Why the AI builds the Ships it does

[Atrocities]

Don't ask me why or how, but most of my AI opponants are building Base Ships now. I don't remember altering the AI to do that, but its great that thay are doing it now.

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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Captain Picard STNG
New Age Ship Yards

[Alpha Kodiak]

Okay, I'm getting a little bit of a picture, but it's still confusing. I set up the contruction vehicle file to require 10 attack ships before anything else in all situations. I set the ship size limits in the settings file to allow any size ship from the beginning. I then created a high tech game in a large quadrant with only this race (under computer control) and one other (which I started under human control). There are 3 attack ship designs in the design creation file. The first is set for 10 - 600 kt. The second is set for 601 - 999 kt. The third design is set for 1000 - 5000 kt.

After the game was under way, I switched my experimental race to human control and set complete AI on in the ministers section. I then let the AI run and just observed.

In the first 10 turns, 2 of the first design were created and another was started. On turn 11 the second and third designs were made obsolete and new identical designs were created. In the build queue (which was still building the third copy of the first design), one of the second design was added. In the next few turns the first design completed, the second design completed and another of the second design started.

On turn 20, the obsolete Versions of the second and third designs were removed from the design screen. This is apparently the "garbage cleaning" routine to remove unused designs from the design screen. I assume that it is run every 10 turns.

On turn 21, the third design was made obsolete and a new, identical design was created. This new design was added to the build queue after the copy of the second design that was under construction.

On turn 30, all obsolete designs disappeared as expected. On turn 31, all three designs had new, identical designs created.

Now for the squirrely part (no offense to squirrels intended). Throughout this process, whenever a new ship would come off the construction line, the AI would send one of the ships that was exploring back to the home world to be scrapped. This sometimes resulted in one ship being scrapped at the same time and place that the exact same ship was being built. I finally concluded that this was caused by the now working maintenance limit. Once a ship was constructed, the maintenance (in radioactives) was over the 80% of income limit.

In my test, after turn 31, no ship appeared in the build queue until turn 36, when the designated ship made it back to the homeworld to be scrapped. At that time, 2 copies of the first (smallest) design were placed in the build queue.

I am concluding this test at this time due to baby duty. I want to next spend a little time investigating the maintenance limit and the aggressive scrapping of vessels that the AI seems to enjoy currently.

[This message has been edited by Alpha Kodiak (edited 30 June 2001).]

[mac5732]

Atrocities, you said their building base ships? Is this in a mod or straight game? if straight how long before they started building, is this part of 1.41 patch? I think its great if they now build baseships, how about invasions with troops?? any sign AI using this as well??

just some ideas Mac

[Alpha Kodiak]

Well so much for the "Best laid plans of mice and men..."

The pattern I saw earlier works great in a high-tech game where there are no changes to technology during the 10 turn cycle.

In a game where technology is changing, new designs are generated in each size class. This seems to cause the AI to always build the first entry in the queue.

[Atrocities]

Has the AI started building better ships?

The ones I have encountered have often been formidable to say the least.