There's one more quirk to the AI design process, Mephisto. Each of those Misc. abilities is looked for in available components and added SEPERATELY without checking if the ship already has the ability. If you created ships with inherent stealth abilities (like the "Super Stealth" races in Stars! have) then the AI would still put a cloaking device in them even if it was no better than the hull's inherent ability. And, if you created "integrated" components with several abilities, say combat sensors and ECM in one unit, it would put TWO of this component in the ship. Yeah, it looks mechanically for each ability and mindlessly adds a component with the ability. A simple loop.
I'm not sure how you would fix that. It looks for the _best_ available ability each time, of course. It would have to do some sort of check of the ship in each go-round, I guess, comparing the ship's current abilities with the component. But sometimes you might want to duplicate abilities, too.... hmm. Sounds like a candidate for a new setting in the ship design list. "Can duplicate abilities" or something like that.
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 14 December 2000).]