Forum Game: Your views on AI in 250 words or less.

Rules of the game are simple:

1. You may post no more than 250 words (this post is about 280).

• Collect your thoughts. Draft it on paper, or in notepad. You may edit your post as many times as you like. Don't link to a PhD thesis, and say "read this, it'll convince you why I'm right." That's not in the spirit of the rule. Your post contains your thoughts on the subject matter. It doesn't matter what Uber has said, done, or plans to. Your views on the subject matter.

2. One post per player (the OP gets one optional bonus post, as s/he must use the first post to introduce the topic and re-state the rules).

• No exceptions. Don't break the rule in response to someone else who has broken the rules. No matter who they are, how good (or bad) their post is.
  
  No. Fuggin. Exceptions.
  
  I think this game will work best when there isn't discussion going on.

3. If you do not understand ALL OF THESE RULES, do not play.

• This is both a game in self-control, and possibly a way to get clear views and opinions without retarded and circular arguments.

4. No Polls.

• No. Just no. Don't make me slap you over the Internet.

5. Rules are final, once the thread is posted.

• Future games may modify Rules 1, 2 and 3, or add extra rules.

And with the formalities dispensed with, this thread's topic (if you haven't already guessed) is;

• Your views on having some form of "AI" to help you control your army. Explain what you consider to be fine, expected, too much, or what things you consider to be not AI.

Interesting way of saying "don't post a big *** ******* wall of text," am i right or am i right?

1. Right
2. Right

I dunno, let's start a poll

See what the community thinks about how right you are.

Responsive, falls into formation quickly, does not "Spaghetti" when told to move to a distant location.

The last one is important for me, too many RTS games just have all the units follow their own singular path to a point, resulting in a big string of units that is moving only as fast as the slowest member of the group who chose the longest way to get there.

Improved Artillery AI would be nice as well, maybe have them aim for clusters.

I also want auto-formation move. When I put units into a tight group and tell them to move somewhere as a group, I want them to stay in that tight group unless I tell them otherwise.

Typically games feature attack move which moves units from A to B, stopping them automatically if they encounter the enemy and firing, if the enemy retreats, they will chase to some degree before returing to their original path. This is a simple AI.

Another AI feature present in many other games is the concept of auto-cast, abilities that execute automatically when appropriate. Clearly it can be done, and has been done in other games.

Now for something a little bit smarter. A fast scout Unit doesn't want to attack when it encounters the enemy. So our default behavior of an attack move, is a bad idea. Instead, the scout should retreat when it encounters the enemy. This does raise some questions of what direction it should retreat in, but hopefully a solution can be found for that question.

What about stutter step? All the unit is really doing is retreating in between shots and stopping just long enough to fire again. This is just like the idea above with scouts retreating, only stopping just long enough to fire before retreating again.

• Attack
  Retreat and Fire (Harass)
  Retreat

So that gives us three clear behaviors that we want units to be able to do. So we just need selectable buttons of some sort to control the behavior of our unit AI.

First off, the AI better be good for this game, as I am a skirmisher and not a hardcore rts multiplayer person.

This can only be done by testing the game, analyzing gameplay videos, getting feedback of that sort, and updating the AI accordingly. Like balance updates except for the AI.

Assuming this is the scenario, they should simply take that AI, and make it possible for people to give control of their units to it. I think it best done by choosing the unit to give command to with a toggle. And when any units under AI control are chosen by the player and given a command, they should become player once more.

Perhaps several toggles for different things you expect from the AI. Like pressing alt+insert+(1-10).

The commander unit should possibly in the spirit of the game be unable to be AI controlled. If it were, it would act like a builder under AI control.

Units that can build, when placed under the AI, should have a toggle for several building "guidelines" like a passive and a resource and an agressive.

If units can repair, they should have that as a guideline where they seek and follow your units if your units are dense (10 of your units within spaces of each other).

If you give a production structure to the AI, the units under it should be toggleable to "made as yours" "made as ai's" and possibly the building itself given a waypoint scheme as a rally point. Perhaps the toggles should cover what sort of function the units built from the structure should take or what units to produce.

I think at this point, grouping should be done several-layered. I think every unit should remember the "base" that built it, so you could use that as a grouping when you choose a group and toggle for an AI control. This way, you could choose groups by different criteria, attack units, structures, just-this-base, just base defences, ect.

I think the benefit of this entire idea is for people to have it if they need help. To the best player, it could literally be a second pair of hands. You can't click all over the solar system at once, let alone just 2 planets, especially without any more than 1 monitor. To the worse player, they would watch and take notes of build order and choice of units to build for attacks and field controlling, and they could borrow from an already AI built base the resources to build their own utility groups and send them to accomplish their own little small goals.

I also think the only limit to this would be making player-assistant-AIs unable to "imperialize", so the player has to at least decide where to expand fresh new additional seperate bases at for resources and whatnot.

Besides that, anything the player could already make an auto-clicker for or something, should be a player feature (kiting and whatnot). Maybe toggled differently in "player commands" instead of AI-control, to simply modify the commands a player gives a unit directly.

Errrrrr... I want units that don't have to stop to shoot. Like TA and FA did it. Modern tanks can shoot while they are moving, a friggin' nanolathed supertank should be able to do it. ;P

As for AI: SupCom had some great comfort AI functions, especially when it came to transports. Transports would even start ferrying units if they were in a group with a move order. I liked that.

30 units all fired on the very first target to come into range. One of the reasons T3 AA sucked so hard. Would be nice if the units in PA would have a way to spread their front-loaded damage a bit. The target painter from SupCom2 might be a way.

On the lowest level, where AI can perform as well, if not better than a human, AI unit control is fine, though it is preferable to make a game where micro is not feasible, and therefore there is no need for this low-level AI.

On higher levels, both tactical and strategic, AI control of your army should be more limited to following your commands via the UI. (In other words, no AI beyond what we've seen in stuff like FA.)

When it comes to base building, AI is not needed.

Playing with an AI as a teammate that shares unit control, as posited by Neutrino, can be a fun concept, but that would be limited to specific game modes or team configurations.

That's not "AI" so much as it is (a lack of group-based) pathfinding.

Good point. I actually did consider this after I posted it, but decided not to bother editing. I was confident someone would complain about it. ;P Shooting while moving, does simplify the AI on this one a bit.

Mind you, if some units did for some reason need to stop to fire, maybe their guns are bigger or whatever, I would be perfectly okay with that. And as I explained, doing AI to use that intelligently without requiring micro, should be possible.

LOL

Rules?

On the internets?!

-Smarter units.

This means smart targeting and avoiding overkill (even when one target is manually prioritized, obviously.)
This also means units moving and acting in a smart way depending on the other units around it. For example, HP-pile screening units would stay around fragile and powerful units, acting like a mobile wall. Or ground units attacking AA instead of powerplants when there are also air units around.

Unit stances should be determined by the player, of course, be it with toggles (retreat if damaged more than X) or special order (kite-attack)
Some stances could be 'harass' (attack only undefended units), 'scout' (roam around the zone, avoid contact and if possible detection), 'superiority' (roam around the zone and attack any enemy unit passing there - more useful than patrol for air superiority)...


-Better UI tools.

Beyond individual unit orders, there are other UI tools which would need some automation. Advanced building templates, with placement-dependent buildings. Squad orders, for coordinated attacks, target prioritisation and such.

Urban planning tools, with limited building auto-placement : For example, I want to build ten more generators in my home planet, far behind the frontlines, doing so by simply adding a generator to the base, from the zoomed out view, would save a precious few instants of focus.


- AI lieutenant

This is quite another feature, actually. The concept is that you play with an AI ally with the "share army" option (and you probably still have only one Commander). So it would be a specific game option instead of a general tool.
If you don't want to play, then the AI will play instead. But if you want to play, the AI will only use what you don't, and you can give it orders it will try to follow.

It would need tools to give such orders to the AI like "secure this zone", "go colonize this world", "make more fighters", "use only that quantity of resources"... In fact, those tools could also be used between human players, with one assuming the role of general and coordinating the others, for example. Maybe a new thread should be made about those tools...

This AI would be helpful for inexperienced players, so they aren't overwhelmed (though, they should be told that the AI isn't as good as a human for strategic decisions). So they can learn the game bit by bit.
It may also be useful for the biggest battles, for players not feeling too comfortable with managing 20 worlds, or for really massive battle where a human simply can't manage everything (maybe for when the hardware will be more powerful, as well as for some mods).