AI and the future of it's ship building capability

[Tousansons]

R&D and enemy economy is hard to figure out with fixed ship design, I agree. While i'm sure something can be done to show an AI strugling to rebuild a navy after a long and costly war, be it with less ships or skipping some types entirely. I'll personnaly have to wait and see what the campaign is all about before offering elegant solution on "how" the AI will build these fixed designs.

On the other hand, we also don't know how random design will handle this situation either. In theory it is indeed better, "if" it can be smart enough. Which I have my doubts on seeing how the differents AI works right now.

10 hours ago, Skeksis said:

And how many models could there be?

An interesting point that could effectively work with random designs from the beginning. while fixed design will require some time to be added to the game (hence why I first wanted  a pool expanded by developpers and players) My opinion on the matter could very well change if I'm under the impression that the current AI designer can do something interesting about that. But like the above, I'm waiting for the first pass on the campaign, is it interesting to fight against slightly different random designs each time or not? This was my initial question.

edit: never write when in a hurry.

Edited April 1, 2021 by Tousansons

[Cpt.Hissy]

Hmm good point from Skeksis here.
While FTD works, it only has about a hundred of designs for each faction, it doesn't need to deal with decades of gradual improvement and changing tech, everything is available from beginning. And even this was a grand work of dozens of community members and developers.

As compromise, AI could be restricted to a set of "default" general layouts and try and squeeze what tech it has into them. But it also needs the designer to be less stupidly limited by things like useless superstructure being huge.

[Stormnet]

This is one long thread I see...

[Tousansons]

3 hours ago, Stormnet said:

This is one long thread I see...

Feel free to expand it.