Topic: Quick Question

[Captain Adam]

.

[Pestalence_XC]

The game goes by the Base Point Value (BPV) for the enemy as compared to your BPV.. there are settings in the game that you can change to where the game will only generate smaller ships than yours or larger ships.. 2 to 3 ships or just 1 ship. The files that adjust these settings are the MetaMap.gf and the MissionMatching.gf

MetaMap controls how the AI is generated. (1 2 or 3 AI and starting BPV, Difficulty modification adjustments)

Missionmatching controls which way Ai will be generated against the player. Friendly hex encounter, enemy hex encounter, neutral hex encounter, too weak BPV, Too Strong BPV, etc.

The best place that explains some of the functions of these settings is Nuclear Wessels web site.. however I am currently re-writing a guide to go with the current versions of the server kits.

Hope that this helps.

[marstone]

a quick question is a good title for this also.

When enemy ships are drafted in mission, how does the server pick what race it is from.  I get tired of fighing the same race over and over no matter where I draft a mission.  If in neutral, I might draw a lyran, in klingon space I draw a lyran, in friendly space near the Romulan boarder I draw a lyran.  Is there any way to have the ships you draw as enemies be related to where you are in space?

[Pestalence_XC]

The UI in game has nothing to do with actual game play..

The game is designed to match the players BVP for the ship you are flying.

The best tool to use is Shipedit and Shipedit OP to check BVP of your ships that you are customizing Shipedit will automatically adjust for the cost of each system you put on a ship.

the game will read the ships BPV from the shiplist for your ship, plus added supplies like mines, fighters, drones, marines, etc (which increases your BVP of your ship).. on base settings, the AI will generate a ship based on your initial ship's BPV and then use the game's difficulty settings to adjust the BPV.. say your BPV before load out is 126 for your ship and you are playing in Admiral mode.. the AI will have 126 * 1.25 = 157.5 (rounded to 158).. so the Ai can either generate a ship that is 158 BPV with no supplies, 2 ships that total 158 BPV, 3 ships that total 158 BPV, or 1 ship less than 158 BPV and load out supplies until it reaches 158 BVP.

Now, depending on how the files are set, the game generates map based AI and it also generates Mission based AI.

You have Map based AI which are generated at campaign start with the initial AI BPV x difficulty setting.. these are the ones that run around on the map trying to flip hexes against you and generate news reports..

Then you have mission based AI that generate when you go into a mission.. first the game will check for map based AI, if none found, then it will generate an AI based off your BPV x difficulty level as explained above for you to fight.

So if your KCR is reduced to a heavy cruiser but has the BPV of a Batle Cruiser, the game is going to generate a battle cruiser, carrier, or small DN to come after you, so long as the BPV is similar..

So what you have to do is use Shipedit and Shipedit OP to adjust your shiplist files so that you will have a close approximation to what the BPV should be.. for each ship.

in the GF files, you can adjust the starting difficulty level for the AI.. the numeric value you put in will be multiplied by your BPV.. like on my hardcore server.. the AI gets 1.75 times players BPV.. that means the AI can have 75% more points than I have to buy ships and load out.. and that means the ship AI classes are usually 1 to 2 times bigger than you...

AI Starting BPV means that when an AI generates, it has a minimum set BPV regardless if the player has a smaller BPV.. On my server, I have AI starting with 148 BPV and the game has the option to multiply that by the 1.75 difficulty setting to throw at me.. Several times I have drawn BBs with a DD.. a few times with a FF..

In mission matching, the TooHighBPV matching is set at 300 .. which means that the game will only throw ships bigger than your ship 30% of the time. Changing this to 1000 will make the game 100% to always throw a ship or ships at you that are either bigger or out number you.

these things are found out through experimentation.. Also, i would correctly label each ship as Light, Heavy, Battle and so forth using shipedit.. the game on default settings likes to throw the same class ship you are flying.. with my settings, it will trow the kitchen sink and everything else it has.
 

[Pestalence_XC]

a quick question is a good title for this also.

When enemy ships are drafted in mission, how does the server pick what race it is from. I get tired of fighing the same race over and over no matter where I draft a mission. If in neutral, I might draw a lyran, in klingon space I draw a lyran, in friendly space near the Romulan boarder I draw a lyran. Is there any way to have the ships you draw as enemies be related to where you are in space?

The enemy ship is supposedly picked from closest enemy race to your hex.. although crazy maps, improper 2nd level map integration and random AI effect this and it does not work as it was originally intended. It could also be an error within the shiplist itself.. also the gf file settings could be to blame along with the political tensions.. say if you are flying Fed.. and go towards Rom space near the klingon border.. then depending on the political tension level, the AI will be going after you from the strongest dislike, regardless of who's border you are near..

However like I stated, there were many things that are suppose to work a certain way that does not.. which is the reason behind SFC 4

[marstone]

  Thanks answer it good anough.  Hopefully an error that will get squished with the new release.

[NuclearWessels]

Heh, just to throw an extra set of curves into the equation ...

how the enemy ship gets selected also depends on what generation technique the scripter chose:

(i) Routines that draft an enemy ship - these specify a size class range, a bpv range, and whether to draft any enemy or your most hated enemy.  If there is a nearby player or AI ship that matches those are candidates to be drafted, otherwise it will create a new AI specifically for the purposes of being drafted.  If there is nothing in the shiplist that fits the hull/bpv criteria then unpredictable things happen.

    (Server .gf settings also allocate how much weight they'll put behind the script recommendations, and how much to scale the bpv sizes by.)

(ii) Routines that "internally" generate an AI within specified hull sizes and bpv bounds, but of a specific race chosen by the script.  If there is nothing that matches the criteria then you may simply get no enemy ship, and if the script doesn't account for that then odd things happen.

(iii) Routines that precisely specify exactly which type of AI to generate.  (If that ship isn't actually in the shiplist then you get a crash.)

Hope that helps!
dave