Planet Automation - Discussion Thread

[Offe]

Not all designation types have the same option with regards on when to build the capital. Why is that? I used the energy and mining designations but its haphazard at best with the rest. (00_mining_automation.txt and 00_generator_automation.txt)

1 = {
building = building_capital
available = {
always = yes
}
}

I am fairly sure this does absolutely nothing, the automation system will go from top to bottom and try to build the first possible building, but it is never possible to build another capital building. It is a leftover from the old script.

Where is that second block of script from? It is from outside the planet automation script somewhere?

 

[Offe]

It's definitely possible to use conditional effects (eg. +[10 * X]% output if Ascension Tier X), too. A simple "If is homeworld/capital, then [effects]" which could be inserted in to every/any designation, combined with the above it would let you do away with the capital designation entirely

The problem is not how to solve it technically in the game, it is more that this is what has been decided it should be like. I can't change how the capital planet works mechanically without game design approval just because it would make the planet automation system work better unfortunately

 

[Pancakelord]

The problem is not how to solve it technically in the game, it is more that this is what has been decided it should be like. I can't change how the capital planet works mechanically without game design approval just because it would make the planet automation system work better unfortunately

Ah I see. Could you do the inverse, then, and add a planet decision to the capital "Specialise capital", adding a planet modifier [e.g. like the high gravity world planet modifier] mirroring the modifiers, then have automation code do the following

• If Not capital
  • do normal stuff.
• If capital,
  • look for specialisation planet modifier.
    • If none found do normal stuff.
    • If found pick from appropriate action per list:
      • Modifier type = designation type.

Its clunky, in that it forces a player to go digging in the decisions menu.
A more elegant solution would be to fire a popup when turning automation on on the capital for the first time (with the option to change it from planet decisions menu), that lets you set its "specialisation planet modifier" and go from there, per above.

 

[Offe]

Ah I see. Could you do the inverse, then, and add a planet decision to the capital "Specialise capital", adding a planet modifier [e.g. like the high gravity world planet modifier] mirroring the modifiers, then have automation code do the following

• If Not capital
  • do normal stuff.
• If capital,
  • look for specialisation planet modifier.
    • If none found do normal stuff.
    • If found pick from appropriate action per list:
      • Modifier type = designation type.

Its clunky, in that it forces a player to go digging in the decisions menu.
A more elegant solution would be to fire a popup when turning automation on on the capital for the first time (with the option to change it from planet decisions menu), that lets you set its "specialisation planet modifier" and go from there, per above.

Yeah it would be possible to work around it somehow. However, I will ask again if we can come to some agreement on how to solve this issue with our designers once I find some time to sit down and implement all the changes from this thread, hopefully we can come to some compromise that isn't a workaround

 

[HFY]

@fourteenfour So currently ignore industrial/forge/factory world automation? It just doesn't work unless there's a blue moon.

Unfortunately I can't ignore Forge or Factory designations -- there's no other way to get the district jobs specialization.

:-/

 

[SirBlackAxe]

@Reffy @HFY
The code block being referred to here is the one automated designation selection uses to choose which designation to use, and shouldn't effect construction automation at all.

 

[Offe]

Yeah I haven't seen any specific issues with factory/forge worlds, perhaps he was using sector automation and not planet automation, trying to get it to automatically assign the forge world designation. As been mentioned before that system is very out of date.

 

[hart30]

Currently the biggest issue with automation i seem to have is that i cannot afford to activate it right after the planet has been colonized. Because it is relatively common, that the planet decolonizes itself by the last pop migrating away. Then there is the issue with the outdated automatic planet designation calculation. Works good for already developed planets (for example for a forge world which switches automatically to a factory world if there is a shortage), but the less developed a planet the worse automatic designation gets.

Also how are planets with special designations getting developed? A crime world for example, whose designation doesnt grant any boni for a specific ressource to be developed? Does it then go after planet modifier or current shortages?

The last one is sth i noticed when all my storages start overflowing and all the designation districts are filled. Then rather then building up free non-designation districts left on the planets the automation seems to accept bigger amounts of unemployment, especially robots which then are given a role as "servants". Still triggers unemployment events.

 

[Reffy]

Yeah I haven't seen any specific issues with factory/forge worlds, perhaps he was using sector automation and not planet automation, trying to get it to automatically assign the forge world designation. As been mentioned before that system is very out of date.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...tion-doesnt-work-3-4-5.1539043/#post-28429562

I posted the bug here.

In short; Factory/Forge/Industrial worlds don't build anything.

 

[fourteenfour]

I am fairly sure this does absolutely nothing, the automation system will go from top to bottom and try to build the first possible building, but it is never possible to build another capital building. It is a leftover from the old script.

Where is that second block of script from? It is from outside the planet automation script somewhere?

@Offe 00_colony_types.txt inside the folder colony_types

For my test on my homeworld I unemployed my forge jobs to push me under the income threshold. The very next month my separate forge world started to build a new industrial district. I did experiment with selling alloys to force my rate to 0 or even negative but it only appears to evaluate production amounts.

I suspect the rules in 00_colony_types.txt is interfering with other aspects of automation. Whenever I find coding based upon the year of the game I get very worried.

Now someone did state this only affects the assigned designation however it just is too much of coincidence. When I crossed year 50 (or 51) I unemployed forge workers as my income was manually pushed beyond 40 and my forge world again started building. Now I did not test what would happen if I had two forge worlds.

 

[Sumpfnase]

Usually i play as Machine Intelligence in 1000 star galaxies, so i generally end up with lots of planets. So in my examples I will use MI district names etc. After planetary automation was added in it's current state the year at which the micro becomes noticably tedious increased, so it helps. For completion's sake - i've never used any sector automation. Now that I've given some context here's my feedback.

• Remove the stockpile system. I'd like to designate a portion of my empire wide resource storage, which the automation system isn't supposed to use. so while storage is filled over that amount (it doesnt matter if it's defined absolutely or relatively) automation automates things, otherwise not.
• Automation option to upgrade buildings might be okay when working with planets that dont have all building slots unlocked by default but it is very inefficient when using it on machine worlds and similars. Upgrading i.e. research labs before building more t1 research labs is a no go in terms of upkeep. also from the limited time ive tried using it, it seemed to upgrade everything possible even when there were not enough pops to take the additional jobs, so when doing this you constantly lose menial jobs and gain complex jobs which can wreck your basic economy. Additionally when using it on planets which already have all building slots populated it first upgrades everything to t2 and then everything to t3, which can cause slight problems when needing to replace buildings. Instead it should upgrade to t3 one building at a time.
• A single planetary designation doesn't allow planets to fully develop. even highly specialized planets have to produce multiple resources to make use of both districts and building slots. Usually you get enough nexus district to take care of amenities, choose one type of production district plus the appropriate production increasing buildings and buildings for another resource (that can only be provided by buildings) in addition. No designation currently allows that to happen at the same time, you would have to switch designations a lot of times over the development time of a planet. I don't have any good ideas on how to properly solve this though.

 

[Offe]

@Offe 00_colony_types.txt inside the folder colony_types

For my test on my homeworld I unemployed my forge jobs to push me under the income threshold. The very next month my separate forge world started to build a new industrial district. I did experiment with selling alloys to force my rate to 0 or even negative but it only appears to evaluate production amounts.

I suspect the rules in 00_colony_types.txt is interfering with other aspects of automation. Whenever I find coding based upon the year of the game I get very worried.

Now someone did state this only affects the assigned designation however it just is too much of coincidence. When I crossed year 50 (or 51) I unemployed forge workers as my income was manually pushed beyond 40 and my forge world again started building. Now I did not test what would happen if I had two forge worlds.

I think perhaps you may get some left over automation behavior if you enable sector automation but disable the planet automation itself. I found some left over script in the sector automation the other day. I thought I had removed all the sector automation scripts but it seems I had missed some.

 

[Offe]

The last one is sth i noticed when all my storages start overflowing and all the designation districts are filled. Then rather then building up free non-designation districts left on the planets the automation seems to accept bigger amounts of unemployment, especially robots which then are given a role as "servants". Still triggers unemployment events.

Planet Automation constructing things outside of the designation was one of the biggest complaints with the old system. Where you would make a mining world but then when mining districts were filled it would then fill any type of district and also make a bunch of random buildings producing tech/unity etc.

Currently the idea behind it is that the pops will simply auto migrate away when it is no longer possible to continue building according to the designation. Also the fringe world designation will fill all the base resource district slots eventually.

This should probably be a setting as well, "build outside of designation as last resort", exactly how it would work is very unclear though. The best way right now is to change the designation into something else to make it continue building, for example, setting it to a research world after all the mineral districts have been built

 

[Shark7]

First let me say that while I appreciate the work the team has done trying to get a reasonable automation AI into the game, I'm one of those players that truly enjoys the micromanagement of my empire. That combined with the fact that I have rarely seen an AI that would do it like I would means I tend to stay away from automation.

But I do have an idea that might encourage me to use automation. Templates.

Imagine being able to set my own building priorities in a master file (that should be something that can be saved and called up each game, and have multiple plans to choose from so each game can be different).

Basically, just give me a spread sheet that defines each colony designation with Priorities 1-5 for me to define, you should also have some new designations such as "Newly Conquered", etc that are temporary (as we all know, newly conquered colonies can be high crime areas). Each priority could be weighted so the AI tries to build the first priority as much as possible but will also allow it to over-ride when conditions are met.

So for example:

Designation_______Priority_1____Priority_2______Priority_3_____Priority_4_____Priority_5

Mining World______Mining______Amenities______Stability______Farming______Defense
Urban World_______Amenities___Trade___________Stability______Mining_______Farming

Anyway, I hope you can see where this is going, I can basically 'program' the automation with my way of building so that it works, but does so in the fashion that I like. The system could always be coded to over-ride my priorities in times of resource deficit or emergency (like Crime greater than 20% it will increase enforcers), or to keep amenities positive, even if I don't designate any priority to amenities, etc.

The system needs to be rigid enough to do it my way, but flexible enough to respond to changes in my empire.

Just an idea.

 

[DamnedLackOfTropicalFruit]

But I do have an idea that might encourage me to use automation. Templates.

[...]
Anyway, I hope you can see where this is going, I can basically 'program' the automation with my way of building so that it works, but does so in the fashion that I like. The system could always be coded to over-ride my priorities in times of resource deficit or emergency (like Crime greater than 20% it will increase enforcers), or to keep amenities positive, even if I don't designate any priority to amenities, etc.

The system needs to be rigid enough to do it my way, but flexible enough to respond to changes in my empire.

I'm also a micro-addict, but I'm not sure I'd use templates for automation. As an example, could you describe two different Generator World templates?

Aside from dynamically responding to conditions like Housing, Crime or Amenities (which the current automation already does), or choosing to build something like pop assembly, I don't really know of any situation where my build order changes.
My preferred build order is not necessarily the same as automation's build order (automation tries to keep crime at 0% instead of 29%, is sluggish to upgrade production boosting buildings, and insists on a specific district:building ratio), but every difference is an issue with all automation. The only way templates fixes this is by forcing me to hand-make a second copy of every designation with the same 3/4 issues fixed on all of them.

What use case are you thinking of that isn't already handled by an automation checkbox?

 

[fourteenfour]

I think perhaps you may get some left over automation behavior if you enable sector automation but disable the planet automation itself. I found some left over script in the sector automation the other day. I thought I had removed all the sector automation scripts but it seems I had missed some.

i do not use sector automation. I never will. I created a fresh game. I stocked the reserve as shown in the Montu video. set the planets as I came along and the planet type I had problems with was the forge worlds. they do not build if my income exceeded the amounts I found in that colony file.

I will have to recreate another game later when I have the time and upload it.

 

[Shark7]

I'm also a micro-addict, but I'm not sure I'd use templates for automation. As an example, could you describe two different Generator World templates?

Aside from dynamically responding to conditions like Housing, Crime or Amenities (which the current automation already does), or choosing to build something like pop assembly, I don't really know of any situation where my build order changes.
My preferred build order is not necessarily the same as automation's build order (automation tries to keep crime at 0% instead of 29%, is sluggish to upgrade production boosting buildings, and insists on a specific district:building ratio), but every difference is an issue with all automation. The only way templates fixes this is by forcing me to hand-make a second copy of every designation with the same 3/4 issues fixed on all of them.

What use case are you thinking of that isn't already handled by an automation checkbox?

Rather than a true template, it's more of a set of guidelines for the AI. I can't say that it will definitively fix the problem, but it might help the AI make better decisions when it comes to building.

I don't see why I would need 2 or more sets of rules for generator worlds, since I'm telling the AI that such a world should prioritize buildings on every generator world in this specific way. There will be variations because every planet and every situation is different, but I can at least specify that I want technician jobs first and foremost, but also have excess amenities, etc.

 

[Offe]

i do not use sector automation. I never will. I created a fresh game. I stocked the reserve as shown in the Montu video. set the planets as I came along and the planet type I had problems with was the forge worlds. they do not build if my income exceeded the amounts I found in that colony file.

I will have to recreate another game later when I have the time and upload it.

If you can upload a save game where this happens it would be great!

 

[TrotBot]

I don't know if this is possible to do in an elegant way so I understand if it can't be in the game, but I wish I could set amenity behaviour beyond "touch"/"don't touch". It currently is set to absolute minimum amenities. It automatically disables as many amenity jobs as possible till you're down to 1 amenities. But I play for roleplay, and I'm giving people utopian abundant living standards. So I have to disable auto amenities and build my own theatres. What if you could set it to low, medium, high, and unlimited amenities? The ai would not build multiple holotheatres, but it would leave the amenities uncapped and not worry about "too many".

 

[Offe]

I don't know if this is possible to do in an elegant way so I understand if it can't be in the game, but I wish I could set amenity behaviour beyond "touch"/"don't touch". It currently is set to absolute minimum amenities. It automatically disables as many amenity jobs as possible till you're down to 1 amenities. But I play for roleplay, and I'm giving people utopian abundant living standards. So I have to disable auto amenities and build my own theatres. What if you could set it to low, medium, high, and unlimited amenities? The ai would not build multiple holotheatres, but it would leave the amenities uncapped and not worry about "too many".

I have made a simple system to allow/forbid jobs via scripting, currently i am using it for crime mangement / micro, but i plan to remove the current amenity management and replace it with the new scripted system. It would then be possible for people to mod the system in order to expand it with different settings. For example, you could then script 3 different toggleable settings for low/medium/high amenity target. But for the non-modded vanilla version of the game I think it may be a bit much to provide 3 different amenity settings