Why the AI builds the Ships it does

[Deathstalker]

I have been wondering this for a long time. I will have created an Ai that has 3 ship 'classes' for attack or defense and only 1 of them seems to get built, the odd other one will. Recently I discovered why (maybe the various modders already know this, but I didn't, and I know a few others didn't as well, so heres my story )

The game builds the ships exactly the same as it selects weapons in the ship designs. that is to say the most recently discovered is used exclusively. (this means the FIRST one in the file!!) So if you build an AI that has 3 attack classes listed as 10-300, 301 to 600 and 601 to 1500 in size listed from the 10 down to the 601 and with all carrying redundant weapons (ie, all have say weapns listed as torp/apb/duc) then only the size 300 will be built as it is the first one the Ai comes to in the design file that meets its non-obsolete criteria when new tech is discovered.

How to get around this: build backwards!

List the Heavy attack ship first in the ai file, then the medium, then the light. this goes for all other ships as well (and bases). This way has been tested and works. Another way to do this (if not seperated by size) is by weapons (this has not been tested, don't know if it works since engines etc are being discovered all the time as well). List the most 'advanced' model first, and DO NOT include lower weapons like DUC's or ABP, just the 'advanced' weapon (pick 1) that it will use (ie, list the Null-space ship b4 the DUC ship). (the duc ship will be obsolete and the null space will be 'new tech') At least it should work this way.

If anyone has comments/corrections please post them here, I know the first part works, but would dearly like to know if the 2nd does without completely re-vamping a shipset for testing.

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

[Atraikius]

I think it may be more than just that. I've seen one of my AI's building a combat support ship I had put in its design file over its normal attack ship - when I tried to figure out why, the only thing that I could come up with was that the AI must evaluate the designs against each other in a solo duel using the ship strategies - thus it chose to build a fleet tender (attack ship with repair, and 1 cap missile 3 - maximum/dont get hurt) over the normal attack ship (2 plasma 1, 2 DUC3, optimal/short) because the tender would be able to beat down the attack ship at the long ranges.

As a related question - has anyone else noticed that the AI will occasionally loose it and start designing ships with 1 primary weapon, 1 secondary weapon, additional abbilities, and then fill up on the primary weapon regardless of how many primary and secondary weapons it is suppose to place on the design?

[Tampa_Gamer]

Deathstalker-

I can confirm this behavior. Early on (11/00) most of the modders tried to have a multitude of different ships/classes/sizes but the only thing that consistently worked the way we wanted to list the ships in the order you describe. The designs for my races and some of Daynarr's are setup in this way. The only drawback to this method is that the AI sometimes will have identical designs which still causes the AI to try and upgrade identical designs and thus hang. I think MM tried to fix this a few patches ago, but I do not think all of the kinks are ironed out.

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 29 June 2001).]

[Atraikius]

Miss-read post first time -

1st part - yes I have observed that.

2nd part - as my earlier post - when AI has ships with different weapons combinations it seems to evaluate them in some way because it does not neccessarily build the first one in the list, or the most recently designed/newest tech one - in the attack ship/tender example I stated previously, when I switched the tender strategy to optimal/short - the AI switched to building the attack ship although the tender was both a newer design, and had newer technology components on it, while the attack ship came before the tender in the design file.

[Deathstalker]

Strange, anyone ever emailed MM and recieved and answer to how the AI reads/builds ships???(and how we can consistantly get it to build the ships we want?)

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

[Atraikius]

Nope figured it was just something we had to deal with/work around.

Has anyone noticed if the AI not designing redundant ship designs in the latest update. I've noticed that some designs that end up being the same early in the game are not being used and am not sure if this is from an improvement, or related to the AI flaking out on the ship designs (the 1 primary, 1 secondary, fill up afterwards one)