View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009865 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - AI Behavior And Tactics | Nov 2, 2012 12:40 pm | Nov 2, 2012 5:03 pm | |
| Reporter | KDR_11k | Assigned To | |||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Summary | 0009865: Intelligent wave composition and use | ||||
| Description | According to the discussion on mono/schizo waves the current wave logic just picks a ship type at random. That kinda runs counter to the whole artificial INTELLIGENCE bit, making the AI feel more like a bumbling idiot that gets lucky once in a while. Phase 1 would be making the AI pick wave compositions (allowing multiple ship types if the AI wants them) depending on the static defenses of the planet and likely mobile reinforcements. Basically look at enemy hull types, pick ships that counter those hull types, giving preference to ones that outrange or are not countered by most of the defending units. Potentially allow replacing some fleet ships with starships if the defenses encourage that (e.g. one or more ion cannons on defense). Phase 2 would be having the AI devise an attack plan and choose and operate units along that plan. The plan would basically consist of multiple fleets, each with a task on the attack. E.g. fleet 1 is tasked to smash that ion cannon and thus composed of fast raiders or whatever may be necessary to pierce/peel away the forcefields and other obstacles in the way. Fleet 2 goes for turret cleanup and thus picks anti-turret ships. Fleet 3 goes straight for the command station, this is prioritized if blasting the CS would shut down the planet's supply or cause a brownout. Fleet 4 counters mobile ships. Fleet 5 engages the fortress. Each of these fleets would get different ships and the wave's size gets split between them depending on the difficulty and importance of their tasks (e.g. smashing the CS is low priority if the planet is in supply range of another planet). Fleets remain managed as fleets until the wave retreats (then they just turn into threat) and may recruit nearby threat ships if they fit into the fleet's type. Whether a fleet group-moves, FRDs, etc should also depend on the task. Fleet objectives remain in place even after the fleet moves on to attack the next human planet though fleets may decide to wait for other fleets to finish first if those have tasks that ease their own job (e.g. the ion smash or supply shutdown fleets will go first, before the turret cleanup or anti-mobiles go in). Possible fleet objectives include the above mentioned (attack special defenses or forts, turret smashing, anti-fleet, CS raiding) as well as obstacle cleanup (specifically picks out gravity and tractor units to clear the path for other fleets), mobile denial (uses tractors or gravity to keep enemy mobiles away from other fleets), AIP hunting/eliminating civilian structures or even specific trolling tasks (e.g. having maws eat up ships and run away to a planet with a raid engine before self-destructing). All of this should make waves seem less stupid and increase the FUN factor while also making the AI take the strategy part of the game more seriously. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Hope you don't mind if I linked a bunch of other wave composition and wave behavior ideas. |
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For Phase 2, would this also apply to freed ships that are on a hostile planet (from a threat ball coming in, or something)? (Or possibly, for performance, only if >N ships are on a hostile planet, so this expensive planning only happens when the AI has enough to work with) Right now, ships from a wave are exactly that, freed ships that have happened to spawn (due to the wave) on a hostile planet, but behave the same as if some other freed ships just wandered in. So the behavior would either have to be split, or any "while attacking" intelligence from wave ships would get automatically get inherited by "free threat that happens to come into enemy territory". (Personally, I think extending this sort of tactical considerations to any freed ships on hostile territory seems like a nifty idea |
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Hearteater's point (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11906.msg127678.html#msg127678) is a good one. This sort of scheme will need to be tempered with a good deal of randomization to prevent "mind gaming" the AI into being easily manipulable. |
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I figure the game should be able to flag the units as wave units when spawning them as part of the wave logic. The fleets could draft free units that fit the composition of the fleet as well. |
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So, there would be a new kind of threat, "wave threat"? Hmm, that could work. Would "wave threat" decay back into normal threat if they retreat? Would large "threat balls" switch to "wave threat" if they decide to go into a planet, or keep normal threat behavior? |
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I suppose if a large enough threatball becomes active the AI could split it up into fleets if the included ship types make sense for that. It could also take available threatfleets into account for wave composition and e.g. send fewer bombers in the wave (spending that capacity on other things) if there are a lot of free bombers that can be drafted into the fleet instead. Obviously it should have some randomized fudge factors to not be entirely predictable and maybe also take previous failures and current chances into account so e.g. if it knows that a wave will not be able to break the system completely it focuses on sub-goals (like, say, wrecking the forts, raiding a key structure or bringing down the tachyon coverage) and only brings a main fleet for that (plus maybe support fleets for helping with that task, e.g. a bunch of long range ships that get specific attack orders on the grav turrets that protect the fort), perhaps trying to coordinate non-wave attack methods with the wave so that others can go into the breach (e.g. having the threat fleet or hybrids on standby for when those forts are down). Perhaps threatfleets could also evaluate the counter situation on a planet before attacking, e.g. a fleet with many cloaked ships would be more eager to attack a planet without tachyon coverage while ships that aren't tractor immune may balk at the idea of going into a planet with a ton of tractors around. Basically a more detailed evaluation of what's going to happen when the AI attacks, not just a raw comparison of firepowers. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2, 2012 12:40 pm | KDR_11k | New Issue | |
| Nov 2, 2012 12:59 pm | TechSY730 | Relationship added | related to 0007211 |
| Nov 2, 2012 1:01 pm | TechSY730 | Relationship added | related to 0009436 |
| Nov 2, 2012 1:02 pm | TechSY730 | Relationship added | related to 0006291 |
| Nov 2, 2012 1:03 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028863 | |
| Nov 2, 2012 1:07 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028864 | |
| Nov 2, 2012 1:11 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028865 | |
| Nov 2, 2012 2:07 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0028870 | |
| Nov 2, 2012 4:14 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028873 | |
| Nov 2, 2012 5:03 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0028882 |
