Anyone try repair ships for the AI yet?

Atraikius · #1 July 13th, 2001, 06:36 PM

Getting the AI to design a repair ship is not hard (have had one of mine designing a tender for a while), but so far I've only had the AI build them once - had 2 attack ships designs, both light cruisers, one had 3 DUC 3's and 2 plasma torp 1's, other had repair bay, and one CSM 3. The attack ship was listed first in the DesignCreation file, and had been designed more recently, yet the AI would only build the tender.

Sinapus · #2 July 16th, 2001, 06:28 AM

Well, I got the neutrals to build repair ships, though it looks like they are not building space yard ships now. Hm.

Q · #3 July 16th, 2001, 11:59 AM

To be really useful a repair ship must be included into the fleets. Until now only attack/defense ships and carriers are included into fleets by the AI. Not minesweepers, not boarding ships, not repair ships. At least that's what I've seen.
So the only possibility is to include repair bays either in attack/defense ships or IMO better into carriers. I tried to do that in my AI modififications of the CueCappa and Phong and in a different way with the Borg. Don't use space yard's because then the AI will start construct something with it and the ships cannot move!!

Tampa_Gamer · #4 July 17th, 2001, 01:14 AM

Q nailed the issue. Until the design file contains a field to indicate whether a given design should be included in attack/defense fleets, you are forced to include it in one of the attack/defense ship designs.

Alpha Kodiak · #5 July 17th, 2001, 12:37 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
Q nailed the issue. Until the design file contains a field to indicate whether a given design should be included in attack/defense fleets, you are forced to include it in one of the attack/defense ship designs.

Even better would be a fleet composition (perhaps in the fleet file) so that you could specify that an optimal fleet would contain a specific combination of support ships (repair, mine sweeping, stellar manipulation, troop transports, boarding ships, etc.) along with attack ships and carriers. Otherwise, you are likely to get a fleet full of repair ships only, or something equally undesirable.

Even cooler would be allowing multiple fleet types, and specify the general objectives each fleet type would be used for.

Obviously, that would be a major change, and there would have to be flexibility built in to not hold a fleet up if the only available mine sweeper was on the other side of the empire, but it would sure make it easier to get the AI to act more like a human player.

Atraikius · #6 July 17th, 2001, 12:28 PM

So far I've found that Attack Ships, Carriers, Boarding Ships, Kamakaze Ships, and attack bases will be included in attack fleets. Defense ships are only included in defense fleets, and if designed as a warship, Troop Transports will be included in attack fleets.

Since Boarding ships seem to work like Troop Transports in that the fleet strategy needs to be set for boarding as the primary movement choice, I've found that having an AI use the Boarding ship as an alternate design will allow some control over the AI building mixed ship designs. I've also found that by using the Boarding and Kamakaze ships as the support designs, they will be included in fleets, which has allowed me to get an AI to build two separate types of attack ships (one using attack ships, the other attack bases as an attack base is classified as a ship in the vehichle data file), a fleet tender (repair ship) using the Boarding ship, and a point defense ship using the Kamakaze ship. All of these ships are included in attack fleets, and with carefull balancing of the Construct_Vehicle file, some control over the fleet composition can be made.

Tampa_Gamer · #7 July 18th, 2001, 01:54 AM

Atraikius - what is the frequency of the Kamikaze Ship and Boarding Ship in the attack fleets (i.e. approximate % total vs % added to fleets)? A number of us AI Modders tried this method back in January for adding additional support ships, etc., but for the most part these ships just sat at the Homeworld and did nothing and were rarely, if ever, added to fleets. Perhaps MM slipped this change in (or correction) since then. . .

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 17 July 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 17 July 2001).]