Game rules do not apply to rival colonies

[DWest2127]

So, I was hoping for a 4 way challenge against a set of game rules that would apply to the game, ie: all 4 participants. What I got was just a harder challenge against 3 AI colonies.

I use Lart Ark - only 1 colony ship - and yet by sol 15 the China colony had 50 residents. I applied the "Long Ride" as well, and sent for colonists on sol 9 after I had built the 1st dome (achievement earned!) only for my Chinese AI to build a dome on sol 11 and earn the first martian pop on sol 12 just hours before my ship landed. I thought that highly suspicious, improbable, but possible. But it was the population explosion that convinced me that the game rules were not being applied to the rival colonies.

Game rules should apply to the game session, imo. Not to the player only colony). Or at the least, there should be a toggle switch that would apply the game rules to the AI's if wanted, or just to the player.

Just FYI and hopeful suggestion. Otherwise I've been fortunate, no bugs or crashes on PC/Win10.

 

[SillySMS]

I suspect it'd depend on how the rival colonies are implemented. If they use the full simulation that players have with an AI player, probably not too hard. If they're basically tickers that try to mimic having a colony there, then you basically need to implement each rule's effect on those tickers, and you would need to have two effects for each rule; one for the player, one for the AI.

 

[Space Mango]

10 bucks the 'AI Players' are only a lots of scripts and routines based on your progress and played time.

 

[SillySMS]

10 bucks the 'AI Players' are only a lots of scripts and routines based on your progress and played time.

Based on how consistent my three rival colonies are with each other, despite spanning a difficulty range from Blue Sun (quite easy) to Russia (quite hard), I... kinda suspect it's "a load of scripts and routines". Possibly it's influenced by player actions, like they'll grow faster if you trade with them or give them free resources, but in terms of population growth at least, they stay pretty neck-and-neck for a long time.

It's sol 133 in my game, and the AI colonies range from just 201-260 colonists, and one would think a genuine, player-like simulation would diverge a bit more by sol 133.