Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[gregebowman]

Can't wait to try it out.

[Captain Kwok]

I'm working on improving the AI's ship designs for v1.14, including a new scheme for AI weapon selection which will be based on the specific vehicle type, rather than ships versus units. Feel free to post suggestions or designs that you find work well for you.

[Captain Kwok]

Another item for your consideration...

I'm working on v1.14 right now, which includes adding a vehicle size distribution component to the AI's design creation. For example, a race might design up to 3 sizes of Attack Ships if they have a wide range of hull sizes available. There is also race specific variables that determine the shape of the distribution, that is whether or not the race focuses on building more small ships or fewer large ships. Currently I have this set up for the following AI design types - Attack Ships, Defense Ships, Missile Ships, Carriers, and Weapon Platforms.

I'm wondering how often you guys use variable sizes of other design types, like repair ships, supply ships, or other freighter based ships. Do you typically use the largest hull for them and similar types?

[Q]

Usually I just use the biggest available hull size with the exeption of specialized ships (e.g. stellar manipulation ships).
More important IMO is the different composition of specialized fleets: defense/attack/planetary invasion fleets.

[Suicide Junkie]

What if you were to use small ships as the front line short-range strategy force, with fewer guns and heavy shields/armor?
That would complement their defense bonuses while the big warships provide the heavy firepower from long range.

[Captain Kwok]

I'm not so concerned about the size distribution for the combat ships, as that's more or less determined by the race's weapon choices. But I wasn't sure how to best utilize the revised system for non-combat ships... is it really necessary to have multiple sizes of repair ships for the AI? Does having more smaller mine sweepers help their distribution between fleets or is single ship sweeping capacity more useful - ie larger mine sweepers? Those are the kinds of things I'm not sure about.

[Baron Munchausen]

How do 'economics of scale' affect ship designs in the Balance Mod now? If larger ships are still "more efficient" then you'd make the best AI by just having it always use the largest available hull of the appropriate type. In many other games it does make sense to have support ships such as escorts be a few sizes smaller than "capital" ships but there are underlying design elements of SE that seem to make larger ships always more efficient, even in mods.

[mrscrogg]

I use the smallest size to get job done - if I can contruct a repair ship or medical ship as a " destroyer " class and save resourses and build time thats' what I do

[mrscrogg]

minesweepers are different larger hulls more " sweeping components quicker and more efficiernt job get done - samw for mine laying , satilites , so forth

[Captain Kwok]

It looks like I'll have to add suffixes to the design types to accomplish the new ship size scheme. I had wanted to avoid doing that so that I didn't have to add all sorts of extra conditional statements for a variety of ship/design functions, but the built-in script functions for picking and choosing design types operate entirely on the concept of 1 active design per design type.

I'm going to use the format "Attack Ship - Small", "Attack Ship - Medium", and "Attack Ship - Large" etc. for the design types that are subject to the size distribution scheme.