AI construction queue problems (ship construction)

[HreDaak]

[quote]Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
I've known for a long time that the AI doesn't check if a planet has cargo space for what it is building. This results in loads of satellites being built and then LOST with nothing to show for the allocated resources. I have asked MM to let satellites (at least) be automatically deployed when built if there's no cargo space.
[quote]

I think that the AI checks if there is enough free space in the planet to build ONE unit of the things it is trying to build. If there is less space on the planet than one of these units would take it will not try to build these on that planet. But if there is enough space for ONE unit then it will try to build as many of these units on the planet as it can in one turn, the excess units that cant fit on the planet are simply not build on that planet (log Messages: not enough storage or something). Problem in the late game are Medium and especially Large weapon platforms that are so big that many of the planets cant hold even one of these monsters. So now if there is a call to build say 2 per every planet the AI has there will soon be very acute space problems on AI planets. Some larger colonies especially the ones with breathable atmosphere are able to hold several Large weapon platforms but the amount of these planets is very limited compared to the total amount of planets the AI has. So this can cause very severe building problems for the AI in late game as only those planets with breathable atmosphere and maybe some other large/huge planets are the only ones able to hold them. This also limits the amount of planets that can even try to build them and this in turn can cause the AI build queue to advance very slowly (or stop completely if AI runs out of space) if there is a call to build huge amounts of these Medium/Large weapon platforms...

[quote]
But the defense base thing is odd. I can't imagine what might be going on there. BTW, the AI _does_ build colonizers even if it doesn't know of any colonizable planets. The "must have" entry in the queue works for colonizers. I've seen every "Neutral" I ever invaded keeping a colonizer at its homeworld even though there are no planets left that it can colonize. Too bad. This is also a useless drain of resources.[quote]

Have you tried one of the examples i have posted in my previous Posts? These will reproduce that conflict bug. I suppose this could be a typo or some other small quirk in the hard coded part of the game that partly somehow mixes up defense bases and colonizers, but only Malfador can say if it is so...

Hummh.. i meant that the AI will not assign any more colonizers in its build queues if it does not see any more colonizable planets. This does not prevent the AI from having few leftover colonyships from turns that it still had one planet left to colonize. You can easily test this by making a construction file that has only 1 entry in the exploration AI state.

AI State := Exploration
Num Queue Entries := 1
Entry 1 Type := Colonizer
Entry 1 Planet Per Item := 0
Entry 1 Must Have At Least := 1000

AI will build new colonizers as long as it has free colonizable planets in its home system. Once there are no more free planets left in its home system it does not assign more colonyships to be built. Note that this can cause the AI to have 1 or more leftover colonyships depending on how many turns it took for the Last colonizer to do its job.
I think this is the reason why neutrals can have few colonyships left even though they have no more planets to colonize.

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 06 February 2001).]