AI designer needs to be removed

[Ahnassi]

One of the most dentrimental things to the improvement of the game has been the AI designer.
It's restricting the player designer as the devs seems to stubbornly want to have the AI and the player follow the same rules when designing. Also things like modular hulls not being a thing in the game are blamed on the AI not being able to cope with it.

Trying to fix the Ai designer takes time and money, things that can be better spent on improving the core gameplay, such as battle AI, gunnery and armor mechanics etc.
Having the Ai pick from a list of prebuilt ships would be better (even better if the player could add their own ships to the list for more variation/challenge).

[HofVanStrudel]

Yeah have preset build the ai can choose from

[The Bush Wolf]

There is a myriad of issues with having the AI select pre-set ships in a campaign setting, the AI will be unable to adapt to the financial status of their nation and tech levels will be different for everyone. Having premade ships for the AI to select is a little too much, the creators would never be able to make a ship for every single possible outcome of the tech branch and financial outcomes for each nation.

The AI designer is a little bit ridiculous at times creating ships with far too much firepower and no durability but this is what makes the game interesting in my view, I never know what the AI is gonna cook up for me to battle. Removing this and making things streamlined and boring is a no-go in my view.

But what do you think is gonna happen if they remove AI design? Its gonna cost them even more money to make something different so this doesn't solve anything it just creates more problems than there currently is.

I'm sure different people are focusing on different aspects of the game. Modelers focus on building new ship, superstructure and gun models or updating existing stuff.

Different programmers and art designers working on the campaign while others work on the core features using the alpha testers to give feedback on all possible problems that occur.

[Ahnassi]

Rule the Waves have templates/premade ships for it's AI, and that game is essentially what UAD is advertized to be, but in 3D.

[The Bush Wolf]

But I'm sure even that requires some form of automation to create said ships.

[The Bush Wolf]

But I'm sure even that requires some form of automation to create said ships.

Just because Rule The Waves did a form of that, doesn't mean this game has the ability to do that fully, just because one game did it doesn't mean this one can. Its advertising has nothing to do with that capability.

[Ahnassi]

If they didn't took 12 months trying to make the AI design better we could have modular hulls, better battle-AI, better gunnery etc at this point

[HofVanStrudel]

Originally posted by Ahnassi:

If they didn't took 12 months trying to make the AI design better we could have modular hulls, better battle-AI, better gunnery etc at this point

I agree

[SS-310]

I think them having premade ships that are replicas and/or variants of real ships of the time would be a vastly better system then whatever the hell AI ships are. Making variants could be decided by AI depending on the campaign nations financial status and tech level, swapping out the real ships guns with other guns but retaining a realistic look.

Ex. The japanese Mogami class CL with 5x3 6in guns. If in the campaign in 1930 the economy was poor, they could be dual mounts instead of triple mounts, less/weaker secondary guns, less torpedoes per launcher or less torpedo storage etc.

The same would go for a better economy. Could replace them with dual mount 8" guns like the late WW2 retrofit irl with improved secondaries.

If the economy is too bad to make new ship classes, continuing older designs or retrofitting older designs could be an option. 100% AI design imo is stupid, isnt working, and ruins the immersion of the game by having completely unrealistic and overarmed designs

[Ahnassi]

Suggesting good idea wouldn't get you anywere with this dev team. They are to stubborn to realise it, at least Nick is.

This " be part of shaping the development of the game" is nowhere to be found here, as very little, if anything from community suggestions outside of bigger guns and some hulls have been added to the game.

[stm8022]

Originally posted by Ahnassi:

One of the most dentrimental things to the improvement of the game has been the AI designer.

You have zero actual knowledge of how much development time was spent on the AI designer, thus no room to make declarations what was "the most detrimental". For all you know the AI designer might be currently lacking because it *doesn't* get the dev attention it needs to iron its kinks out.

Having fixed designs as alternative is a poor idea, since it makes the AI unable to react to player's designs, while allowing the player to create superior designs at any stage, since they know in advance exactly what sorts of ships the AI can produce. In contrast, getting (reliable) intelligence on what the enemy was building and/or planning was in reality a big part of the whole naval wargame.

Also, this should be obvious, but removing the AI designer *now* not only won't give back the time spent on it, but it'd instead require further dev time, both to actually remove it, and to implement the alternative. Thus it's a misguided request, at best.

[The Bush Wolf]

Originally posted by stm8022:

Originally posted by Ahnassi:

One of the most dentrimental things to the improvement of the game has been the AI designer.

You have zero actual knowledge of how much development time was spent on the AI designer, thus no room to make declarations what was "the most detrimental". For all you know the AI designer might be currently lacking because it *doesn't* get the dev attention it needs to iron its kinks out.

Having fixed designs as alternative is a poor idea, since it makes the AI unable to react to player's designs, while allowing the player to create superior designs at any stage, since they know in advance exactly what sorts of ships the AI can produce. In contrast, getting (reliable) intelligence on what the enemy was building and/or planning was in reality a big part of the whole naval wargame.

Also, this should be obvious, but removing the AI designer *now* not only won't give back the time spent on it, but it'd instead require further dev time, both to actually remove it, and to implement the alternative. Thus it's a misguided request, at best.

Exactly, this is pretty much what I was trying to say except better explained