[Captain Kwok]

Regarding AI design files. Basically to make the best AI you want to have entries that are customized for each ship size and race. At first this sounds like a lot of work to do, but it really isn't.

The trick as I've mentioned below is to use "component lineages" that share a common AI tag but utilize different abilities. This way you can have the AI design ships that seem to "evolve" throughout the game.

Lineages that would be appropriate to the Star Trek mod would be Armor and shields. Do not bother using the shield and armor "spaces per one" entries, but rather call them using AI tags. This is especially important in regards to armor since the mod uses a leaky armor system, which by design usually avoids labelling armor as "armor" in data file terms.

Expanded Examples:

AI Tag X: Basic Armor - Advanced Armor - Racial Armor

At the start, ships will use the basic armor until mid-game when advanced armor becomes available. By end game, they've researched their racial armor, which may be a completely different ability from the previous armor their ship employed, but they'll having no problems changing over to it.

AI Tag Y: Hull Plating - Shields - Phased Shields

More or the less the same as above. Hull plating is really a true armor in SE4 terms although we are using it as "pre-shields" in the mod, and had you been calling for shields or armor from the "Shield Spaces" or "Armor Spaces" you'd get all sorts of unintended design craziness.

For each race, make an optimized "cruiser" size design. Copy and paste that design for each race's ship sizes, making the appropriate changes. All multi-purpose ships (as opposed to mine sweepers, etc) have the same characterisitics and relatively the same percentage of space dedicated to each of the major ship systems, so you'll just need to adjust the spaces amount to be in line with the ship size.