Lack of ships

[lordtarl]

So I used the UE to play around and tweak the galaxy exactly as I wanted it.. larger planet sizes, higher power and cost ships, yet a bit lower cost buildings ... did this for all races so as not to be greedy heh heh.
I also added a few custom models and re organized the minor race ships and game them out to the various master races as buildable ships with special properties.. cloaking scouts etc etc.
Game pays fine but for one thing..

None of the major races seem to build large amounts of ships. If I see a major race with more then like 4 TOTAL ships I am amazed... and forget about a fleet. Doesn't happen. Question is.. what might be causing this? I have been all through the settings and cant find anything.
I have even dropped the build-cost of ALL ships to like 1 credit and they still don't build many. One or two yes. But never massive amounts. And I have also went as far as 250 turns before I just gave up waiting.
I know they have credits, I know they have the build capabilities.. everything seems to be in place for them to at least ... defend themselves lol.. I can walk thru them with a destroyer 2 half the time and just unload space trash on their home worlds and they just take it all and sit there... they need backbone! lol And I need more of a challenge!!

Anyone have any suggestions as to what I could check out? This game is a staple for me. I reload it every like 2 months and play for a week or two.. since it was launched lol But I miss the fights now!
Help!!
=)

LT

[Peter1981]

What version of Botf did you mod? (vanilla CD, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, ECM, ECM2, UDM3...et al)

What version of UE are you using?

Ship nuilding by the AI is strickly controled and understood, have you looked at that info?

Can't really tell from your infomation what is wrong: but bare in mind that the AI usually buys not builds so you may have a problem with AI having enough credit.

[DCER]

larger planet sizes

This is probably what's causing the low number of ships. With larger systems the AI spends a lot of time developing it's colonies. If you wait long enough it should start building ships. My advice: lower the pop sizes

[lordtarl]

larger planet sizes

This is probably what's causing the low number of ships. With larger systems the AI spends a lot of time developing it's colonies. If you wait long enough it should start building ships. My advice: lower the pop sizes

Would giving all the major races larger numbers of starting buildings, so they do not have to develop their systems, cause them to be able to builds ships better / faster? Or is it something like they will ALWAYS develop first even to the point of making more then they need? By my calculations all the M races should be ok but I can give them enough so that their citizens are fat and happy.. like 50 of each building or something.. I think they all start at 25 right now. For Industry, food, etc etc The only other thing I can think of is raising up the growth rates so they fill the queues up faster but I really don't want to play with the EXE settings in the hex editor heh heh I'm just not hat motivated / good =)

As for the versions etc I am running 1.03 with the newest versions of the UE (umm I wanna say dev K?). Aside from one other issue where I randomly get a crash on a system with a too high planet pop (which I can just not visit if it happens heh heh) this issue is the only one I am having. All new models, buildings, race info etc is good. I just need them to be not so lazy lol

[lordtarl]

larger planet sizes

This is probably what's causing the low number of ships. With larger systems the AI spends a lot of time developing it's colonies. If you wait long enough it should start building ships. My advice: lower the pop sizes

Waiiiiittt.... are you talking about like the outlying colonies.. like how you get two additional systems on setting 5 and the two non home systems never have special buildings? Are those what they are building so they queues are always going to be filled with those and not ships?
Is that what you mean?
Cause if thats the case.. I don't think there is an easy way to equip those two extra systems is there>? I mean you would have to seriously hex edit the starting conditions I would think as those systems are non static...poo.. I was hoping for an easy fix..

I could always just reload the basic RES file and then just lower the build values down so the original small system pops SEEM bigger lol
sigh

[DCER]

The outlying colonies and new colonies as well. From what I remember the AI doesn't queue things, it leaves the queue empty and rush buys the building if it has enough credits to do so otherwise it does nothing. Ships on the other hand are free for the AI except for the maintenance cost, although that might have been a cheat on a higher difficulty, not sure.

[Peter1981]

maybe try giving better production values to the colony ships

Colony ship 1
1 -> 4

colony ship 2
3 -> 8

will speed terraforming and should give the ai (and player more farms, industry and stating population.)

[Tethys]

Lower all ships maintenance cost to 25 or 50% of original, this can be done by using the multiplication tables in Group Ship editing screen.