SO, thanks to Dysp who has been doing a little work on the AI, sometime next week, in new games, the AI will start to actually fight back a little.
Now according to Dysp, at first they might be a little tougher than they should be because they trade too much with each other. I think I’d like to get his code out there and tested and we can tune and modify it on the fly.
Hmm, might force start a few 1:1 games, go toe to toe with our robotic foes.
I’m not sure it will be up to a 1v1 one battle just yet. It still feels a little random and crazy. Kind of like having a crazy person start next to you in a big game.
LOL that this will be bad-a** … AFK/QUIT’s are the scourge of NP, so this should re-balance things a bit when that occurs.
In fairness Jay, the old AI wasn’t up to a 1v7 game. Just took a while to grind them down 
The new AI will be up to a 1vs7 challenge much better. 
The changes made are:
All your fixes look great but a big LOL on that one - just awesome - presumably a random number generator that just may decide some tick that you pi**ed off the Robot and it goes Terminator against you! Even nastier would be if one AI is attacked, the others all mark that attacker as hostile and engage against 'em! 
BTW, is there any difference between if a player goes AFK versus QUITS?
P.S. I don’t know how/if your improvements tie into the AI tech trading algorithm, but I have noticed that the AI is a bit too “nice” about sharing. I.e. I attacked 'em and then a few turns later, they were willing to trade with me. I don’t think one attack should mark you as hostile for life, but seems like it should take longer to be marked as “friendly”
Heh, there is no evil random generator there. The bots will only consider what you do for them. If you attack you are evil, if you give tech they like more about you etc…
And it is fully possible to be friendly with one AI and be in war with another one. So they will not automatically gang up on you.
No there should not be any difference.
There is no changes to this behavior. This is one of the aspects we were discussing with Jay. We should have more wide range of how much bots like others. Now it’s basicly on / off with them.
Is there ever a plan to let AI’s enter alliances? Or at least stay in alliances they were in before going dark?
and actually, @HULK, I think we need to do a quit/afk test in the alliances test game since an alliance with a player breaks as soon as they turn cyborg.
Maybe?
The goal is to make them more interactive with real players and this certainly falls in to that category. There is no timeline for this, but definitely having this on the todo list. But first we have to check out how the latest changes workout and see from there.
I was thinking that with the new alliances if you have a bunch of ships on an allies stars and he quits or AFK’s, it could be VERY painful to your ship counts. I don’t think the 24 hours applies when someone goes AI right? The loss of the alliance is immediate? Or am I wrong with that?
Yes, I will see about changing the code today so that a player goes AFK in a formal alliance they will stay in the alliance.
Is the new AI activated yet?
Not Yet,
Yesterday I added a proper pathfinder so it knows how to plot a path from one end of the galaxy to the other if it wants to.
I did a first pass using the new pathfinder to distribute ships to the frontline. No more random shuffle.
Today I need to do lots of tests and try and refine things a little. Then because I don’t check big changes into the server in the afternoon, probably tomorrow morning.
However, I my tests today might show some bugs, or I might decide its just not good enough so I might miss that deadline.
Will this affect existing games, or only new ones?
These changes are too big for existing games. Only new ones.
Oh good.
Good to know, thanks.
AWESOME - go Dysp and go Jay