AI choosing ships in SFC:OP

[Rogue NineCH]

How does the AI choose the ships that are going up agaiinst you or flying with you in a campaign mission.  For example you are flying a Fed CA+ and your next mission is "Shipyard Defense", does the AI only choose from ships in the original shiplist that came with OP, or would it choose a custom ship you added like a destroyer armed with fusion beams (Classification - DDF).  Would the computer choose a custom ship for your enemy, like a Klingon F6, a Heavy Frigate (I made this up of course for this post).  

I have read all the posts I could find on the subject and either I missed it or it wasn't explained cause I still don't know.  Any of you mission scripting gurus that can tell me the answer.  I would appreciate it, it would change the way I am making up my custom shiplist for my game.  Thanks again.

[Rod O'neal]

It depends on how the script was written. When you right a script you can tell the game to use specific ships, or to choose by bpv, etc... I don't know all of the different parameters that can be used. If you are wondering if you put custom ships into the game if they'll show up in campaigns? They will.  

[Rogue NineCH]

Thanks for your help, I know they come up in the campaign, I was kinda hoping there was a file you can modify that changed the way AI chose ships, but I figured it was written into the mission scripts and I can't change that, oh well.  Thanks again.

[NuclearWessels]

Basically for the D2 scripts they do one of three things:

(a) draft a ship: here they basically specify a hull class range, friend or foe,  and a bpv range.  The BPV range can either be expressed absolutely (draft a ship between BPVs X and Y) or as a ratio of the drafting player's BPV (e.g. .6 to 1.2 times the BPV of the drafter).  The difficulty modifier from the MissionMatching.gf file also gets factored into the BPV range.   It can then draft or generate any ship in the shiplist that matches the parameters given, EXCEPT ships marked as "special" in the shiplist.  So nearly anything you add to the shiplist has a chance of being drafted except things you classify as special.

(b) create a ship in a specified class range and centered around a specific BPV value: pretty similar to the above, except that the ship is never drawn from the D2, it's simply a generated NPC for that mission

(c) create a specific ship, e.g. "generate a F-CC"

dave
 

[Rogue NineCH]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, it makes sense now.