[cybersol]

Originally posted by Master Belisarius:
From scratch??
It's something against my principles, I thought. Never started a Cobol program or an AI from zero!!!!

Yeah, it seemed like a good idea when I started, but it takes longer than you would think. At least it forces me to learn about and make a decision on everything. So far I'm just focusing on the bussiness end of the AI, not the political or speech, etc.

Originally posted by Master Belisarius:
A cloaked ship can't build anything... but as you noted in your second post, I think the best use for these ships is try to recover damaged ships that can't move...
I dislike when the space yard ship build something... usually they build Defense bases in middle of nowhere, or build colony ships and send those ships to colonize planets without load population first (and then the new colony will be useless for the AI!).

Well that explains why you cloak them. I'm implementing space yard ships now, so I have not tested them. My impression from previous Posts is that they are supposed to go to a front line resupply base and construct from there. If they indeed build lots of stuff in the middle of nowhere then I will have to cloak them or not build them as well.

Originally posted by Master Belisarius:
I only saw this behavior when an AI reach the DN, but maybe the trigger is that after some time without redesign a ship, the AI decide to redesign using the previous ship design with different weapon...

It works better now that I call the destroyer and lower "light attack ship" and the light cruisers to battle cruisers "main attack ship". I hope it doesn't decided to produce more light attack ships later in the game though. CSM1 destroyers versus dreadnaughts would be amusing but not effective.

Originally posted by Master Belisarius:
The problem is that considering the free space, the AI will try to use the most advanced Armor...

Conclusion: if you want to use a ship with lot of Standard Armors (not Scattering!), you should not research After Armor III!

Yeah, I reached that conclusion also. If the armor were give an ability like "normal armor" and that could be called in the misc section that would work SO much better. Alas that requires modding though.

Originally posted by Master Belisarius:
I think the AI always check the 1-11 every turn. My guess is that the AI always start from the number 1 in the queue and check if need to build the item or not. One after other.
For this, if the queue is very large, the AI have problems to reach the Lastest items in the queue... because always is building trying to replace the loses in the first places of the queue.

AI_CONSTRUCTION_VEHICLES.TXT. This is a really interesting inquiry, and might deserve its own thread, but it would be all you guys anyway.

MB, what you describe is what I though at first also. AI_Research and AI_Planet_Types definitely work the way you describe, but they don't loop and are not numbered. I will have to test this out some more, because as you say it determines optimal queue length and behaivor.