Community Request - Customized Designs

[Litjan]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
... and zip up and post those files here...

Ok, how and where do I upload? Can´t attach files here in the forums?

Jan

[Erik Rutins]

You should be able to attach a file to your post. When you are posting, use the "Post Reply" button rather than the "Fast Reply" area on the bottom. Then use the "Click Here to Upload" link to attach a file.

I just updated this forum as well to allow larger files and zip files. If that was preventing your upload before, apologies, but it should work now!

Regards,

- Erik

[Shark7]

While I haven't had the opportunity to play with this yet, seems to me the easiest way to handle this is to start a new game at tech level zero...design your ships and save it. Then start a new game at tech level 2, design and save...rinse repeat until you have a ship set for each tech level.

At least that is my plan to attempt this afternoon when I get home from work.

[Litjan]

Ok, here is my first zip - it contains three files, all go into the "human" folder that is to be created under "designs".

The files contain designs for the initial tech level (starting) and the second one.

Feedback wanted!

The second level designs have different stuff in them - for example both matrox blasters, missiles and ion cannons. I assume that all the first level tech is known at that stage. If you research into only one direction (i.e. only mass drivers) you will not get those designs, because they are not buildable (no ion cannon researched)...

I think this is a general problem with this approach - if you miss just one single technology, you won´t get the new design.

Jan

[azcore]

ORIGINAL: Litjan

Feedback wanted!

I know, that's the case with default designs as well, but is there a reason for luxury extractor at gas mining stations?
Also, I think 3 gas extractors is optimal instead of default two.

[Litjan]

Thanks, didnt know that - didnt want to optimize too harsh in fear of omitting something important

Just ran into some problems with the designs - when the new destroyer designs became available (Mk2) the game would fail to retrofit the destroyers to that design - even when manually ordering the retrofit.

I also get constant "do you want to retrofit" questions that actually don´t retrofit anything (it asks for a bit of money, but doesn´t subtract it from my account).

Jan

[WoodMan]

Re: luxury extractor on gas mines. Some ice planets have only luxury resource plus tyderios which requires gas extractor. I think that is the reason for them on the originals.

[jlevans]

ORIGINAL: Litjan

...

The second level designs have different stuff in them - for example both matrox blasters, missiles and ion cannons. I assume that all the first level tech is known at that stage. If you research into only one direction (i.e. only mass drivers) you will not get those designs, because they are not buildable (no ion cannon researched)...

I think this is a general problem with this approach - if you miss just one single technology, you won´t get the new design.

Jan

I've done a complete set of designs for the Boskara that evolves as tech progresses. It is aligned with their Torpedo and Phaser research priorities and recognizes their overall Power policy emphasis. I'll upload the single file later today after a little more simulation testing and finishing touches.

One problem I've found that is challenging - there are a few components that simply improve in place as tech progresses - hab/life support and energy collectors are two narly ones. The automated research project selection system tends to lag quite a bit in improving these technologies. As a result you may find that your more advanced designs are not buildable (insufficient hab/life support) or quickly run out of fuel (insufficient energy collection rate). The fact that both of these have no second component type that needs to be retrofited onto your ships means that there is no way to encourage the AI to improve that line of tech, at least beyond what is already built into the project selection algorithm.

Also, when designing from Level 7 as recommended by Elliot, both of those technologies are already maxed out, so it requires quite a bit of manual calculation. That is one of the reasons why it took me a full 10+ hours to do this one race! The approach of starting games at different tech levels is a bit easier, but still has the same fundamental problem.

Given the investment in time required, I recommend we each pick a favorite race or two to optimize. My Boskara file will follow in a few hours.

[Nedrear]

Easiest way:
 
Start a lone universe with only your race a whole lot of pirates and space monsters. Start on tech level 0. Now set everything on automatation full speed and watch them research 3-4 games. Now you DEFINETLY know what they research and in which order.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Litjan
Ok, here is my first zip - it contains three files, all go into the "human" folder that is to be created under "designs".
The files contain designs for the initial tech level (starting) and the second one.

Feedback wanted!

The second level designs have different stuff in them - for example both matrox blasters, missiles and ion cannons. I assume that all the first level tech is known at that stage. If you research into only one direction (i.e. only mass drivers) you will not get those designs, because they are not buildable (no ion cannon researched)...

I think this is a general problem with this approach - if you miss just one single technology, you won´t get the new design.

Thanks Litjan, I'll give them a look as well. It's true that you need all the technologies to use the design, but this generally does happen over time, especially if you focus on the tech preferences of each faction.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: jlevans
One problem I've found that is challenging - there are a few components that simply improve in place as tech progresses - hab/life support and energy collectors are two narly ones. The automated research project selection system tends to lag quite a bit in improving these technologies. As a result you may find that your more advanced designs are not buildable (insufficient hab/life support) or quickly run out of fuel (insufficient energy collection rate). The fact that both of these have no second component type that needs to be retrofited onto your ships means that there is no way to encourage the AI to improve that line of tech, at least beyond what is already built into the project selection algorithm.

Good feedback, thank you. If we can make this part work better, we will.

Looking forward to the Boskara.

Regards,

- Erik

[Falokis]

This addition is a great step in DW and this is a good thread. Life is kicking my butt and I don't have time to do this, but I appreciate those that are doing it. Awesome step forward in the game.

[WoodMan]

You are wrong. The event cycle in the race file allows you to change the race characteristic and add a timed event lasting X years every Y years.

Extract from UC file:

'Periodic Change Interval: number of years between change to racial characteristics (defined below), 0=no periodic changes
PeriodicChangeInterval ;3

'Periodic Change Length: number of years changed racial characteristics last (defined below), 0=no periodic changes
PeriodicChangeLength ;1

'Periodic Factors - Growth: periodic change to growth rate
PeriodicFactorsGrowth ;1.03

'Periodic Factors - Aggression: periodic change to aggression level
PeriodicFactorsAggression ;75

'Periodic Factors - Caution: periodic change to caution level
PeriodicFactorsCaution ;150

'Periodic Factors - Friendliness: periodic change to friendliness level
PeriodicFactorsFriendliness ;100

'Race event that occurs during change cycle: 0=None, 1-28=events (see Modding Guide)
PeriodicChangeCycleEvent ;18

Hey Ned, it sounds like a quite a departure from original DW races and quite interesting. Regardless, I was talking of course of the base stats of the races. If you are able to make them completely redundant that is an interesting discovery, but far from the original DW races and those are who we are building ships for.

However, nevermind, I've given up, I just hope not all the ships are exactly the same but with the weapons switched depending on which research tree they have focussed in their policy file.

This seems restrictive, gamey, and illogical to me. I am vehemently opposed to restrictions on ship design beyond the physical limitations of what I can put in a given volume. Doubly so when said restrictions are not based on the universal Laws of (Scifi) Physics.

Take a 100m cube. If Smart Race can fit 4 Titan Beams in the cube, why can Dumb Race only fit 3? There would have to be some technical deficiency in Dumb Race's Titan Beam design, and that would be best represented by making lower-tech versions of the same components take up more space than higher-tech ones (MOO2 style). Another plus for the necessity of component modding, BTW.

Or why can Passive Race only fit 3? What if the one guy in charge of ship design takes steroids and PCP and is aggressive as all hell?

Roided Passive Race Lead Designer: "HEY! I GOT AN IDEA! Why don't we put *4* Titan Beams in our 100m cube? Just like those other guys!"
Milquetoast Passive Race Engineer: "We can't. We're too passive for that."


Sorry, that just doesn't work for me. Such a system would have to be optional, as I would turn it (or mod it) off.

By your logic the USA, China and Russia should all share exactly the same military hardware then, if its just a case of taking technology of the same level (which they have) and sticking it in a certain size box [&:] But of course they don't.

USA, Russia, China: different hardware
Federation, Klingon, Borg: different hardware
12 colonies, Cylons: different hardware
Narn, Centauri: different hardware
DW by your standards: all the same...

Take Ferangi as an example, they are obsessed with trade, if we changed that trait to obsessed with war wouldn't we see a difference in their ship designs? I guess we would.

Anyway as I said I've given up as I seem to be somewhat of a lone voice on this issue so nevermind.

Making ship designs equal makes the best economy the best military power. If everyone has the same quality ships then the race that can afford the most of them will be the best military power. This is in my experience Shandar, Securan, Ugnari, Teekan, Gizurean. Ironically 4 of those races are pacifists.

[Raap]

The USA, China and Russia definitely don't have technology of the same level when it comes to military hardware. Those are closely guarded secrets, but there's little doubt the US leads by a wide margin( unless, of course, the two others are hiding something big). I don't really see Russia or China being able to put railguns on their ships anytime soon.

That's kinda the point though. It's not the design itself that should be limited, it's the actual techs. And they are, since empires will be at different tech levels. Problem is that the differences between a tech level or two isn't necessarily huge, and of course all the empires have effectively the same tech trees( anything else would be too much work). Thus you need to have a decently big tech advantage before your ships are significantly better than an opponent's similar design. There's also the problem of not enough weapon alternatives being viable, which encourages pure designs with no variation. Torpedoes have the best range and damage/space/firerate ratio, and none of the other alternatives can stand against that.

Anyway, technology decides ship quality, since it's the player that designs ships and there aren't really many viable choices. But the solution isn't to remove or tone down the ability for the player to design ships( which is one of the best features of 4x), but rather to improve on the number of viable designs by giving weapons and components more uniqueness and strengths. Of course, that also means having an AI capable of handling and using such changes to its benefit. Other improvements could be balance changes to the empire files, like actually making a pacifist empire have penalties to hit accuracy and such( ala MoO2), basically making them poorer fighters.

[MisterBenn]

I am not an authority on DW ship designing (I design all my ships but haven't even played as all the races yet) but I agree with you Woodman. I'm afraid that Smart Race / Dumb Race example is a bit forced in my opinion, it's not a case of "We are passive so we'll design a ship that's a poor fighter" - it's more a case of a supporting a race's strengths and victory conditions. If a race has a great aptitude for construction and a tolerance for war then ship will likely be high weapon / low armour "replaceable" ships. If a race has strengths in fleet resupply and experience gain then an armour and shield heavy emphasis would suit, along with an emphasis on earlier withdrawl from combat. Imperious races might arm their resource stations and jealously guard all territory, warrior races might have lightweight stations and spend everything on ships!

There are lots of concepts like that that could be entertained, building a synergy between ship design and race victory condition and strengths just seems amazing! I have to say this latest update is very ambitious and forward-looking and I am very excited about it! As I said I am probably not best to contribute designs, but I'll certainly playtest something specific if it's useful and post back what I can.

Edit: on the contemporary example, I saw a tank documentary a few years back that suggested that American main battle tanks were built with super heavy armour under the philosophy that they should withstand a direct hit from any competing tank on the planet. To achieve this they suggested that outrageous fuel consumption and high support and supply requirements were tolerated. If this has any grounding in reality then it would suggest that these kind of themes do come up at relatively equal technology levels.

[WoodMan]

Something that might help a bit if is we could set difficulty and aggressiveness settings for each race we add in the last screen during game setup.

With other things like empire size you can set a global value in the new game screen and then overide that setting in the other empires screen. If I could do this for difficulty and aggresiveness that would probably make me less concerned about empires with high happiness, population growth, or maintenance savings being the best military powers. I quite like the Ugnari and Teekan to be minor players in the galaxy who I can trade with and not get into wars with, but they actually usually outclass other races that should be big threats like the Sluken and Dhayut (apart from their inferior ships).

It would be great if I could set Teekan, Ugnari, Gizurean etc on normal difficulty and ramp up Sluken, Dhayut and intelligent races like Kiadian and Quameno to higher difficulties. Seperate aggressive settings would be great too. The ship design issue wouldn't bother me too much then to be honest. I like a two tier or three tier galaxy, it makes things more interesting for me [8D]

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm talking about the sliders already available, not changing race stats, just those sliders that are already there in the New Game screen, but adding them to the Other Empires screen for greater customisation.

[onomastikon]

I'm afraid I fail to understand exactly what is going on this new feature. This is not meant to be ironic, I just don't understand it, literally. Are we supposed to make "blueprints" for each and every possible ship design based on each and every tech advancement during the course of the game, and then save each of these discretly, so that we (and the AI) fall back on them when the time comes in future games? Is this to help the AI opponent races get better ships, save us time in future games at the sake of an enormous time investment now, or help the AI automatically upgrade our ships when automatic upgrading is set to "on"?

This seems really complicated to me and I am pretty sure I fail to understand both the main point of this feature as well as the exact steps I need to do in order to implement its functionality.

[jlevans]

As promised, here is my zipped Boskara Design file. It needs to be unzipped in your .../designs/boskara/ folder.

The nomenclature I used (aka. BattleCruiser V) generally refers to the highest level tech (V) used in the design. This is usually the primary technology research area listed in the Race's tech policy. For Boskara its Torpedoes. Most of the support techs (engines, armor, etc.) I use in each design lag this highest tech level as they tend to be secondary or tertiary priorities for the race. With this approach I believe the design will get into the field earlier than it otherwise would.

I've simulated these designs scores of times now and discovered a few things that will probably require some additional work by Elliot to resolve, assuming my observations are accurate.

Some of my learnings:

1. Be cautious when optimizing very early designs. While it is attractive to use Torpedoes early with the Boskara, they use alot of Chromium. It can take quite a while to find sources, so you can quickly run out which will then clog your production shipyard waiting for Chromium that hasn't been discovered yet. For this reason, the first couple of designs shy away from Torpedoes. I discovered this through many rounds of simulation, so learning number 2 is:

2. Simulate many times.

3. When designing, start at Level 7 and make your designs for all levels there. Don't worry yet about getting the balance of components right. In fact, use more of each desired component than needed. That way, when you subsequently start a game instance at Level 1 or 3 or such, you can then remove components to optimize Hab/Life, speed, energy, power, etc. restrictions. You can always take components you haven't invented yet out of a design, but you can't put them back in when you haven't invented them yet. Try it out. You'll get the idea.

Some observed issues:

4. I would have thought that the AI would make its own designs to fill in gaps as technology progresses where there isn't an Optimized design. While I think this may happen infrequently for state ships and bases, I've never seen it occur for private ships and bases. The AI will create a private design to start the game if there isn't an Optimized design available, but doesn't create any more after it encounters an Optimized Design, even if that Optimized Design uses ancient technology. If you want your private fleet to use advanced tech, you'll need to create Optimized designs at the Levels you desire.

5. A related observation - I've never seen the AI obsolete an Optiimized Design. As a result all buildable optimized designs always appear in the list of available designs a space port can build. As technology progresses, it gets pretty cluttered and probably has something to do with the next observation.

6. I find it pretty common for the AI to continue to build ancient Optimized Designs (Level I) even when Levels II, III, IV, V Optimized Designs are all available at the space port to build. This may not be a new phenom though as there have been threads before (previous to Optimized Designs) discussing the ancient designs the AI continues to build even when it has invented and designed more advanced alternatives.

7. Related to the above, when beginning a game at an advanced Level of technology (Level V for instance), the game has a tendency to instantiate your starting ships and bases with the most basic (Level I) designs, even though there are optimized designs available at Level V. There are exceptions but this occurs more often than not.

8. Beware of including Pirates. Starting a game at Level I, I've found very advanced Pirate ships show up using my optimized designs right from the start. Try taking down a Pirate's Level VI Optimized Design Destroyer when all you have are Level I Frigates! Makes for a short game as your mines don't survive and your economy collapses.

I'm guessing Elliot's original game design acquired Pirate ship designs from the current design list of the player and AI competitors. Previous to Opt Designs, only designs that were buildable would appear in the list of available designs. This makes game design sense as it would keep pirate designs competitive with the player but not OP. However, now that we have Optimized Designs, the designs contained in the list include designs that are not yet buildable! I'm guessing the pirate ship selection algorithm is picking from that list, buildable or not.


Open Questions:

9. If one develops an Optimized Design to handle a Silvermist, will the AI know to use it?

10. To simulate without any required intervention, I automated all policies, retrofitting and eliminated all popups, including retrofit question popups. However, I still get these retrofit questions presented to me the observing player.

If I don't respond to the retrofit prompt question, after a timeout, does the AI assume they should retrofit as suggested and go do it? In other words, does auto retrofit really work without player intervention?

Even with player intervention (responding yes to a retrofit prompt), while I have seen retrofitting occur, I don't remember seeing the AI retrofit a unit to a more advanced Optimized Design. Not sure about this yet though.

[Noble713]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

By your logic the USA, China and Russia should all share exactly the same military hardware then, if its just a case of taking technology of the same level (which they have) and sticking it in a certain size box [&:] But of course they don't.

USA, Russia, China: different hardware

Actually, we pretty much *do* use the same hardware.

Towed and self-propelled artillery:
US/NATO: 155mm. Russia/China: 152mm

Main Battle Tank Cannons:
US: 120mm smoothbore. UK: 120mm rifled. Russia/China: 125mm smoothbore

Rifle Cartridges:
US: 5.56x45mm Russia: 5.45x39mm China: 5.8x42mm

Fighter Cannons:
US F-35: 25mm w/180 rounds Russian Su-30MKI: 30mm w/150 rounds

Armored Vehicles:
US: stopped using open-topped tank destroyers in favor of main battle tanks
Russia: stopped using heavy assault guns in favor of main battle tanks

Fighter Forces:
US: mix of twin-engine heavy air superiority jets (F-15,F-22) and single-engine interceptors/bomb trucks (F-16, F-35)
China: mix of twin-engine heavy air superiority jets (Su-30,J-11) and single-engine interceptors/bomb trucks (J-10)

Given rough technical parity, differences in hardware are not due to racial characteristics that somehow render certain configurations impossible, but do to conscious choices regarding policy and strategy by whoever is in charge at that time.

Here's another example: The Russians build generally lighter APCs, IFVs, and MBTs than most of the Western World. Due to the geography and poor infrastructure of their country and Soviet operational/tactical doctrine, they stressed the need for speed and cross-country mobility (including basic river fording with almost no prep-time). Israel, in contrast, builds gigantic, heavily armored vehicles. Their small population size places a greater importance on crew survivability and their generally defensive posture and heavily-urbanized surroundings precludes the need for peerless mobility. If the Russians wanted to build Israel's Namer IFV in Real Life (tm) or in Distant Worlds they could, but under your system they could not, because they would inexplicably run out of "Armor Hard Points" because they are too aggressively-minded. Same race as before, same characters calling the shots, but the situation on the ground has changed and they need to adapt immediately. That doesn't mean the Namer IFV is the optimum overall design and everyone should be fielding exactly that, it just means that if it is the one configuration at just the right time, they have the option to pursue it.

Take Ferangi as an example, they are obsessed with trade, if we changed that trait to obsessed with war wouldn't we see a difference in their ship designs? I guess we would.

Anyway as I said I've given up as I seem to be somewhat of a lone voice on this issue so nevermind.

Making ship designs equal makes the best economy the best military power. If everyone has the same quality ships then the race that can afford the most of them will be the best military power. This is in my experience Shandar, Securan, Ugnari, Teekan, Gizurean. Ironically 4 of those races are pacifists.

Isn't that the whole purpose of these lines in the race files:

Code: Select all

'Overall Ship Design Focus: 0=Balanced, 1=Speed/Agility, 2=Power, 3=Efficiency
 OverallShipDesignFocus		;3
 
 'Tech Focus 1: 0=None, 1=Beams, 2=Phasers, 3=Rail Guns, 4=Torpedoes, 5=Bombard Weapons, 6=Missiles, 7=Area Weapons,
  8=Ion Weapons, 9=Fighters, 10=Armor, 11=Shields, 12=Reactors, 13=Main Thrust Engines, 14=Vectoring Engines,
  15=HyperDrives, 16=Hyper Disruption, 17=Construction, 18=Damage Control, 19=Targetting, 20=Countermeasures, 21=Sensors, 22=Medicine, 23=Recreation
 TechFocus1		;0
 
 'Tech Focus 2: 0=None, 1=Beams, 2=Phasers, 3=Rail Guns, 4=Torpedoes, 5=Bombard Weapons, 6=Missiles, 7=Area Weapons,
  8=Ion Weapons, 9=Fighters, 10=Armor, 11=Shields, 12=Reactors, 13=Main Thrust Engines, 14=Vectoring Engines,
  15=HyperDrives, 16=Hyper Disruption, 17=Construction, 18=Damage Control, 19=Targetting, 20=Countermeasures, 21=Sensors, 22=Medicine, 23=Recreation
 TechFocus2		;0

If you set a race to Speed/Agility with a focus on Medicine and Recreation, does that not yield a race with ships perpetually behind the power curve in combat power? If it's WAD then we don't need an additional system. If it's not then that's a bug to be fixed.....and we don't need an additional system.

[Arcatus]

ORIGINAL: jlevans

(Snip..)

8. Beware of including Pirates. Starting a game at Level I, I've found very advanced Pirate ships show up using my optimized designs right from the start. Try taking down a Pirate's Level VI Optimized Design Destroyer when all you have are Level I Frigates! Makes for a short game as your mines don't survive and your economy collapses.

(snip....)

Wait? What? So by creating optimized high-tech designs for the races that can be pirates then the pirates get access to them at the start?

That sounds like a rather serious issue....