Autodesign and AI Ship Variety
Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:43 am
So lately autodesign has has been on my mind.
I mentioned in another thread that the AI never seems to use heavy weapons, even when they research them.
This is because the AI always uses 'balanced' autogeneration, which usually puts medium weapons into heavy hardpoints. It's a valid option, since I believe you get twice the shots so putting a medium weapon there actually often provides a higher damage output, with less range of course.
It would be nice though if the AI created designs for both configurations. Then the navy composition code could build some mixture of them based on whatever criteria it uses.
I've also noticed that the auto design also never uses anti-missiles. I discovered this was due to the auto design configurations, and modified it a little so that if the anti-missiles are available, it may design with a mix of direct-PD and anti-missiles. I figure a mix is good because they complement each other: direct-fire PD can autofire so is good for close-in when you need that reaction fire, while the longer range of anti-missiles means that it is great for providing cover to other ships, and much more easily creates overlapping missile denial zones.
This means that the AI can now build ships with anti-missiles.
For example, when auto-designing an ashdar escort cruiser with rapid-fire and anti-missile techs researched,
Vanilla: https://imgur.com/a/ARVi9u0
Modded: https://imgur.com/a/ob9fts4
I also tweaked siege autogeneration so that, like balanced, it includes some point defense, as missile fleets do benefit from having PD, especially against other missile fleets.
In the process I also fixed a bug in the part ordering code that was causing nested mixed_goals to not work.
NOTE: this mod is in a bit of a weird place as of r22256. There is some additional work I need to do in order to make the AI fully use the new designs in this mod. However using this mod should still work without any errors.
Updated: 02/05/2018
I mentioned in another thread that the AI never seems to use heavy weapons, even when they research them.
This is because the AI always uses 'balanced' autogeneration, which usually puts medium weapons into heavy hardpoints. It's a valid option, since I believe you get twice the shots so putting a medium weapon there actually often provides a higher damage output, with less range of course.
It would be nice though if the AI created designs for both configurations. Then the navy composition code could build some mixture of them based on whatever criteria it uses.
I've also noticed that the auto design also never uses anti-missiles. I discovered this was due to the auto design configurations, and modified it a little so that if the anti-missiles are available, it may design with a mix of direct-PD and anti-missiles. I figure a mix is good because they complement each other: direct-fire PD can autofire so is good for close-in when you need that reaction fire, while the longer range of anti-missiles means that it is great for providing cover to other ships, and much more easily creates overlapping missile denial zones.
This means that the AI can now build ships with anti-missiles.
For example, when auto-designing an ashdar escort cruiser with rapid-fire and anti-missile techs researched,
Vanilla: https://imgur.com/a/ARVi9u0
Modded: https://imgur.com/a/ob9fts4
I also tweaked siege autogeneration so that, like balanced, it includes some point defense, as missile fleets do benefit from having PD, especially against other missile fleets.
In the process I also fixed a bug in the part ordering code that was causing nested mixed_goals to not work.
NOTE: this mod is in a bit of a weird place as of r22256. There is some additional work I need to do in order to make the AI fully use the new designs in this mod. However using this mod should still work without any errors.
Updated: 02/05/2018