automation doesnt use armour

[Gertjan]

I have a nice game going on now (about 40 colonies), but the AI does not seem to use armour components in its designs. Is this a bug or is it rational? It would seem natural to use it, right?

[malkuth74]

Use the editor to look at there ships. Only real way to tell.

[Gertjan]

I can see it already in the ship designs. Am I the only one who is bothered by it?

[elmo3]

Sounds like a bug so you might want to upload your file to Matrix.

[PDiFolco]

I had a look at the starting designs and overall I don't like them much : not enough fuel, no weapons at all on mining bases, too many shields on freighters (but not even a blaster again..), Resort bases having more armament than a Capital ship (!!), troop transports size just over 200 so you can't build them (!!!)... I think the player has to redesign all of them, luckily you can save the designs for future use ! [8D]

[ASHBERY76]

If the A.I empires are getting this bug,this is a massive issue.I have not had this issue in my games.

[fabio80mi]

I can confirm that very often troop transport and sometime destroyers are over 200 in size at start or in the first ai design.
Also very often in the beginning there is no armor.

I cant comment on 1.02 though since i'm desigining all my ships by myself since

[malkuth74]

Well at the start of the game you really can't build destroyers anyway. Size 200 is like a small pocket destroyer.

The frigate comes in at what like 160 or so start of game the escorts are like 110 or so.

I use to make my own ships, but found that my own ships could not keep up in gas like the AI ships for some reason. I had 1 destroyer that I put large amount of Fuel cells in (which made it larger then the standard destroyer) and it could not stay out as long as the standard one. really only built 2 of them so never bothered to check if ai ships had an upgrade or not that I missed.

[Gertjan]

Could Erik or Elliot comment on this please?

[Erik Rutins]

I have seen armor in the AI designs, so I would need more detail to be sure what's going on here. The ships around 200 are simply close to the initial capacity and sometimes their designs (depending on components) will go over that initial capacity. The first shipyard upgrade resolves that and it's by design that the AI focuses on upgrading components more than limiting ship size to capacity. That could be tweaked in the future, but it's intentional.

[Gertjan]

Erik, thanks for the reply. I will try another game today and tell you whether the AI uses armor.