Ship Design Question

[Gandalph]

I have designed a new ship for exploration in the mod I am working on and I get errors when testing in game along the lines of "unknown type in blahblah_AI_designcreation.txt" Is there a limitation to ship type or is there a work around?

[Jmenschenfresser]

At present you can only use the ships types that exist in the ship type file in the data folder.

Ran into the same problem. Not sure why there is a moddable file that we can't change, but go figure. Won't even work if you add new types to this file. Can only use existing.

Who knows, maybe the game doesn't even use this file yet, but Last I asked, this is going to change in the next patch.

[Suicide Junkie]

Default design types.

The AIs are only coded to recognize the default unmodded types.

Adding extra types is convenient for the human players, however.

[PsychoTechFreak]

see Atraikus Design Creation cheat sheet

[Rollo]

A good type to choose for a scout ship is the "attack base". They do not get included into fleets and exlore quite well. Just make sure that you change the min. and max. size for the design accordingly.

Rollo

[Gandalph]

Not being able to add a design kind of limits ability to mod. That kinda sux.

Thanks Rollo, I will try that.

[Gandalph]

Ok, got rid of the error message but the AI won't design it. I have a special hull with cloak ability for unseen early game exploration and set the must have ability in the designcreation.txt to "Cloak Level" so it won't design because I don't have cloak tech yet?

[Rollo]

Yeah, if you put cloak level as must have, the design minister will look for a cloak component to put on the ship. Otherwise it will not design it. I don't know, how you want your scouts, but one possibility around that would be:

1. make scout hull size 140
2. set min. and max. size for scout to 140
3. remove cloak as must have

So the minister will use the biggest hull allowed (that would be the 140 scout hull with built-in cloak). For the other designs it chooses the biggest hull allowed as well, which would be the escort (150) at the game start and bigger hulls later.

There are probably other ways to make this work, but you would have to tell us more details on how you would like to do things.

Hope that helps .

Rollo

edit: typo

[ 09 April 2002: Message edited by: Rollo ]

[Gandalph]

Managed it by changing hull size to 151 and set min and max the same. I am now testing and the AI built 2 within 5 turns and is exploring like crazy, exactly what I wanted to achieve. Thanks for the input. Stayed tuned for more questions as I get deeper into AI. I think I will tackle politics next! (Oh Good Grief!!)