[Mephisto]

> Now it looks like the test is all colony ships plus all ships at top of build queue equals or exceeds number of colonies excluding homeworlds.

So, in effect, the AI would not send out a colony ship when there was only 1 available, 0 building, if it had 3 settled planets?
I don’t know if this is correct. I have never seen such a behaviour, especially later this cannot be true. If the AI has 20 planets and only 2 colony ships ready and 3 building it will still colonise IMHO. Then again, I could not test it here at work.

>Entry 38 Type := Mine Layer
Entry 38 Planet Per Item := 80
Entry 38 Must Have At Least := 3
Build one minelayer for every 8 colonies counting ships NOT yet built but queued up AT THE TOP of the queues, and then for good measure, ALSO build up to 3 MORE if the number already BUILT does not exceed one per 8 colonies - IGNORING how many are in the queues, build at least one, but stop before 3 if building yet another would exceed one per 8 planets.

Mmm, my understanding is this:
Build one minelayer for every 8 colonies counting ships NOT yet built but queued up ANYWHERE in the queues, or at least up to 3.
So, if you have 8 colonies it would build 3 ships.
If you have 16 colonies it would still build 3 ships.
If you have 24 colonies it would still build 3 ships (“break even”).
If you have 25 colonies it would build 4 ships (25/8=3,125, round up = 4).


>I THINK the five turns queue ahead is useful because it gets the entries moved past ship/base entries so that units can be built.

IMHO it is not a good idea. The AI fills up the queues according to the build list of one of its “states”. So, if the AI is exploring, the AI fills up the queues with build orders according to the state “exploration”. If it now hits an aggressive enemy, it is still producing 5 (?) turns in the “exploration” state, switching to war production only after 5 turns have passed, a deadly mistake against a human player (don’t forget that after 5 turn only the production is switched but the ships/units must still be produced so it is more of a 8 turn shift).

> Now what I suggest is that the selection of best available YARD simply EXCLUDE any colony which has unused facility slots and ANY item already queued. Also do a facility build queue call when a YARD call selects the colony. If the queue is still EMPTY after the call, then ADD the ship to the queue, otherwise proceed to the next yard. It would be REALLY nice if changing units production could also be done at the same time. Basically I suggest that the sector inventory be checked to tally up the number of units of the specified type, INCLUDING all queue entries in all colonies in the sector (and not just at the TOP either). Divide the total by the number of colonies in the sector. If the average is less than the planet per item call, THEN schedule the unit. If the average equals or exceeds AND if there are unused facility slots on the colony, THEN do a facility build queue call. If the queue is still EMPTY after the call, then ADD the unit to the queue, otherwise proceed to the next colony.

This sound quite good. I would suggest to first to the facility build run and then the vehicle build run. Otherwise the AI cripples itself by not building any infrastructure.