I am seeing just fleet of same ships all the time.This is making the combat a bit of a turkey shoot in general.

Does the A.I try to make balanced fleets of just build latest ship?

In my expereince playing a couple of dozen games on Normal:

In the preious buils it has been concentrating on building 3 types of ship which mostly varried from game-to-game but always included the battleship for Yoral and Fleet carrier for Ashdar

It doesn't matter how many resources the AI has had it was always doing the above - I have been suggesting to have this changed for the same reason: to have more balanced fleets and "force" the AI to produce cruisers for example for its capital ships

Now, with the latest build, the AI seems to be largely doing the same, but I have noticed a couple of other ship types popping up.
Example: In my current game, the Gremak have a fleet of 4 Battleships, 6 Battlecruisers, 1 Escort Cruiser, and 1 Destroyer (also thre are Heavy Crusiers lurking around the map over which I am very hay abouth)

Now if the smaller ships would get slightly more priority, the AI would utilize its resources more effectively and we would get a perfect fleet combinations for our tactical engagements

I've played many games on hard difficulty. The different races do have specific weapons they like. AI making balanced fleets? Sometimes? You need something to take out fighters and missiles, otherwise having a balanced fleet doesn't really matter.

The AI tends to be poor at building up their planets or they fail to expand. So they might not get a lot of ship types researched.

You do see them upgrade their designs with new weapons. You can often look through one of their fleets and see a mix of ships built with early weapons and later weapons.

Don't know if they ever upgrade their older ships. I often don't do it myself, as its a pain and tedious or too expensive.

nathanebht wrote:I've played many games on hard difficulty. The different races do have specific weapons they like. AI making balanced fleets? Sometimes? You need something to take out fighters and missiles, otherwise having a balanced fleet doesn't really matter.

The AI tends to be poor at building up their planets or they fail to expand. So they might not get a lot of ship types researched.

You do see them upgrade their designs with new weapons. You can often look through one of their fleets and see a mix of ships built with early weapons and later weapons.

Don't know if they ever upgrade their older ships. I often don't do it myself, as its a pain and tedious or too expensive.

I found the instant refit function to be very helpful. Mostly only use this to upgrade the fleets that will engage in battle as it only takes one turn for them to be ready

Sometimes I do refit individual ships from a planets production menu directly, but only if I am running low on resources and the fleet in question is holding down a front line planet (since I do not have any resources to spare anyhow, that planet can slowly refit ships with useful new tech

As for balanced fleets: I have seen a lot of these lately after the AI update I guess, especially in early to mid game when old ships are still around
The AI does seem to upgrade these as eventually their ships are always carrying new stuff