AI on the Offense news - 2D Games

Intro
The AI used to be passive. It would take over neutral planets and expand, and it would defend itself when attacked. This ultra-turtling can never actually win a game. So, I finished the ability for the AI to fight back.

Raids
These are random events where the AI picks one of your planets and sends a party to attack anything near it. Raids have a low probability (less than 1/1000) of occurring every time the AI thinks. This means faster thinking AIs (AI-Think rate is the difficulty scaling in BoS) have the ability to launch more raids.

Conquests
If there is no room left to expand, what do you do? Gather a force and go take control of someone else's planet. This involves determining a planet that is an easy target (it makes no sense to attack the home planet straight away; it's likely very defended) and ordering a fleet there.

The difference between a raid and a conquest is the reinforcement method. Raids are 1-time deals, conquests have a constant stream of units coming in to support it until the job is done. On fast thinking AIs, this makes conquests very difficult to repel.

You can't repel a conquest, but you can keep the area secure and reinforced enough that you don't lose control of the planet.

Music
Using creative commons licensed tracks, I present a small sample of the BoS music.

Not too shabby. The artist is enthusiastic about the project because it should generate him some publicity.

Sieges
Planets can now become neutral. Using a siege capable ship, you can park it on the planet and watch explosions happen all along its surface as its population drops. Three conditions can make a planet become neutral:

• Population hits 0....duh.
• Population drops below 100,000 in which case there is a small chance of rebellion until the coin flips properly and the planet rebels.
• Loyalty drops below 25% also introduces a rebellion chance. Loyalty is linked to another feature I'm not done with yet (Spheres of influence).

Becoming neutral does NOT destroy the command structure in orbit. The orbital facilities and planet side mechanics are intentionally not linked. You don't need to own a planet to keep operating a base in orbit, but you do need to own that planet to recruit from it.

Comments
Questions? Comments? Contact me here or at masternerdguy@yahoo.com . The game is less than 2 months from an alpha release.