good beta-patch.
Though IMO a severe fun-killing bug is still hiding in the code somewhere making all the races specialise in the same weapon and defense at the same time.
Here comes a detailed look at the AI designs in my first and current beta-3-game:
Designs M0-4
Drengin Heavy Fighter Missile
Korx Defender Missile
Terran Defender Missile
Designs M0-6
Arcean Fighter Beam
Drengin Defender Beam
Torian Fighter Beam
Designs M0-9
Altarian Defender Beam
Altarian Fighter Beam
Torian Defender Beam
Torian Fighter Beam
Designs M0-10
Altarian Defender Beam
Designs M0-12
Drengin Heavy Fighter Beam
Thalan Defender Beam
Thalan Heavy Fighter Beam
Designs M1-1
Thalan Defender Beam
Designs M1-8
Altarian Escort Beam
Altarian Fighter Beam
Arcean Defender Beam
Arcean Escort Beam
Arcean Fighter Beam
Drengin Defender Beam
Iconian Defender Beam
Iconian Heavy Fighter Beam
Terran Heavy Fighter Beam
Thalan Defender Beam
Designs M2-1
Altarian Defender Gun Shield
Drengin Defender Gun Shield
Drengin Escort Gun
Drengin Heavy Fighter Gun
Terran Defender Gun Shield
Thalan Defender Gun Shield
Torian Cruiser Gun Shield
Torian Defender Gun Shield
Torian Fighter Gun
Torian Heavy Fighter Gun
Okay, as you can see, every race began specialising in Missiles but not many of the actually built combat ships at this time. May or Jun first year had every race switch to beams. Finally somewhere between Sep second year and Jan third year, every race switched to massdrivers and shields.
Things to take note of: Drath hasn't built one single combat ship yet. Korx has only one really old missile design.
Some might say that this is coincidence and begin rambling about probabilities. To that I have to ask, how likely is it for this to happen in all my beta games so far (~6) unless there is a bug involved? Not very likely no.
And then there is the fact that others have reported the same thing.
This cripples the AI:s because of the following reasons:
1) They can't adapt to the player or each other.
2) Most of the AI:s will be forced to adapt even though there is no need for it.
Example: Torian in my game had the biggest military, economy, industry, everything. He had a big border towards me who was using massdrivers. He had lots of beam ships. Now a while before he went to war against me, he had to switch to massdrivers even though I had no defense against beams (none of the AI:s had it either, even though there was some Shield research, they were probably all specialising in shields). Suddenly they begin building massdrivers ships which are much worse than their previous beam ships, because they had to begin their weapons research from the beginning.
I am hopeful that you will be able to fix this before the 1.1-beta is over.
