[grumbler]

I think that there may be some misunderstanding of what I am talking about when I say I want to use a common "model" for a ship type. What i mean is that i think we should agree with, for instance, a capital ship should devote (say) 40% of its hull size to weapons, 40% to speed, and 20% to electronics, or whatever. Each race would have different weapons and systems, and so different ships, but the overall outline would remain similar, just as (say) all WWII battleships had between 8 and 10 main guns. No "race" had 20 medium guns on a battleship.

The reason I am so anxious to start with a workable model for the AI_D_C is because it is the hardest thing to make work, and require playtesting to ensue that it works properly. You can automate the process of weapons design somewhat, and a given weapon isn't much changed by being 10% lighter and 10% less powerful, but a 10% change in AI_D_C is huge. If you have seperate "customized" ship designs for each race, you are creating a design monster - the very monster that Val himself dispaired of slaying (remember how the AI designs were always causing RCEs until Path went back and scrubbed them to get them into working order?)

The Mod "as is" is good, but the AI still does not build ships that can compete with a human for design utility. Some of the ships it produces are hardly mobile, while others contain a strange assortment of weapons. Given the complexity of the problem, and the need to make sure the designs WORK before making sure they WORK WELL, I find the suboptimal AI_D_C files quite understandable.

But if you are going to build the ships around the weapons and not the weapons around the ships, you need a lot of people who know how to make AI_D_C work right, and a lot of playtesting time, because that's the only way to do it.

I know, because I have been trying for a year, and I am not there yet.