Gold, Ship Sizes and AI

[Andrés]

I noted that in gold Version, AI will not always use the largest ship size available, but will choose smaller ones many times.
Now AI seems to get good combinations of different sizes, and you'll see a lot of small high-tech ships that were very uncommon before.

AI does not seem to make a new design everytime a related new tech is reached, like before.
And when a new design is made it can go back from a dreadnought and design a destroyer.
Does anyone know how does the AI choose which size to design?

Now how do I force it not to do that?
I'm updating the Ultimate Vehicle Size mod to Gold. The new alternative bitmap in vehicle size works great.
In general this new AI feature seems to work, but it will use small and slow colony ships once larger colony ships are available, and that is a serious disadvantage.
I heard that it is possible to add new design types or to call different sub-types in the Construction_Vehicles file. I already have the AI using two different colony ships (for each planet type) entries in DesignCreation.
How do I make AI use the first one only at the very beginning of the game and use only the second one later?

[Jmenschenfresser]

I am not sure about Gold, but I assume it is still there. IN the designcreation.txt I believe there are two lines which stipulate the size hull with which to use the design. If you delegate the design to a larger hull, then it will obviously only be able to use it later in the game. Then it depends upon when the new colony ship hull becomes available as to the time of use.

Just make a new colony ship hull, slightly larger, have it come available later in the tech tree, then set the design to use only hull of that size. Sort of indirect way of doing it....that is if it is at all possible.

Just an idea, and one you've probably already thought of.

[Andrés]

What I'm talking about is apparently a new feature in gold.
AI now does not allways use the biggest available hull, but sometimes picks a smaller one.
It also seems to show only one kind of colony ship even if there are two designs with different names only one will be non-obsolete at a time.

[oleg]

My impression is that once AI makes an advance in tech and decides to upgrade designs, it cycles throw hull sizes starting with smaller one.
For example, this is what I obsedved in my Last game (proportions mod): I am fighting Piundon, they have ship hull up to cruiser and shard cannon II. The moment they discover Shard cannons III, they create a new _frigate_ with SC III and label all light cruisers and cruisers obsolete. Next one or two turns, they upgrade design to destroyers, then LC and finally cruisers. I have been fighting battles in succesive turns against new frigates, then destroyers, etc.

When Piundon made next upgrade (after getting shield II), the cycle repeats itself. Apparently, if research is slow, AI will produce mostly biggest ships. I might be wrong, but it is what I saw in my games.

[Atraikius]

Some of the races use kamikaze, Boarding, Defense Ships, and Troops Ships with differing weapon and size settings to provide a better mix in fleets.

[Alpha Kodiak]

quote:

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Originally posted by oleg:
My impression is that once AI makes an advance in tech and decides to upgrade designs, it cycles throw hull sizes starting with smaller one.
For example, this is what I obsedved in my Last game (proportions mod): I am fighting Piundon, they have ship hull up to cruiser and shard cannon II. The moment they discover Shard cannons III, they create a new _frigate_ with SC III and label all light cruisers and cruisers obsolete. Next one or two turns, they upgrade design to destroyers, then LC and finally cruisers. I have been fighting battles in succesive turns against new frigates, then destroyers, etc.

When Piundon made next upgrade (after getting shield II), the cycle repeats itself. Apparently, if research is slow, AI will produce mostly biggest ships. I might be wrong, but it is what I saw in my games.

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Look in the ai_design file and see if there are multiple attack ship designs for the Piundon. See if there is a ship class that maxes out at frigates. Gold may be cycling through the designs in a different way than earlier Versions did.

I'm afraid I haven't been able to explore too much of that myself, as I was doing all of my Gold work on my laptop and it is still recovering from my 20 month old daughter's little milk spilling incident.

[Andrés]

Oleg, my observations are more or less the same.

I don't know know how it's modded in proportions mod, but in standard Version Piundon have only one Attack ship.

Why do I have to repeat this over and over. AI now does not always use larget hull available.
It's not something bad, now AI races will mix different sizes of ships quite well.
That even works allright with the many extra ship sizes in the UVS mod.

But it doesn't work fine with colony ships. AI will insist in using Colony Slugships and Light Colony Ships late in the game.
Using colony ships in which you can only fit 1 engine (and sending them to planets far away) is something very stupid when you have larger colony ships where you can fit 6 engines + additional components such as solar sails, shields and cloaking devices.

[oleg]

quote:

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Originally posted by Alpha Kodiak:


Look in the ai_design file and see if there are multiple attack ship designs for the Piundon. See if there is a ship class that maxes out at frigates. Gold may be cycling through the designs in a different way than earlier Versions did.

I'm afraid I haven't been able to explore too much of that myself, as I was doing all of my Gold work on my laptop and it is still recovering from my 20 month old daughter's little milk spilling incident.

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Yes, they do have separate design entries for each ship class. That explains it. Still, pre-Gold SE IV would ignore smaller ships and this situation does not happen.