Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Icemania

quote:

ORIGINAL: OJsDad

Hello. 

   I got the AI Extended mod a few days ago.  I'm on my second game (after having got destroyed by the Naxxilian).  I'm playing Extreme difficulty.  One thing I've noticed in both games is that the AI doesn't seem to be doing a good job with ship design.  In my first game, everything was equipped with missiles only.  In the second game, everything is equipped with gravitic weapons only.  In both game, I had researched fighter bays, but the AI seems to ignore these.  Nor does I seem to build balanced weapon load outs.

Am I missing something.

Thanks

OJsDad

The AI for each race has designs focused on particular weapons (and other factors) and research orders that align with that. Those choices are stated in the updated help files for each race. If you play with a race focused on Missiles, manually research something else while automating the ship designs (which are still focused on Missiles) then there will be a misalignment. This post from a few pages ago should help explain why that was needed and there are some ideas if you want to change it more to your liking.

quote:

Does changing research priorities in the empire settings screen change how the AI will design ships as well? So for example I switch the research priority from beams to rail gun, and subsequent designs will prefer rail guns to beam weapons.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

If you look in the design templates folder, you can find that the human destroyer design includes:

WeaponBeam ;6
WeaponMissile ;3

So the human AI designs (in default setup) will always use 6 beam and 3 missile as long as they can fit to size. The focus should influence what to research and possibly also influence which beam weapon to actually equip, for instance.

It is a good idea to be aware of this if you have just one of the research/design settings automated. No matter how much you research phasers, the human AI designers won't use them. And unless you mess with tech focuses, the human research-AI won't spend much time on phasers, no matter how much you equip them. If you change research focus to phasers, I think you will see the AI research it, though.

quote:

ORIGINAL: deciplex
Actually, it seems like the AI will look at the research priorities when deciding how to outfit ships. I had an early game as the humans, who are beams and missiles by default so the starting destroyer design is with those two weapon types, i.e. pulse blaster and seeking missile. I turned off all manual upgrades and waited until energy collectors were researched. I saved the game, set the research priority from missiles and beams like before, to missiles and rail guns, then turned on auto-upgrades for destroyers. When the AI designed a new ship to add the energy collectors, it had swapped out the pulse blasters for long range guns. I reloaded the save, kept the research priority as beams and missiles, turned on auto-upgrades, and this time I got a destroyer design with the blasters and missiles. Seems pretty conclusive.
This was with auto-research set to OFF, mind you.