First time I have tried this mod. I am very happy with how the AI acts now but I have noticed something you should probably look into. I am rocking up with battleships and the AI is still only making corvettes. They clearly have the tier technology, as I have tier 4-5 equipment to their tier 3-4 but i am yet to see a single destroyer or cruiser and it feels like they are pumping out the first ship they can afford instead of waiting for the bigger and better ships.
I am on medium difficulty with slightly elongated mid-game start (around 2300 i think but i didn't check before i started the game) with a slew of various mods that effect events, anomalies, planet types and buffs, and graphics but nothing to totally overhaul the game like alphamod.

Thanks a lot for the feedback and I will try to test if everything works as I wanted.

If you wouldn't mind, can you answer a few my questions?

What is the current year in your game? What do you mean when you say "normal difficulty", ensign/captain/commodore? Do they have lvl4 lasers? Do they have combat computers? If yes, then which one, green or yellow ?

Depending on the situation behavior you are seeing may or may not be intended (if the year is 2350 on commodore with lvl4 lasers and yellow computers then everything went wrong, if the year is 2260 on ensign and they don't have level 4 lasers and no combat computers then everything is fine).

They are not supposed to transition out of corvettes immediately (it's intentional that they fight only with them till 2240-2250) because larger ships require other supportive tech to become better than corvettes.

Today I added the chance they will do a timing attack with cruisers (but you've passed that point, since once of the requirements for that to happen is nobody having battleships), so it partially covers your problem. .

If the game continues til 2400 with no signs of switching then indeed everything is borked. I saw AIs switching yesterday, but I may have broken the behavior when I added the cruiser timing.

To answer your questions.
last time i looked it was 2330 ish. I had been kinda diving head first into battle and not checking the clock. So it could be as late as 2350.

The difficulty is Captain as i had lightened up the difficulty as per your advice on the front page.

I had also added 2 advanced AI starts of which they both have their own federations but still conquered everything around them as intended, I believe only 6 (excluding me) of the 12 AI remain alive or independent.

The AI is definitely at tier 4 (federations doing better at Tier 5) now with all the upgrades expected, they do not refit their ships but I have been killing them so quickly that the new ones pick up on their tech. However, judging by what you said, clearly not tech-ing fast enough.

So far i am observing federation fleets straddling the 200 corvette strong mark and my slav-thral-companions are reinforcing my ships with about 30-40 corvette strong fleets. (Although i have noticed that they don't follow me like a puppy but instead go off on their own missions, which i like). But certainly not a single ship bigger than corvette.

Yes, if they have tier 5 tech then indeed something went wrong, thanks for the report!

There is a vanilla bug (can't be fixed by a mod, sadly, it is present in vanilla, in starnet and in glavius) when AI builds only corvettes in federation fleets, might be that one which creates behavior you are seeing. In that case the situation is a bit dire, until they fill up the federation forcelimit they will be stuck.

a bit offtopic to the point but I really like the state of your galaxy, sounds quite fun!

I think I'll try it again on a much harder difficulty and give it another bash. The heightened aggressiveness and the actual willingness to go and do something really improves the game. Like seriously this is my fave' behaviour mod (The others seem to improve the AI but not to anything obvious to game-play.)
The improved vassal behaviour is a big plus as i do like going around conquering and subjugating the galaxy to make a mosaic of small vassals. But to see them take their own battles near their borders instead of following my fleet makes it feel like they are wanting to do me proud.
I have not hit the end game crisis yet but I am hoping the AI actually reacts to it better than vanilla (who just sat there and got eaten) If it's not in then it's an idea for you.

Tis a shame about the corvettes but I am sure i'll suddenly get a pleasant surprise soon. Keep up the great work.

don't know if this is something your able to alter but the AI doesnt seem to be checking combined fleet power of you and your allies me and friend we're in a defensive pact and had a combined fleet power of 10k while AI had a fleet power of 7k yet it still chose to attack us thanks to that we where able to slaughter its fleet which caused one of its neighbours to attack it and finish it off was a pretty funny event but still seemed like suicidal behaviour from the AI

Not sure if I can alter it (I thought I can but after your message I don't think so anymore).

Very often fleetpower is a bad estimate of a real strength (and ai currently tends to use weapon combinations which are underevaluated by fleetpower display) and AI is designed to use hit-and-run approach (as in, attack, fight it out, disengage, repair and rebuild, fight again) so currently it is supposed to engage if it has at least 90% of fleetpower of the enemy (it's less than 100% to prevent stalemates).

If it engaged 10k with 7k then I don't know why it did, it wasn't supposed to do that :(. Thanks for the report, sadly I can't fix it it seems.

UPD: Oh, now I realise that I misinterpreted your post, your issue wasn't AI engaging your fleets, but rather the fact that AI declared a war in the first place, correct? The answer still is "behavior is not moddable", conditions for war declaration are hardcoded by paradox, they probably just check if your forces are "equivalent" to theirs but it's +-50% size so 10k vs 7k is within the margin. The workaround way I make AI prepare for wars is indirect, by forbidding to make claims until they are prepared and forbidding declaration of wars until they have claims. Sadly this doesn't mean that a correct target will be chosen but it works fine overall.

I will try to think about this, maybe I will find a better workaround.

yeah issue was it started a war it couldn't win the fleet power difference wasn't to bad but still early game so we could slaughter the enemies fleet by waiting for it at a bastion that was guarding the border making it about 12k vs 7k think in that scenario the AI should of tried to do a joint war with another AI

Throughout my latest game, the AI appears incapable of building any megastructures save for the occasional gateway. Maybe the AI should be instructed to start building megastructures once they have access to habitats in order to give them a chance to catch up with the player; who could easily build large quantities of megastructures to the point of having an overwhelming economy relative to the rest of the galaxy.

Great mod, thanks for creating it! Believing that the AI might attack at any time has lead to a completely different play experience for me that's been a lot more fun.

A few notes about AI diplomatic strategy:
1) AIs trying to win through Technology advancement should probably try to keep research agreements. As a human, I want to make these with AIs who are my technological peers or ahead of me, and are far away from my region of the galaxy. Especially if they are going to have a Technological faction that will benefit their whole society from having 3 research agreements. (Usually having both of these be true is enough to push from 5% happiness bonus to 10% happiness bonus for the faction, which is a worthwhile productivity bump.
2) AIs should make more strategic use of Migration Treaties. The first two made, with species who can colonize each super-category of biome, are extremely powerful at helping your economic base. (For a little diplomacy you get a lot of the power that comes with Glandular Acclimation.) Additionally, making agreements with species that offset your weaknesses (Charismatic when you're Repugnant, for example) can make your species economy perform better.
3) Commercial treaties shouldn't be made before 2050-2070 or so when you're done expanding, and it's dubious even then. You need a pretty big trade economy before you'd want to trade your influence for more energy. (There's probably an easy equation to run to see if it's a good deal.) There's probably an exception for MegaCorps so they can build offices, but in general these pacts are a waste of influence until your economy is pretty big.

Observed behavior note:
I played on a medium map with 18 species and no specials (no advanced, no FE, etc.) I found the AI made a lot of offers of research agreements and commercial pacts, and then would often break them a month or two later. This felt annoying, and it would be nice if the AI made fewer offers but kept them.

Alright, general feedback time. I actually was able to activate this on the save in question and ended up with one neutral, one friendly and one hostile neighbor.

This is about the balance that I was hoping for. It still punishes the player for not having a strong navy and makes the reality of what happens with a strong and hostile neighbor very real.

What was happening for me was that I had a neighbour with almost identical ethos to me that due a small difference mounted a ridiculously effective campaign to change my ideology to theirs even though they weren't described in their empire screen as being particularly "evangelical". Once the friendship patch was activated, they immediately did what I felt they would have logically done from the getgo and sought friendship. I finally had somewhere to open branch offices and someone to get into a defensive pact with.

The super strong empire right next to them declared war on me and everything went about like it should. I was very effectively attacked and I ended up surrendering some claims because he chose a time when I was trying to pull of a massive economic reorganazation (harvesting pop workers from a newly starborne upstart empire). Redistributing 31 pops forcibly is not a very easy thing to do however, and I was getting into absolutely dreadful back and forth economic issues the moment they attacked. It was a very realpolitik lesson in the consequences of overzealous conquering.

It felt very real. Was very challenging and gave me a great chapter in this empire's story.

I think that if you're planning on playing a trader or more peaceful empire that Starnet w/friendship patch provides the most balanced experience but if you're super militarist or a conquerer than maybe Starnet *without* friendship patch would be best.

@whitewolf87912

I have somewhat different viewpoint, I am trying to look at it from AI viewpoint and not from player's viewpoint. Asking a question, when doing something sounds useful for AI, how would a human player behave if it was in AI's place?

You mentioned that it should have "sought friendship" because it was logical, but realistically what did this AI get from this friendship? I see how you profitted from it (branch offices are very profitable for the megacorp and not really that useful for the host; you got a defensive ally to protect you; etc.) but I fail to see how it wasn't a "bad diplomatic play" from AI's viewpoint, Bismarck would be mad for such one-sided alliance.

An example of profitable friendship happens if you two have common enemies or if you were much stronger than an AI (so defensive ally would give good protector to AI). And guess what, in both cases AI would be very happy to ally you, even without the patch (sometimes more happy than with the patch).

So to be the friendly cooperator and build your own dream version of United Federation of Planets in Starnet you need to build your own starfleet. Then you will see that AIs (especially non-neighbouring AIs) will welcome you with open arms.

Now if you do not want to build a fleet and want your "friends" to do all the dirty work while you grow and research with much smaller fleet, I am not sure if you are that good of a friend to them :)

I am looking forward if the diplomatic DLC ever happens (or if paradox make diplomacy more flexible in its moddability, currently it's very rigid) so I can code cooperative AI behavior, but currently the only type of friendly relations I ever see are abusive relations where AI does all the work and human players profit.

The AI empire that originally decided that I was the devil w/o the friendship patch was a fanatic pacifist empire that would have done absolutely nothing in its war against me with its stated wargoal (change ideology) if it was a human player. It even cited my warmongering as a reason why in the dialouge message (which yes I know by default isn't always perfect) as a means to it, even though I had the weakest fleet of anybody in the neighborhood at the time and had (at that point) NEVER declared a single war on anybody. It didn't make any narrative sense whatsoever, was unimmersive, and if I was playing as that empire, I would be focusing myself on steeling myself against the very very warlike empire to my east, which is now a mutual problem for both of us in the currently playthrough.

What does it benefit from allying with me with a defensive pact? Like from a player perspective?

Pretty Much Geography: The big bad empire to the right of both of us only had one entry point directly into their empire (spiral arm galaxy) which it (the peaceful people) had fortified to a fair-thee-well. However, there were two entry points into my empire on it's "north" flank. I had heavily fortified a line of three systems *including* these two, so by allying with me the AI would have to take into account (a) that I would possibly counteract at my one entry point into the big-bad militarist empire and (b) that it wouldn't have a chance of "faking" a friendly relationship with me to get down into the other peaceful empire. Similarly, I act as a buffer state for the other large empire to my "north" where I lie sandwiched between the two who views me more neutrally than the Big Bad, but that the peaceful empire had fallen out of favor with, so again...buffer state. Also, just two systems away from that fortified border (and gauntlet for any invading force from the "east") is none other than their homeworld, so they have a good reason to take advantage of the maginot line I built that also protects the core of my Empire. Also, the not-so-well defended four systems before the Maginot fortifications houses (a) the entrance to a cluster pocket chock-FULL of resources, two dig sites, and two primitive civs (which I've now lost due to the war with the Big Bad that—true to the narrative—stopped right at the entrace to the gauntlet) and (b) a source of living metal that it (the big bad) has now denied me.

Now, I didn't mention any of that initially (about the common enemy), but that was because I was more relieved that the WORST thing that had happened w/o the friendship patch wasn't happening anymore. I don't mind getting the sh!t knocked out of me, but I'd rather have it done in a narratively compelling way and not by an empire that is making a huge mistake in attacking me based on minor ideological differences while they've got the Big Bad who is listed as "overwhelming" to both of us on our own. While they're pissing about trying to stick flowers in my gun barrels (by shooting me), the Big Bad is hammering their way through that Eastern chockpoint and taking all their outposts in the "southeast" which chews them up and then eventually would probably come after a much-weakened me after they were done. That doesn't make a lick of sense from any perspective and doesn't make for a compelling story. If I were them, I'd be seeking to build a wall against the Big Bad.

I am currently trying to build up my own fleet, but it's a catch-up game. It's not the worst fleet in the world, but it is small and with me still trying to get the economy fixed it's going to take a while before I can string together some cruisers to combat the Big Bad's. It's going to be pinch to get the maginot able to handle the push from them. I'm going to need every one of the 10 years of peace to barely have a chance. While we are united, my chain of fortified stations acts as a buffer and slows down an advance. *I* am the better target for the Big Bad just by virtue of having the smallest fleet, which allows the peaceful people to rest on their butts a bit while they continue to develop.

Oh, and aside from that I am actually more tech-advanced than the peaceful people, so it's not a bad move for them to get me to sign a tech treaty with them in exchange for protection so they can play tech catch-up of their own.

In this way, they behave more or less like their personality describes them as (which is good for the story of this galaxy) and also shows good tactical sense by using me and my fortress gauntlet as a helmet to protect the core of their empire. Without me, the moment the Big Bad breaks through their choke point, roughly the "south east" 2/3 of their empire becomes the Fulda Gap. At least I offer a compelling distraction.

Yes, them being fanatic pacifists indeed makes such behavior questionable and being friendly a better choice.

Sadly, diplomacy isn't quite moddable, you can't make behavior much different between personalities (only few things depend on personality, most parameters are common for all empires).

As for research aggreements, they are pretty bad atm, often they are not worth the influence you are paying by signing them. While signing research aggreement with scientifically advanced empire sounds good intuitively it barely does anything. Invading and taking all their labs will give you vastly more effective science :).

As for Bid Bad situation, there is a mechanism in starnet to make coalitions against snowballing empires, it probably haven't kicked in yet (If somebody starts growing too much, all other empires start getting huge "common threat" relation boost).

Interesting...maybe that'll kick in in a decade when the next war starts.

From my perspective, Stellaris is a story generator. I'm fine with my empire's story being a tragedy or playing second fiddle to somebody else just so long as the story makes sense. I know for instance that research agreements are about worth their weight in chocolate (or less), but I like it when they're active because it often kind of makes sense to the story for them to be. Or at least I can contrive in my head a way for it to make sense.

In this I definitely agree that diplomacy as it stands is a huge load of suck. Right now we basically have hot and cold options. I'd like options that are more warm and cater to neutrality. Right now for instance (in vanilla) non-aggression almost always leads to defensive pacts leads to alliance of some kind.