Inofficial 0.93h

Since I don't really remember when I've done what change, I'll give a bit of a summary of the current play-style of the AI:

The AI is, once again more aggressive and harder to keep peace with.
They will always attack someone when they cannot otherwise develop anymore but will also attack sooner, when they consider themselves at an advantage.
For determining an advantage they look at fleet-strength, production-output and invasion-potential. The latter turns especially Bulrathi and Sakkra more aggressive than you might be used to form before.
AI will now risk invasions without air-superiority under certain circumstances especially early on and again with combat-transports.
AI will now use mostly hybrid-ship-designs rather than specialists. This is a bit experimental to see whether this increases or lowers their overall playing-strength.
In connection with that there was a bit of an overhaul of the scapping- and design-slot-management-logic that should fix various bugs about that.
Diplomatic behavior is much more simplified compared to last release. It is relatively easy to predict once again and generally comes down to "big fish eat small fish".

Inofficial 0.93g

No longer having excess amounts of ships waiting for an invasion, when the colony under siege can already be destroyed. Ships instead move somewhere else, where they are still needed. If they are not needed somewhere else they will all stay and wait for the invasion to finish.

Fixed issue with hyper-space-communications and colony-ships. (Rerouted ships where falsely added to their previous target in the mind of the AI instead of subtracted. This lead to confused behavior of colony-ships.)

Fixed issue that prevented the AI from bombing other AIs when the player didn't know to whom the bombarded system belonged.

Adjustments to early-game-colony-ship-building to commit more to them once pop-growth slows down below 80% of maximum. This will primarily help the Meklar and the Sakkra and will have the least impact on the Silicoids.

Further reduction of aggressiveness during expansion-phase.

Inofficial 0.93f

Xilmi-AI now analyzes the political landscape in a much more sophisticated way than before. Instead of just looking at the power and the contacts of other empires, the locations of both planets and fleets are now also being taken into consideration to predict how a conflict unfolds and which side to take in it.

The same algorithms are also used for recognizing how deeply in trouble a Xilmi-AI is, when it is at war. A Xilmi-AI expecting to lose will fight much more fiercely for their survival than they used to do. So wars, even against seemingly easy opponents will require more commitment.

Overall you can expect fewer wars and longer periods of peace but also more severe wars in the cases when they happen.

Inofficial 0.93e

Improved AI population-management.
Fixed exploit that allowed exploring systems while retreating.
Fixed issue that prevented sending ships back to where they came from despite having hyper-space-communications.

Rotp Inofficial 0.93d

Fixed issues with scrapping designs in situations where they shouldn't be scrapped.
Improved combat-behavior to now try and get the first hit with faster ships and when defending.

Rotp-0.93c

Shows pop-growth when clean.
Better handling of missile-boats.

Inofficial 0.93b

Commits on Jun 11, 2021
@Xilmi
Update RacesUI.java …
c1093bb
Race-selector no longer jumps after selecting a race.
Race-selector scroll-speed when dragging is no longer amplified like the scroll-bar but instead moves 1:1 the distance dragged.
@Xilmi
Update AIFleetCommander.java …
e47e7a6
Smart-Path will no longer path over systems further away than the target-system.
Fleets will now always be split by speed if more than 2/3rd of the fleet have the fastest speed possible.
@Xilmi
Update AIGovernor.java …
277a1d9
Build more fleet when fighting someone who has no or extremely little fleet.
@Xilmi
Update AIShipCaptain.java …
ff243a1
Kiting no longer uses path-finding during auto-resolve.
Ships with repulsor and long-range will no longer get closer than 2 tiles before firing against ships that don't have long range.
Will only retreat to system with enemy fleets when there's no system without enemy fleets to retreat to.
@Xilmi
Update CombatStackColony.java …
33a0379
Added override for optimal firing-range for missile-bases. It is 9.
@Xilmi
Update CombatStackShip.java …
08c7d07
Optimal firing-range for ship-stacks with missiles will now be at least two when they have repulsors.
@Xilmi
Update NewShipTemplate.java …
2462633
The willingness of the AI to use repulsor-beam now scales with how many opponent ships have long range. It will be higher if there's only a few but drop down to 0 if all opponent ships use them.
Commits on Jun 18, 2021
@Xilmi
Update AI.java …
6894eae
Improved logic for shuttling around population within the empire.
@Xilmi
Update ShipBattleUI.java …
46f0fcd
Fixed a bug where remaining commands were transferred from one stack to another, which could also cause a crash when missile-bases were involved.
@Xilmi
Update Colony.java …
91ae8f9
currentProductionCapacity now correctly takes into consideration how many factories are actually operated.
@Xilmi
Update NewShipTemplate.java …
c8ed9e1
Fixes and improvements to special-selection. Mainly bigger emphasis on using cloaking-device and stasis-field.
@Xilmi
Update AIShipDesigner.java …
9d4cfd4
Consider getting an important special like cloaking, stasis or black-hole-generator as reason to immediately make a new design.
@Xilmi
Update SystemView.java …
5a4fa0e
Systems with enemy-fleets will now flash the Alert. Especially usefull when under siege by cloaked enemy fleets.
@Xilmi
Update AIShipCaptain.java …
36a773e
Added check whether retreat was possible when retreating for the reason that nothing can be done.
@Xilmi
Update AIGovernor.java …
c593516
Taking natural pop-growth and the cost of terraforming into account when deciding to build factories or population. This usually results to prefering factories almost always when they can be operated.
@Xilmi
War- and Peace-making changes. …
733d18e
Prevent war-declaration when there's barely any fleet to attack with.
Smarter selection of preferred victim. In particular taking their diplomatic status with others into account.
Toned down overall aggressiveness. Several personalities now are taken into account for determining behavior.
@Xilmi
Update General.java …
c07f01e
Don't attack too early.
@Xilmi
Update AIFleetCommander.java …
f0d9d91
Colony ships will now always prefer undefended targets instead of waiting for help if they want to colonize a defended system.
@Xilmi
Update Rotp.java …
c4e1d08
Version 0.93b

Inofficial 0.93a

AI:

Removed requirement about no longer knowing uncolonized systems before it was allowed to go to war for all races except Alkari, Bulrathi and Mrrshan, for whom this already was the case.

Colony-ships, except huge ones, once again consider range as a factor to take into consideration when choosing their target. Not doing so caused massive issues with changing targets and not actually arriving once hyperspeed-communications was discovered. So this means a huge improvement in lategame-capabilities.

Fleets that are on their way to staging-points, gather-points or a smart-pathing-hop on their way to a target will now be split by how fast they are, making faster fleets arrive earlier. For the distance to their actual attack target, however, they will stick together and move of the speed of their slowest design.

Rich and Ultra-Rich-Planets will no contribute their production towards the reserve, when they would otherwise be researching-technology.

Improved management of the reserve: An emergency-reserve will be kept for cases like supernova-event. When there's no developing worlds the reserve may also be spent on any system.

Techs that are known to be owned by another empire are now avoided to be researched, if possible, as chances are high they can be obtained via trading, stealing or invasion.

Fixed an issue where ship-stacks with multi-shot-weapons like gatling-lasers would retreat when they shouldn't due to thinking they hadn't used their weapons, when they actually had.

Designing ships, including scrapping is now executed before moving them. This shall avoid rare cases where a fleet is slowed down by a design that is scrapped the same turn it was sent to move.

Fixes:

Increasing the allocation of security- or espionage-sliders will no longer cause colonies to do too little cleanup leading to waste and citizen-deaths in the next turn.

Smart-Pathing

Some minor tweaks to research and diplomacy.
Improved gather-point determining algorithm.
Introducing a new feature for the Xilmi-AI: Smarth-Pathing.
This makes AI not send fleets over long distances at once. Instead they will take reconsideration-breaks that allows them to react on changes in their opponents fleet-locations.

AI Improvement Build

This build contains further improvements of the AI.

Some of the more mention-able are:

• No more overshooting on colony-ship-production. Colony-ships are now produced by the intended amount.
• Fixing several issues that led to unintended behavior on the strategical map. For example leaving fleets where they were instead of coming back to a staging-point or not splitting off colonizers from a fleet to grab nearby systems during a war.
• Two new behaviors in tactical combat: Backing off after shooting to make room for other stacks or make better use of specials such as repulsor-beams. Waiting at the planet so the opponent has to get into range to always get the first attack when defending.
• Initially less aggressive but potentially more aggressive or even suicidal when cornered.