0015321: AI Races Over-Value Ship Class Upgrade Technologies - DEV Arcen

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0015321	The Last Federation	Gameplay Issue		May 29, 2014 6:11 pm	May 31, 2014 10:42 am

Reporter	Thasero	Assigned To	keith.lamothe
Status	resolved	Resolution	fixed
Product Version	1.023 (Uprisings)
Fixed in Version	1.024 (Disease Resistance)

Summary	0015321: AI Races Over-Value Ship Class Upgrade Technologies
Description	The AI races drastically over-prioritize researching the technologies that grant a bonus to a particular ship class, i.e. SM Offensive Upgrade and the like. From game year 3009 onwards, I have never seen a race research a technology through normal efforts other than one of the ship class techs. (Sometimes they start a research project before 3009 and finish it afterwards, but the next technology will always be a ship class tech.) New tiers of ship class research unlock faster than a race can get all 8 of the techs in a tier, so the AI will spend centuries slowly working through the entire tree of upgrades while ignoring all other technology. The races will eventually pick up all of the technologies that allow building planetary structures by trading in excess resources, but no other technologies will be researched. I saw the pathological version of this in an observer-mode game where the Skylaxians and Acutians formed the Solar Axis Pact; the Skylaxians then used the Spread Science action to place 300 mini-labs on each of the 3 planets controlled by the Acutians. Even with a ludicrous four-digit science multiplier, the Acutians made very slow technological progress because the high-level upgrades are so expensive. Only after finishing the entire Offensive Upgrade / Defensive Upgrade tech tree did the Acutians research anything else, and then blew through the entire rest of the tech tree researching 1 technology per month for a 2 years until they gained Time Travel. In practice, this cripples the AI's research efforts: 1. The AI will never possess any military speed, space military power, ground military power, or science boost technology that it does not start the game with or research before 3009... unless the player gifts that technology. Technologies that cannot be purchased by cashing in resources are 100% under the control of the player. 2. Ordinary space military power techs, like Advanced Gravitonics, are cheaper to research AND more powerful AND affect all ships equally, so the player (and the player's client races) can gain a drastic technological advantage with little effort. Likewise, you can protect your chosen races from ground invasion by researching Vibroblades / Personal Shields / etc. for them, secure in the knowledge that hostile races will never close the tech gap. 3. Because races mostly waste their research effort by spending 10 years to get the 4th GI Defensive Upgrade instead of collecting the dozen other technologies they could get in the same time, there is little risk of making a race too powerful by giving them science boosts. Building science outposts is a freebie. 4. The AI will never research the vaccine for a disease except by receiving it from the player or from a random technological breakthrough that happens to coincide with a disease.
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Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
May 29, 2014 6:11 pm	Thasero	New Issue
May 30, 2014 10:24 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Assigned To	=> keith.lamothe
May 30, 2014 10:24 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Status	new => assigned
May 31, 2014 10:42 am	keith.lamothe	Internal Weight	=> New
May 31, 2014 10:42 am	keith.lamothe	Note Added: 0038401
May 31, 2014 10:42 am	keith.lamothe	Status	assigned => resolved
May 31, 2014 10:42 am	keith.lamothe	Fixed in Version	=> 1.024 (Disease Resistance)
May 31, 2014 10:42 am	keith.lamothe	Resolution	open => fixed