Stellaris Dev Diary #252 - Artificial and Automated Intelligence

[Lorenerd11]

So still no auto-building of mining and science stations?

This should be a setting on individual construction ships tbh. Devs mentioned adding automatic construction of mining and science stations to construction ships a long time ago, I really don't get why this wasn't implemented yet.

 

[MicroBlogganism]

No idea how you are managing to put so much into this update, but please keep it coming! The new planet automation and the AI actually gearing up for war before it declares are a gifts from the Worm. I'm looking forward to not needing to go through all my planets every couple of years to build stuff. Quick question: If I tic the designation automation box for a agricultural planet, will it only automatically build farming districts and a food processing building, or will it also automatically build hydroponics buildings once it runs out of districts?

 

[Offe]

This is a very very welcome change. A few random questions on AI logic and priorities:

• How do other AIs respond to this notification of mobilisation, if at all?
  • For example AI1 moves their fleets to Ovastivum, as in your screenshot.
  • What happens if the blue empire ("AI2") is not a player? Does it decide to mobilise its forces to Krant? (or more generally the nearest star to the mobilising fleets?)
  • IF AIs do act on neighbours' mobilisation events, what happens when There are 2 neighbours mobilising against a 3rd empire.
    • Lets say on opposite sides of their nation (think WW2 Germany - poland - russia, as a crude analogy)
    • Will the Middle AI, "Space poland", if they respond to these mobilisation events, split its forces in 2 (or even or weighted) to face both mobilising enemies?
    • Or will it attempt to fight one AI or the other, win and move from there (this i suppose feeds in to a broader question about AI mission priority in wars in stellaris).
• What will AIs do to mobilise vs an enemy, if there is no clear path to the enemy? (e.g. some 3rd party is blocking the way with its borders)
  • Will they proactively stack up on gateways/q-catapults/hyper-relays, or jump drive, and try to "get close as possible"?
• Will AIs (if 1 is mobilising against, say, a common ground start federation) split their forces to mobilise against "all war participants"? or will they focus on the nearest? Or weight higher the "enemy war leader"?

Bonus question, more content than AI focussed (though it touches on spoofing AIs decisionmaking in Singleplayer):

• Will there be potential in the future for an espionage operation/situation to "fake a war mobilisation"/"false flag operation" and maybe trigger a war between two powers? (e.g. assuming they already have poor relations).

But wouldnt this still be possible, to a lesser degree, in sufficiently large federations, like some galactic unions? If I approach member I ~ N and ask to join in sequence (being rejected each time), with enough candidate states I should still stack some large net modifiers.


I've not looked at GC resolutions much, are the Support/Abstain/Opposition thresholds scriptable? Or are they dynamic (e.g. set by/scaling with country ethics somehow)



This is real nice. The only thing that jumps out at me is that there is no list of what each designation will/could actually build if you turn it on? Like A dynamic Localisation string under "Control-click" above saying "Current designation [Mining] can build [whatever districts and buildings]" would be a very helpful way to centrally show what this can do - alternatively sticking such a string in the designation tooltip itself could work?.



So still no auto-building of mining and science stations, auto-colonisation or auto-terraforming options [budget permitting]? (a la "old" sector functionality)?

If you ask one of the AI federation members to initiate a vote for you to join, it will cause the 10 year cooldown for all AI federation memebers such that no one will propose it again during this period even if you ask a different federation member.

The numbers needed for Support/Abstain/Oppose are moddable defines such as "RESOLUTION_VOTE_PROPOSE_THRESHOLD = 8.0", both these thresholds as well as the AI logic for how much they would like to vote on resolutions are fully scriptable/moddable

Being able to see what a designation automation would build would be nice. In general it is now extremely restrictive and much more predictable.

 

[Lorenerd11]

If you ask one of the AI federation members to initiate a vote for you to join, it will cause the 10 year cooldown for all AI federation memebers such that no one will propose it again during this period even if you ask a different federation member.

Isn't this too much? I feel like the join request cooldown should be an exception, maybe 4 years instead of 10.

 

[Verx90]

Right now it is only for attacking AI, it would be natural to extend this support such that defending AI would be able to react to this if they have enough intel in the future

i can see the attacking AI empires being way more successfull in 3.4 then ... well, how they use the fleet changed too, so we will see i guess.

 

[Offe]

No idea how you are managing to put so much into this update, but please keep it coming! The new planet automation and the AI actually gearing up for war before it declares are a gifts from the Worm. I'm looking forward to not needing to go through all my planets every couple of years to build stuff. Quick question: If I tic the designation automation box for a agricultural planet, will it only automatically build farming districts and a food processing building, or will it also automatically build hydroponics buildings once it runs out of districts?

automate_farming_planet = {
    category = "planet_automation_designation_construction"
    
    available = {
        OR = {
            has_designation = col_farming
            has_designation = col_ring_farming
        }
    }

    prio_districts = {
        district_farming
        district_rw_farming
        district_farming_uncapped
    }

    buildings = {
        1 = {
            building = building_capital
        }

        2 = {
            building = building_food_processing_facility
        }

        3 = {
            building = building_hydroponics_farm
        }
    }
}

The designation automation scripts follow this pattern. It will try to build any combination of available farming districts and then build the buildings in the priority order. So it will build the food processing facility first if you have researched it and then continue with hydroponics. The automation will try to build something like 2:1 districts and buildings as well so you should see a mix of farming districts and hydroponics farms.

If you enable the "building slot" automation and the farming designation automation on a planet without any available farming districts then it would build 1:1 city districts followed by hydroponics farms.

 

[McEldrad]

I AM HUMAN

 

[Lorenerd11]

The designation automation scripts follow this pattern. It will try to build any combination of available farming districts and then build the buildings in the priority order. So it will build the food processing facility first if you have researched it and then continue with hydroponics. The automation will try to build something like 2:1 districts and buildings as well so you should see a mix of farming districts and hydroponics farms.

Shouldn't it not build hydroponic farms at all if there are agricultural districts available?

 

[MathyM]

Is the planet automation system aware of things such as Mining Districts unlocking building slots and providing extra housing for Subterranean empires?

 

[Jazzbanana]

Wow excellent news, great job. Can't wait to try this out.

As someone already said it would also be great to be able to customize sectors instead of the 4-jumps rule. Can you comment if this is something that's being discussed?

 

[Zxcpoi]

​

@Eladrin Tunneling underground is a bit more expensive than building on the surface, but has its advantages, especially when a hostile force attempts to bombard your cities​

There should be defensive combat bonus too.

 

[MadCow94]

Will lithoids habitabilty be changed to minimum hab. rather that a flat hab. bonus? I never play lithoids because it feels like EZ Mode being able to settle basically any planet right from go.

 

[Verx90]

There should be defensive combat bonus too.

i can argue that there are defensive combat disavantage too. i think its safe to give nothing .

 

[Alfha Robby]

i wonder if custodian initiative will fix the rebellion of some of your subsidiary planet, since your subsidiary empire were unable to declare war against the rebel empire of the same main species with different ethics (weird how machine uprising is different from typical same main species rebellion on single planet) because they were my vassal and i hate the cheese like map on the galaxy and you can't really transfer system with colonized planet as well.

also is it possible for normal planet (not ring world, habitat and ecumenopolies) to have administrative, research and trade district since its tad annoying to build tons of administrative office, research lab and commercial zones building, i'd really appreciate it if these three district will receive same treatment like industrial district and the three building i mention receive same treatment like civilian industry and alloy foundries.


also its really rare to have betharian and isolated valley that it really make me feel speechless since even in one of my game where i own 60 colony i only have around 2 planet with these building just show you how rare it's.

 

[Offe]

Shouldn't it not build hydroponic farms at all if there are agricultural districts available?

Maybe. Like written in the dev diary it will be impossible to make an automation system that everyone will think is 10/10 perfect.

If you enable designation automation but disable building slot automation it will continue to build farming districts and as long as there are no free building slots then it won't build any hydroponics.

 

[Offe]

Is the planet automation system aware of things such as Mining Districts unlocking building slots and providing extra housing for Subterranean empires?

Both yes and no, depends on what you mean.

The building slot automation will make sure that there is always 1 free building slot on the planet. If you enable this on a planet with the mining designation then it will make fewer city districts as a result since sometimes it will get a building slot for free.

The same is true for the housing automation which will only build extra housing districts when needed, so if the mining automation always have a healthy surplus of housing from the mining districts then it will never have the need to make extra housing

 

[Critical Ethics]

On the topic of the origin. Will it be able to go together with the Aquatic trait? Underwater caves do exist so will it be a possibility? And if so, will the city look different by having a blue filter over it? And how will it affect the look of Ecumenopolis worlds?

What I'm more entertained by is an arid world subterranean empire will have 50% habitability on an Ocean world.

*stamping around at the bottom of the Mariana Trench* Well it's not ideal

 

[The Shacks]

Yes please fix fleet splitting, whenever I loose control of my fed for a few years to my lessers....valued Federation allies and then get it back I have to deal with like 650 fleet capacity that is now all broken into 1-3 ships Takes so long THEN I have to go manually delete all those 'new fleets' with 0 ships in them in the fleet manager. I like micro but that is actually the bad kind

 

[McEldrad]

@Offe So the length of time of AI preparation of war is usually just how long it takes for the AI fleets to move from their docked station (usually their capital) to the system adjacent to the war preparation target? So therefore for a set distance, and increasing tech of ship thrusters, the time taken for war preparation will decrease as tech increases? (assuming no border changes which is obviously a large assumption)

Additionally, does the war prep system mess with the frequency of wars declared by AI? I.e, is it likely that by the time the AI has spent X amount of time "preparing" and moving their fleets, is the AI fickle enough to call off the war and change their mind? Does the immediate "fire when ready" of AI war declarations of 3.3 increase the wars occurring on average?

Btw thanks for the great DD

 

[Xyre255]

What I'm more entertained by is an arid world subterranean empire will have 50% habitability on an Ocean world.

*stamping around at the bottom of the Mariana Trench* Well it's not ideal

The better question is how a non aquatic ocean world species managed to get out of the cave without flooding it in the process.