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Did you realize that the auto-ship-creator won't use a newer weapon if it's raw dps (presumably measured at range 0) is less than that of an existing weapon?[X(]

Kind of sucks for making different flavors of weapons that actually have different characteristics, such as velocity having less raw damage, but much better range & speed. But currently, the epsilon will be chosen instead until the 2nd upgrade (level III of velocity shard in my mod), because its raw dps is too low (even though I am *choosing* that).

We badly need the ship designer to be user-specifiable (manually designing every ship is just not something I find fun / entertaining). But I should very much be able to say "long range torps + fighters" or whatever... having to argue with the automation is not cool.

Now - the only thing I can think of to overcome this is to buff the velocity (and other torps) and nerf the epsilon III, so that I can make velocity I's raw dps at least marginally higher than epsilon III. [:@]

Anyone else notice this sort of thing? Is there a work-around?

duno, i'm always make design manually [:D]

The base game's auto ship designer is to put it simply idiotic.
When given more than one option of the same rank column on the tech chart, it will choose the option furthest to the right, and closest to the top regardless of actual stats. The position being more relevant.

For instance Hyperdrives, if you have developed the initial drives, Kaldos, Equinox, Calista-Dal the designer will always use the Kaldos simply because of it's position. The same applies in every case of optional branches.

I haven't really checked it out as I enjoy making my own designs, but maybe the designer is 'fixed' in some mod.

Hmmm... I was assuming it was a dps because I was getting no-updates to auto-designs even after researching a higher level velocity-shard compared to shockwave torp.

In terms of research level:
Epsilon I, Epsilon II, Epsilon III, Velocity I, Velocity II, Velocity III
Epsilon I, Epsilon II, Epsilon III, Shockwave I, Shockwave II, Shockwave III

if I had Velocity I, the auto-designer chose Epsilon (or at least refused to auto-update the design to Velocity)
if I had Shockwave I and Velocity II, the auto-designer chose Shockwave I (or at least refused to auto-update the design to Velocity).

So, in the first, I have a higher-level plain & simple: Velocity I is a column 4 (level 4) tech, compared to a level 3 tech (column 3).

In the second, I have a column 5 tech vs. a column 4.

in both cases, the Velocity is on a lower-numbered row then either epsilon or shockwave... (but you're saying top right - which should favor Velicty, unless the real issue is position in research.txt or components.txt, or some UI sorting thing?)