Design Saving for Custom Battles

[NuclearNadal]

Custom battles are a great feature for testing our ships against AI creations but it also shows the AI designs weaknesses. 

 

For example Ai battlecruisers have appallingly bad armor. Even with some of the latest techs they won't create designs with armor better than HMS Indefatigable. If we could select designs for the AI to use in custom battles, we could have more "fair" fights. 

[gunnyfreak]

Agreed, I feel like as is the game mostly just randomly slap-dash ship designs together.

Perhaps for now, a budget limit could be a good start -- when designing a ship, the AI can be given a budget range that more or less corresponds to how much a ship of the class of the time period *should* cost, and the AI would reroll ship design until they meet it. That way, if the AI did not properly armor their ships, they would at least use their budget to significantly upgun them which could provide desirable enemy diversity.

It may also be a good start to campaign AI, which will have to wrestle with budget management. Maybe the budget limit can also be implemented into custom battle somehow -- fleet sizes can be determined by number of ships, budget, or both, which can also solve the problem of players being incentivized to spend as much money as possible when designing ships for custom battle.