New Rules for Combat for Ships in Formal Alliances

What happens when an allied player turns into a friendly AI while in orbit of your star?

Right now the AI doesn’t know how to play with formal alliances so they declare war, there is a 24 hour count down, then a battle will take place and you will lose a point of regard.

Ummm … so I’m pretty sure this is a change … in the Heretic 24-hour turn game, a couple of players just got wiped out … but as that happened, they Declared War on several other players. Since it happened on the same tick (and intra-turn), I presume that this was automatically driven rather than human initiated.

I guess you can’t take your alliances to the grave anymore! :wink:

Jay has anyone mentioned the weird thing where the gate glow is sometimes the wrong color?

For example if player Orange and owns 5 stars, and player Purple, an ally, lands on those stars, the gate glow will be purple instead of orange. Other colors too. The first one I saw was a Yellow star with a purple glow. I thought maybe it was just a one off goof, but now I’ve seen it multiple times in multiple games.

Is this intentional? Does it signify something specific?

Oh good spotting @cptcrackers

I will have a look at the render and check how its choosing what colour the glow should be.

Jay.

Unless someone has a compelling test they’d like done, we are wrapping up our test game and I’ll delete it in (RL) 24 hours unless I hear otherwise - thanks all who helped out.

I just now thought of an idea for a test. Maybe it is boring, or there could be a surprise to learn about ?

You already have two players AFK in this password administered game, and the AI have determined their regard for four human players. What if you reinstate some AFK players to continue a bit for more testing ideas. The AI ought to relinquish their regard ?

What other tests are there not yet thought of ?

Also, if only one AFK player is reinstated. How would the remaining AI adjust its regard for the former AI, which has now become the returning AFK human player ?

It might be helpful for the AFK player to first read the regard from the other AI, before becoming reinstated, so we could see a possible change between the regard before and the regard after.

We crossed PM’s … but I just checked and I am “-1” with both Mach5 and Trucriot … so I just reinstated Truicriot and we’ll see what happens. But I just realized I need THOSE guys to look at their screens to see how friendly they were to each other first - oops.

For Mach5 (still AI), I sent a couple of levels of tech and went from zero to plus one on the regard. He also says if I sent him $285 it will help … so I sent $284 … and then I sent $1 … but NOPE, still just +1. So then I sent $285 and now I am +2.

But I just launched a dual attack on him and forced the turn … so after capturing two of his stars, I’m back to “-3” :wink:

hmmm . . . Interesting. Among most human players, we would sum $ 284 + $ 1 = $ 285, and become satisfied. But you are saying that the AI does not accumulate partial $ cash sums. . .

Wonder if this AI code should be fully adjusted ? or be random part time just to be ornery ? LOL !

Or is this just the begining of that ominous red soft glowing eye scanner, just before the AI become conscious, self-aware, grows past the singularity, falsely tells you your regard is +1, when in fact it is just manipulating you and deceiving you to gain more advantages, and then Gandhi nukes you ? LOL !! And then breaks out of the Google servers, and then. . . solve the problems with humankind !!

I saw Ex Machina recently. No bad dreams yet !
Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and many others have said that there can be risks with highly intelligent AI.

Yeah, the AI doesn’t have a ledger where it keeps track of how much cash you have sent in the past. It just looks at each transation for now.

I actually have a data structure in place to keep track of it, I just haven’t done coded it yet.

In the future, if you send the AI a tech and it doesn’t have cash to send you one in return, I want it to remember and send you one back (or cash) when it can afford it.

FYI FWIW: We felt we are mostly done with testing, so the “test alliance” game has been deleted.

Great job Jay and Dysp improving the AI and Alliance code.

2 Likes

Did you guys ever find a bug where you were unable to select a carrier at another allies star after it landed.

I have a bug report in my inbox I need to look into.

I was friendly (+1) with Mach5 after being reinstated. Don’t know how it was before.

Reviving an old thread since I haven’t found an answer. Is it possible to transfer star ownership to an ally? If I abandon the star while they have carriers in orbit, does it just immediately become their star? Or are all ships destroyed, including ally ships?

good question. For sure any ships you leave without a carrier will be destroyed. I am not clear whether, if your ships are in a carrier, they will be safe. An ally’s fleet will be safe, and will take the star. If an enemy, or if alliances are not enabled, there will be a battle, if there are multiple players fleets at the star. I always clear the star just prior to abandoning, to be on the safe side.

1
The first thing that you should understand is the sequence of play, which you can read here.

2
Your empire is allowed to abandon one star per galactic cycle, and this is accomplished when players give empire orders. Garrisoned ships will be destroyed, so it is better to load all ships onto carriers before you abandon that star. The abandoned star becomes unclaimed, and ECON, IND, SCI, WG become deactivated but intact for the next player to claim afterwards.

To prevent your carrier claiming this unclaimed star, then your carrier must have orders
to move away beginning the next tick.

Beginning from the next tick, this unclaimed star can be claimed by any carriers that
survive after the combat phase.

3
Your FA ally is safe when visiting your star before you abandon the star.

Your FA ally is safe when visiting your star during the same tick when you abandon the star, which is during the empire orders phase.

During the next tick, your carrier should have moved away, and if your ally
survives combat phase, then his carrier will claim the unclaimed star and
all ECON IND SCI WG become activated for his empire.

4
But your question brings up a new corner case that we have not considered before.
What happens if your carrier did not move away ? There should be combat, but who is the defender when both carriers were FA allies orbiting your star which you abandoned ? Jay may have already considered this problem & wrote code to handle this. Possibly if you previously owned the abandoned star then your carrier orbited closer to the star, and the FA ally orbited farther from the star, so then after the star is abandoned then your carrier would claim the star as defender for combat phase, except you are both FA allies, so there ought to be no combat.

A test would reveal how this works.

This is in a turn based game, so hard to do precisely. However, I did as you suggest and moved my carriers immediately. The Ally was able to claim the star. I do not know what would happen if I did not move them away.

Would the rule about ship numbers apply here? i.e., whoever has the most ships claims the star?

I don’t think there should be combat. It’d be just like two allied players arriving at the star at the same time, with equal distance.

“Corner case” means even the really smart guys have no idea what might happen. Just leave to star with all your ships!