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I'm trying to get automation working.. It's like I used to play this game all the time on crazy manual settings.. and now the one time I actually want automation to work It doesn't! ha..
Ok so I just want my AI to help me build ships... so I set my settings to picture below... is it correct?
the problem is it's not ever suggesting to me to build anything!!
I'm also seeing Retrofit questions like "do you want to retrofit for $30,000 to Meridian shields?"
Has the AI _never_ suggested for you to build ships? If that is the case, check the policy panel that that one is not out synch.
The below is how I understand the AI to do ship building from the economic side:
1: At frequent interval it checks if ships should be built. In your case the answer will be "no", since you have 530k negative cashflow. So the "normal" build routine will not trigger until your negative cashflow is gone.
2: At rarer interval, maybe yearly, the AI does an extra check that was added many versions ago. This considers the cash on hand. If there is a lot of cash on hand, like you got, the AI will build some ships to spend cash.
If you run the build ships AI on suggest, this has one issue. If you open the build order screen, you will see the version 1 suggestion. In your case "build nothing".
Then, once in a while, you get a suggestion like "build this stuff for 300k". That is the version 2 suggestion. But if you click on it to see what it is, you see no suggestion, since that is the "type 1".
I have a few times tried to let the AI create the budget, while I order the military ships as I see fit within those limits. That runs into the problem that once cashflow is negative, I never see the AI suggest building construction ships or exploration ships. And I never see more than the amount it would build from in its "type 2" checks, so I have to interpret that as "The AI wants to build for 300k, I can for sure spend 250-300k if I want to". I can not know if I was supposed to build 5 construction ships with some of those 300k, though.
Ok well, I have yet to see any pop-up for building ships.. only the occasional "retrofit" pop-up.. but I haven't even seen those recently..
anyhow, what do you think in the Policy Screen settings might be out of whack?? I will try making my cashflow positive but not sure if that will solve it..
Look at my Policy settings in picture above.. but look.. i do get these.. but nothing happens when I do click approve.. I'm not sure what is actually retrofitting.. 1 ship??
The only thing that could be wrong that I know of, if there somehow was a bug where the ship building was manual in the empire policy screen. But it is not, like it should not be when you have set it in options.
In that latest screen, I guess the economic situation can look too dire for the AI to ever consider building. The AI is not good with bonus income, and your negative cash flow is a large part of your current cash on hand.
