AI difficulty levels and weapon damage

Yeah, I have to say I dislike (strongly) the concept of improving AI in games by just uping the damage output and/or hitpoints/armor/etc.

Make the computer play better instead. Higher level AI's should be better at calculating where you will be given your current location and momentum, and will shoot towards THAT. They're better at making tiny course or speed changes to make it harder on you to do the same thing to them. They know how to use the planet to slingshot and to hide behind, etc.

Make it play smarter; just uping the damage is lazy IMO.

Agreed. I've had a few fights against a crazy cyborg Scryve which one shots almost every ship, especially if you happen to spawn in the line of fire.

I want to learn better tactics and maneuvers in avoiding engagement or blindsiding the opponent. I don't want to just get better at dodging bullets.

This is something I look for in EVERY game difficulty setting, in every game, forever.

If the enemies are smarter or better tactics? This is a good difficulty setting, and I'm game for Hard mode.

If the enemies are bullet sponges, or just do double damage, this is a bad difficulty setting and I'll put it on the mode where the playing field is even.

Stellaris had two difficulty sliders:

• Aggression Difficulty - this set the other empires into a more aggressive/expansionist mode that made them start more wars, and expand more than lower settings. This gets an A+ from me, and I regularly took on Hard Mode or Insane, or whatever it was.
• General Difficulty - this gave boosts to the AI empires' production, ship hit points, research rate, and gave them fake diplomacy buffs. I HATED this difficulty setting, as it simply neutered the player for no reason. Set to normal in most games.

Star Control Origins is in a unique position to ONLY employ the GOOD kind of difficulty setting, if you put the work into it. Don't make their damage higher or shields higher for superficial reasons. Make them smarter, quicker to respond, and employ better tactics, and you'll make for a REALLY fun time.

Kudos to everyone on this thread for being on the same page. 

I personally would like to see where the AI levels affect how much damage they take.

Or perhaps give them a bit more crew.

Hey, even if this is how it ends up, there's always normal difficulty for me. I'm happy!

Ouch...that is the opposite of what I wanted to hear.  I think inflated stats being subbed in for difficulty is lazy/bad design.

Except AI level has nothing to do with crew amounts or damage levels, and I concur with others here that adding multipliers to simply alter these values is disingenuous. These are just difficulty factors, not AI levels. Logically speaking, if an AI were flawless/undefeatable, it would not matter whether it had 1 crew or 100, or amazing firepower versus a peashooter ... it would still be virtually impossible to beat it regardless.

Increasing the AI level should reduce the computer's response times and increase the tactical deduction more rapidly so that it recalculates approach vectors and attack angles more accurately. TFB pulled this off just fine 25 years ago, as do most games today.

For the sake of fairness the increased difficulty levels do the things that people are asking for:

Crazy

    btThinkTime = ".075"
    chooseWeaponTime = "0.6"
    weaponScoreThreshold = "0.5"
    obstacleGatherRadius = "6.0"
    obstacleForceMult = "8.0"
    thresholdModPerEvade = "-.05"
    thresholdModPerShot = ".01"
    applySteeringDelay = ".05"
    lookaheadMod = "2.0"
    threatDetectionRadius = "10.0"
    threatAvoidMod ="3.0"
    avoidBordersFactor = ".85"
    borderDistanceThreshold=".85"
    defaultBTName="Evade"

Challenging

    btThinkTime = ".1"
    chooseWeaponTime = "1.0"
    weaponScoreThreshold = "0.6"
    obstacleGatherRadius = "5.0"
    obstacleForceMult = "7.0"
    thresholdModPerEvade = "-.05"
    thresholdModPerShot = ".01"
    applySteeringDelay = ".1"
    lookaheadMod = "2.0"
    threatDetectionRadius = "7.0"
    threatAvoidMod ="2.0"
    avoidBordersFactor = ".85"
    borderDistanceThreshold=".85"
    defaultBTName="Evade"

There are going to be humans who are better than the computer.  There's no way around that.  The normal AI will be as good as they can make it. But there are still players who are just insanely good.

Yeah, that's just fact.  I don't think making the enemy ships playing with different toys is the right response though.  I think you need a level playing field and to accept that some people will destroy your best AI.

i don’t think that’s a fair thing to ask players to accept.  I stopped playing super Melee in sc2 bc I could beat the AI on the hardest level.

Is the crazy cyborg as currently configured meant to be unbeatable? I still beat it really handily every time I play. And the fleets I create to fight with is basically just one of each ship, same for the AI. I wasn't looking at crew #s or damage #s. It did feel like if I ever got hit by a shot it was instant death for my small ships, but still all-in-all the difficulty mode was rather easy to win as flaws in AI processing/reaction can be gamed. As in, the way AI responds to certain stimuli and the behavior patterns it exhibits are easy to recognize and therefore exploit. I don't think it's a big deal though as once the community is robust enough can just rely on playing other human opponents which should provide for more satisfying challenges. Would be kind of cool though to have an insanely good AI and it's like a mt. everest type challenge to try to beat it. Agree that just giving the AI buffs to dmg and hp would not be as fun.

I do not mind having difficulties with damage bonuses. But one of the difficulties should be fair damage and best possible AI reaction time. Essentially, the equivalent of highest difficulty in SC2. Not have that AI locked together with "cheating" difficulty.

So, it could look something like this.

1 - Bad AI, damage penalty (for beginners) - damage penalty is better approach then SC2 mode which locked secondary weapon for AI

2 - Better AI, fair damage (for regular players)

3 - Best possible AI, fair damage (for good players)

4 - Best AI, damage bonus (for good+ players)

5 - Best AI, insane damage bonus (for good++ players)