Ship Design Questions, Weapon Picks

[jc173]

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Originally posted by Deathstalker:
Ok, I am just finishing off my first/second/third shipsets. Now I am working on the AI...For the ship creation there is the weapon picks (1 through 5). Now this is how I ASSUME it works. Pick 1 is the most important and is what the ship 'fills up' on. Now if pick one is not available (through research) then it goes on to pick 2 etc. I want to design ships with straight Crystal Torp. And a second set with just High Energy Magnifiers. These wpns would be supplimented with a few well placed shard cannons.

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As I understand it that's pretty much how it works, although I'm a little shaky on how the AI decides to partition the space devoted to each component, from one of the default AI files.

Majority Comp Spaces Per One := 1200
Majority Comp Ability := Weapon
Secondary Comp Spaces Per One := 500
Secondary Comp Ability := Weapon

This looks kinda weird since it seems like you would devote one secondary weapon per 500 tons, but only one primary weapon per 1200 tons. There was a pretty good explanation of this awhile back, but I can't remember it or the title of the thread unfortunately, I should have probably saved it somewhere. You can have different types of ships, they just need different names, although the design type field has still has to be set to one of the default types.
I looked at the TDM modpack's AIs to get a better idea of how to set these files up. They have some examples with races having different types of attack ships etc.

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Also, the weight limit..now can I set this at say 400 and then design a totally seperate attack ship class for 400 and up that the AI will use?

Any help would be appreciated....The shipsets will eventually make their way to the mod section.(the second shipset will have wpns consisting primarily of tk.proj, but also a virus/subverter combo.)

Also (not quite done ), any advice on designing a crystal/organic race??

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You can have different designs of different weight classes for the same design, the only thing to keep in mind is the AI will probably keep constructing ships of those types even if it has bigger hull designs available. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you may still see LC's etc pretty late in the game that way. Against a player like me who uses the LC and CR as his main warships that's probably not a huge disadvantage, not sure it would work out against some who likes to build the biggest ships available.