Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?

[Suicide Junkie]

I like the system I made for gritecon.

Using required mounts and maintenance modifiers on the hulls, the build cost is made to rise FASTER than the size of the hull. Maintenance is made to rise SLOWER, taking into account the higher cost of the components.

In Gritecon, build cost is equal to size cubed.
So an 800kt ship takes the same amount of time to build as eight 400kt ships.
However, that 800kt ship costs about the same as a single 400kt ship.

Big ships are thusly great to have around, but they're really hard to make.
Overall, you've gotta find a balance. If you are at peace, or winning with relatively few losses, then you build bigger ships so that you can increase your tonnage-in-the field without paying more maintenance. If you start losing, then you can build smaller ships, and get more tonnage per turn to throw into the meat grinder.

[Makinus]

Suicide Junkie said:
In Gritecon, build cost is equal to size cubed.
So an 800kt ship takes the same amount of time to build as eight 400kt ships.
However, that 800kt ship costs about the same as a single 400kt ship.

If i mod these alterations in the game, would the stock (or TDM) AI work ok? Or they would be at a severe disvantage from the player (assuming a medium bonus).

My skill level: I can beat AIs with low bonus 90% of the time (never make any teatries with anyone, but don´t select AIs x humans), at medium bonus i can beat the ais 50% of the time... and at high bonus i can beat the ais only 10% of the time. Normally i play with medium bonus.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Hmm...You might have too much bonus there.

Dunno. You can always test them in-game.

[Suicide Junkie]

The stock AI assumes that the biggest hull is always the best.
Making any of the changes suggested in this thread would falsify that assumption, and the AI would go down hard.

It would be entirely possible to change the AI files so that it will build a decent mix of smaller ships, however.

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Combining the gritecon with the other things suggested would be much too far, indeed.
Gritecon's changes stand on their own to make a nice utility curve in which all sizes can be useful depending on the situation.

Long term, you can't support much of a fleet with small ships. Short term, you can't build much of a fleet with big ships.
The shorter the term you are considering, the smaller the ships you will build.

[Glyn]

How about a new race tech group that make small ships better?

Can wepon mounts be limited to only smaller ships? Or would you have to create a special ship clase for the race tech?

Other posable race tech groups: Fighters and/or Missile races.

[Dizzy]

Suicide Junkie said:
The stock AI assumes that the biggest hull is always the best.
Making any of the changes suggested in this thread would falsify that assumption, and the AI would go down hard.

I disagree. By the time AI start getting to the nifty weapons, ship contruction has just got up to around the CL stage at which point some nice designs will come out and hopefully live a while to make an impact. Casualties aside, the decreased maintenance costs will enable these ships to hang for a long time. The bonuses these ships have will enable them to be somewhat competitive later on and that's the point.

Bottom line is balance. Aside from QNP propulsion or gritCons idea, this is a step in the right direction that's more in line with staying stock.

Does the AI retrofit ships?

It would be entirely possible to change the AI files so that it will build a decent mix of smaller ships, however.

This should be the case already... I guess since no one has addressed the big ship little ship issue... we've left the AI set to bigger is better...

[Suicide Junkie]

Quite simply, the AI by default will always build only the biggest.

If biggest is not best, then the human players will trounce them even more than they already do.

Now, as I also said, it is possible to mod the AI to build smaller ships too, but that's a serious bit of rolling up your sleeves and digging in with your favorite text editor.

[Dizzy]

What about the AI that seem to never get into bigger ships? At that point, they can stay competitive... I'm not penalizing AI by making larger ships suck, smaller ships are just not so out of date...

So, what are some tips for modding the AI to build a few of the smaller ships?

[Wenin]

I'm currently playing the Imperium Verus Mod, and it made Solar sails only work for 600Kt (Frigates in the mod) sized ships. You also can't have a Solar Sail with any other engine. The top of the line Solar Sail gives movement of 8, using only 1 supply unit per movement. The other ships use QNP engine system, though their speeds can get up and past 10 per turn they won't have the range.

So in this system the FGs are still nice ships late in the game.

[StarShadow]

Well...it would be nice if the AI could use the advanced small hulls, but even if it doesn't, the idea (of advanced small hulls) is still good. After all, the point is to make the small hulls competitive against larger hulls, not to make them better than large hulls.