Empty carriers?

Yes it’s silly but at the moment the AI doesn’t build fighters, but keeps building empty Carriers nevertheless.

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Feel lucky earthling ?

fighters are units and the AI has a different priority for units than ships. Carriers get built along with any other ship at a higher priority than fighters which get lumped in with troops and satellites etc they should have the same priority as the carriers which would carry them but I am not sure how to separate them from the rest of the units but I think thats whats needed

It likes building useless drones though

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I have not dug into the coding to see what priority fighters get as compared to the other units. I do know that they all get lumped together. However it would be nice if the existence of an empty carrier in system or for that matter an empty mine layer satellite layer etc bumped the priority of that particular sort of unit in that system.

Based on the default values in the stock scripts, the AI should build about 10-12 fighters per carrier...

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Just out of curiosity, is there any way to teach the AI to "read" the number of fighters in a carrier and then prioritize fighters to top it off?
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There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Second, fighters have an alarming tendency to be shot down against even relatively weak opponents. I only use them as pursuit and mop-up craft, as they get eaten alive by any force that uses direct-fire weaponry, and heaven forbid they meet anything with PD, due to their relatively weak evasion values.

The AI, of course, is probably not aggressively stacking +eva, nor is he using his fighters conservatively, so what few manage to find their way onto a carrier instead of rotting on some planet somewhere probably are quickly shot down, leaving empty carriers that merely run from every fight instead of doing something intelligent and useful, like ramming their enemies to actually cause damage. So instead the AI's fleet is composed of masses of useless carriers that serve no other purpose other than to flee rapidly from anything that doesn't have enough fighters to chase them down (and your balancemod design scripts which tend to cause them to pack lots of PD guns, making it impractical to use your own fighters to chase them!). Thus those carriers exist only to be hunted to the death in pop-and-shoot warp point fights and to stir up unrest in newly conquered systems when chasing them down is an exercise like herding cats.

Meanwhile, all the AI's fighters(that weren't senselessly shot down in a random carrier skirmish) are grounded on some distant runway, where they don't launch in defense of the planet and get vulched.

I have just effectively set a 1 carrier max (like kwok's AI) because I realised how ineffective they were. I have also turned up the base build points on fighters because they seemed to be far too low when counting the minus modifiers for being in existance and being in the queue.

Previously the AI would be lucky to get ten in its build queue's, never mind in a fleet or on a carrier, before the priority dropped below most other things.

I wonder if its possible to have the number of carriers raise the build priority for fighters... thats something i'll have to check, how about using this loop and if statement on the build priorities, i have borrowed it from Script_AI_Lists.txt.

A loop if you will of all ships you own, excuse my loop coding its been awhile but kwok or someone should be able to tidy it up

For Script_AI_construction.txt

loopcount long
carriercount long

for loopcount in [lst_AI_Our_Ships]

do
call lst_AI_Our_Ships.add(sobj_id)
set ai_design_type := Sys_Get_Space_Object_Ai_Design_Type(sobj_id)

if ai_design_type := "carrier" then

carriercount := carriercount + 1

endif

done

// Depending on how high carrier count is then

set type_name := "Fighter"
set veh_size_class := AI_VEHICLE_SIZE_CLASS_FIGHTER
set tf_role := TASK_FORCE_ROLE_PICKET
set add_type := bool_Race_Uses_Fighters
set curr_in_existence := -100
set curr_in_queues := -100
set curr_base := 2000

if carriercount > 2 then
set curr_base := 3000
endif

if carriercount > 5 then
set curr_base := 5000
endif

if carriercount > 10 then
set curr_base := 10000
endif

Been fiddling with the loop and i'm not sure about the call lst_AI_Our_Ships.add statement, should it be list_AI_Our_ships.get or set?
But you get the idea. Anyone think it would work with a bit of code correction?

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Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki

There is a file, I think it is Script_AI_Construction that along with the AI_GlobalSettings that is used to set those priorities discussed.

I think the problem is that in this code it calls out specifically for Attack Ships (Defense Ships get the same default for Attack), Satellites, Mines, Weapons Platforms, and wallah Carriers. I suspect that you could add in code that gives a high priority to fighters.

I think you are on to something. I have only just read through the scripts for this but I think it is feasible or in the Script_AI_GlobalSettings file you could introduce some lines that check the players number of carriers and adjusts the priority for them up to what an Attack Ship gets...then they cannot be bumped. Once you hit the total unit space for the carriers the priority could be adjusted back down. I think the latter would have to happen in the Script_AI_Construction file.

I must be playing a different game...As I stated in a different post, in a stock game, since 1.25 I have run into carriers with fighters on numorous occasions.

Empty carriers used to be a problem is stock pre 1.25 but now if you hit an empty carier its frequently because its just been built/refited or has lanched all its fighters and gone back for more. Not seen one not in orbit of as shipyard world since 1.25