computer cheating...

When I first read this, I just assumed "eh, bigger ship." But Sweet Georgia Brown, that's a lot to cram into a Small hull! Even with max miniaturization, that's still about 1.5x as much stuff as I'd expect one hull to carry.

Each time someone came with "the AI is cheating" and someone knwoledgeable came to answer, well... it was not. From a certain difficulty level, the AI gets bonus even if it's not free ships/techs (it still needs to get them).

Look, everytime I lose the AI is cheating, ok?

I did have a think about it, and there are plenty of random events and additional extras you can get that increase minaturisation. I didn't realise the AI actually got those bonuses in minaturisation though Fuzzy?

At high enough levels, the AI gets bonusees to pretty much *everything*.

I kinda figured they did... Thou I am not sure what bonuses they get on the masochistics level. (where I encounterd that ship) And it really didn't do the AI any good. Sure they got to pick off some of my Huge sized defensive ships with them, but I simply mass produced ships that cost me 5bc a turn to upkeep and at the max 2 turns to make, that destroyed them all (Anytime I can destroy a ship that costs 20 bc a turn to upkeep and it only cost me a ship that costs 5 bc a turn to upkeep- I figure I'm winning!) I really wish the game would play a better offensive game. Like, having the Korx delcare war on me the same turn they blitz across my boarders with the ships and transports laying waste to everything... (I don't want you to miss-inturpet, I'd love that until it happened to me, then I'd complain)

Woah... my advice: make peace with em (any way possible) and then buy every one of those fighters you can get your hands on!

Woah... my advice: make peace with em (any way possible) and then buy every one of those fighters you can get your hands on!

Well, I had to take 20 of there planets before they'd listen to my pleas for Peace... 'nuff to make a feller cry. Luckily after I'd blown all there starbases up, taken all but 6 of there planets and destroyed all but 4 of there ships- (Because they where off hiding...) They finaly allowed Jimmy Carter to appear on my behave and plead for Galatic Peace

How the devil do they fit that all in there???

With max miniaturization a small hull has size = 55 ( 26 x 2.15 = 55 ).

With the new miniaturization rules ( 1.3 beta 3X ): For small hulls;
Doom Ray = size 11;
Mark III Hyperwarp = size 6;
Ultra life support = size 2

So total size for the ship would be 71.
That would require a 30% compounded miniaturization bonus ( 55 x 1.3 = 71 ) or
a 60% stacked miniaturization bonus ( 26 x 2.75 = 71 )

The Korx do not get any miniaturization bonus and there are not any miniaturization bonus's for political parties and there are not any ability miniaturization bonus's.

So unless the mod added more miniaturization someway ( and lots of ways to do it from the looks of it ) -- That leaves difficulty level bonus's ( or computer cheats/bugs ).

I couldn't find anything about modding difficulty levels in the modding guide. And I couldn't find any XML files that deal with difficulty levels.

Anybody know if there are any files I can look at to see what the difficulty level bonus's/ handicaps are? OR is that stuff hard coded in compiled C/C++ code?

Hope I got all that stuff right -- first time I looked at those files and the modding guide.

It's hardcoded

Well you are entitled to a few secrets. Thanks for a reply, guess i can stop searching now.

Kyro, any chance you could tell us why the AI was able to build the ship that started this post?

I've been playing Masochistic and the first time I ran across something like that "a Korx escort with 2 hyper warp III and enough blackhole generators to give it a 100 damage on a small hull. I was WTFing when my fleet 3 huge class attacked a transport with 6 escort and I lost everyone of them.

I stopped building large hull ships because no matter how much defenses you put on them you still lose them with one shot.

Now I only build small hull 3 Hyperwarp III and as many weapons as I can fit fleet 10 - 14 together and go for it. You will lose some each attack but they are cheap to build.

Now I only build small hull 3 Hyperwarp III and as many weapons as I can fit fleet 10 - 14 together and go for it. You will lose some each attack but they are cheap to build.

Yep that is how you counter that type of ship. It has no Def so killing them is easy, just build tons of cheap fighters, sure you will lose lots of those cheap fighters but he will lose just as many and those Doom ray ships will take time and money to replace.

In many ways it seems to be better to produce small cheap ships that you can cram a lot into one fleet, unless of course you come up against an AI that uses lots of high level defense