AI Ship Design Modder

Zeno42 · #1 March 13th, 2001, 04:33 AM

Hey All. Now that I'm back from vacation, I'm gearing up to get started on an AI Ship Design Modder. Anybody have any thoughts/ideas/requests/suggestions on what they would like included??

--Zeno

Tampa_Gamer · #2 March 14th, 2001, 02:09 AM

Wow - this is going to be a tough one to make a program for! To the best of our knowledge, the AI will go through the design several times until the ship is filled. The biggest wishlist would be able to somehow determine how the AI will construct the design based on what you have entered (i.e. shields per x, etc. The problem is the other two variables - (1) tech level of various components (reached or not reached) and (2) whether the next higher hull size is available yet. That being said, maybe we could enter these variables as assumptions and then run something similar to your "analyze prerequisites" in your tech modder. Anyway, I am rambling - but this is the biggest pain about the design file b/c it forces you to play the game and inspect the AI race designs periodically, then flip back to the text file to modify more.

Jason2 · #3 March 13th, 2001, 09:56 PM

One of the best designs I've seen so far is the modpack 1.61 for the Sergetti... the make heavy use of point-defense and Uranium Cannons/Phased Beams and armor and seem to constantly update. This is much better than missiles (which I never use) because the point defense takes out missiles/fighters/sats and the Large-mounted guns pack quite a punch.

I don't know if looking at their AI would help?

Felan · #4 March 13th, 2001, 10:20 PM

Something I learned from a ship I designed that had tractors and repulsors is that the order of the weapons on the ship makes a difference. I designed a starbase and my repulsor weapons were installed before any of my other weapons, consequently they would fire first and push the enemy beyond the range of the other weapons on the starbase.

Likewise in general you would want your shield/armor ignoring weapons to fire before shield depleting weapons which would fire before the rest of your non-missle weapons and finish off with missle weapons (the rest may kill the enemy and it can use the missles against some other target).

If designing a ship capture type then I would automatically have it list all shield depleting weapons first then start staggering the boarding parties between every weapon afterwards.

I haven't looked too close at this but I think maybe the real difficulty comes in retrofits which may have a tendancy of scrambling the order of weapons a bit. Firing shield depleting weapons after firing your DUC's is pointless and doesn't help at all. I will have to investigate this further and I hope I'm wrong.

Zeno42 · #5 March 13th, 2001, 11:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
Wow - this is going to be a tough one to make a program for! To the best of our knowledge, the AI will go through the design several times until the ship is filled. The biggest wishlist would be able to somehow determine how the AI will construct the design based on what you have entered (i.e. shields per x, etc. The problem is the other two variables - (1) tech level of various components (reached or not reached) and (2) whether the next higher hull size is available yet. That being said, maybe we could enter these variables as assumptions and then run something similar to your "analyze prerequisites" in your tech modder. Anyway, I am rambling - but this is the biggest pain about the design file b/c it forces you to play the game and inspect the AI race designs periodically, then flip back to the text file to modify more.

Tampa, I was thinking along the lines of leveraging the work I've already done on the AI Tech Queue modder. You'd merely enter a research point total, and the current techs and tech levels would be determined from the Research File. You'd select a design template from a drop-down list, enter a tech point total, and press a button to be presented with a representative AI ship. What I've got to figure out is how exactly the AI uses the Design Types File to design ships at a given Tech level. What's the current state of knowledge on how the AI fills up the ship based upon the Space per One entries??

--Zeno

Tampa_Gamer · #6 March 14th, 2001, 12:21 AM

Zeno42- The knowledge is 80% sure, 20% assumption right now. There are several good threads from about a month ago on this subject where everyone explained multiple times using a ship as an example. I will try and see if I can "bump" them up for you. As this was one of the first areas Mephisto dived into, he has a good understanding of the design algorithm. If I cannot find the threads, I will gather my notes from home this evening and re-post details here.

Later-
Tampa_Gamer

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 13 March 2001).]