Annoying feature about the speed values in AI_Design_Creation.txr

Trachmyr · #1 April 6th, 2001, 12:25 AM

I'm working on a mod that uses the "Engines per Move" field, requiring ships to use the same % of their weight in engines to achieve the same speed. However, the entries for "Desired Speed" and "Min. Speed" in the AI_Design_creation.txt actually refers to ENGINES not speed. The only way I see to get arround this problem, is to make seperate templates for every size of ship for every race! That's a lot of work!

Here's my question(s): Is there a better/easier way to do this, and if I do this, will it cause problems with the AI?

Any answers greatly appreciated!

(P.S. I wrote MM about this and asked him to change it so that Speed refers to SPEED not engines (but before any bonous movement is added))

Baron Munchausen · #2 April 6th, 2001, 01:07 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Trachmyr:
I'm working on a mod that uses the "Engines per Move" field, requiring ships to use the same % of their weight in engines to achieve the same speed. However, the entries for "Desired Speed" and "Min. Speed" in the AI_Design_creation.txt actually refers to ENGINES not speed. The only way I see to get arround this problem, is to make seperate templates for every size of ship for every race! That's a lot of work!

Here's my question(s): Is there a better/easier way to do this, and if I do this, will it cause problems with the AI?

Any answers greatly appreciated!

(P.S. I wrote MM about this and asked him to change it so that Speed refers to SPEED not engines (but before any bonous movement is added))

Since there is a hard limit on the NUMBER of engines a ship can carry there doesn't seem any reasonable way for the AI to design its ships by any other rule than numbers of engines. I've been playing a game using a mod that give engines more than ONE standard movement and then gives ships different 'engines per move' to scale the number of engines more gradually by ship size, though it's not as exact as you seem to want to do. Escorts and Frigates only need 5 engines, destroyers 6, light cruiers 8, cruisers and battlecruisers 10, and battleships and dreadnoughts 12. This is a 'reasonable' scale of increasing movement cost to my mind. We are only dealing in approximations in this game.

I should point out, though, that the max speed of larger ships goes DOWN as the engine count goes up, so the scale is a bit steeper than it may look. Escorts move 7 for their 5 engines, frigates and destroyers 6, all cruisers move 5, BB and DN move 4. So, there is a reason to still build destroyers or maybe even escorts in the later game. They are faster and can make 'torpedo runs' at larger ships.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 April 2001).]

Marty Ward · #3 April 6th, 2001, 02:23 AM

The limit on engine per ship size can be changed in the vehicle file. You could put any number of engines you want on a hull. Maybe that could help you do what you want.
I've noticed a lot of threads on getting engines to move based the hull size and on weight. What is the reasoning behind that?

Sinapus · #4 April 6th, 2001, 03:10 AM

In a mod I was testing a little while ago I increased the attack ship desired speed to 20 and then used vehicle.txt to increase the engines per move and max engines to increase the number of engines ships need for movement. Worked fine. I had battleships set to 3 engines per move and 15 max engines. The AI designer built them with 15 engines.

However, it *is* tedious to increase the "desired speeds" of those ships by so much.

Procyon · #5 April 6th, 2001, 06:07 AM

My solution was to find and replace "Desired Speed := " with "Desired Speed := 10" effectively changing all 6's to 106's. AI now always uses max engines.

Trachmyr · #6 April 6th, 2001, 08:41 AM

Let me clarify what I'm talking about... I know you can change the limit of engines, and engines per move in Vechiclesize.txt; However if the AI_DesignCreation.txt says min speed 4 and desired speed 6... it will use 4-6 engines regardless of what SPEED that will achieve. This becomes a problem because the enties for "Attack Ship", "Carrier", etc. have a range of possible ship sizes (Attack Ships range from 100 to 1000 tons)... but if diffrent sizes have diffrent "Engines per Move" entries then you get the AI to build with far too few engines for larger ships. The Soulution is to create a seperate "Attack Ship" template for EACH hull size (times the number of races)... which is a lot of work, and I worry that this may cause other problems for the AI.

As for WHY I want to do this, I want to retain smaller ships in play for far longer... to do so, I make Large ships use a lot of engines (thus reducing space for weapons), or make them smaller. I know that the larger ships can put less engines on... but they still get too much speed for a couple of engines (thus more room for weapons) in my opinion.

Trachmyr · #7 April 7th, 2001, 12:46 AM

Tampa,
Thanks for the reply... The AI going retrofit crazy was something I had feared. Well, let's hope the patch fixes this. I can do the work to create all the hull sizes, but if it messes up the AI then it's all for nought.

Nitram Draw,
I'm afraid your suggestion (although very good, as I've added extra move to some ORGANIC hulls I've made for organic tech) won't solve my problem. But I certainly thank you for your reply!

[This message has been edited by Trachmyr (edited 06 April 2001).]

Tampa_Gamer · #8 April 7th, 2001, 01:04 AM

Trachmyr- some of early mods did try and make several attack ships (essentially one for each hull size) in order to maximize the efficiency of each design. Currently, the Darlok, Sergetti and Zi'Chung in the TDM ModPack have multi-designs, so check them out for ideals. The problems with multiple designs are the following:

(1) Each "design" is still valid in later games, thus the AI will still build them in later games (partial solution - what we did was make a range of hull designs so that you had 3 types of attack/defense ships)

(2) The AI for some reason continues to re-design the multi-designs even at full tech start! This leads to hundreds of the same designs, which would not be a problem except for the retrofit minister gets chumped trying to retrofit a design with no changes. [Note - this may be fixed in the next patch]

Anyway, this has been an issue for awhile and I just wanted to let you know how we were dealing with it. I will stop rambling

Nitram Draw · #9 April 7th, 2001, 01:26 AM

Trachmyr,
Could you get the effect you want by adding an extra standard move and extra combat move ability to each base hull type? It won't solve the space problem but it may be easier to accomplish, the AI would automatically get the ability.
I don't know if this ability will work on hulls but I have added extra supply to a scout hull type and it seems to work.

Sinapus · #10 April 7th, 2001, 03:01 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
Trachmyr- some of early mods did try and make several attack ships (essentially one for each hull size) in order to maximize the efficiency of each design. Currently, the Darlok, Sergetti and Zi'Chung in the TDM ModPack have multi-designs, so check them out for ideals. The problems with multiple designs are the following:

(1) Each "design" is still valid in later games, thus the AI will still build them in later games (partial solution - what we did was make a range of hull designs so that you had 3 types of attack/defense ships)

(2) The AI for some reason continues to re-design the multi-designs even at full tech start! This leads to hundreds of the same designs, which would not be a problem except for the retrofit minister gets chumped trying to retrofit a design with no changes. [Note - this may be fixed in the next patch]

Anyway, this has been an issue for awhile and I just wanted to let you know how we were dealing with it. I will stop rambling

So.... will you increase the desired speed Category for all ship entries in all AI_designcreation.txt files so those of us who -do- try to increase the engines-per-move and max engines don't have to spend time modifying it to match whatever changes you guys make?