Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: onomastikon

I completely agree. Not only is it too much work, it is not dynamic.
I would like to see added to the design screen area an "Obsolete this component" section, which would make most of my issues with automatic upgrading irrelevant. (Granted, it would not make the AI use better designs for itself, but I could live with that.) With a simple checkbox, upgrading would never place older, obsolete items in your ships anymore.

Of course, all of this would still be moot if the "automated" upgrading and retrofitting would not function in the future.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Litjan

I agree - the customized design are just a band-aid for the current AI´s inability to make good designs.

The customized design approach can work for an AI empire - in a roleplaying way. You can put in a sequence of designs that follow a predetermined research path. The AI will research accordingly, to achieve the ability to build the custom designs. But it is not able to follow a different path (i.e. railguns instead of phasers) and it can not react to an enemies technology (i.e. put more armor on if an opponent has good railguns). The whole concept is about as viable as "custom designing" the way evolution evolves the flora and fauna on a planet...

For the player it´s even more complicated. IF he automates ship design AND research, it would work the same way as it would for an AI. But as soon as the human player strays from the predetermined research path, all the custom designs become either not buildable or are simply not the best design currently available.

1.) Distant Worlds needs a design AI that is able to build the very best design currently possible. This includes adjusting to parameters like resources available, enemy designs, galaxy proportions and racial preferences.

2.) Distant Worlds also needs an automation that helps the player maintain and upgrade his fleet in an ergonomic and smart way.

I think the effort would be better spent on improving the two points above than in implementing custom designs. If they help Elliot see some new ideas and design paradigms - all the better. But eventually the AI needs to learn to build great designs dynamically.

Jan

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arcatus

The AI isn't all bad.

I just finished a game where I just had to mop up some Zenox to hit my victory conditions. My tech and fleets were superior, but the buggers still managed to hit a weakly defended planet and conquered it!

Well played Zed. Well played.

However - I think we all agree on their (lack) of shipdesigning... Once my fleet got there Zed was dead in seconds...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shadow Tiger

Shark7 you sparked the idea that took this from a jumbled good idea in the wrong place to something interesting. Instead of trying to fit the design project concept into the constraints of the current design screen, why not use the policy interface?

I present for your perusal my take on the Design Policy screen. Keep in mind this would be accessed from the current Designs screen, and would be used to generate AI designs. As conceptualized more fine tuning can always be done manually. The idea is KISS as much as possible. Let the player give the general direction then the AI can go from there. Too specific and things break down as tech level and construction size increase.

The basic idea is to have one design policy per ship role, to make things easy on the AI. I suppose multiple policies for a role are possible, but that could induce headache much like multiple buildable designs can be now.

The preferred/secondary/tertiary weapon choices would be pull downs using the same logic currently used in the Empire Policy. Also the default attack/flee stances would be determined by the Empire Policy. I'm not sure of the best way to determine how much space to devote to weapons. Personally I'm of the opinion it should be a semi-generic option menu of something like: none/low/moderate/heave/nothing but. Similar to how I did the defense emphasis.

A couple other things I don't show in this mockup are station specific components.

Station Specific -
(Gas) Mining Engine (extraction rate: low/medium/high)
Luxury Resource Extractor (extraction rate: low/medium/high)
Construction Yard (1 for construction ship, give specific number for stations and space ports)
Weapon/Energy/HighTech Labs (number of each to use; only show on state designs)


And perhaps most importantly for some players is the list of components to never use on a specific design. That's right, I said specific design. Just to keep it interesting. Much of what would be on this list is already covered in the template. Mainly it's down to weapons and something I know I'm forgetting.

Do Not Use These Components -

Weapon Type(s) (Beam/Phaser/Torpedo/Missle/Area/Ion/?)
Reactor Type (?)
Shield Type (?)
Armor Type (possibly to )
?

Note that this will not set policy for the following types of components:

Automatic items not in policy - (ai default for design)
Command Center
Life Support
Habitation
Commerce Center
Medical Center
Recreation Center
Colonization Module (have 'use extra colonization modules when available?' option)
Weapon/Energy/HighTech Plants (based on number of construction yards)
Cargo Bays
Passenger Compartments


Oh yeah, one more important thing. The idea is that racial tech will override preferences in the template. Otherwise why have it?

That's it, it's late here and I just wanted to get this posted.

EDIT: Troops!! I forgot to add something for the gorram troops! Make a note to pencil it in, I'm going to bed.
EDIT2: Hyperdeny, Hyperblock, Damage Control, Repair Bots. Add those to the Optional category.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shadow Tiger

WiZz, this idea would be used by the AI instead of optimized designs. What I'm proposing is essentially an empire policy level system. It would be empire wide, and work from game start up to the end game. As for being predictable, that's already the case when every empire uses the same designs.

I can't comment on MoO2, but I do know that you wouldn't have to define everything in the template. And honestly, how many coders did MoO2 have vs DW? I think we've gotten a pretty good game considering the resources involved.

quote:

ORIGINAL: onomastikon

I second this (or twelve it or whatever). I've been wanting something like this for SO LONG. GREAT!!!!

Only two things I would add:

Thing 1: Explicit Choice for "fuel type" (e.g. Caslon or Hydrogen)

Thing 2: some sort of "never" list, such as:

- /checkbox/ NEVER put in /DROP DOWN/ on this type. Common things I would put in here would be, for example, engines of a type I do not want, reactors, planetary bombardment, troop modules, etc.