The game has too many APs as it is anyway, I prefer this approach you've taken.

We may have different philosophies on what mods should do. The AP is niche, but that is intentional. I don't want to add an AP that becomes a mandatory pick in every game. I want APs to be situationally useful, but when they are useful they should be very strong. In the case of Armored in Firepower it has two main uses.
1. If you've invested into fleets of stealthy torpedo frigates, it doubles the number of torpedoes in your fleet. Stealthy torpedo frigates are very situational, but this straight up doubles their effectiveness.
2. If you're building a fleet of high evasion destroyers, it allows designing destroyers that combine kinetic artillery with two energy torpedoes and act as big ship hunters. Without the perk the design could only carry one energy torpedo, so you're again doubling the number of torpedoes.

@frosties I would recommend using a mod where u can use more ascension perks anyway, The AI uses them too and it makes the endgame much less empty.

I feel like the ship sections given by the ascension perk are mid as hell. No way I would waste an entire ascension perk when you are already limited to only 8. I would like to see a substantial buff to it, especially considering that it is added by a mod, which I would expect to have a power level equivalent to at least the A or S tier compared to the vanilla perks.

v2.3.4
Stellaris 4.0 compatibility patch:
- Added bioship cost triggers and modifiers to defense platform sections and T slot weapons.
- Implemented logistics trade upkeep and role selector background for standard ship sizes and removed piracy suppression data.
- Implemented triggers that block bioship empires from getting mechanical ship weapons.
- Added missing weapon tags for slot size to mecanical ship weapons.
- Added cosmic storm AI weight factors.

Other changes:
- Added new logic for using archeo-tech weapons. Empires will only use them if they have more than 2000 minor artifacts stored and more than +2 minor artifacts income. Even then empires who don't have the Archaeo-Engineers perk will prefer normal weapons, unless they have more than 5000 minor artifacts stored and more than +5 minor artifacts income.
- Energy torpedoes are now classified as explosive weapons.

It wasn't designed with that mod in mind nor did I test it. I honestly don't know if they are compatible or not.

Heyy Does this work with THe Ancient cache of technology? LIke will it automatically upgrade to dark matter?

Sure, go for it. I'm an old-school amateur modder who believes it's polite to give credit, but everybody should be able to freely take and tweak things from other mods. ;)

To add onto this: I am also going to slightly modify said bits, so It works on 4.0 / it doesn't create issues with the current mod

Greetings, am I allowed to use pieces of this mod in another mod I updated?
My rerelease of the mod is called "4.0 Stardocks" and I would of course credit you in the description.
The things you added in this mod seem to be exactly those things I struggled with. I'd be glad to be allowed to do this.

Eventually I'll update all my mods to the latest version of the game, but at the moment I switched back to playing and modding Crusader Kings 2.

@Dragatus, thank you!
I hope we'll get updated version of the mod for 4.0.

I used it with 3.14 and didn't notice problems, but I make no guarantees.

Is this mod workable on 3.14?

Awesome mod. Makes the AI much more challenging to play against

Not that I know off.

Is there a version of this or perhaps a mod that keeps the original ship sections and just makes the AI design smarter and use hardening? Or no?

The logic is based only on preferred weapon type, which the mercs do seem to already have (kinetics), so giving them a full personality wouldn't achieve anything new.

Cool, thank you! Not asking you to, but wondering if you've messed around with applying a personality to Mercs as a way of invoking all of the logic you have here. As far as I can tell, this should be possible - which country types can get which personalities is gated on the personality side, not the country type side. No trouble if you haven't, just don't want to chase after it if you've tried it and it doesn't work.

It does help them a bit. They'll still mostly use kinetics, but will mix in a small amount of plasma.

Does this mod help Mercenary Enclaves build better ships? They don't have personalities, as far as I can tell, so I'm not sure how the preferred weapon checks will interact with their decision making.

It helps to reduce the number of ships in the late game, which should help to reduce lag. If the AI builds 1 cruiser instead of 4 corvettes or 1 battleship instead of 4 destroyers that's 75% fewer ships that the game needs to keep track off. In the late game it can really add up.

Beyond that, big ships are still just better than small ones, so long as the enemy isn't bringing too many torpedoes to the fight. A cruiser is going to wreck 4 corvettes and a battleship is going to do the same to 4 destroyers.

The new Picket Ship Stern for cruisers was added to prevent player exploiting the new behavior by going full torpedo on the AI. It should provide some defense against torpedoes without making strike craft and missiles entirely useless.

I'm curious why you stop the AI from building corvettes and destroyers later on. Does it do much to help them?

v2.2
- After researching Destroyers technology the AI will stop building corvettes.
- After researching Cruisers technology the AI will stop building frigates.
- After researching Battleships technology the AI will stop building destroyers.
- After researching Battleships technology the AI will favor using P slots on smaller ships even if PD weapons are not the most advanced weapons available.
- Added new Picket Stern for cruisers.
- If AI has the Armored in Firepower ascension perk, it will continue to build destroyers even after researching Battleships technology.
- Armored in Firepower requirements changed from 1 other perk and Battleships technology to 2 other perks and Cruisers technology.
- AI is less likely to take Armored in Firepower.
- Fixed missing AI tags on weapons and ship sections. Ship designer will now recognize the various stealth roles.

Thank you for the heads up. I'll look into it for the next update.

Doing some mod merging - it looks like this mod doesn't have ai tags for stealth ships. For example, MEDIUM_AUTOCANNON_1:

ai_tags = {
weapon_role_anti_shield
brawler
}

The base game with the stealth expansion also has the tab brawler_stealth. Several other weapons, but not all, should have this tag too.

Fair enough, I would probably do the same

I'm 99% sure it's safe to ignore the warning.

it says its only for 3.7, should i ignore it?

The mod should work fine with the 3.8 patch for Stellaris. I'll still update it when I find the time.

Thank you. I used to have a more vanilla variant of the mod, but very few people were using it and at one point I decided t wasn't worth keeping it around.

I would prefer a version without the changes to vanilla ships, otherwise good work

No, it isn't. SSD is not compatible with mods that add new ship sizes and ship sections.

Hi is this mod compatible with Aesthetic Cinematic Gameplay (ACG)?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2012803646
Thanks

v2.1
- Incorporated archaeotech weapons.
- Proton and Neutron Launchers now use the cost and upkeep for medium weapons instead of the cost and upkeep for large weapons.
- Large railguns and plasma no longer have a minimum range.
- All X and T size weapons now have 45 minimum range.

First I'd like to thank you for linking the other mod. That makes it much easier for me to check compatibility.

And yes, the mods should be fully compatible.

Is this compatible with Amazing Space Battles?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1878473679

If that is true, it was a failed attempt. Unmodded AI is actually really bad at making the best use of G slots. Torpedoes are tagged as anti-shield weapons, but that leads the AI to think they're a great combo for energy weapons when it's in fact just the opposite. And eventually all vanilla AIs will switch over to energy torpedoes, but there is no good S slot option to go along with them. They all have either vastly lower range or they skip shields, the one thing energy torpedoes need help with.

I think the entire invention of Torpedo slots and the Frigate ship type was to help the AI to make better ships and fleets.

@Morcleon

Two reasons.
1) It makes the ships types more specialized if small ships are the only ones with PD. This gives you more of a reason to keep using them after the invention of cruisers and battleships.
2) It makes carriers better at keeping their distance if you replace PD with missiles.

Could you share your reasoning for switching out the P slots for S slots on a lot of the hangar sections?

v2.0
- Remade mod from scratch for the 3.6 Orion patch.
- In addition to more intelligently choosing ship sections the AI will now also more intelligently choose which weapons to put in each slot size.
- Most of the new ship sections added by previous versions of the mod are gone.
- Modified standard ship sections: Destroyer Picket Bow (SSP -> MPP), Cruiser Hangar Core (PPH -> SSH), Cruiser Torpedo Core (SSGG -> GGG), Battleship Hangar Bow (HMPP -> HMSS), Battleship Carrier Core (SSPPHH -> SSSSHH)
- New standard ship sections: Multirole Frigate (PG), Destroyer Interceptor Ship Bow (SSS + extra defenses), Destroyer Torpedo Stern (G), Multirole Menacing Cruiser (LGMSP)
- Armored in Firepower ascension perk now provides different new sections than before: Guardian Corvette (MPP), Gunstar Corvette (MM), Guardian Frigate (GPP), Nova Frigate (GG), Destroyer Gunstar Stern (MM), Destroyer Nova Stern (GG).
- Standard Frigates and standard destroyer stern get +2 small slots for defenses.

Fixed the problem and updated recommended patch version number. No further changes at this point.

I'm mostly looking forward to it, but I do also have some concerns. For example I don't see why they want to split torpedo corvettes off into a separate class. But we'll see.

Awesome. Are you looking forward to or dreading Paradoxes upcoming combat changes? Sounds like the studio has it's sights on exactly what your mod does!

I ran into some unexpected issues that are keeping me from updating the mod (and might force me to delete and re-upload it), but the 3.4 version should work fine with the new patch for the game.

More broadly, Battlecrusiers, Escorts and any other new (or at any rate, newly playable) ship classes also will not be affected by my mod's logic. If the other mod adds new ship sections for Corvettes, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships there could even be bigger conflicts.

I had to look up the mod. It's always useful to include a link to make it easier for me to look up the mod you're concerned about. That said, it seems like Ancient Cache of Technologies could confuse my mod. The new technologies from that mod won't be accounted for, so the AI and auto-build won't be able to judge which slots are best.

What you'll end up with once you've researched all vanilla technologies is an AI preference of X > L > M > S > P slots, with AI empires that prefer missiles favoring G slots over everything short of an X slot and AI empires that prefer strike craft favoring H slots over everything short of an X slot. And the AI will then stick with that regardless of what new technologies it might unlock.

Firstly thank you for making your mods and still updating them. My question is: How well does this mod work with Ancient Cache of Technologies?

I made a new mod called Refined Weaponry that rebalances vanilla weapons to make the early ones still have some use even in the late game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2840205674