Auto-designer is really bad...

[Zorlond]

Big surprise, a segment of gaming AI is garbage, but in this case it's directly impacting the player's control of their own empire.

So you want to let the game auto-design your ships? Too bad. It'll latch onto the most garbage designs and cling to them for dear life. Me, I've got Railguns (tech 3 mass drivers), but the auto-designer insists on using the weak mining drone lasers and tech 1 torpedoes. Just swapping the lasers for Railguns gets more than +2 damage output. You might say 'hey, armor penetration', only everyone in my neighborhood uses shields, not armor. And torps don't do anything to shields, so it's not even a valid weapon combo.

Please, we need a better auto-designer. Or at least a way to tell the auto-designer "don't use these, use these".

[BenWang]

Well.......my designer uses only the blue lance and plasma cannon......from battleship to corvette.
Approved!

[Snowhusky5]

Yeah, the auto designer is pretty dumb sometimes. For example, it seems to always prefer having all slots filled with shields and power, leaving no room for more than 1 piece of armor (if there's a slot that can't be filled with shields without going into negative power). Also, battleships always include a hangar slot, even if you only have scout fighters, and never any of the field-effect modules. It never uses other modules like shield capacitors either.

[Prisoner 76561197992841073]

I haven't even touched the auto-designer once, I recommend you don't; the ship-designing is pretty simple to do yourself.

[Darkeus]

I wouldn't know. I don't let the AI make my ships.

[Hurodrik]

Originally posted by goblin:

I haven't even touched the auto-designer once, I recommend you don't; the ship-designing is pretty simple to do yourself.

Not to mention it's fun. I can't help but think back on the ship designer tool from GC2 and conclude how much I like this one.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Zorlond:

And torps don't do anything to shields, so it's not even a valid weapon combo.

FYI Torps ignore shields :)

But yes its not the best, the auto designer, but tbf designing one yourself takes very little effort.

[JunJun]

yes, don't let the AI build your ships....just build your own. It's pretty simple!

[AlbertNi]

They could've have an "auto-update" funtion that automatically upgrades your component to the latest tech (red-blue-UV-Xray laser, etc.), and have a prompt bubble when you unlock a new type of component via research

[Zorlond]

Originally posted by RodHull:

Originally posted by Zorlond:

And torps don't do anything to shields, so it's not even a valid weapon combo.

FYI Torps ignore shields :)

Yeah, that's my point. Torps ignore shields, and don't reduce the shield strength at all. So the lasers would be banging away at the shields and the torps wouldn't help them at all.

As for designing being quite easy (as multiple people have stated), the initial design is fine and dandy. And then comes the update. And another update. And another. And another. And... You get the drift.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Zorlond:

Originally posted by RodHull:

FYI Torps ignore shields :)

Yeah, that's my point. Torps ignore shields, and don't reduce the shield strength at all. So the lasers would be banging away at the shields and the torps wouldn't help them at all.

As for designing being quite easy (as multiple people have stated), the initial design is fine and dandy. And then comes the update. And another update. And another. And another. And... You get the drift.

No generally speaking even with high research you dont have to update that often as sometimes its tech you dont really need anyway. And if your using torpedos, then kinetics are a good choice early game to go with them, lasers later as they have high dps so shields while useful vs them dont last long at all. But generally you dont want to overuse torpedos anyway the AI hard counters them with PD if you rely on them to much

[suppa]

Auto designer is meant to give you a little help. Designing your own ships is part of the strategy. If you have access to special ammo you can use those types of weapons for an advantage.

[Free Luigi M.]

Originally posted by BenWang:

Well.......my designer uses only the blue lance and plasma cannon......from battleship to corvette.
Approved!

That's not very good. Both those weapons are weak against shields. If your enemy stacks shields and shield regen you are boned.

Originally posted by Zorlond:

Or at least a way to tell the auto-designer "don't use these, use these".

We need this asap.
Autodesigner is very useful, but we need to be able to select things to exclude and things to use. And then the autodesigner can do the calculations and optimize the power usage.
This is especially true for when you want to put aoe modules on your ships. The autodesigner removes them all the times, even if you put them in yourself.

[SlicedAndDiced]

I made two battle ships, put a bunch of Tachyon lances on it called it the "Ass-Cannon". The second i gave it alot shields and armor Called it the "Butt-Buffer" . No one in the galaxy is safe from the Ass cannon buffer combo!!!!