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

[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...