AI should build carriers under some circumstances.

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Atarlost
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Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 24, 2015 1:58 am

AI should build carriers under some circumstances.

#1 Post by Atarlost »

Since the AI doesn't scrap ships it risks penalizing itself with obsolete fleets when not at war. This may be a contributing factor to the less aggressive AI being easier.

If, when not at war and not at max tech for ship components, the AI built carriers if able to do so it would help mitigate this since fighter upgrades aren't limited to a single weapon line and fighters are never rendered irrelevant by shields.

Building carriers would also be useful to AIs behind on tech for the same reasons.

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Dilvish
AI Lead and Programmer Emeritus
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Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:25 pm

Re: AI should build carriers under some circumstances.

#2 Post by Dilvish »

The AI does build some carriers, I see them in every game I play. Not usually at first, but once it starts running into enemies with shields, then it will usually start cranking out some carriers (generally not pure carriers, i.e., also using some direct fire weapons, and it seems familiar that we might have made that a requirement for them, that their carrier designs always have at least one direct fire weapon).
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Atarlost
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Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 24, 2015 1:58 am

Re: AI should build carriers under some circumstances.

#3 Post by Atarlost »

Dilvish wrote:The AI does build some carriers, I see them in every game I play. Not usually at first, but once it starts running into enemies with shields, then it will usually start cranking out some carriers (generally not pure carriers, i.e., also using some direct fire weapons, and it seems familiar that we might have made that a requirement for them, that their carrier designs always have at least one direct fire weapon).
Either it's not something the stable branch has caught up to or I missed it then.

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Dilvish
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Re: AI should build carriers under some circumstances.

#4 Post by Dilvish »

Atarlost wrote:Either it's not something the stable branch has caught up to or I missed it then.
Oh, I recall pretty clearly that was an important thing to have working for 0.4.7, as part of the whole fighters rollout. Are you fielding shielded ships? I think the AI doesn't start using Fighters/Carriers until it starts facing a fair number of shielded ships.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

Atarlost
Space Floater
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 24, 2015 1:58 am

Re: AI should build carriers under some circumstances.

#5 Post by Atarlost »

Dilvish wrote:
Atarlost wrote:Either it's not something the stable branch has caught up to or I missed it then.
Oh, I recall pretty clearly that was an important thing to have working for 0.4.7, as part of the whole fighters rollout. Are you fielding shielded ships? I think the AI doesn't start using Fighters/Carriers until it starts facing a fair number of shielded ships.
I was definitely fielding shields, but possibly the other AIs weren't.

In any case waiting to see shields before building carriers means failing to take advantage of the way obsolete carriers degrade into glass cannons instead of glass feathers like obsolete gunships. Preferring carriers on lower aggression levels until the AI gets into endgame weapons or is losing ships would mitigate the problem with building ships that will just waste upkeep later on.

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