! AI Ship Building Priority Fix
Get better performance, and stronger AI fleets, with this mod.
Made on Stellaris 4.2.2
#
# Basic Description
#
This mod uses the AI’s technological advancement to disable the AI’s ability to buy bad ships.
When the AI researches Destroyers, they lose the ability to purchase Corvettes.
When the AI researches Cruisers, they lose the ability to purchase Frigates and Destroyers.
Why? Because AI ship spam is killing performance nowadays.
#
# What you will see in game
#
In the early game the AIs will produce their normal fleets of Corvettes and Frigates. By about 2230 they will have the Destroyers tech and will no longer make Corvettes.
By about 2280 they will all have the Cruiser tech, and from this point on their small ships will not be built or replaced. Battleship timing varies, but they usually have them at about 2350. From here on out their fleets will be primarily Cruisers and Battleships with the occasional Titan.
This results in two major changes:
– As AI economies become strong, they lose the ability to make fodder ships. They still grow their fleets but do so with fewer, more powerful ships.
– Stronger fleets. Normally the AI has a terrible purchasing strategy that results in spamming weak Corvettes. With this mod, midgame and lategame fleets will actually withstand your opening strike and put up a fight.
#
# Performance
#
I’ve done two test runs with this change – a Huge galaxy (1,000 stars, 30 AI, all Advanced Start) and a Tiny galaxy (200 stars, 6 AI, all Advanced Start). Both runs were in "normal" conditions, aka I had a browser open in the background while the game was running.
For the Huge galaxy, I eye-balled the following seconds-per-month timings while running the game in `observe` mode.
Early Game: 2-6 seconds / game month
Middle Game: 6-10 seconds / game month
Late Game: 10-12 seconds / game month
For the Tiny galaxy, same methodology.
Early Game: 1-2 seconds / game month
Middle Game: 2 seconds / game month
Late Game: 2-3 seconds / game month
This mod does not prevent perf from decreasing in the mid game (nothing does, trust me I’ve tried everything), but it does stop the bleeding as the game progresses into the late game. With this mod the game remains playable instead of becoming a slideshow.
FYI: The real performance "fix" is to reduce the number of AIs; the number of AIs directly determines good/bad performance. But few AIs isn’t much fun, is it.
#
# Comparison with other performance mods
#
There are two other major approaches right now: more expensive ships (e.g. Compact Armadas) and ship combiners (e.g. AI Game Performance Optimisation).
Both of those mods have the goal of reducing the number of ships, but they both have the problem that the AI continues to spam the cheapest available ship: Corvettes. This means they are merely stop-gaps that don’t actually stop the problem of ship spam.
This mod, on the other hand, directly prevents the AI from making small ships. And this mod comes online as the AI economies come online, right when they would normally start to ruin the game with small ship spamming.
This mod is also much more compatible than those mods.
Compact Armadas is incompatible with basically everything as a result of changing all of the ship and component values.
Whereas the AI Optimizers tend to be old things that use obsolete strategies that haven’t mattered in years (e.g. they still disable Xeno Compatibility, even though Paradox already fixed that problem). Those old strategies can sometimes cause more problems than they solve.
#
# Compatibility + Load Order
#
This mod should be compatible with all of the common mods. Most mods don’t mess with the base ship classes.
This mod edits `00_ship_sizes.txt`. Specifically, it overwrites the `corvette`, `frigate`, and `destroyer` entries. Mods that change those three base ship classes will conflict with this mod.
Put this mod at the bottom of your list, under things like UI Overhaul and any major content changes.
#
# Localization + Translation
#
This mod does not have any text. It will work for all languages.
#
# Permissions
#
If, in the future, the following two things are true:
– Game updates break this mod
– I’m not around to update it
You have my permission to re-upload a fixed version. Just link back here so that you don’t need to rewrite that huge description, and put a link to the fixed version in this mod’s comment section.
