Node:AI Boost, Next:Multi-headed Engines, Previous:Long Bridges, Up:The Patches
aiboost, -A
This switch is deprecated, and does not work as intended. Do not use it.
With this switch it is possible to try and make the AI (`artificial intelligence', i.e. computer players) slightly more intelligent. However it is currently of limited use, and large values (greater 5 or so) can make the game very sluggish, or in fact even stop it completely. Don't activate this unless you know that it can lock up the game.
This works by modifying the so-called "recursion factor" in the game. This determines how far ahead a computer tries to look. However, the time spent doing this increases exponentially with that factor, and that's why you should be very cautious in increasing it.
If a too large value is selected, it may easily happen that the computer stops responding, because a route evaluation is suddenly taking several hours when normally it would be done in a few milliseconds. And since these evaluations happen frequently, even reasonably small increases are noticeable in small, but frequent pauses.
This switch is more of an experiment than it is useful, since any reasonable changes doesn't seem to affect the computers' stupidity, they still build they same brain-damaged routes no matter what you try. So, feel free to play with this switch, but don't expect any large effects to happen.