Laser Trees and AI

[lightstriker]

I think that one of the biggest problems with the AI right now is how they handle your laser mines. They simply... don't react well to them. At all. In many cases, they'll either totally ignore them when they're orbiting around a planet, letting you essentially shut down an entire asteroid for free, or they'll send in a slow trickle at them from across multiple asteroids, burning through hundreds of guys. If they DO handle them well, it's usually an "accident" (they were attacking ____ and the laser mine was in the way). Not sure what can be done about this, but... yeah Just thought I'd throw it out there. (Also, one of my complaints is that many levels feel MUCH harder based solely on "Did you get laser mine or not?" which kinda feels... lame.

also, on a related note, I feel that defense trees are rather weak. They do have a place in the game, but I rarely feel that they're good at anything but delaying a bit (forcing people to build larger armies to attack) while delaying their creator's said buildup (with the exception, again, of laser mines). But I dunno.

[Alex]

Thanks for the post - I'd love to have had time to address the AI stuff better. Unfortunately when I rewrote the AI I didn't do such a great job, even though it's better than it was it's still not really a good strategy AI. I'll probably be rewriting the AI again for the next version in like 10 months time...

Defense trees can be devastating if you have a large crowd of seedlings all milling around a tree base trying to take the planet over, as they stop attacking trees at that point and the defense missiles can take out literally hundreds of seedlings at a time. It can really slow down an invasion. But in general scheme of things they only tend to actually stop trickles of seedlings yes. These trees are something that evolved over time and I think when we released were at an acceptable game design level... they could be improved to make the game a bit more predictable, but we've designed too many of the levels around this deisgn now so we're unlikely to change it.