Problems with ship design

[phramus]

Looking for some insight into the ship design process.

I started my current game with most things automated, including ship design. Plus, I left everything on auto/auto for upgrade/retrofit. I immediately did a manual upgrade of all the military ship designs, making them all orange. Early game, this worked great. The AI updated my designs as modules improved, and retrofitted them to new modules as they became available. However, around the time that I hit the "size 400" tech, everything went to hell. The AI started producing its own (white) designs and completely ignored my oranges. What have I missed here? I really don't want to go with either all white designs or with a fully manual click fest. Is there no in between?

[Bingeling]

I am not sure what was going on before size 400. Automation is either on or off, but you may still have your own designs alongside the AI design of the same class. Only one of them will be "latest buildable design", though.

What you can do, is to browse the Empire Policy windows and find the checkboxes in the Research section that allows you to have the AI ignore the (un)selected ship classes.

So you can do destroyers, the AI does the rest. For instance.

[phramus]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

I am not sure what was going on before size 400. Automation is either on or off, but you may still have your own designs alongside the AI design of the same class. Only one of them will be "latest buildable design", though.

What you can do, is to browse the Empire Policy windows and find the checkboxes in the Research section that allows you to have the AI ignore the (un)selected ship classes.

So you can do destroyers, the AI does the rest. For instance.

Not sure I follow your first point. For any design, white or orange, you can elect to separately automate each of "upgrade" and (for state designs) "retrofit" events. In my case, both events were automated for all designs. Before size 400, there were no white designs -- that is, they were all obsoleted by my initial manual upgrades (which are permitted, even with "automated" on) and did not return until the size 400 tech. [Actually, it was in that time frame, but not necessarily linked to that specific tech.] After the problem point, though, then both white and orange designs existed for each subrole, and the white designs took precedence. If I obsoleted a white design and manually upgraded my orange design, then when the next retrofit point arrived, the AI would just build new white designs. Seems very buggy.

Unchecking specific subroles in the empire policy screen is the same as selecting "manual" upgrades for those subroles in the the design screen .. with retrofit still on auto. I haven't tried this, but I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for the reply.

[Bingeling]

Not sure what happened in your game.

Having retrofit on/off is just a way to preserve special ships. If you have "My special cruiser" alongside the "AI cruiser" you may want to turn retrofit off on your own to avoid it being retrofitted to "AI cruiser" if you for instance tell a fleet it is in to retrofit. It is the way for instance "Alien Ships" you find survive without being retrofitted to the crap designs of your own technology.

[phramus]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Not sure what happened in your game.

Having retrofit on/off is just a way to preserve special ships. If you have "My special cruiser" alongside the "AI cruiser" you may want to turn retrofit off on your own to avoid it being retrofitted to "AI cruiser" if you for instance tell a fleet it is in to retrofit. It is the way for instance "Alien Ships" you find survive without being retrofitted to the crap designs of your own technology.

I tested "manual" upgrade and "auto" retrofit for a single ship class. The test doesn't explain what happened originally, as I had already reverted to all white designs to preserve my sanity. For this test, though, I upgraded the white design (made it orange) for the frigate class. This didn't automatically trigger a retrofit, nor did I think it would. When the next retrofit point came along, though, my upgraded design was used. Of course, this left me one retrofit behind current, but it did demonstrate that the AI would use my changed design and not create a new white. To stay current after upgrading the design, I can just select all ships of the class and tell them to retrofit. That's OK, except that I've noticed another issue. If ship behaviors are automated, a retrofit command may or may not work, depending on whether the AI decides to grab the ship or fleet for its own purposes before the retrofit happens. Still, this may be manageable .. though I see it as a "work around".

[Bingeling]

The only link between design updates and retrofit is that the AI will suggest to retrofit after it does the design pass following new technology.

I almost never accept this suggestion (if I got that suggest choice on), since it is usually a bad idea to retrofit all at once. So I manual retrofit by fleet orders, in which case the retrofit choice on the design is relevant. If retrofit is off, the ship will refuel instead of retrofit when that fleet order is given.

The AI does not change your designs, the only thing close to that is pressing "automatically upgrade design" or whatever it is called. This will make the AI replace stuff with later versions (like a new blaster upgrade). If you make your "yellow" design, it will be there until you obsolete it (in which case it will still stay at least as long as there is a ship using it). I guess what you experience is that the default design filter is "latest buildable design", and the AI is quick to replace its design when a new tech is available. You will still find your design if you change the filter to "buildable designs". And as long as they are not obsolete, you can at least build them from the construction yards menu (but not by the build shortcuts below the selection panel).

By turning automation off, either for single ship classes or for all, you will get rid of the problem that the AI inserts its design and you risk building/retrofitting to designs you don't want to use.

An automated fleet may or may not retrofit on its own initiative. I don't automate fleets myself . If you want to force an otherwise automated fleet to retrofit, grab it, give it retrofit order, and then automate it again. It will be automated once retrofit is complete. Setting automation on does not cancel the current order, which can be useful in quite a few situations.

[Tophat1815]

Read through the thread and not at all clear what happened either. Do you have a "save game"showing this situation? Are you using any mods and if so which? Is the problem ongong? By that I mean if you start another game of DW does the situation replicate?

Is this situation happening in Universe? Shadows? Legends? Basically what version of the game. If DWU is it happening in what build of the game? Did it happen in earlier builds.......patches if you played any before this.

Can you list the OS you are using as well?

[phramus]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

The only link between design updates and retrofit is that the AI will suggest to retrofit after it does the design pass following new technology.

I almost never accept this suggestion (if I got that suggest choice on), since it is usually a bad idea to retrofit all at once. So I manual retrofit by fleet orders, in which case the retrofit choice on the design is relevant. If retrofit is off, the ship will refuel instead of retrofit when that fleet order is given.

The AI does not change your designs, the only thing close to that is pressing "automatically upgrade design" or whatever it is called. This will make the AI replace stuff with later versions (like a new blaster upgrade). If you make your "yellow" design, it will be there until you obsolete it (in which case it will still stay at least as long as there is a ship using it). I guess what you experience is that the default design filter is "latest buildable design", and the AI is quick to replace its design when a new tech is available. You will still find your design if you change the filter to "buildable designs". And as long as they are not obsolete, you can at least build them from the construction yards menu (but not by the build shortcuts below the selection panel).

By turning automation off, either for single ship classes or for all, you will get rid of the problem that the AI inserts its design and you risk building/retrofitting to designs you don't want to use.

An automated fleet may or may not retrofit on its own initiative. I don't automate fleets myself . If you want to force an otherwise automated fleet to retrofit, grab it, give it retrofit order, and then automate it again. It will be automated once retrofit is complete. Setting automation on does not cancel the current order, which can be useful in quite a few situations.

The AI only suggests if you have chosen that option. Fully automated does not suggest. If you have the "suggest" option on, then accepting the suggestion is the same as manually doing it.

The AI DOES change your designs ... and if it didn't, there would be no point in having "auto" for upgrades and/or retrofit of orange designs. The point of the original post was to say that this worked like a charm for a while then totally ceased working.

I agree that turning automation off may be required to prevent the AI from ignoring my designs. Again, this is a bug. Orange designs have the same manual/auto settings as white designs, so they should work the same.

The problem with the AI changing your retrofit mission is that the AI doesn't "remember". Once your retrofit mission is canceled, it won't be reinstated.

Agreed that turning automation off for specific design types may be the only solution .. an annoying work around for bugs.

If you don't automate fleets, then they don't take care of themselves (refuel, etc.). That's too much micro for me. Also, it's not yet clear to me that fleet postures will work with automation off.

[phramus]

ORIGINAL: Tophat1812


Read through the thread and not at all clear what happened either. Do you have a "save game"showing this situation? Are you using any mods and if so which? Is the problem ongong? By that I mean if you start another game of DW does the situation replicate?

Is this situation happening in Universe? Shadows? Legends? Basically what version of the game. If DWU is it happening in what build of the game? Did it happen in earlier builds.......patches if you played any before this.

Can you list the OS you are using as well?

Sorry, no save game. I got annoyed and reverted to all white designs before deciding to look for solutions. I don't know if the situation will replicate or not. If I start a new game, I will most likely use different settings in an attempt to avoid the issue.

This is Universe. Steam version, so latest patch. I'm a noob, so it's all a fresh install.

Win 7, 64-bit Pro.

Edit: I am using the DAS "neutral" UI mod. Can't see that being an issue, but then what do I know?

[phramus]

Thanks for the replies, guys. My original concern was that maybe I'd overlooked the obvious. I think it's clear now that I did not. Complex software becomes a "complex system", meaning that it's difficult or impossible to accurately predict. That said, automated cars will be prevalent in the near future. Is that scary or what?

[Tophat1815]

ORIGINAL: phramus

Thanks for the replies, guys. My original concern was that maybe I'd overlooked the obvious. I think it's clear now that I did not. Complex software becomes a "complex system", meaning that it's difficult or impossible to accurately predict. That said, automated cars will be prevalent in the near future. Is that scary or what?

I have played DW since first game beta and had numerous weird situations arise. The vast majority were not game bugs,however some were. After new updates/patches there might be a new bug created,an adverse reaction between a mod and the new update,a mistake i made that went unnoticed until something that makes you go hummm happened or the random ai attempt to ruin my "best game ever". Personally I think Elliot added a hidden ai cheat smack a player down when all is going too well.

Hope your game straightens out and future games offer non game mechanics challenges!

If this does replicate again grab a save and post it in tech support forum,it'll get straightened out.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: phramus

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

The only link between design updates and retrofit is that the AI will suggest to retrofit after it does the design pass following new technology.

I almost never accept this suggestion (if I got that suggest choice on), since it is usually a bad idea to retrofit all at once. So I manual retrofit by fleet orders, in which case the retrofit choice on the design is relevant. If retrofit is off, the ship will refuel instead of retrofit when that fleet order is given.

The AI does not change your designs, the only thing close to that is pressing "automatically upgrade design" or whatever it is called. This will make the AI replace stuff with later versions (like a new blaster upgrade). If you make your "yellow" design, it will be there until you obsolete it (in which case it will still stay at least as long as there is a ship using it). I guess what you experience is that the default design filter is "latest buildable design", and the AI is quick to replace its design when a new tech is available. You will still find your design if you change the filter to "buildable designs". And as long as they are not obsolete, you can at least build them from the construction yards menu (but not by the build shortcuts below the selection panel).

By turning automation off, either for single ship classes or for all, you will get rid of the problem that the AI inserts its design and you risk building/retrofitting to designs you don't want to use.

An automated fleet may or may not retrofit on its own initiative. I don't automate fleets myself . If you want to force an otherwise automated fleet to retrofit, grab it, give it retrofit order, and then automate it again. It will be automated once retrofit is complete. Setting automation on does not cancel the current order, which can be useful in quite a few situations.

The AI only suggests if you have chosen that option. Fully automated does not suggest. If you have the "suggest" option on, then accepting the suggestion is the same as manually doing it.

The AI DOES change your designs ... and if it didn't, there would be no point in having "auto" for upgrades and/or retrofit of orange designs. The point of the original post was to say that this worked like a charm for a while then totally ceased working.

I agree that turning automation off may be required to prevent the AI from ignoring my designs. Again, this is a bug. Orange designs have the same manual/auto settings as white designs, so they should work the same.

The problem with the AI changing your retrofit mission is that the AI doesn't "remember". Once your retrofit mission is canceled, it won't be reinstated.

Agreed that turning automation off for specific design types may be the only solution .. an annoying work around for bugs.

If you don't automate fleets, then they don't take care of themselves (refuel, etc.). That's too much micro for me. Also, it's not yet clear to me that fleet postures will work with automation off.

We may be talking past each other but:

The AI never changes a design, apart from toggling the obsolete status. It makes a new one. The old is obsoleted, a new is made. The old one is still around (at least until no ship uses it any more). You may edit a design that has never been built, and you can always change the top left options (flee when, and friends).

If you have fully automation on stuff, you let the automation do its stuff. Making designs is the AI design choice, the retrofit all suggestion is the Construction AI choice.

You think the AI changes you design, it does not. It adds its own design, your design is still there. It may have been obsoleted (which you can undo), but I seriously doubt the AI will ever obsolete anything but its latest design. Something odd may happen if you edit the latest AI design, though, better to "copy as new" and then edit the copy.

The AI manages to have its fleets retrofitted, so an automated fleet should figure it out by itself eventually.

Postures work somewhat even if not automated. Fleets will respond to attack (at the most in-opportune moments). They will not "go back home" unless automated, I think. I have never become friends with postures, so I have not studied it in details...

If you want manual design and AI design for the same class (say frigate), you can do that just fine, but you need to take care when retrofitting frigates so that "your" frigates don't become AI frigates or the other way. You may have two (or more) buildable designs, but there will always be only one "latest buildable design" which is the one used by default when you or the AI orders a new, or retrofits a frigate. You can manually order a ship of any non-obsolete frigate design.

[moonraker65]

I keep getteng strange behaviour with ship and base designs. I always leave ship design on manual as I like to make my own designs. Since the 1.9.5.9 update I cannot seem to upgrade anything with weapons on. They just won't save at all. You click save after copying as new and they just stay as default designs. Anything that doesn't haven't have weapons on is ok and will upgrade normally.

[Bingeling]

I saw your bug thread. Does it happen without the mod?

[moonraker65]

Yes with or without the mod

[phramus]

<<< SNIP >>

We may be talking past each other but:

The AI never changes a design, apart from toggling the obsolete status. It makes a new one. The old is obsoleted, a new is made. The old one is still around (at least until no ship uses it any more). You may edit a design that has never been built, and you can always change the top left options (flee when, and friends).

If you have fully automation on stuff, you let the automation do its stuff. Making designs is the AI design choice, the retrofit all suggestion is the Construction AI choice.

You think the AI changes you design, it does not. It adds its own design, your design is still there. It may have been obsoleted (which you can undo), but I seriously doubt the AI will ever obsolete anything but its latest design. Something odd may happen if you edit the latest AI design, though, better to "copy as new" and then edit the copy.

The AI manages to have its fleets retrofitted, so an automated fleet should figure it out by itself eventually.

Postures work somewhat even if not automated. Fleets will respond to attack (at the most in-opportune moments). They will not "go back home" unless automated, I think. I have never become friends with postures, so I have not studied it in details...

If you want manual design and AI design for the same class (say frigate), you can do that just fine, but you need to take care when retrofitting frigates so that "your" frigates don't become AI frigates or the other way. You may have two (or more) buildable designs, but there will always be only one "latest buildable design" which is the one used by default when you or the AI orders a new, or retrofits a frigate. You can manually order a ship of any non-obsolete frigate design.

Agreed that we've been "talking past one another" .. an interesting phrase, I had to google it. I might have used the term "impedance mismatch", but the correct semantics are probably more easily inferred from your phrase.

I understand that designs are never overwritten. It is nevertheless correct to refer to an upgrade or retrofit as a "design change", particularly if the new design becomes "current" and the old design is obsoleted.

Your observation that "Something odd may happen if you edit the latest AI design ..." may well be to the point, particularly if by "edit" you are including "manual upgrade" changes. I did, in fact, manually upgrade all of the AI's latest military ship designs at the start of the game. Maybe this was the issue?

Ostensibly, the "manual upgrade" and "copy as new" functions yield identical results, except that the former automatically obsoletes the original design, while the latter does not. But who knows what really happens? The two processes may execute substantially different code. I will start a new game with (mostly) the same automation choices as before; but in this game I will ignore the "manually upgrade" button in favor of "copy as new". Again, I will introduce new designs for all of the military ships at the start of the game -- but this time using the "copy as new" function and manually obsoleting the old designs. Hopefully the problems encountered before will not replicate.

Regarding postures, yes I have observed non-automated fleets being grabbed by the AI and sent off on a mission to another system. The AI flipped their posture from defense to attack when doing so. And yes, the fleet was stranded in the new system when the mission was over. I don't believe the AI will maintain these non-automated fleets, however (refuel, repair, etc.). I normally keep my fleets automated simply because I read somewhere that this is necessary for postures to work correctly; but I really don't have enough experience to know if this is true.

Finally, I may want more than one active design for a given class. I am assuming that this will work correctly even with automated design and "fully automated" retrofits turned on, as long as I choose "manual" for both the upgrade and retrofit options for all designs in the affected class (e.g., "frigate"). Dos that sound right?

[Bingeling]

I have barely tried manual design, apart from exceptions, since I find it clunky. I have my fun in other parts of the game...

I do not know what happens if there is only one design around, and the AI makes a new one. In any case you can unobsolete your design but take care when building to get the right one.

It may be that a lot is cured for you if you turn "upgrade" off in your design. It may be that the AI replaces (obsoletes) all the "yes, upgrade" ones.

As long as retrofit is turned off in the designs, they should be perfectly safe, unless you manually mess them up. Retrofit them from the ship list, and possibly a right click menu, but I doubt that one lets you choose which design to upgrade to. I have had some special exploration ships alongside the AI ones, and my own were allowed to hang around (since I never bothered to upgrade their design). I did not actually care much what equipment my moving monitoring stations had, apart from some movement capability and a long range scanner.

[Darkspire]

Ostensibly, the "manual upgrade" and "copy as new" functions yield identical results

They do not yield the same results, 'copy as new' will copy a current design, one of its uses is when you wish to have a current design modified or viewed that already has craft of that type, if you click on a design type that has craft of that type already built you will be told you can not edit it, that is where the 'copy as new' button comes into use, if you click cancel the current design that you 'copied' will not be made obsolete thus it is also useful in viewing a design without the warnings.

Finally, I may want more than one active design for a given class. I am assuming that this will work correctly even with automated design and "fully automated" retrofits turned on, as long as I choose "manual" for both the upgrade and retrofit options for all designs in the affected class (e.g., "frigate"). Dos that sound right?

That would be correct, just remember that you will have to manually select which subtype of the type that you wish to build, you may have three current designs for a Destroyer class but if you are on auto build then the AI will only build one of the types, you will have to choose the subtype yourself.

As for designs in general the Design Templates do help, a bit, they are very general though, they do lack a certain control, like being unable to designate what fuel a reactor uses, always worth having the private ships run on one fuel type and the state on another. Once you understand the tech tree for the theme you are using you could then move onto manual design and use the 'automagicly upgrade design' button, the reason I say understand the tech tree is because you will need to understand what the various classes have in connection with each other, like weapons, if you fit lasers the auto upgrade will only fit the best laser, no matter that you have a much higher class of phaser.

Darkspire

[phramus]

Well, I did the next test. Started a game, same auto settings as before except that research is manual in the new game. I immediately made a couple of custom designs, verified that my custom designs were the "latest buildable", and waited for stuff to happen. Once Enhanced Construction (ship size 300) was researched, new white designs appeared within a very few days for most ship types. There was no new design for the colony ship for some reason. Also, the original troop transport design had disappeared, leaving only the new design. That seemed odd, as no other designs were missing.

Anyway, the new designs became the "latest buildable" designs, but they themselves were not based on the previous set of latest buildables. Instead, they were based on the original set of white designs, a couple of which had already been obsoleted by my two oranges. Wherever a new design replaced an original, the original was obsoleted (if it hadn't already been). My custom designs were not obsoleted, but they are no longer "latest buildables", so they won't get auto updated/retrofitted.

This is all consistent with what happened in my original game. In that game, I must not have built my custom designs until after Enhanced Construction (my first tech) was researched, as the problem didn't manifest in that game until after Component Prefabrication (ship size 400) was researched, some 20+ years later. For that 20+ years, my custom designs remained the "latest buildable" designs and were auto updated and retrofitted appropriately over that interval.

Bottom line is I'll either have to stick with white designs or go manual for at least the designs that I care to customize.

Finally, I would attach a save file, but I don't see how to do that.

[Bingeling]

The AI ship designer always implements the template defines in the designTemplates folder. This can be modded, as Icemania have done in his AI Improvement mod. It does not modify a design, it implements a new version of the design template (adding all the latest version of all the pieces defined). In early game, pieces are missing (not yet researched), and items may be removed to fit a cruiser under 400 size, for instance, but it is always the same template being used.

Take a look in the designTemplates folder to see what it is about.

Any simple "retrofit" or "build" order will use the latest buildable design of that class. In the construction yard list and in the build order screen you can however define which design to build, and in the ship list your can retrofit and define which design to retrofit to. You can only choose non-obsolete designs, though (which is a good thing, as the game matures there is a lot of obsolete designs).

Mixing manual and AI designs for the same class is harder than doing either manual or AI. You have to pay attention to retrofits, you have to pay attention to building. Turning retrofit off helps, though. In the "old days" having a fancy alien cruiser avoiding being retrofitted to your own crappy cruiser design (once they were buildable) was not so easy...

If you want some "help" from the AI in providing designs you can design from, I would rather suggest to turn AI design on before an important tech is research, and turn it off after the AI design appears. You can easily obsolete the AI designs you don't want by toggling the red blob-thing on the right end of the design list.