Stellaris Dev Diary #17 - Ship Designer

[Remoria]

Energy as far as stellaris is concerned, they might technically be energy credits im not sure.

 

[Safehold]

As an aside, I can't help but feel that any kind of "real life" energy shielding for a vessel would require mind-boggling amounts of energy - especially when compared to weapons. How could you possibly win that race? For every (... ? Watt? Joule?) you put into a weapon, it would take hundreds or thousands more to counter it with a shield. How would that work?

Could utilize leaky shields, to negate 50% of beam energy via dispersion. That way armor would still be needed to absorb the damage or reflect lasers. Could also have a passive shield as a sensor device, then when something enters the perimeter, the power plants charge up and focus power on that quadrant or area, charging the shields up instead of using x energy to maintain the field all the time. It would mean first strikes would do more damage.

 

[mwyeoh]

The AI needs to be just as capable as an advanced human player at designing space ships regardless of the technology you have researched. If the techs are truly random then no two games will be alike, and thus no two games will have the same exact ship designs. The AI needs to be competent at making a good design regardless of what tech you throw at it.

Im sorry, what I mean is, I am wondering with ship building being at times as time consuming as it can be, how ship design would work in multiplayer as the game would need to continue regardless (multiple players would not pause their game so one person could design his new ship)

What was suggested was that perhaps players will be able to save previous ship designs and load them in future games

I was then questioning whether or not this would be feasible since each game would play out differently and you most likely would not be able to load a previous design since your technologies would be so different

I was not questioning whether or not the AI could design ships. Paradox have proven themselves in being able to do this

 

[Beric]

I was not questioning whether or not the AI could design ships. Paradox have proven themselves in being able to do this

I've never played a Paradox game that had an AI custom unit designer. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to which game you're referring? My only experience is with every other strategy game with a unit designer out there, which do NOT have AI capable of good unit design.

 

[Phase]

Will we be able to save ship templates to use in other games? I do imagine that because there are many different technologies (which is amazing) that it would be difficult.

 

[Arkangilos]

I've never played a Paradox game that had an AI custom unit designer. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to which game you're referring? My only experience is with every other strategy game with a unit designer out there, which do NOT have AI capable of good unit design.

Any of the hearts of iron games have unit designers. The "ship" is the division. The "components" are brigades.

 

[misterbean]

Any of the hearts of iron games have unit designers. The "ship" is the division. The "components" are brigades.

Yeah, but the HOI AI is just told something along the lines of: "You need at least 1 or 2 frontline brigades in every division. The rest can be filled out by choosing from the following list, depending on the country you play."
That means that sometimes you will come across divisions that have 2 inf+2AA, and they will try to conquer your defended city.

 

[kreissig]

In the polygon video, on the ship-build screen, it shows the cost of the ship with a mineral symbol next to it. Now....in this DD it shows as a little stack of money. I'm not sure which one came before the other actually. Is this shot of a little stack of money a more "fleshed out" design?

Or is it that we are seeing a mechanic that is on the drawing board, or otherwise not finalized? I'm just not sure about this? Maybe they are teetering on a ship costing minerals and energy...???

Mind you all, it is clear that there is a maintenance cost. This is only about construction.

 

[sterrius]

how the AI will handle the ship design plague me with doubt.

I love interesting and complete design systems but i want even more a complex and strong AI that can actually give me, the player, a challenge.

I want my best ships to actually fight for they money when they find the best AI fleet of a similar size empire.
Usually in 4x games when we get to mid/end game its a walk in the park. Its not a battle, not even a beating, its total anihiliation with your ships barely getting damage at all and killing enemy ships like they are bugs.

I hope stellaris avoid this and i don´t even care even if the AI have to cheat to obtain this.

Saying "just nerf yourself and use the default ships" is not a option either, as this is just a lazy response to a serius problem.

 

[Beric]

how the AI will handle the ship design plague me with doubt.

I love interesting and complete design systems but i want even more a complex and strong AI that can actually give me, the player, a challenge.

I want my best ships to actually fight for they money when they find the best AI fleet of a similar size empire.
Usually in 4x games when we get to mid/end game its a walk in the park. Its not a battle, not even a beating, its total anihiliation with your ships barely getting damage at all and killing enemy ships like they are bugs.

I hope stellaris avoid this and i don´t even care even if the AI have to cheat to obtain this.

Saying "just nerf yourself and use the default ships" is not a option either, as this is just a lazy response to a serius problem.

This is precisely what I am saying in my thread here but there seems to be a certain subset of people which is more interested in the ability to crush the AI with superior ship designs than in an actual balanced game. I have never seen a game with capable AI unit design that can match a half-decent human player.

 

[sterrius]

Usually for the AI to do that beric you have to limit the Player options.

More options the player have more problems the AI is going to have to actually work with the system.

You can create AI´s directives for the AI to choose more weapons, shields, movement etc but in the end its a limited amount of options and the player will figure out sooner or later what directive the AI is using and work against it.

Other problem is when you give a complete randomized directive, them the ships will go from good ships to totally useless ones.

For example, I struggle to find a solution to make the AI choose the best section showed in the dev diary. How the AI is going to know it needs Titan Breaker instead of Pulse breaker?

One way i found is a solution i posted in another topic.
Make the AI record and interpret data it gets from battles, scout and espionage.

Lets say AI is going for All guns no defense ships and meet a player going a balanced design.
When both start fighting the AI will get the first battles and analyse why its losing ships and improve on the design they already have and also make new ones to counter that specific threat.

Its because they are missing too many shots? The AI will get more support sector and fill more Computers to help them hit.
Its because they have no missile defenses? Change and get more anti-missile modules.

Also the AI don´t need to actually lose fights to react to the player. Using espionage and scout they can analyse the enemy ships and already work on counters to that ship.

For this to work the AI must have a very good number of options as it needs to interpret the Rock > Paper > Scissor game and already know that it needs Shield vs energy weapons for example and that lasers don´t care about anti-missile modules.

Its lots of work and i don´t even know if its possible.
This would make the AI really dangerous and also make sure players would not be able to stop with a "I win" design. If a player wanted to win they will need to make a actually complete fleet that can help each other out.

 

[Beric]

Sterrius, that sounds like a really good idea and I greatly look forward to the day when AI can handle such intelligent behavior. However, like you I am not optimistic that in this day and age this AI will be any different that any other game's unit design AI I have seen in the past.

 

[sterrius]

Yeah, unfortunaly i agree with you, making a AI that can take and interpret data like that would take a huge effort.

 

[Arkangilos]

So what exactly is the difference between not having a choice at all... and choosing to auto-do it instead? If your answer is, "Well... multiplayer..." Then just ask for a feature where we can disable ship design, so you and all of the people who agree with you can choose to play with the auto design.

 

[huyderman]

I'm pretty sure they've said that the plan is to release HoI4 before Stellaris.

Yes, and it probably is. But plans change. If Stellaris is ready for release before HoI is ready, I doubt they'll just sit on it just because the original plan was to release it after HoI.

 

[Haldan]

What if the AI copies the ship structures of its opponents after say, beaten by them?

 

[SolarGuy]

What if the AI copies the ship structures of its opponents after say, beaten by them?

I generally wonder what happens with the technology / knowledge of a defeated empire. Will the victorious side get every tech, or only the techs that have been built and still exist? If the latter is the case, one would want to be careful in a war so he doesn't destroy something valuable (for example ruins tech or fallen empire's tech). When you destroy the database of all knowledge of that empire, you will most likely miss something important.

 

[Haldan]

I generally wonder what happens with the technology / knowledge of a defeated empire. Will the victorious side get every tech, or only the techs that have been built and still exist? If the latter is the case, one would want to be careful in a war so he doesn't destroy something valuable (for example ruins tech or fallen empire's tech). When you destroy the database of all knowledge of that empire, you will most likely miss something important.

If you blow up a ship and collect the debris, you're most likely to only get a scrap of knowledge from it.
If you capture a planet with a Fallen Empire's tech, you might only be able to use the infrastructure, but not how to rebuild it.

 

[Safehold]

My only experience is with every other strategy game with a unit designer out there, which do NOT have AI capable of good unit design.

SOTS1 had a pretty good AI design system later on.

There was a lot of specialized ship types that only the player knew how to use well, but the general battleline of the AI was pretty good as a challenge. Assuming equivalent tech levels at least.

If Stellaris uses the same AI design as SOTS1, which also had ship sections and small/m/l sized weapons, they'll know where to improve upon it. Part of it is limiting the hard counters and super weapons to be something that the AI can easily recognize and use.

Another part will be actual AI tactical maneuvers for both fleets, and how that interacts with various weapons. It's actually easier to create and balance an AI for automatic tactical combat, than for the manual player controlled tactical battle in SOTS1.

how the AI will handle the ship design plague me with doubt.

I love interesting and complete design systems but i want even more a complex and strong AI that can actually give me, the player, a challenge.

I want my best ships to actually fight for they money when they find the best AI fleet of a similar size empire.
Usually in 4x games when we get to mid/end game its a walk in the park. Its not a battle, not even a beating, its total anihiliation with your ships barely getting damage at all and killing enemy ships like they are bugs.

I hope stellaris avoid this and i don´t even care even if the AI have to cheat to obtain this.

Saying "just nerf yourself and use the default ships" is not a option either, as this is just a lazy response to a serius problem.

Usually 4x games tend to give too many micro management options to the player, to keep them busy, which makes writing an AI for the various queues and ship design parts, difficult. A game built with the AI in mind, for multiplayer and automatic tactical battles, will be easier to manage.

The rest is due to 4x's lack of an end game challenge, which Stellaris will deal directly with in other ways.

I generally wonder what happens with the technology / knowledge of a defeated empire. Will the victorious side get every tech, or only the techs that have been built and still exist? If the latter is the case, one would want to be careful in a war so he doesn't destroy something valuable (for example ruins tech or fallen empire's tech). When you destroy the database of all knowledge of that empire, you will most likely miss something important.

A wreckage will drop from any destroyed ship, which a science ship can salvage for usable tech. As as with anomalies. A lot of the tech is abstract bonuses, rather than buildings physically there. I haven't read anything concerning capturing tech from invading planets, however. Or whether tech can be transfered via subverting a primitive planet.

For Fallen Empires, you might only get the most valuable tech from anomalies on their planets. That way, you're still using the science ship, science character trait, mechanic.

I am wondering with ship building being at times as time consuming as it can be, how ship design would work in multiplayer as the game would need to continue regardless (multiple players would not pause their game so one person could design his new ship)

If there is a way to set the game time to the slowest tick rate, there should be plenty of time to develop the ship designs. How they will set that up, people who have played EU4 or HOI3 multiplayer, can probably more reliably guess at that.

I can estimate, in general, how long it took me to design each ship in Sword of the Stars 1, using 3 sections and picking various hard points.

 

[Silveroak2]

The effectiveness of the auto-ship builder is where I'd be worried, it would be fantastic if there was a way to prioritize the type of ship the auto-builder made, hevay on one or more weapons systems, shields, or FTL type. So even though the ships will be automatically designed they will fit with the type of fleet the player would want.