AI Ship class Behaviors/Use

[Overlord015]

I'm aware that whenever automated the AI tends to use escorts to police and protect shipping lanes, and trading hubs. My question here is, does the AI similarly have other specialized behaviors for other ship classes? And would you guys be willing to provide me with anecdotes and observations that could shine some light on this?

[RogerBacon]

Destroyers seem to wait at bases or planets and defend the system they occupy. I'm not sure about the others.

[Bingeling]

Based on the default sizes of the classes, the "larger" ships should be assigned to "defend" more valuable targets. So escorts for escorting random freighters, cruisers for what the AI thinks is important gas mines or colonies, etc.

I can not say I have observed this so much, as I do not run automated single ships

[RemoteLeg]

The only warships I automate are small sentry fleets that guard strategic locations.

The AI handles this pretty well. When these ships need to refuel they go to the nearest refueling station, fill up, then get back to work - excellent.

I've noticed an odd glitch that sometimes when I upgrade these ships to a later design, they insist on traveling all the way back to my home-world rather than upgrade at the nearest space port. Crazy I know, but once they decide that my home-world is the best place to upgrade there's no arguing with them. They'll travel across the galaxy rather than upgrade at the large space port next door. It doesn't happen often, but it's frustrating when it does.

[btd64]

What I see is that any ship placed on Auto, hitting the "A" key, will patrol different areas. But Destroyers and down to Escorts will patrol and escort....GP

[Overlord015]

So the general perception seems to be that AI emphasizes size, rather than a ship design role in regards to automated behavior? Need to get to testing stuff already (working on a mod that may never see the light of day, heh), been working on the design docs for too long dangit. Wish there was some real relevance to ship roles. . .

ORIGINAL: RemoteLeg

I've noticed an odd glitch that sometimes when I upgrade these ships to a later design, they insist on traveling all the way back to my home-world rather than upgrade at the nearest space port. Crazy I know, but once they decide that my home-world is the best place to upgrade there's no arguing with them. They'll travel across the galaxy rather than upgrade at the large space port next door. It doesn't happen often, but it's frustrating when it does.

Strange, I typically have the opposite experience in regards to this, most of my ships tend to rush any port nearby when upgrading, even when the planet doesn't have the resources to enable the upgrade. Also happens with constructors, but this one's understandable, and incredibly frustrating all the same. They often work on the frontiers and nearby planets are often underdeveloped and running shortages.

[Retreat1970]

Wish there was some real relevance to ship roles

There are none. I've seen Carriers escort freighters, and Battleship patrol mines.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Overlord015

So the general perception seems to be that AI emphasizes size, rather than a ship design role in regards to automated behavior? Need to get to testing stuff already (working on a mod that may never see the light of day, heh), been working on the design docs for too long dangit. Wish there was some real relevance to ship roles. . .

No, it is the opposite. It uses the role as the size indicator.

escort - frigate - destroyer - cruiser - capital ship.

And the carrier somewhere in there...

You can have a tiny capital ship and a giant escort, and the AI will consider the capital ship as the large one.

Whether it really cares at all, is a different matter.

[stuart3]

I have just built and automated 21 cruisers to check what assignments they get.

3 are patrolling mining stations (quite valuable ones. One is mining Loros Fruit, the others valuable luxuries).
13 are patrolling my home planet.
5 are patrolling other colonies.

It seems that they tend to be assigned to patrol more important assets than the smaller ships defend, but they still get patrol duties.

[Hattori Hanzo]

ORIGINAL: stuart3

I have just built and automated 21 cruisers to check what assignments they get.

3 are patrolling mining stations (quite valuable ones. One is mining Loros Fruit, the others valuable luxuries).
13 are patrolling my home planet.
5 are patrolling other colonies.

It seems that they tend to be assigned to patrol more important assets than the smaller ships defend, but they still get patrol duties.

interesting results, I will try do to the same with all the other classes of ships in a new created "experimental-game" to see what will happen.

[Unforeseen]

While I do automate most of my fleet when I'm not at war or preparing for war I don't really worry about the individual activities they perform. As long as they are moving around and spread out to protect my entire empire from pirates and surprise attacks long enough for me to respond with my fleets or put one together I'm happy.

I don't bother with the whole Capital Ship is your biggest ship thing though. I just use the roles to make it easier to have ships with different components. Most of the time my ships are all the same size, they just serve different purposes. For example I might design a "cruiser", call it a heavy cruiser and make it a slow moving vessel with alot of firepower. Then I might design a "destroyer", call it a light cruiser and make it a faster moving vessel with less firepower. Both ships have the same size, but do different things. The only time I really consider not using the max size available for a ship is when I'm intentionally trying to make the ship as inexpensive as possible. Such as with my area weapon designs, whom because such weapons aren't feasible as primary weapons are used as kamakazee ships to weaken enemy defenses and destroy private sector ships.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: stuart3

I have just built and automated 21 cruisers to check what assignments they get.

3 are patrolling mining stations (quite valuable ones. One is mining Loros Fruit, the others valuable luxuries).
13 are patrolling my home planet.
5 are patrolling other colonies.

It seems that they tend to be assigned to patrol more important assets than the smaller ships defend, but they still get patrol duties.

As long as you also saw smaller ships escorting to a higher degree, this supports what has been said - mure "valuable targets" for bigger ships.

The AI will always have to give an order as far as I know (freighters and exploration and a few more can be idle somewhere). So a military ship should have an order.
So pick your choice between repair, refuel, move to, attack, escape, escort, patrol, load troops, unload troops, and probably a few more. Patrolling a key colony is the "top AI defense mission" as I see it.

While my "top defense mission" would mean sitting parked on top of the colony (in the gravity well), doing nothing at all.

The good thing about the eternal "patrol" is that it ought to hang around, the bad thing is that they burn fuel. My idle defenders may be dragged away by some enemy visit, and will not be near the colony at a key moment. But when sitting at the wrong end of the system, they will at least not be low on fuel (I got collectors).

[Overlord015]

So the general idea here is that ship roles work as a "tag" of sorts in letting the AI know what to do with each ship design? If so, knowing this would be a great help in further optimizing designs toward certain mission-sets. For example, making escort designs that emphasize speed, rail guns and/or high DPS (or make escort carriers) to outrun and chase off pirates trying to threaten your shipping. Also, another idea, if destroyer and cruiser behavior is as observed, would be to make heavily armed, shielded and armored, jump inhibitor-equipped monitors for point or colony defense. If designs could be optimized in such a manner It'd go a long way in improving AI performance.

Has anyone observed if the AI prefers to place certain types of ships in raid fleets during war (referring to regular races, not pirates)? Or is this dictated by fleet composition in the race policy settings? Personally I've seen it often use destroyers, but I haven't played in a while, so I'm not sure.

[Bingeling]

I believe the fleet composition specifies the layout. I have never paid attention to it, though, since I do not trust the AI with fleet setup

[stuart3]

For example, making escort designs that emphasize speed, rail guns and/or high DPS (or make escort carriers) to outrun and chase off pirates trying to threaten your shipping.

There isn't much point to escorting shipping. In the early stages of a Prewarp game, threats will almost always be too strong for escorts and will destroy them or drive them off. Once you have researched hyperdrives, private sector shipping will always try to hyperjump away and will usually succeed,

[Overlord015]

ORIGINAL: stuart3
There isn't much point to escorting shipping. In the early stages of a Prewarp game, threats will almost always be too strong for escorts and will destroy them or drive them off. Once you have researched hyperdrives, private sector shipping will always try to hyperjump away and will usually succeed,

Oh I'm aware of this, guess I should've made this clear in the opening post. I'm building a mod (which may never see the light of day) with Icemania's AI mod and Bacon Mod as a base. Bacon's mod adds gravity wells to systems, this means pirates and the AI can definitely threaten shipping in the traditional sense since now ships will be spending a whole lot of time at sub-light speeds. He also increased fighter ranges, which probably makes carrier tactics feasible as well. Therefore me making this thread, I want to update AI mod's ship designs to reflect these two new realities (and to reflect the fleet doctrines of the new factions I'll be creating).

[stuart3]

Sounds interesting. Can you make the warships travel in closer proximity to the ships they are escorting? They often seem to follow quite some distance behind them. I have often thought that that they aren't close enough for effective protection.

[Retreat1970]

Has anyone observed if the AI prefers to place certain types of ships in raid fleets during war

Nope. It's all quite random. The AI will put escorts in fleets, and keep carriers out (for example). The AI will reorder fleets frequently, so when you need your big 30 ship fleet it will have reorganized to a fleet of two. This seems to be quite random as well.

[Uncle Lumpy]

When the game reorganizing a large fleet into two smaller ones, is it because of the Fleet Formation settings in the Empire Policy screen? I automate very little in the game (including Fleet Formation), and I have not seen my fleet compositions/size ever change. So if Fleet Formation is set to "auto," is the Typical Number of Ships in Fleets setting then reflected in the composition/size of the two smaller fleets or is it completely arbitrary?

[stuart3]

It will only reorganise fleets if the Fleet Formation section in the Empire Policy screen is set to "fully automate". It will then do that in according to the values that have been set for "Proportion of Military ships assigned to Fleets & Strike Forces", "Typical number of ships in Fleet", and "Typical number of ships in Strike Force".