AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

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ThinkSome
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AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#1 Post by ThinkSome »

with-FreeOrionSDK-v11-335-gb2112feb2

Looks like the AI decided to outfit it with (better) engines. Is this even a bug or just funny to see?
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ThinkSome
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#2 Post by ThinkSome »

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Oberlus
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#3 Post by Oberlus »


Ophiuchus
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#4 Post by Ophiuchus »

ThinkSome wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 9:58 am with-FreeOrionSDK-v11-335-gb2112feb2
That is your SDK version. Which revision/commit is your freeorion? (E.g. taken from start screen or git log)
ThinkSome wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 9:58 am Looks like the AI decided to outfit it with (better) engines. Is this even a bug or just funny to see?
It guess it is a bug in the AI ShipDesigner as there are cheaper and better (faster/sturdier) designs available. But there may be a rare situation where you do not want to wait for a shipyard to be build, so even the base hull colonizer has a niche.

Before this design was not possible, because you needed at least two internal slots to make an immobile hull movable - one for the colony pod, one for the engine and either one for fuel tanks or the right tech/species for some fuel.

AI team needs to be aware of this. Morlic?
Morlic wrote:
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Oberlus
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#5 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 10:49 am Which revision/commit is your freeorion?
It's latest weekly test build.
Already reported in the issue in GitHub.
Ophiuchus wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 10:49 am It guess it is a bug in the AI ShipDesigner as there are cheaper and better (faster/sturdier) designs available.
It's just a bug because players can't mount engines in base hulls (forbidden).

//Edit: Oh, no, it isn't forbidden, human players can also mount engines in the base hulls!
So maybe it is not due to any change in AI ship designer but something about ship parts and hulls in general//

Morlic worked in some simplifications of the AI ship designer that might have backfired.

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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#6 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 10:56 amMorlic worked in some simplifications of the AI ship designer that might have backfired.
It might be that the AI did the right thing though (although I doubt it).

Think about Sly powering deep colonisation with cryo pod base hulls built from stockpile. Not having to build a shipyard is a plus.
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#7 Post by Oberlus »

I think having to build a shipyard is an essential part of current balance.

Sly can build a shipyard in no time early game, and also Sly need stealth sooner or later and won't be able to take advantage of hull bases from stealth colonization. So this would not be something particularly targetted at Sly.

Allowing everyone (not just Sly) to colonize other systems from newly acquired systems before the 5 turns that a shipyard needs for completion would change current game pace. Do we want it?

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Oberlus
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#8 Post by Oberlus »

I tried to compile release-v0.4.9, that already had the 3 slot base hulls (IIRC) to test if it was possible to mount engines on them, but my system (or configuration) no longer can compile that version, python issues.

Can any Windows user test it with the available binaries in SourceForge?
Just start a game with fast techs and fast ship building enabled, research first engine on turn 1 and try to mount it in turn 2.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oberlus wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 10:56 am//Edit: Oh, no, it isn't forbidden, human players can also mount engines in the base hulls!
So maybe it is not due to any change in AI ship designer but something about ship parts and hulls in general//

Morlic worked in some simplifications of the AI ship designer that might have backfired.
If the game mechanics have changed, I would guess that it's related to the crash when double-clicking a part in the design screen. Some test that depends on slot type might not be working now, and lead to this as well. (Or maybe not)

Edit: As noted below, they apparently haven't changed since v0.4.9

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swaq
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#10 Post by swaq »

Oberlus wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 11:47 am I tried to compile release-v0.4.9, that already had the 3 slot base hulls (IIRC) to test if it was possible to mount engines on them, but my system (or configuration) no longer can compile that version, python issues.

Can any Windows user test it with the available binaries in SourceForge?
Just start a game with fast techs and fast ship building enabled, research first engine on turn 1 and try to mount it in turn 2.
I can confirm on Windows (v0.4.9+ [build 2020-04.20.b2112fe]) that I can make a Colony Base Hull with outpost/colony, fuel tank, and engines and move it around.

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swaq
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#11 Post by swaq »

I can also confirm this affects the official 0.4.9 release.
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#12 Post by Oberlus »

Is this mobile base hull bug/feature good, bad or irrelevant for gameplay?
Could it be a better choice than current colonization or chaff mechanics?

CHAFF
Its base cost is already balanced for immobile chaff. The 15 cost from the engine to make it a 20 speed ship is clearly discouraging for chaff. No problem here.

EXPANSION
While in supply, it does not need a fuel tank to move around, and with one fuel tank you could get two hops away from your supply.
The 15 cost is not that relevant here, compared to outpost or colony pod cost. And can be compensated by the fact that it does not need a shipyard to be built, so you can colonize a planet that gets supply-connected to the main supply group and start building a mobile colony base in it to further away colonisation, saving yourself the shipyard building time or the travel time from the initial shipyard
However its slow 20 speed and only 2 hops out-of-supply range can make it not better or maybe just worse than standard medium hull colony/outpost ships.
swaq wrote:It'd have to be a pretty specific case where you can get another colony set up faster with that. Probably Sly + a very close gas giant
Ophiuchus (agrrr3) in GitHub wrote:there may be a rare situation where you do not want to wait for a shipyard to be build, so even the base hull colonizer has a niche.

Alright, I guess we can consider this a feature and not a bug. It will just need some adjustments in base hull description.

Anyone against this?

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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#13 Post by Morlic »

Unfortunately, the savegames do not cover the critical time where the AI considered to queue the ship.

My best guess is that you or another AI cut the supply network between Phad Alpha (where the ship was built) and any shipyard.

Assuming that is true, the AI then tries to do something useful with those disconnected PP which in this case is building a colony ship. Considering there is no shipyard available and the better and more cost-efficient designs can not be queued, it can only queue the colony base design. The ShipDesignAI does consider the design inferior to the standard designs, so shouldn't ever build it unless forced to (i.e. not having any shipyard on any planet with the desired species).

Kind of working as intended as far as the AI is concerned although the logic for supply disruption is definitely improvable.
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#14 Post by Oberlus »

Morlic wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 6:09 pm Kind of working as intended as far as the AI is concerned
That makes sense.

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swaq
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Re: AI Colony base travelling the starlanes

#15 Post by swaq »

Oberlus wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 3:16 pm Alright, I guess we can consider this a feature and not a bug. It will just need some adjustments in base hull description.

Anyone against this?
After thinking about this for a while I think I would slightly prefer just excluding engine parts from the colony base hull. Using the colony base hull this way is of extremely limited use and I think it would be more confusing to the player to try and explain the "feature". In addition the engine parts are supposed to be improvements to engines that are already capable of interstellar travel so I don't think just plopping them in a interplanetary ship should suddenly make it able to travel starlanes.

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