Where's the option to disable AI surrender?  Blair Fraser mentioned adding it in the next patch, does this mean it's not forthcoming?

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/448797/page/1/#3415301

The issue is not that unfair is too difficult...the issue is that for a developing player, the jump between hard and unfair is too large...map size and number of humans vs. AIs is largely irrelevant to this issue....

The whole logic behind nerfing the hard AI is so that the gap between normal and hard is not so big...this was specifically done for SP guys who are not pros at this game or for people new to Sins...it only makes sense that the same thing would be done for going from hard to unfair, since those are difficulty levels appealing to essentially the same crowd...

If the jump between unfair and cruel becomes an issue, then add a difficulty level in between unfair and cruel...

I suppose I am looking to see why it stated that there is a large base of people who finish a game within one hour.  Know I have kids and I have to pause oh, every five minutes however, I think I haven't ever finished a game in under an hour.  Although I take planets for myself and build up.  The AI still places a very good fight if over 2 AIs on unfair or above.  I am trying to see who can beat 2+ AIs on vicious without cheating under an hour with more than 25 planets. 

As this quote says the toughest AI assuming its 6 player 1 human 5 AIs 2v2v2 all on cruel or vicious or the toughest whatever we want to call it.  Who beats it under an hour?  Without cheating, money on normal income.

In fact using a cheat trainer from cheathappens and having unlimited credits crystal and metal, the AI seems to have a full force ready to throw at me by the time I unlock a titan which is typically fast since I use the money cheat.

Completely agree with all what Seleuceia says. It's very illogical to touch only HARD or only NORMAL as you did before. And now we will wait the next patch, devs to realize that UNFAIR is also too far from HARD. Isn't it comically, folks? 

I hope that Unfair is left untouched... It's at a really good level as it is, nerfing it would be tragic.

I am not disagreeing with you here and i certainly dont want to pre-conclude things without trying it myself, but i would argue that once you get good enough to beat several Hard AIs at once, the size of the bonus for Unfair and higher difficulties is not that important, since its an incredible overkill anyway.

I mean, i usually play against Hard AIs, at least it was my difficulty up until now (even with their 2,25x planet income advantage). I beat bunch of them several times in the past, but even now it happens to me on occassion that they overwhelm me at the beginning, if 2 or more attack me at the same time.

My point is, by now, being capable of beating Hard AIs, i have nothing new to learn about the game. If i lose the game now, its not cause i did not know something about the gameplay mechanics or did some beginners error, it is because i am failing with the real-time aspect of the game. I simply dont click fast enough, dwindle over decisions, what to do next (whether to build another ship or risk it and invest into another important research)...and this costs me valuable seconds, during which the AI is amassing fleets thanks to its income bonus. The solution here is not to play differently, but to play faster, and it does not matter that much, whether the AI has 3x,4x or 6x more resources. I mean, the only way to play the game "fast" is to play it over and over and over and get that sort of twitch, where you dont even think what are you doing anyway, cause you did it so many times, its given.

I dont wish to generalize here too much, and say, what is true for me has to be true for anyone else, so take this with a grain of salt. 

I agree with Timmaigh, once you get multiple Hard AIs down it's just a matter of speed as the AI doesn't get any smarter, it just gets more money to outspend you.

When are AI players going to start building starbases in the solar gravity wells?  Its kind of easy to beat when you can throw 4-5 of them into an enemy sun and bottle them up.  It would make Vicious or Cruel more challenging at the least.

Thanks,

-Jason

If a SP player has matured to the point where they can routinely beat hard AIs, then it is only natural the next difficulty they would want to play on is unfair...

The problem with unfair is that it radically changes what the player must do in order to win...the resource cheat the AI gets at that level reaches a new threshold where the human player must either be pro (which normally only applies to MP) or must adapt "anti-AI" strategies that would normally fair poorly against a human player...in other words, once you step up to unfair, it isn't just a harder game, it's a different game...

The ideal difficulty level is one that mimics the capabilities of a human player...obviously we can't expect the AI to be smart enough to do this, so we use resource bonuses to level the playing field...hard is not quite good enough as a moderately skilled player can easily out match it...unfair is too good because its resource cheat results in an "unnatural" enemy...the ideal difficulty level for a moderately skilled player (ie a veteran SP player or casual MP) lies somewhere between hard and unfair....

I understand if new players are struggling jumping from normal to hard, and thus I am not against nerfing hard in and of itself...however, hard is currently the closest difficulty to the "ideal level" before one gets into resource cheats that radically alter the AI's gameplay....by nerfing hard, you further remove that difficulty from the "ideal level", a change that will severely hurt the replayability of this game for veteran SP players...

There needs to be a difficulty level somewhere between the current hard and current unfair...if one becomes afraid that a jump between two of the higher difficulties (unfair --> cruel or cruel --> vicious) will become too big, then the best solution is to introduce a new difficulty level that narrows the gaps between difficulties while still maintaining the challenge of the highest difficulty (currently vicious)...

Or they could open it up in an option menu that would allow the players to set the AI resource bonus, research bonus, etc and allow us to save our custom AI settings until we find something that we like. Or at the very least put it in a moddable file.

While we'd all love it to be moddable, that request has been made for years with no luck...the number of difficulty levels is also hardcoded....because of that, I'm fighting as hard as I can before the devs nix the difficulty level most optimized for casual SP play...

I will say regardless of the difficulty the AI still does things that are incomprehensible to me.  For one, they don't build star-bases in the Solar gravity well, regardless of settings.  I just finished a game against 3 vicious and nothing.  They also will not attack a pirate base if you double it up in galaxy forge.  Cannot understand that all.  They will set on the closest planet with 1500 in fleet cap and do nothing.  Now if I build anything they will attack regardless of the number of times I destroy their entire fleet.

Sorry if I am out of order here,

-Jason

Not yet - depends on when Blair has time to work on it. 

That would be a code fix.