Why the AI builds the Ships it does

[Alpha Kodiak]

I get quite a bit confused by how this works. For fighters, I usually set up two designs, one for "guns" and one for rocket pods. The designs seem to toggle back and forth between the two and I get a decent mix. When I tried adding a third design only the one in the middle got built.

With attack ships, I wanted to get a mix of sizes, so I set up a class that goes up to battle cruiser first, then a second that is battleship only, and a third that is dreadnought only, with the smaller designs listed first. When I played a full tech game, I got a mix of the sizes (after I had played enough turns to get past the size limits at the start of the game.) Then, the low tech game I was playing finally got to the point where the larger sizes are available (and show up in the design screen), but so far, only the smaller class is being built.

I think that the construction minister somehow cycles through the list of available designs on a periodic basis whether it needs to start building one or not. Then when one needs to be built, it grabs the one it is currently looking at.

I do know that if you list the larger designs in the file first, it typically won't even create new designs for the smaller ships once the larger designs are available.