[grumbler]

Okay, back in battery. Some sewer maintenance guys (I think one of them was Ed Norton) cut my buried phone line and the interim "hand-laid" line had so much noise my modem couldn't connect at speed. Some fora I could get to, but this one kept timing out.

I managed in the meantime to fix some facilities problems, and found that i could get the Ai to build small ships, but still have this major problem: the AI will build escorts now, but still seldom anything larger (but occasionally up to Heavy Destroyers). What is the limit 9for I can only think there must be one) on the time that the AI will spend on building any ship?

Here is the crux of the mystery, as far as I can tell: the AI will design every ship its tech allows. However, even though AI_D_C calls for all warships to be called "Design Type: Attack Ships" the resulting designs are ALWAYS called by their hull size, e.g. Light Cruiser (and once one gets past HD, it is always the hull size next above the one it is actualy using). Naturally, since the AI_C_V never calls for the construction of anything with a Design Type of "Light Cruiser" the LC design cannot enter the construction queue. I believe that all the designs that are e.g. "Heavy Destroyer" I have seen are upgrades to existing ships - but how can the AI upgrade to a design it cannot build?

This has been a real show-stopper. In three months of testing and tweaking I haven't found the solution. Can it be that there can only be the single design type of Attack Ship (size 10 kt - 5,000 kt) as in the core game? I cannot believe this, as I remember this function working in the base B5 mod, and it had as I recall a bunch of attack ship types.

however, I cannot make it work, and would appreciate any help anyone can give.

I do have a workable "prototype" for everything else, barring weapons (which Timstone has a great design model for). Facilities work, but need to be "racialized." Engines, reactors, and all of the ship, base, and unit components work. Even the "discovered" technologies now seem to work, except the "unique ship class" which the AI won't build because of the aforementioned problem.

Does anyone have ANY thoughts on the lack of AI-built larger warships? It will build battleship-and-above-sized troop transports, minesweepers, and whatnot but not warships.