Q re ship design

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Siddham
Posts: 171
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:03 pm

Q re ship design

Post by Siddham »


I cannot see any difference between the various combat ship templates....frigate, destroyer, cruiser etc
and I wonder is there?
Does the AI treat them in any way differently...or does it distinguish between them at all?
mordachai
Posts: 684
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 4:55 pm

RE: Q re ship design

Post by mordachai »

I can only offer a partial answer, as there are more experienced folks who can add more, but I'll give you a start:

* Each of the military class vessels has a different target size in mind in the design template: 200, 300, 400, 500, ... etc.
* Only the top two ships - the battleship and the carrier - dynamically grow their size significantly as your build limits grow beyond 800 (the others seem to remain at or near their original design specs).
* Battleships gain more weapons (maybe proportionally per the template), and Carriers gain more fighter bays.

Beyond that, I do not know if the AI distinguishes Escort from Cruiser. If it does, I would imagine it does so by firepower, and then perhaps assigns escort duties to ships based on target value (i.e. high value targets get more firepower ships to protect them). This is purely speculation on my part.

I'm sure others will correct me & add to this... :)
Bingeling
Posts: 5186
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:42 am

RE: Q re ship design

Post by Bingeling »

It should be like this:

Ships have their armaments defined in the design template. A battleship won't grow larger, but they may require a large size to fit everything in the template. The designer drops components to fit under the build limit. This will make it look like it gains weapons with size.

If you make an escort design with lots of components, you will see the exact same thing as you see with battleships.

I would be amazed if the AI looks at anything but ship class when assigning targets. It assumes that the escort is tiny, and cruiser quite large, and uses cruisers for more valuable missions. An AI cruiser may protect a colony or important mine, an escort ship will probably escort a freighter.
Siddham
Posts: 171
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:03 pm

RE: Q re ship design

Post by Siddham »


So if I understand right, the AI generally follows the set target sizes for the different classes in its own designs, meaning for example that its frigates wont go beyond ~300...??

What about the player?
Is there any reason for the player not to keep increasing the size of their frigates as they unlock the construction tree..??
Any reason, other than nominal or cosmetic, to use the destroyer template or designation?
And how might this affect the AIs response to the players ships and fleets?
Aeson
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:36 pm

RE: Q re ship design

Post by Aeson »

Is there any reason for the player not to keep increasing the size of their frigates as they unlock the construction tree..??
Cost and desired use.
Any reason, other than nominal or cosmetic, to use the destroyer template or designation?
The "retrofit to latest designs" command (cntrl-right click with a fleet selected, then select from the menu), automated retrofits, and advisor-suggested retrofits will cause ships to refit to the latest design in their role, not necessarily to the latest version of that ship's design. Therefore, if you want to make use of any of these features, it's easiest to manage if you have no more than one current design in any given role (escort, frigate, etc).

Furthermore, I personally like to specialize my ships for the role that I'm going to assign them. System defense ships do not need to have significant range, and for them it's probably more important to have a fast-jumping hyperdrive (e.g. Kaldos) than a high-speed hyperdrive (e.g. Equinox) since they're responding to in-system threats and the distances are small enough that the jump initiation matters more for response time than the top speed. Similarly, you don't really need to have Fleet Targeting and Fleet Countermeasures on every ship in the fleet, so it makes a degree of sense to create a specialized command ship design to mount these (and possibly to carry any fleet admirals) which may trade a bit of firepower for staying power or something like that. You might also want to keep bombardment weapons on a separate design from your regular combat ships, as standard bombardment weapons are either useless for ship-to-ship combat (bombardment missiles) or not very effective (heavy and massive mass drivers, which have very poor bombardment performance and aren't the greatest at ship to ship combat). Thus, it makes some sense to have a dedicated bombardment ship design with a large number of bombardment weapons per ship (if you're going to create bombardment ships, at any rate), rather than diluting the firepower of the battle line with a handful of bombardment weapons on each ship. This suggests four general ship types - standard ships for the battle line, command ships, bombardment ships, and system defense ships. You may also want to diversify your fleet a bit - perhaps you'd like to have a raider (fast-moving, hard-hitting, but thin-skinned, perhaps with a small amount of troop transport capability and bombardment capability to take an occasional poorly defended colony, or boarding capacity to seize the occasional mining station or enemy warship) and a battleship (slow-moving, lots of firepower, very durable, doesn't bother with troop modules, bombardment weapons, or boarding pods because it's intended use is for the big pushes which will have dedicated support fleets to cover those roles if you want them), or perhaps you want to maintain separate long-range and short-range warship designs.
And how might this affect the AIs response to the players ships and fleets?
I don't think that the computer sees the type distribution of a player's ships and fleets, only the total firepower (which is calculated as the ship's maximum salvo damage).
mordachai
Posts: 684
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 4:55 pm

RE: Q re ship design

Post by mordachai »

again - sorry - limited knowledge.

The AI follows the designTemplates\<race>\<shiptype>.txt

Those files call for various amounts of things, and aim towards a specific size budget (but don't call one out explicitly - just implied by the fact that they want say 10 shields + 10 thrusters + 10 blasters.

To the best of my knowledge, "Capital Ship" and "Carrier" class do grow dynamically beyond the design template - but this is inferred based on a comment I saw while reading up on Extended AI mod, so I could be wrong there.

The player is welcome to design almost anything and call it almost anything. Carriers must have 40% space dedicate to hangar bays. Military ships must have a weapon, etc., but if you designed your Escorts to be 1500 size, then they're 1500 size.

Some mods even setup the AI to only build a single ship class for some races (say all Escorts, or only Capital Ships). There's nothing sacrosanct about the ship-designations - they're just 5 arbitrary "slots" to do with what you want, and the AI does based on design templates. Military definitely is treated differently than civilian, and base vs. ship, etc., as per "duh", but I don't believe AI knows an "Escort" from a "Cruiser"
Bingeling
Posts: 5186
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:42 am

RE: Q re ship design

Post by Bingeling »

The AI follows what is written in the design template. The default templates follow the logic of increasing size in escort - frigate - destroyer - cruiser - capital ship.

There is nothing preventing you (or others) from making a different set of ship templates where the capital ship is tiny and the escort is giant. The AI could struggle a bit, though, as it won't by default (unless modded otherwise) use escorts in fleets since it think that class is the small class.

There is nothing preventing the player from doing anything apart form with carriers and resupply ships which have some special rules.

The AI follows whatever is in its settings, both in designs and fleet composition. What you do as a player makes little if no difference in what the AI opponents do, apart form the AI seeming to avoid going to war against a superior power (probably measured by overall score and maybe military strength).

Apart from that I don't enjoy manual ship design, a reason why I would not bother increasing the size of frigates, is that I would probably never build one. There are only so many different designs needed in an empire. I want carriers, a main fleet ship, and potentially a "capital ship" with a long range scanner in each fleet. And if bored maybe another class for some swift raider fleets.

If you enjoy making powerful ships and think the AI is wimpy with its silly weak space vessels, consider to use Icemania's AI mod where the AI is configured to both build more powerful ships, and to research in a fixed and rather optimal way.
Siddham
Posts: 171
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:03 pm

RE: Q re ship design

Post by Siddham »


Good posts guys. A lot of good info and insights. Thanks :)

I am into manual ship design at this stage, and thinking along the lines outlined by Aeson - specialisation
I can see how I could use the various combat ship labels to designate purpose rather than size

I will definitely be trying out Icemania's AI mod in due course...but right now I am just learing the basics of this wonderful game
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