Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

As in making an entry in design creation file for a 'space yard ship' that has repair bays instead of space yards. According to the help files in the manual, the 'Space Yard Ship' minister is supposed to dispatch SYS's to places where there are damaged ships, but I think they never can do that because the Ship Construction minister keeps using the spaceyard-equipped ship for construction.

May try to put an entry for that in all the AI design creation files and see what happens as time goes on.

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 10 July 2001).]

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Sinapus,
That is my observation too, so I deleted SYS's from all of my AI's. Hadnt considered equipping them with Repair Units though instead.
As with all other aspects of the AI, I took a generalist approach and have set up the AI carriers to have one repair unit, so that its fleets always have a limited amount of repair capability....Was considering equipping Kamikaze ships out with repair capability too (and no ram weapons/orders) and having them as a second line warship for the AI.
What do you think?

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Yeah I created them, but haven't had time to test if the AI uses them or not. I have them setup as attack ship, with the hope that they will team up with a fleet...

[This message has been edited by PurpleRhino (edited 11 July 2001).]

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> Yeah I created them, but haven't had time to test if the AI uses them or not. I have them setup as attack ship, with the hope that they will team up with a fleet...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I think if you make them an Attack Ship, they'll join fleets, but the Space Yard Ship Minister won't recognize that they're SYSs.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by capnq:

Quote:

Yeah I created them, but haven't had time to test if the AI uses them or not. I have them setup as attack ship, with the hope that they will team up with a fleet...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I think if you make them an Attack Ship, they'll join fleets, but the Space Yard Ship Minister won't recognize that they're SYSs.

Probably not, but if that ship survives any battles in that fleet it will repair any crippled ships so that fleet won't be stuck forever drifting...

Maybe I'll add both. One with a lot of repair bays and make it the SYS. Another with one repair bay, some weapons and shields and an attack ship designation. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif


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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Well, one obstacle cleared. Actually got the AI to -design- a repair ship. Now I'll see if they'll actually build one later tonight and use it.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Getting the AI to design a repair ship is not hard (have had one of mine designing a tender for a while), but so far I've only had the AI build them once - had 2 attack ships designs, both light cruisers, one had 3 DUC 3's and 2 plasma torp 1's, other had repair bay, and one CSM 3. The attack ship was listed first in the DesignCreation file, and had been designed more recently, yet the AI would only build the tender.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Well, I got the neutrals to build repair ships, though it looks like they are not building space yard ships now. Hm.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

To be really useful a repair ship must be included into the fleets. Until now only attack/defense ships and carriers are included into fleets by the AI. Not minesweepers, not boarding ships, not repair ships. At least that's what I've seen.
So the only possibility is to include repair bays either in attack/defense ships or IMO better into carriers. I tried to do that in my AI modififications of the CueCappa and Phong and in a different way with the Borg. Don't use space yard's because then the AI will start construct something with it and the ships cannot move!!

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
Q nailed the issue. Until the design file contains a field to indicate whether a given design should be included in attack/defense fleets, you are forced to include it in one of the attack/defense ship designs.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Even better would be a fleet composition (perhaps in the fleet file) so that you could specify that an optimal fleet would contain a specific combination of support ships (repair, mine sweeping, stellar manipulation, troop transports, boarding ships, etc.) along with attack ships and carriers. Otherwise, you are likely to get a fleet full of repair ships only, or something equally undesirable.

Even cooler would be allowing multiple fleet types, and specify the general objectives each fleet type would be used for.

Obviously, that would be a major change, and there would have to be flexibility built in to not hold a fleet up if the only available mine sweeper was on the other side of the empire, but it would sure make it easier to get the AI to act more like a human player.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Q nailed the issue. Until the design file contains a field to indicate whether a given design should be included in attack/defense fleets, you are forced to include it in one of the attack/defense ship designs.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

So far I've found that Attack Ships, Carriers, Boarding Ships, Kamakaze Ships, and attack bases will be included in attack fleets. Defense ships are only included in defense fleets, and if designed as a warship, Troop Transports will be included in attack fleets.

Since Boarding ships seem to work like Troop Transports in that the fleet strategy needs to be set for boarding as the primary movement choice, I've found that having an AI use the Boarding ship as an alternate design will allow some control over the AI building mixed ship designs. I've also found that by using the Boarding and Kamakaze ships as the support designs, they will be included in fleets, which has allowed me to get an AI to build two separate types of attack ships (one using attack ships, the other attack bases as an attack base is classified as a ship in the vehichle data file), a fleet tender (repair ship) using the Boarding ship, and a point defense ship using the Kamakaze ship. All of these ships are included in attack fleets, and with carefull balancing of the Construct_Vehicle file, some control over the fleet composition can be made.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Tampa - I've been seeing about 100% on the Kamakaze ships which I've been using as Point-Defense/Minesweepers, and except for one AI, I've been seeing about 80-90% of the Boarding ships included in fleets, it may be higher, but the AI seems to wait longer before including them in fleets than it will with other ships. I have noticed that Kamakaze ships actually armed primarily with explosives with normal secondary weapons act similar to what I have been seeing with the Boarding ships where they will sit over a planet for very long periods of time before they actually are included in a fleet.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

So do you think that their "willingness" to join a fleet may be based on their type of weaponry? If so, what layouts seem to be working and which do not. This is very interesting. This will definitely open up some new doors in AI design if this is working now. Cool http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Atraikius - what is the frequency of the Kamikaze Ship and Boarding Ship in the attack fleets (i.e. approximate % total vs % added to fleets)? A number of us AI Modders tried this method back in January for adding additional support ships, etc., but for the most part these ships just sat at the Homeworld and did nothing and were rarely, if ever, added to fleets. Perhaps MM slipped this change in (or correction) since then. . .

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 17 July 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 17 July 2001).]

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Oops on that Last post of mine - problem with going from memory at work.

Had the Boarding and Kamakaze ships flipped around, so it should have been 100% of the boarding ships are being included in fleets. I also had flipped the ship designs in the AI that was using the other type (Kamakaze)so it turned out they were also boarding ships.

Attack Ships, Attack Bases, and Boarding Ships are all included in fleets with no problems. Attack Bases just need to have the minimum size changed, and boarding ships can just be set for weapons as primary and secondary weapons.

Defense ships will only be included in defense fleets.

Carriers and Troop Transports can be made as attack ships, but they AI will not include them in fleets until they are at least partially loaded with the appropriate cargo.

Kamakaze Ships will be included, but from the times I've seen it, it seems as if there are some odd requirements. Each time I've seen them included, the AI was in a defensive mode had recently lost a significant number of ships, once it was included in a fleet it seems to stay in though.

Sorry about the goof earlier.

edit:
After observing how the AI actually uses repair ships in fleets, I noticed that it dosn't make a difference anyway. When a fleet has taken damage in combat, it always moves all ships of the fleet back to the nearest resupply base at each ships best speed - thus breaking up the fleet before the repair ship has a change to make repairs.

[This message has been edited by Atraikius (edited 18 July 2001).]

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

On the bright side - at least we know there should be at least three attack ships to work with as (from what I understand) using boarding ships and Troop transports is exclusive as they both require the fleet strategy to be set appropriately, so by having AI build some cheep troops and ensuring that the troop ship has only one cargo, the troop ship can be used as a attack ship design.

Just a note on troops/planetary assaults - in my current game my Orks currently have SIX planets that they have captured and held long enough to build them up (there also in first place with 880K - captured planets making significant difference, with second place having 350K - I'm at a lowly 6th with 200K)

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

***bump***

Rollo and MB - heres the thread I was refering to.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Thanks, Atraikius,
this is exactly what I had in mind http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.
Judging from the dates of the earlier Posts, this topic must have been just "before my time". Either that or I skipped it, because I was not interested in AI stuff a few weeks ago http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif.
Rollo

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Well, I've been modding the Terrans a bit and added a repair ship in the design file. From what I can tell, they will build one, but haven't seen one go off and repair a crippled ship.

I have the same design in some files I made for Neutrals. They tend to build at least two repair ships. Haven't seen them go after any cripples that sometimes result in battles.

I'm guessing I'm going to have to set the individual ship minister for my own race and see if it will send a ship over to repair another ship.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Thank you Atraikius!

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

I've never seen the AI use a space yard ship to repair other ships, even though it builds them. I think this is another area where the AI is not "finished" yet.

Re: Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?
 

Nope, I saw an Ork shipyard, repairing the damaged engines of one ship.
The bad thing, was that I saw a Pyrochette shipyard, building a defensive base into the space! This was when I decided to don't build shipyards anymore!

I think that's more useful, make ship designs with Repair Bays.