Quick Questions

From what i remember, mutliple launch components only matters in Simultaneous. (and combat of course) i'll test it again but i'm pretty sure i remember carriers launching alot more fighters than my frieghters(with one fighter bay) per turn.

k so the test isn't conclusive but i'm going to go back on what i said earlier.
it doesn't seem to matter how many launching components you have on a ship, outside of combat. This is with Stock 1.58 Unnamed AI, max level with everything.
My game crashes when i try and launch 200fighters per ship(3 ships) in a system.
The single launch bay on my freighter and the multiply launch bays on carrier both launch 100 fighters per turn. so maybe at huge numbers but i don't think that's going to be an issue.

Will upgrade to 1.62 and see if launching units is fixed

I recall Kwok mentioning that a huge bottleneck in turn processing is the Movement Phase - moving all those ships around. More efficient approaches have been suggested.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

This would be a real improvement in the viability of smaller AI races (either single-system minor races, or "full" AIs that haven't expanded much for whatever reason), but it requires non-trivial coding.

By default, each race builds a separate ship for each role (mine layer, satellite layer, drone launcher, carrier, freighter, etc.) and the AI generates tasks for each role and sends the ships of the appropriate type. Each ship can simply have orders to collect all of its type of unit (mines, etc.) that are available, and then head to someplace where they need to be deployed.

A far more efficient setup for a small empire would be to have one utility design with a single launcher of each type and the rest cargo bays. (For a fighter-centric race, dedicated carriers might still be needed for combat.) Writing the AI scripts to properly balance the relative needs of various tasks in peacetime and in war, and to load an appropriate mixture of units and cargo, is not simple.

Even for a human player, trying to decide, say, how many fighters to load onto a ship tasked with laying recon sats in uncontrolled space is tricky. If you don't meet any opposition, every sat's worth of fighters loaded is a reduction in the ship's ability to perform its primary mission efficiently. If you meet heavy opposition, a few fighters aren't going to save the day. Ideally, you want just enough to have a decent chance of taking down a single ship of whatever nearby races are using for exploration themselves, which if you haven't met them yet is a very open question.

The all purpose freighter is how i outfit mine. with 1 luancher for all unit types and the rest cargo, it can carry alot of crap around my systems. dispensing it where needed.
Unnamed, if oyu need any help whatsoever with your mod, testing, debugging and such i'd love to help. I'd really like to get into AI scripting but i'm not really sure where to start or even what i want it to do. Any little projects you have would be great

As for turn processing. as mentioned above, Kwok stated that majority of the turn is from movement. the computer checks what's around it after every hex that it moves. So with 50 ships moving 17 hexes that's alot of checking

Well if those ships are stacked, then they do the calculation at the same time if they're moving in the same direction. But still, Kwok's suggested a dual mode CPU check - a separate 'globally aware' CPU that can finish the obstacle check in one swoop, then if there are unexpected obstacles, let the AI decide just as it arrives there mid-turn.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.