Annoying feature about the speed values in AI_Design_Creation.txr

Tampa_Gamer · #1 April 7th, 2001, 01:04 AM

Trachmyr- some of early mods did try and make several attack ships (essentially one for each hull size) in order to maximize the efficiency of each design. Currently, the Darlok, Sergetti and Zi'Chung in the TDM ModPack have multi-designs, so check them out for ideals. The problems with multiple designs are the following:

(1) Each "design" is still valid in later games, thus the AI will still build them in later games (partial solution - what we did was make a range of hull designs so that you had 3 types of attack/defense ships)

(2) The AI for some reason continues to re-design the multi-designs even at full tech start! This leads to hundreds of the same designs, which would not be a problem except for the retrofit minister gets chumped trying to retrofit a design with no changes. [Note - this may be fixed in the next patch]

Anyway, this has been an issue for awhile and I just wanted to let you know how we were dealing with it. I will stop rambling

Nitram Draw · #2 April 7th, 2001, 01:26 AM

Trachmyr,
Could you get the effect you want by adding an extra standard move and extra combat move ability to each base hull type? It won't solve the space problem but it may be easier to accomplish, the AI would automatically get the ability.
I don't know if this ability will work on hulls but I have added extra supply to a scout hull type and it seems to work.

Trachmyr · #3 April 7th, 2001, 12:46 AM

Tampa,
Thanks for the reply... The AI going retrofit crazy was something I had feared. Well, let's hope the patch fixes this. I can do the work to create all the hull sizes, but if it messes up the AI then it's all for nought.

Nitram Draw,
I'm afraid your suggestion (although very good, as I've added extra move to some ORGANIC hulls I've made for organic tech) won't solve my problem. But I certainly thank you for your reply!

[This message has been edited by Trachmyr (edited 06 April 2001).]

Sinapus · #4 April 7th, 2001, 03:01 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
Trachmyr- some of early mods did try and make several attack ships (essentially one for each hull size) in order to maximize the efficiency of each design. Currently, the Darlok, Sergetti and Zi'Chung in the TDM ModPack have multi-designs, so check them out for ideals. The problems with multiple designs are the following:

(1) Each "design" is still valid in later games, thus the AI will still build them in later games (partial solution - what we did was make a range of hull designs so that you had 3 types of attack/defense ships)

(2) The AI for some reason continues to re-design the multi-designs even at full tech start! This leads to hundreds of the same designs, which would not be a problem except for the retrofit minister gets chumped trying to retrofit a design with no changes. [Note - this may be fixed in the next patch]

Anyway, this has been an issue for awhile and I just wanted to let you know how we were dealing with it. I will stop rambling

So.... will you increase the desired speed Category for all ship entries in all AI_designcreation.txt files so those of us who -do- try to increase the engines-per-move and max engines don't have to spend time modifying it to match whatever changes you guys make?

Trachmyr · #5 April 7th, 2001, 04:13 AM

I don't think that will be possible Sinapus unless they incorporate the Engines per Move feature themselves... the mod I'm making is not compatiable with any other mod (except perhaps galaxy types/sector types).

It's one or the other...

Sinapus · #6 April 7th, 2001, 04:24 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Trachmyr:
I don't think that will be possible Sinapus unless they incorporate the Engines per Move feature themselves... the mod I'm making is not compatiable with any other mod (except perhaps galaxy types/sector types).

It's one or the other...

Well, not exactly. I've noticed that the AI designer won't go above the max engines even if "desired speed" is set to 100. Also, my adding multiple levels of Construction as requirements for bigger ship and base hulls (and putting those levels in the research text files for the AI) doesn't affect the research of the AI so long as the entry in techlevels.txt is set to the normal value of 1 when you aren't using those levels. It's just tedious to do with no reward unless you want to switch between the two back and forth.

I'm just being lazy, and hoping to convince someone else to do all the work.

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