Designing Ships and the AI interference problem

[Tanaka]

I cannot seem to find a consensus on this anywhere:

How can you let the AI design crappy stuff you do not want to mess with while you design what you want to without AI interference on what you specifically design?

How can you do this without the AI overriding your designs when auto upgrading and retrofitting?

Has this been fixed now or is it still design all or none? Is there a way around this?

[Bingeling]

Of course there is a way around. You don't auto upgrade.

And don't try to fix "every class apart from three", it would drive you crazy.

First step - give your own designs clearly different names than AI designs.
Second step - always upgrade a single class at a time from the ship list. You can set the design in that case.
Third step - upgrading mixed fleets will be annoying. But it should work to pause, obsolete the AI design, then give the retrofit order (your design is the only one).

It is hard to avoid accidents, though. In my first legends game I thought my space port was wimpy, and discovered it was not my 700 strength medium spaceport design, but a small spaceport with a 130 strength AI design...

[StarWolf]

I currently have DW and the RoTS expansion and this very issue is the main reason I stopped playing. I have been waiting to see if it was fixed in Legends before buying the new expansion and I am very, very disappointed to see that no improvements appear to have been made to the ship design portion of the game at all.

I don't want to design every ship but I do want to step in when needed to design some of them without having to micromanage this portion of the game to death in order to keep the AI from screwing things up. It's pretty much a PITA.

Workarounds are nice but many players are not going to figure them out. Having gone so far to fix the other issues in DW, I wonder why this was ignored, especially since so many folks enjoy the ship design portion of games like this.

[hewwo]

I really agree with these posts. I stopped playing RoTS partially because of this issue, and now with legends, after playing just one game, I find myself once more seriously annoyed

so +1 for having this fixed in the next beta patch

[Erik Rutins]

Some improvements for ship design are on the schedule for the second update, including marking ships and classes on and off for auto-design and auto-retrofit and some other usability improvements for the ship design list screen. I think you will all be pleased.

Regards,

- Erik

[StarWolf]

Fantastic! Thanks Erik!! [:)]

[Data]

Erik, I think we'll be more than pleased....great news about this.

[J HG T]

Sounds good. Though I love MMing my ship designs, more practical ship design options sure are welcome.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Some improvements for ship design are on the schedule for the second update, including marking ships and classes on and off for auto-design and auto-retrofit and some other usability improvements for the ship design list screen. I think you will all be pleased.

Regards,

- Erik

Woohoo finally thanks guys!!! [&o]

[Moltrey]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka

Woohoo finally thanks guys!!! [&o]

Amen to that! Now I can keep my administrators from ruining a perfectly good titan beam ship discovery in the future...

[Franky007]

As discussed in another thread, i hope in addition to an ON/OFF option,
we could get a third option where:
Components would be replaced only with better components of THE SAME KIND.

[Cauldyth]

Nice! So far I've been playing with auto-design turned on, simply because turning it off would open a whole can of worms I'm not ready for yet. If the second update allows me to open that can more slowly, so much the better. [;)]

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Some improvements for ship design are on the schedule for the second update, including marking ships and classes on and off for auto-design and auto-retrofit and some other usability improvements for the ship design list screen. I think you will all be pleased.

Regards,

- Erik

Great to hear. And it is nice that you confirm work on points that are a frequent source for complaints. I just hope that second update is coming real fast [:D]

[Cauldyth]

I believe they said by the end of the year. At first I was disheartened by that, but then I realized that the end of the year is only 4 weeks away. Geez, time flies.

[2ndACR]

Once I have a design I like and don't want the AI to mess with it, I deactivate the wanted design, hit auto upgrade, and then go in and re-activate it. I hate when the AI changes my warships with super fast hyper drives to the slower but energy light versions.

[Malevolence]

The changes coming to designs (and with respect to the AI) are going to be a huge improvement.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

Once I have a design I like and don't want the AI to mess with it, I deactivate the wanted design, hit auto upgrade, and then go in and re-activate it. I hate when the AI changes my warships with super fast hyper drives to the slower but energy light versions.

So you are saying you make your own designs obsolete and then auto upgrade them? Doesn't the computer redesign them when you re-activate your designs?

[bonesbro]

This sounds great.  By the way, I found a bug today: it seems like you can't retrofit bases of design "star base" into new star bases.

Repro steps:
1. Design a base of type Star Base.
2. Build a base of that design.
3. Design a new Star Base.  In this case I hit upgrade on the design after some time had passed and just accepted the new design.
4. Right clicking on the base (or choosing Retrofit from the Ships & Bases screen) does not allow me to upgrade the design.  It shows there are no retrofit options available.

(I used a Star Base for my huge 20 research lab base orbiting my home planet to keep the AI from building those behemoths elsewhere.  Also, I had to switch off automated character movement because the AI kept trying to transfer my scientists to other research stations despite this base having labs on it too)

[HectorOfTroy]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

Once I have a design I like and don't want the AI to mess with it, I deactivate the wanted design, hit auto upgrade, and then go in and re-activate it. I hate when the AI changes my warships with super fast hyper drives to the slower but energy light versions.

So you are saying you make your own designs obsolete and then auto upgrade them? Doesn't the computer redesign them when you re-activate your designs?

Just do this for now Tanaka:
- make your own design (eg. frigate)
- obsolete AI's frigate design
- choose all frigates in the ship list (ctrl and then click them all)
- hit retrofit (it will even let you choose between frifate designs if there are more than one)

You can do all this while auo-design is still on. That way you can choose what to upgrade yourself and when. I really like the whole DW design system.

[cookie monster]

To update some designs via the AI and to have your designs left alone I would :-

Turn ship design to manual

Periodically select a design I want the AI to design for

Then I would upgrade the selected design

Therefore I now have an updated AI design

...

Is that your problem?