Hello
The AI has been building massive fleets, over 34 super dreadnaughts with other ships and a couple assault carriers with many fighters.

I cannot support such a fleet myself, and cannot work-out a defense strategy. I cannot build that many super dreadnaughts in a reasonable time period either.

I was mainly defending with fighters, but the assault carriers and sheer number of ships cannot prevail against such massive fleets.

I have Devnull mod installed.

You can try putting mines on wormholes. So they get damaged prior to a battle.
Second, putting satellites on the incoming side of the wormhole will really do good damage, the battle starts on close range, which most of the times gives you an advantage if using manual battle.

But mainly I would say, you did something wrong with the ´economic´ part. Specialize your planets, not all of them doing everything. If a planet is really good in Minerals, just build Minerals.

Another possibility COULD be spying or better to say sabotage ;)

Thanks for your reply, they can avoid the mines easily it seems. I have the highest mine tech. I have really high tech and research.

I have a huge planet for mining, 600000 mineral storage. I occupy a small corner and have exploited it for research.

But I will certainly try satellites. Thanks.
I am also thinking of having many more space yards, I currently have six total.

hmmmm

Hard to explain without pictures ;)

OK, you have a wormhole, it has two sides, let´s call it outside and inside, so inside being the one in your territory.

You place the mines on the outside and the sat´s inside.....

This means, if the AI want´s to attack you, it HAS to move through the mines.....*evilgrin*

6 SY is not a lot....

YOu can also build SY in ships, advantage they are movable....let´s say you have 2 SY.ships and one Sat or mine layer in the same field. You can then directly deploy everything every round....When mass-producing, check for overlap, let´s call it. especially with smaller stuff, 1 item per round wasted production quantity...sometimes better to produce i.e. 3 in 2 rounds, instead of 3 in 3 rounds.
Don´t forget the bigger planets do get a bonus on production....

WAIT!!!!!!!!!!

How many planets do you have?
You know it takes ages to finish buildings without SY?????
Normally I build on EVERY planet first a SY.....
Also check for the ship-setup. If they use beam and have no missile defense, go with missiles, longer range just stay out of range for them, hit them and repeat. Smaller ships have the advantage of higher speed.
If the have missiles, build a few ships JUST having anti missile weapons, they shall stay 2 hexes before the rest of your fleet, the AI target´s normally those first.

For shields, build a few ships having shield draining weapons only.

If you put everything in one ship, takes too much space...

Same for the Sat´s, specially them, but give them some armor and/or shields!!!!

How is your Pop looking?, spread your Pop with freighters!!! The increase in production and all can be quite huge ;)

Can you tell us what is the game year, your current score, and the breakdown of your score? And what your rank is? Out of how many?

Score attached.

I am ranked 5th out of 5. I thought I had very good tech, as I was easily able to defend my territory until now.

The thing is that I have now seen a fleet with 48 super dreadnaughts ...I don't see how their part of the map could support such a large fleet, multiple large fleets.

I cannot support that many super dreadnaughts, they cleared my mines very quickly and easily, I am still testing my satellites but I don't think they will last.

Is there any way to make devnull's AI easier, as I like everything else about Devnull. I think the AI is cheating because it's maintenance cost seems absurd, I don't know how it could support multiple fleets of such magnitude.

I did use empires copied from TDM mod, perhaps that changed the AI?

Here is an example from an earlier save, 38 dreadnaughts and 11 assault carriers. I am not an experienced player but was doing fine with my own assault carriers. Now I cannot come-up with any strategy.

OK

Let´s start at the beginning ;)

5th of how many?

What were your settings? Size, Empire etc....

And now you did it!

I think I gonna fire devnull up again and play it again myself!!!!! Bad boy!!! ;)

I see no intelligence points???????????????????

This means the AI could have ripped you, slowed you down etc.....

Sometimes intelligence can be a really powerful tool!!!! Disrupting production, movement etc....and best crippling fleets....

5th of 5, last place. There are no intelligence points because I turned it off in the options.
My empire has 5000 racial points to get some temporal and religious tech.

Started with one planet, low tech and medium tech cost.
Low AI difficulty and 4 AI opponents.

I attached my empire map below.

And now, you still want to beat the AI, I assume....

If mines aren´t working, because they might have minesweepers....

Shit, sorry...wanted to redownload it again and can´t find it????

Not even on malfador anymore?

Where did you found it?

If you have Space Empires IV deluxe it will be in an 'Extras' folder, it is included with the game with many other mods.

Or

here:
http://www.spaceempires.net/downloads-details-547-Devnull_Mod_Gold_1.80.html#dldetails


I don't really care about winning this game, but I would like to keep playing and win eventually without this same problem.

Goodaltgamer, if you want to download mods, spaceempires.net is the main hub for SE 4 and 5 now. Try this: http://spaceempires.net/downloads-cat-6.html
Latest DevNull mod for SE4 is 1.80. It's there somewhere.

Unseen4ce, I think you messed up the early game. You are in year 2428 and your research/turn is 112.3K/turn. I haven't played DevNull mod, but I am playing NullSpace, which is a fork off DevNull. I think it has similar tech cost and tech production. E.g., Theoretical Sciences is 50000 for the first level and 100000 for the 2nd level. Research Center I makes 500 Research Points/turn.

In my current game, the year is 2410 and I make 120K/turn in research points. There's a screenshot attached.

I use 2000 racial points, rock/oxygen, low tech start, medium tech cost, medium galaxy size, medium number of computer players (meaning 8 AI empires), medium level of computer players, no bonus for computer players.

I did play and restarted at least 5 games previously in an effort to understand how the game works. I also got really lucky in this game, discovering a huge planet with breathable atmosphere in my system and lucking out in discovering Gas Planet colonization several years later when exploring ruins. But if I don't have those I expect I would still get to the same empire size by 2414.

DevNull mod is reputed to have killer AI compared to standard SE4 AI. I can see that in my current game which also uses his AI. I'm fighting a war against the 6th place AI (not included in the score list). Well, he picked a war against me the moment we encountered each other. The thing is, although I am sure that I outproduce him massively, ton per ton his warships are as good as mine.

If DevNull AI is anything like NullSpace's, then you need to be very aggressive in the initial expansion phase. If you can't manage to outproduce them, they will crush you.

But my problem is that that number of ships, dreadnaughts with assault carriers seems like it would be impossible to maintain even if he owned the whole map. I have a fifth of the map and cannot support near a fifth of his fleet.

He has multiple fleets of that size. One I saw had 48 super dreadnaughts.
Thus I think maintenance cost must be modified for AI, the AI is cheating.

There is no counter to that, there is no way I can maintain multiple ~40 ship fleets. It is a game-breaker, and it doesn't even make sense how the AI could possibly do that.


Is it possible to use Devnull without Devnull AI, to use another AI and paste it in or something?

thanks for both of you ;) Yeah, now I remember, also on the CD it was in extras, but they don´t have the mod launcher included???

Thanks, in before you were able to find everything on malfador.....

And Yes, dev null has a improved AI!

And unseen4ce: If you get me your exact settings I could try to see if the AI overruns me as well ;)



If you are fifth, it means they produce much more, so they could maintain it.

And some technologies IIRC reduce the maintenance (might be a different mod though....)

Replacing the AI files not recommended. Once you temper them you can severely hamper the AI

I can give you a turn 1 save file if you like, you would have to have the same mods though.