Ship Design Questions, Weapon Picks

[Deathstalker]

Ok, I am just finishing off my first/second/third shipsets. Now I am working on the AI...For the ship creation there is the weapon picks (1 through 5). Now this is how I ASSUME it works. Pick 1 is the most important and is what the ship 'fills up' on. Now if pick one is not available (through research) then it goes on to pick 2 etc. I want to design ships with straight Crystal Torp. And a second set with just High Energy Magnifiers. These wpns would be supplimented with a few well placed shard cannons. Also, the weight limit..now can I set this at say 400 and then design a totally seperate attack ship class for 400 and up that the AI will use?

Any help would be appreciated....The shipsets will eventually make their way to the mod section.(the second shipset will have wpns consisting primarily of tk.proj, but also a virus/subverter combo.)

Also (not quite done ), any advice on designing a crystal/organic race??

------------------
"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.

[jc173]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Deathstalker:
Ok, I am just finishing off my first/second/third shipsets. Now I am working on the AI...For the ship creation there is the weapon picks (1 through 5). Now this is how I ASSUME it works. Pick 1 is the most important and is what the ship 'fills up' on. Now if pick one is not available (through research) then it goes on to pick 2 etc. I want to design ships with straight Crystal Torp. And a second set with just High Energy Magnifiers. These wpns would be supplimented with a few well placed shard cannons.

---

As I understand it that's pretty much how it works, although I'm a little shaky on how the AI decides to partition the space devoted to each component, from one of the default AI files.

Majority Comp Spaces Per One := 1200
Majority Comp Ability := Weapon
Secondary Comp Spaces Per One := 500
Secondary Comp Ability := Weapon

This looks kinda weird since it seems like you would devote one secondary weapon per 500 tons, but only one primary weapon per 1200 tons. There was a pretty good explanation of this awhile back, but I can't remember it or the title of the thread unfortunately, I should have probably saved it somewhere. You can have different types of ships, they just need different names, although the design type field has still has to be set to one of the default types.
I looked at the TDM modpack's AIs to get a better idea of how to set these files up. They have some examples with races having different types of attack ships etc.

quote:

---

Also, the weight limit..now can I set this at say 400 and then design a totally seperate attack ship class for 400 and up that the AI will use?

Any help would be appreciated....The shipsets will eventually make their way to the mod section.(the second shipset will have wpns consisting primarily of tk.proj, but also a virus/subverter combo.)

Also (not quite done ), any advice on designing a crystal/organic race??

---

You can have different designs of different weight classes for the same design, the only thing to keep in mind is the AI will probably keep constructing ships of those types even if it has bigger hull designs available. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you may still see LC's etc pretty late in the game that way. Against a player like me who uses the LC and CR as his main warships that's probably not a huge disadvantage, not sure it would work out against some who likes to build the biggest ships available.

[Q]

You are right about the concept of the weapon picks and you can design different ships for under and over 400kT, but .....
the problem is that the AI will not stop to build the ships under 400kT even in the later game, which might not be very reasonable. So I would recommend that you make a design for up to 600kT, which still may be useful with full technology and another design for 800kT and above (battleships and dreadnoughts). You have the possibility to design special attack bases too.
And don't forget to include an weapon pick for the very beginning of the game: that is either CSM or DUC.
Hope this helps you.

[This message has been edited by Q (edited 25 April 2001).]

[Atraikius]

One thing that was messing me up until recently was the lines:

Num Must Have At Least 1 Ability := 1
Must Have Ability 1 := Weapon

From what I could tell, when the AI designs the ship, it will place the "Num Must Have" of the primary weapon after the minimum amount of engines, then will go back and add additional engines followed by the tonnage of weapons desired.

This way, if trying to have the AI design a frigate (200) with one CSM, and 2 DUC's, with the "Must Have" set at 1, and CSM at 1 for every 200, and DUC's at one for every 100, I kept ending up with a ship with 2 CSM. When I changed the "Must Have" value to 0, then it was designed with 1 CSM, and 2 DUC's.

[Deathstalker]

Thanks, things are going fairly smoothly now. I just wish crystal torp did more damage . But so far in a test game they seem to be holding their own against the Rage and the Klingons. So far

------------------
"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.

[Nitram Draw]

If you search the forum for design I think you will find a step by step explanation of how the AI builds a ship. It is a pretty good explanation. I think I have it saved at home. I will post it if I can find it.