AI colony ship design

HreDaak · #1 February 8th, 2001, 01:19 PM

Did some testing how to eliminate AI derelict colony ship problems in Huge galaxies (254 systems). Following changes were enough that the AI never had colony ships that run out of supply.

1. Added 1000 Supply storage to colony ship modules.
2. Changed engines so that they take supplies as 10,9,8 and made it so that AI uses type III engines (8 supply usage) most of the time...
3. Changed colony module size to 180kt so that AI could add Solar collector component to its colony ship designs. Also made sure that the AI researches stellar harnessing III pretty early in the game, its not expensive: 50k+75k=125k.

With these changes i would say that there are practically almost no limits to colony ships range. Standard colony ship with type III ion engines consumes 200 supplies per turn and the solar collector III collects 150 supplies per turn, so the colony ship uses only 50 supplies per turn now. It has an average operating time of 70 turns now and could move 350 sectors. That guarantees that the colony ship can now travel through 31 systems on average... i think that is enough even in the largest galaxies

.

Also i made it so that each AI carrier had 3 solar collectors in its designs. As the AI currently likes to include carriers in its fleets these fleets had much more range... i.e AI fleets could attack several different planets/systems until they had to return back to resupply (note that this has almost no effect on AI carriers since they have only 2 less fighter bays). I've also been thinking to add solar collectors on attack ships, and if you play on Huge galaxies (like 200+ systems) i think it would be wise to add 1 or 2 solar collectors to each AI attack ship design too (depending on the size of these attack ships ofcourse).

Tenryu · #2 February 8th, 2001, 04:09 PM

I solved this problem and some other annoying issues to my liking by REMOVING most of the supply capacity from engines and making it an ability specific to each VEHICLE! Bigger hulls generally get more supplies.

I also give most my hulls a built in movement allowance and by limiting the number of engines per hull and using the "engines per move" field give my hulls the number of 'engine rooms' I feel comfortable with for each ship.

I feel a Gunboat should have way less engines than a Dreadnought and any one engine hit on a gunboat should have way more impact than a loss of an engine on a big ship.

So, my Gunboats have a max of 2 engines, with 1 move per engine and a built in movement of 2 while my dreadnoughts can have 12 engines, but move 1 per 4 with a built in move of 1.

The built in movement on the hulls simulates, at least to me, that putting a ship dead in the water, so to speak, forever, is pretty hard to do.The crew can usually get the ship to make some way if given enough time and the vessel isn't in imminent danger of floundering.

I left a little bit of supplies on the engines and at each level give them a little more supplies. Starting at Ion I, my sequence is: 50, 55, 60, 60, 65, 70, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95.

Additionally, I gave all my Ship Bridge components 1 extra move, I have Base specific and Ship specific bridges, if you're wondering.

You're a ship, you lose your bridge, you slow down some, even if you have an aux.

[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 08 February 2001).]

WhiteHojo · #3 February 8th, 2001, 04:54 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Daynarr:
Anyways, I am using our mod pack and in it the Mephisto has disabled all the supply components.

What exactly do you mean here? Normaly I'd ignore my little voice in my head that want's clarification, but if Mephisto is doin it, it is prob'ly worth snoopin into...

------------------
Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Daynarr · #4 February 8th, 2001, 05:27 PM

Just like it says there. In his mod, Mephisto has removed a lot of the extra components from the ship designs in order to make more space for weapons, armor, shields and more weapons. One of the things he removed are supply components.

Baron Munchausen · #5 February 8th, 2001, 08:40 PM

If each ship type's built-in supply capacity could increase with your tech level that would be ideal. There ought to be some inherent damage rating for the hull, too, so the ship has "structure" just like in MOO. This is the innate abilities for ships idea again. I hope MM can do something like this in the future when the AI is working decently.

Edit:

But this works well enough for the colony ship problem. I can add the 'extra fuel tanks' to the colony ship hull type and the stupid AI can't cram a colony ship into a battleship because it has 'supply storage'...

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 08 February 2001).]

Tenryu · #6 February 8th, 2001, 08:54 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
If each ship type's built-in supply capacity could increase with your tech level that would be ideal.

I don't know, but I suspect it could be done easily with the existing code if they just gave vehicles a 'family' line and then handled vehicle upgrades as per other stuff.

Mephisto · #7 February 8th, 2001, 11:34 PM

I have removed resupply, emergency movement and cloaking.
My reason were:
1.) Cloaking was not used by the AI.
2.) I don't use emergency movement personally so I excluded it.

3.) The resupply minister for the Ai is -actually- quite good except for the colonizers. Further, the AI does not travel very far with its ships so they had no real use for extra supply. Instead they could use every bit of space for point defence and weapons. So I kicked the extra supply.

quote:
Originally posted by WhiteHojo:
What exactly do you mean here? Normaly I'd ignore my little voice in my head that want's clarification, but if Mephisto is doin it, it is prob'ly worth snoopin into...