Procedural vehicles

So, I assume we will need to use procedural generation for vehicles. I understand how that works for spaceships since I play Avorion. But for ground vehicles and aircraft you need to have a smartly designed body for it (aerodynamics). Any ideas on how this would work?

Well, if we have an aerodynamics simulation, the game can just tell the player how much drag their design causes.

I’m not too worried about the player, but that number on the drag could be used to aid the AI in designing better vehicles. My problem with procedural vehicles on the surface of a planet is that most of the procedural vehicles I see are crazy and fly out in all directions. So if it is programmed for “lower drag score is better” then the generator may not make as many crazy non-aerodynamic vehicles.

This was a topic i brought up in the past which was, “if everything the AI uses is procedurally generated how will vehicles and buildings function?” since then i’ve been thinking of the problem also side note i don’t think aerodynamics is gonna be THAT much of a problem but it will still be a huge one but compared to potential problems with how the heck is the AI gonna figure out how vehicle design works they may make their first ironclads like the ironclad the casemate ironclads (which as history demonstrated was not a good design since it was just a regular boat but they replaced the wood with iron nothing worked right as a result and it often dragged across the ground as a result )

The problem will be of course since the cellular stages all other microbes are based on the players first cell how will vehicles and buildings work since they will have no bases (since with multicellular all the cells that make up the multicellular beings belong to a cell based on your first cell and aware and awakening stemming from your multicellular creation with buildings and vehicles there can be no such base construct)

since vehicles will be more complex than hexes on a cell i doubt the AI can design good vehicles no less weapons of war and such without a base to go on i expect stuff like casemate ironclads and other wacky inventions as a result of the AI figuring how vehicles work (unless there was some imput either by the players creations or by some other source as to how vehicles should work)

my proposal for a fix is that whenever an ai nation gets their vehicles butts handed to them by either good technology or better design they either A. Improve their current vehicle design using the enemy who defeated them’s vehicles as a model or B. just copy the design the enemy made and slightly improve it thus ensuring that at a certain point all vehicles will be well balanced and well functional

Of course this is a suggestion made by a person who barely knows how an Ai procedural generation algorithm works or how to fix the problem so take my comment with all the grains of salt you need

COMPLETELY FORGOT: the buildings how will buildings be generated i assume structural integrity will be one part but what about the rest like cosmetic overall design (perhaps buildings and structures use designs similar to each other for visualness like spiky buildings and cars)

It’s been discussed quite a lot whether the AI will be allowed to “overtake” the player towards ascension. In the case the AI is not allowed the player needs to be the first to do a bunch of things: multicellularity, tribal state, constructing the first buildings, first cities, technologies etc. So the player would design the first ever vehicle and the AI (if they split off to another nation for example) could just make a variant of what the player has. On the other hand if the AI will be allowed to reach (some) major milestones first, then things get a lot more difficult.

You could probably just make a base vehicle design that is plain and simple, and have the ai go from there?

That is probably the most sensible way to go about it. It’ll just end up looking mostly the same each game, though. So we would have a no man’s sky situation of diversity that all feels the same.

your solution idea is actually the same as my solution idea, that i did not type because a wall was forming and i forgot how words worked so i ended up repeating myself till i scrapped that part of the text
where was i?

Oh right the vehicles a base vehicle design for the AI to go off on @BowlDawg is going to end up looking samey plus it may not account for planet gravity or terrain

A player design base is an excellent idea though a way to make sure Some of the designs look interesting and unique maybe designs stem from the players designs and some create their own base on a vehicle template they either copied or made from an earlier stage thus lets say they made an old school tank based on your tanks in an earlier era but then they create a new tank off that old tank’s base