Wacky powerful barbarians?

God-Emperor said:

A starbase in the hands of the AI is quite weak unless it is very close to one of their star systems. The reason is that it never puts a single squadron on one, so you can just wipe them out with squadrons yourself without ever risking a ship or squadron. The severity of this can be reduced slightly be giving the starbase units some chance to intercept - I have tested a 20% chance and it doesn't solve the problem, of course, but it does slow the process down and will occasionally cost you a squadron or two before the starbase dies.

I should also point out that I don't think I have ever seen the AI upgrade a starbase. They are always just the regular version, never the delta or omega.

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A very good point (or two), but there's an additional problem: the AI only seems to use missiles if they're nukes - and that's not FF specific.

You're also right about the AI not upgrading starbases; I'm not sure if that's simply a matter of calculating whether it's cheaper to rebuild one after destruction. To be true, I've hardly ever seen a starbase get attacked; the main targets seem just to be star systems (which is a bit obvious as that's what counts in the end). Personally I only upgrade starbases if a) I can afford it and b) stronger spaceships appear in the game (whether barbs or regular AI). As far as I can tell, the main AI reason to build a base is to get at resources and to rely on ships for attack/defense of systems.

Perhaps with reduced fighter/bomber ranges the AI will use starbases as intended?

JEELEN said:

A very good point (or two), but there's an additional problem: the AI only seems to use missiles if they're nukes - and that's not FF specific.

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Didn't they include non-nuke missiles in BTS? Maybe I'm thinking of the Thomas War mod. I haven't played vanilla BTS in many months. I guess I can't remember seeing the AI use missiles. That's unfortunate. I wish I understood the AI more, I'd love to be able to fix it.

JEELEN said:

I've hardly ever seen a starbase get attacked; the main targets seem just to be star systems (which is a bit obvious as that's what counts in the end). Personally I only upgrade starbases if a) I can afford it and b) stronger spaceships appear in the game (whether barbs or regular AI). As far as I can tell, the main AI reason to build a base is to get at resources and to rely on ships for attack/defense of systems.

Perhaps with reduced fighter/bomber ranges the AI will use starbases as intended?

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I never attack starbases unless they are close enough to a star to get in the way.

Starbases did have PD weapons that were great for taking out incoming missiles and fighters in MOO2. I could see a fighter intercept chance (like 25% - 50% or so) being a good addition to starbases.

If you do make changes to units and such I'd love an updated copy of the XML file so when I get around to editing them the changes won't have to be made again.

fulano said:

Didn't they include non-nuke missiles in BTS? Maybe I'm thinking of the Thomas War mod. I haven't played vanilla BTS in many months. I guess I can't remember seeing the AI use missiles. That's unfortunate. I wish I understood the AI more, I'd love to be able to fix it.


I never attack starbases unless they are close enough to a star to get in the way.

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Indeed. So why should the AI act differently?

fulano said:

Starbases did have PD weapons that were great for taking out incoming missiles and fighters in MOO2. I could see a fighter intercept chance (like 25% - 50% or so) being a good addition to starbases.

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Actually, starbases can get promotions (I'm not sure if they do not have an intercept chance already), but since they're very rarely attacked, you can just as rarely make use of those.

fulano said:

If you do make changes to units and such I'd love an updated copy of the XML file so when I get around to editing them the changes won't have to be made again.

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Sure, no problem. (Although I don't know if the next "patch" will contain any unit changes just yet. I want to limit fighter/bomber range, but don't know if I'll get around to it for the next update.)

Actually, starbases can get promotions (I'm not sure if they do not have an intercept chance already), but since they're very rarely attacked, you can just as rarely make use of those.

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There is a slight problem with that: Unless you have changed it in the DLL, you can't use a promotion that increases the interception chance with a unit that does not already have an interception chance. If you have two units of the same unitcombat, with one having an interception chance and the other not, and a promotion that gives an increase to interception set to be available for units of that unitcombat then only the one that already has the interception chance can use that promotion. This is why SAM Infantry can take the interception increasing promotions but the regular Infantry can't even through they are both UNITCOMBAT_GUN and the promotion PROMOTION_INTERCEPTION1 is available to UNITCOMBAT_GUN.

This is the same as not being able to use a promotion that increases collateral damage on a unit that does not already do collateral damage (as of 3.19, anyway) .

Interestingly, a unit that does not have a withdrawal chance can use a promotion that gives a withdrawal chance with one exception: a unit that is flagged as defend only (bOnlyDefensive set to 1) can not use a promotion that gives a withdrawal chance even if it already has one.

These apply to promotions that do multiple things. If you have a promotion that gives an extra first strike and an interception increase, a unit that does not have any interception chance can't take it.

That makes perfect sense. I checked the available promotions for starbases and they do include a +25% strength promotion against fighters, but, as said, starbases rarely get promoted as is. (Obviously this can be changed.)