An idea for AI ship weapons

[Baron Munchausen]

Cpt. Kwok: If you mean giving each unique weapon type a unique family, I can agree. We've got some weapon families identified by more than one family number -- Electric Discharge/Lightning Ray and Plasma Charge/Hyper Plasma Bolt in Organics, for example -- while we've got cases of several distinct and different weapons, like Ripper Beam/Incinerator Beam/Wave Motion under a single family in "High Energy Discharge" weapons. Completely illogical. I'm playing a game now where the Eee have begun researching HED weapons and they're throwing DREADNOUGHTS armed with Ripper beams at me! They already had a range problem, I'm defending with missiles. Now it's a critical disadvantage. If the Ripper were a different family than the Incinerator beam and the Wave-motion Gun they just wouldn't build those dreadnoughts until they had a ranged weapon suitable. Now, if they had tractor beams in those dreadnoughts it might be a different matter.

On the other idea, though, I completely disagree. Customizing weapon families in this way makes them only usable by the paticular race you've customized them for. I think all of the neutrals use the APB as their main weapon. You'd have to go back and alter the design files for them to include both families of the APB so their designs would not be affected. And that's just the neutrals. This could cause chaos with other race AIs. No, one family=one distinct weapon type. I do see that the APB has a very wide range of effectiveness. Maybe it needs to be reduced to 6 or 8 levels and made an 'early to mid-game' weapon, with something more powerful replacing it at the end. The tech field is "Energy Stream WeaponS" -- a plural, after all. Hmm, then we need another "Energy Pulse Weapon" too.

[Phoenix-D]

"This could cause chaos with other race AIs."

It becomes a mod you have to change all the AIs for then, like Pirates and Nomads (or my techmod).

It might be worth looking into even with that.

Phoenix-D

[Rollo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
...On the other idea, though, I completely disagree. Customizing weapon families in this way makes them only usable by the paticular race you've customized them for. I think all of the neutrals use the APB as their main weapon. You'd have to go back and alter the design files for them to include both families of the APB so their designs would not be affected. And that's just the neutrals. This could cause chaos with other race AIs. ...

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I don't think it is that much of a big deal. For the neutral attack ships, instead of

Majority Weapon Family Pick 1 := 9
Majority Weapon Family Pick 2 := 1
Majority Weapon Family Pick 3 := 25
Majority Weapon Family Pick 4 := 0
Majority Weapon Family Pick 5 := 0

you'd just use (going with numbers suggested below):

Majority Weapon Family Pick 1 := 9
Majority Weapon Family Pick 2 := 1
Majority Weapon Family Pick 3 := 201
Majority Weapon Family Pick 4 := 301
Majority Weapon Family Pick 5 := 25

something similar has to be done for all races.
Hehe, and just remember the "9" will mean "WMG only" .

Rollo

[Master Belisarius]

The work around that I did to fix this problem, is having different attack ship designs.
For example, look the Aquilaeian attack ships: they will use DUC cannons until research BC. When the AI research BC, start to use ships with Acid Globulae IV (this avoid the problem to have ships with useless weapons like Acid Globulae I and II).