Heya, yet another question that will likely go unanswered:



Where can I find the AI shipdesigns?

I'm obviously completely inexperienced with the ES modding yet, but I figured it'd be worth a try.

Given that the AI difficulty levels are absolutely not made for large galaxies, but the AI isn't a meaningful challenge, either, I figured it might help to teach the AI to build usable ships.

On my system I would look in \SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Endless Space\Public_xp1\AI for those files, yours should be similar.

That is where all the AI ship designs are stored, BE WARNED tinkering with AI ship designs is notoriously buggy, it tends to break the AI and they either don't produce ships or they only produce a few.

Results vary and some folks have been successful others not so much.

Thanks! I'll try that.

I suppose industry/strategic resource costs will bug the AI?

Edit: OK, actual question: What's the name for the Armour module? Because the biggest problem with the AI is it never uses those.

Ships with 100+ of every defense and 450 hp get old at some point. :P

Edit2: Ok, I think this line: [CODE][/CODE] is it. Appears Amoebae don't have that one at all :P

Most likely they dont use the armor module as it has a very low weighting as you discovered.

There is a reason armor modules are weighted so low.

With the introduction of hull weakness and defense the armor module is not only underpowered it isnt of nearly as much value as it used to be.

You see a ship with 100 of every defense and 450hp and so you think it is fragile and weak.

Not so at all see each of those defenses grants some amount of the "Defense" stat. which adds up to alot more effective hps than you think.

A ship with zero Defense takes full damage and each amount of Defense equal to the ships' Hull Weakness decreases the damage taken by 50%.



Effective Health

Effective Health is another way of understanding the defense mechanics. A ship has a Basic Health (450 health for your typical destroyer, for example) that is modified by the defense the ships possesses. Effective Health is calculated independently for each type of attack (Kinetic, Laser, Missile, Fighter/Bomber). Each Hull Weakness amount of defense increases a ships' Effective Health by 100% of the Base Health.



Example:

A destroyer (Again, base Health 450) has a Hull Weakness of 300. It has 300 defense value of deflector (anti kinetic) modules, 600 defense value of shield (anti laser) modules, and 0 defense value of flak (anti-missile) modules. Its Effective Health versus kinetics is 900 (450 *(1+ 300/300)), its Effective Health versus lasers is 1350 (450 * (1+600/300)), and its effective Health versus missiles is 450 (450*(1+0/300)).

Above taken from a dev post related from the ES wiki.



Thus that 450 health ship with say 5 of each defense even at level 1 systems breaks down thus.

5 Deflectors = 1000 defense

5 Shields = 600 defense

5 flak = 300 defense

So we have a 450 health ship lets say its a medium class which gives it a hull weakness of 200 and 450 hp that is an effective hit points of 2700 vs kinetics, 1800 vs lasers and 1125 versus missiles.

That is 90 weight of level 1 defenses, 90 weight of armor modules is not quite 6 level 1 armor modules total which provide 50% hp per module for a total of 300% actual hp, so with armor modules the ship has 1350 hps total but lacks all the other ameliorating effects of using defensive modules. Just take missiles as an example vs missiles armor modules provide more effective HP but that ship must then soak the entire salvo against its raw hitpoints whereas if it had those 5 flak defense modules a large part of each missile salvo wouldnt even make it to the ship.



So overall no, having AI's use tons of armor modules isn't any improvement over them stacking defense modules.



Now would it be good to see more AI ships using fighters, bombers, power modules, repair modules etc? Heck yeah.

No one asked the AI to use only Armour modules. I know about the workings of defense.

But that factions like Amoebae use none at all is just silly.

If they'd just sacrificed 10% of their defense on their tank designs to increase their real hp by 50-100%, that'd drastically improve their efficacy. I've had fights where the nominal fighting power of an AI Fleet was 3x that of mine, and then they were wiped of the screen in the long range phase with no losses on my side. Which is another, more serious problem: Armour doesn't really improve the nominal power of ships, so the AI thinks "Hey, easy target", declares war on me, and loses half it's military to a single milita fleet that's a serious annoyance to set up with the ever same battle cards twice a turn.

As for bombers, as far as I've seen, the AI uses tons of them, but it's limited to a few factions. Cravers always tends to be nothing but frigates and carriers for most of the game.