Effective Ship Design

[jscott991]

There is a thread about economics which contains a long rant on the incompetence of the AI. I won't bother with that here, since at this point I'm primarily interested in competing with the game system and not so much with other empires.

However, one point was raised: the AI can't design effective ships. I've been using nothing but default designs so far, but would love to know why they are so bad.

What goes in to an effective design? What should I be changing on the AI designed? In GalCiv it was fairly easy to see that the default ships were way too slow because the computer never put more than one engine on them. What kind of issues like this exist in Distant Worlds?

I was hoping there might be some kind of a tip thread or FAQ about these kinds of things, like many other Matrix games enjoy, but I guess the game is too new for that.

[Fishman]

An effective design of ship needs to have a purpose. What is this ship supposed to do? How is it supposed to fight? The AI lacks purpose and direction, so his design mostly involves cramming random systems onto a ship and calling it a day. The other systemic flaw in how the AI builds ships are that they are underpowered and therefore incapable of actually using the systems he crams onto them. Additionally, the AI does not design ships that are particularly human-usable, but the AI itself does not encounter these weaknesses.

The AI's lack of design purpose causes him to build amorphous masses of ships that serve no purpose, whereas the human player will design ships specifically for the purpose of shooting those ships down, and the AI will never adapt to it.

[2ndACR]

Always add an energy collector to your military ships. That way they do not burn fuel while sitting around.

The AI will replace/upgrade items for a 1 for 1 basis. So the basic life support and you have 3 on a destroyer, the next upgrade you only need 2 of them, yet the AI will leave 3 on there.

Watch out for your torpedo boats, the AI loves to swap them for ground bombardment missles. Sort of useless on your space ports and defense bases.

[Gerth]

There are insufficient armament variables to make shape design particularly interesting/diverse. Fingers crossed an expansion will address this. Right now, for fighting ships it's pile on engines, reactors, blasters and shields.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

The AI will replace/upgrade items for a 1 for 1 basis. So the basic life support and you have 3 on a destroyer, the next upgrade you only need 2 of them, yet the AI will leave 3 on there.

The AI will upgrade items like this, but it is not clear if he designs his own ships this way. Upgrading items on a piece-by-piece basis does tend to result in functional overlook of this sort, though, such as upgrading crew parts, or upgrading reactors, where a ship might have formerly needed two or more reactors to meet requirements, when now a single reactor is sufficient to replace multiple reactors.

Given the stigma associated with ground bombardment, it seems unclear whether ground bombardment weapons are useful under ANY conditions.

[Dadekster]

I also feel there are not enough difference in weapons to make too many different specific designs. Take a destroyer hull for example. You can either go standoff piling on nothing but say 8 torps. You can go mixed with 4 lasers and 4 torps. Or you can go short range and just go all 8 lasers with the command of close in. From there it's basically putting on armour or shields in a way that makes sense. Standoff provided you have a speed and agility advantage lets you skimp on defense and you can cramp some extra offense on or vice versa.

After that though, it's pretty much over as far as what your options are. I would love to see some more variety in both beam weapons and torps. Either by making different varients or by introducing completely new weapons such as long range mass drivers and maybe quick flight missles with certain amounts of ammo (maybe tie it to fuel?) and by making torps much slower but packing a heavier punch. Not so much just like that, but some more rocks, scissors and paper would be really nice. At the moment battles are fun with what we have, but I feel they could by much more to them then what we have atm. I hope this won't be doled out in expansions six months down the road.

[Sliverine]

Ground bombardment is useful in late game when everyone has 50+ empires and you want to cut them down as fast as possible during a blitzkrieg run in order to screw their income. You just cant afford the time to actually go in and land troops and all so just fit 10 bombers on each of your 10 cruisers and watch as you jump in, raze the planet and jump out, the only delay being your jumpdrive charge speed.

[Okim]

and watch as you jump in, raze the planet and jump out, the only delay being your jumpdrive charge speed

Yeah, and also watch as your own empire suddenly produces two or even three separatist empires as your people get tired of your extremely evil reputation due to massive bombardments and rebel against you

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Sliverine

Ground bombardment is useful in late game when everyone has 50+ empires and you want to cut them down as fast as possible during a blitzkrieg run in order to screw their income. You just cant afford the time to actually go in and land troops and all so just fit 10 bombers on each of your 10 cruisers and watch as you jump in, raze the planet and jump out, the only delay being your jumpdrive charge speed.

As far as I can tell, this infuriates your own populaton so much that it amounts to a footbullet, however. And landing troops costs significantly less time than any bombardment. Load your battleship with 20 troopers, and one fly-by pass over the planet and it belongs to you in short order. Trying to bombard is just a lot of hassle, plus they will recolonize.

And 10 cruisers? I have never seen an AI capable of even defending a planet against ONE late-game battlecruiser. Plus, if you send more than one, they kill each other with their own wave blasters.

[Drusek]

wave blasters.

Just don't give them those [:'(]

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Drusek

wave blasters.

Just don't give them those [:'(]

But wave blasters are among the most effective weapons for dispatching the swarms of crap the AI deploys. Of course, this limits the number of ships you can deploy into combat, but I have not found this to be a problem, since the AI's craft are generally incapable of contesting even a single battlecruiser, which swiftly destroys them with its FRIED system.

[Kamonrius]

ORIGINAL: Okim

and watch as you jump in, raze the planet and jump out, the only delay being your jumpdrive charge speed

Yeah, and also watch as your own empire suddenly produces two or even three separatist empires as your people get tired of your extremely evil reputation due to massive bombardments and rebel against you

lol he speaks from experience.

[Fishman]

So there you have it. Bombardment weapons are useless and cause more problems than they solve. The only bombardment weapon worth anything is the Firestorm, and that's because it's one of the best short-range weapons in the game, especially since the right race STARTS with it, so it will tear apart anything that they launch it at, and not because of its bombardment attributes.

[Sliverine]

hmm...thats weird...im sure i totally bombed some empire into oblivion without anything more then 3-4 planets refusing to pay their taxes...ah well...i suppose it only affects your planets if there is a partial racial population on them that is the same race as the empire that you are bombing?

[Fishman]

That is probably one factor. The hit to your rep probably isn't as important as the offense the genocided species takes to your bombardment.

[jscott991]

Interesting responses.

Let me ask this.

Is it easy to take control of ship design from the AI?

There is a thread in the war room (kind of dated now) about how hard it is to manage ship designs.

Is it still difficult to manage ship designs? Can you let the AI design mining bases, etc., while you design only military vessels (it seems not)?

[Sarissofoi]

I always design my own ships(even private ones). And in patch 1.03 it is much easier to do it than before. Thx for working refiting and obsolete thing. In 1.00/1.01/1.02 version that was nightmar. Simply.
Now it is doable but still it can be done better.