[Taqwus]

Michou --

Tonnage isn't that good of an indicator. Most of my LT designs aren't nearly as dangerous in combat as most of my CA designs; I'd rather fight against a fleet of my minelayers rather than just one of my DN warships. And power probably scales nOnlinearly with hull size even among warships due to better weapon mounts and more room for goodies (sensors, talismans, solar sails, etc).

It also doesn't necessarily know your fleet's speed, if not all of your ship classes have been seen before and it lacks a scanner. It should probably guess based on your known ship designs and engine constraints due to hull type, 'tho.

More importantly, it doesn't know what weapons, armor etc you have if you have unknown ship classes. Hull type doesn't tell you that much -- a BB could be a beamer, a missile ship, a spaceyard ship, a sweeper, an organic-armor-rammer...

It should definitely use LR scanners more, to compensate for the fact that people have a much better idea, through experience, of AI ship design (e.g. Jraenor implies missiles, Ukra-Tal implies organic weaponry -- often a mix of seeker and beam, and so forth) and don't forget that between games. If it doesn't have one available, but it does have fighters, it could sacrifice one to learn the ship classes. Alternately, sacrifice a satellite (e.g. at a warp point), an unimportant colony, intel points (if it can get through...), or an unimportant ship.

Once it knows your ship designs, it'll be MUCH better off judging how a fight would go. It could even simulate the fight

, but that's possibly a bit much. I'd suggest a win-loss matrix, except that combined arms can have a HUGE impact.

Exception: cargo. You still need an LR scanner to be sure of ship cargo (fighter design...), and I think the LR scanner doesn't work at all on planets.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night