Weekly report - coding 10

Sorry for posting this report so late but I had fever for the last couple of days. I'm still a bit sick so I won't be so productive for another few days.

This week I found a workaround for the issue 126 and there was nothing left preventing me from doing lots of AI battles, so I did. I found out that after cca 30th turn SmartAI takes a long time to make decisions (more than 5 min) so optimisation was a must. I managed to speed it up using caching of some heuristics computations. It now takes up to 3 minutes on my computer which was downclocked to 800MHz because of overheating problems. Most of the action in AI battles happens in the first 30 turns, then even if one player outnumbers the other one by far it takes another 40 turns for the battle to end (video will be posted). In my opinion this is too long and can become boring for the players. I will discuss this with my menthor. I am also a bit concerned that SmartAIs ability to micromanage might have to be limited so it doesn't have too big advantage over a human player.

This week

• workaround for issue 126
• lots of AI battles
• optimisation of SmartAI code
• using caching for some of the computations

Next week

• smarter decisions what type of ship to build (attack or colonisation)
• discuss ways to make battles faster with Alan P.
• make sure SmartAI is not too difficult to play against for a human player