although it does better on higher levels), but what you are doing could be considered a sort of tactic.

on the colonists and troop carrier ships, well the thing is that in order for the ship to be launched off from the planet, it needs at least one colonist or soldier on it, so my guess is that its just the way it is coded. you still have to fill up the colonist/troop carrier ship anyway.

and why would you have a colony module and a troop module on a ship? doesn't make sense because it can't perform both functions in the game.

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and why would you have a colony module and a troop module on a ship? doesn't make sense because it can't perform both functions in the game.

Probably to get 2 free troops. If you do this with enough ships you could fully populate a planet in a single turn.

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LoL...the staggering waste of production to build a fleet of ships, and the cost to upgrade them all pretty much rules out the actual value of such an exploit, don't you think?

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LoL...the staggering waste of production to build a fleet of ships, and the cost to upgrade them all pretty much rules out the actual value of such an exploit, don't you think?

Heh, well, before they fixed the "upgrade every ship of a single type to another type for the cost of one bug", you could just make a bunch of empty hulls, then upgrade all of them to any other model for the cost of just one.

It was the Korx, and they don't get a miniaturization bonus. I even had their Hyperion Shrinker. I actually had everyone's Hyperion Shrinker... That gave me a total of +190% miniaturization, but funny thing is that I was only able to add two more defense components total between +115% to +190% miniaturization on a massive hull.

I actually found another astonishing amount of cramming on a small hull. The A.I.'s ability was at +111% (All Tech bonuses + Thalan Bonus + 1% event bonus, I had their Hyperion Shrinker), and they managed to cram the following in a SMALL hull:

3 Ultra Supports
2 Hyperwarp MkIII
9, yes, NINE Blackhole Generators

I have the pic to show, but I don't know how to get it up here in the forums.

hmm, did you look at what the fleet is made of? the second part about the AI advantages could be from a racial bonus and possibly one of those buildings that increase logisics.

Yeah, I checked their racial abilities after. It was a 42, and they were using 48 points (I thought 49, but rechecked and it was 48). I had their Hyperion Logistics Center so they lost that bonus awhile ago. I am an a$$hole and put influence bases next to any A.I. planets with Hyperion Shrinkers and Logistics Centers and other nice buildings.

and why would you have a colony module and a troop module on a ship? doesn't make sense because it can't perform both functions in the game

Yeah, it can perform both, BUT if you have 1000 soldiers and 500 colonists, you'll only colonize with 500, and invade with only 1000, so if you actually use it, you're going to lose some people.

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and why would you have a colony module and a troop module on a ship? doesn't make sense because it can't perform both functions in the game

Yeah, it can perform both, BUT if you have 1000 soldiers and 500 colonists, you'll only colonize with 500, and invade with only 1000, so if you actually use it, you're going to lose some people.

which wouldn't make too much sense cost wise. doesn't mean someone can't do it however.

the thing about the bunch of stuff on a tiny hull. with enough miniturization, a racial bonus like the Yor have, and probably a few of those buildings that increase miniturization, and maybe alot of those random events that give you extra miniturization capability could allow that to happen. Under the right conditions that could happen.

It was the Korx, and they don't get a miniaturization bonus. I even had their Hyperion Shrinker. I actually had everyone's Hyperion Shrinker... That gave me a total of +190% miniaturization, but funny thing is that I was only able to add two more defense components total between +115% to +190% miniaturization on a massive hull.

I actually found another astonishing amount of cramming on a small hull. The A.I.'s ability was at +111% (All Tech bonuses + Thalan Bonus + 1% event bonus, I had their Hyperion Shrinker), and they managed to cram the following in a SMALL hull:

3 Ultra Supports
2 Hyperwarp MkIII
9, yes, NINE Blackhole Generators

I have the pic to show, but I don't know how to get it up here in the forums.

that one may be a bug or something wierd. maybe the Stardock guys could take a look at this? and I'm not sure whether difficulty level affects the miniturization thing. its also possible for that ship to have been built before you accquired all those hyperion shrinkers. the part about the logistics also sounds strange. it could be something else thats going on. or maybe those ships were fleeted long ago.

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On the transport upgrade exploit: Try it with Information Warfare. Repeatedly. (Insert evil cackle here.)

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Heh, yeah, except the A.I. is FINALLY starting to actually care it seems about morale so it's harder sometimes to do that... Although I find it REALLY easy to get the A.I. to crank up the tax rate if you give it many many ships crammed with as many expensive components as you can find and one weapon. (Weaponless, not defenseless, ships do not have a maint. cost).

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A.I. advantage:

How the heck do they stuff 2 Ultra Supports, 2 HwMk3 engines, 3 B.H.G.s, and 1 Doom ray on a Tiny Hull?!? (This is on masochistic difficulty)

Because it's masochistic difficulty.

How the heck do they have 49 logistics worth of ships in a fleet with only 42 points available?!?

Because it's masochistic difficulty.

How the heck do they make fleets out of single ships?

Because it's maso....oh no, wait, that one I don't know.

Basically depending on the difficulty level the AI is getting bonuses or penalties to many things, not just the economy, research and production bonuses/penalties mentioned in the manual.

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Are there any comprehensive lists of the changes between difficulty levels, or do we have any way of knowing? For example, I just discovered that there's a debt cap on the lowest difficulty level--I was playing a quick sandbox game just to get a screenshot, bought something for 20,000 bc, and had my debt jump to -2000 the next turn. I tested it, and it's consistent. Oviously it's not there at higher levels.

My point is, there's stuff like that going on that I don't notice, and I'm curious whether anybody has a list of it.

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How the heck do they make fleets out of single ships?

Because it's maso....oh no, wait, that one I don't know.

Actually I've seen this happen before and its a minor bug, somehow maybe when a ship gets destroyed or leaves a fleet it gets stuck with the fleet designation, I've seen it happen a few times with transports. I haven't seen it happen to me, just a few times to the AI.

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Making a fleet of one ship is easy. Select a ship that is alone in a parsec, and press "f" on the keyboard.

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Why is making a fleet of one ship an advantage anyway?

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You can also make a ship of one fleet when you send it to a checkpoint that assemble the ships automatically into a fleet. I've seen that plenty of times in my game with 115 planets.

Man it's long trying to fill them all up to max population.

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