On Being A Commander

I like a lot of those ideas.

A "Replace" setting, so units and structures lost are replaced. Of course manually set by player.

This gives bases templates. Where if buildings are lost, but the enemy was destroyed by defences, they would replace themselves if preset when first made. You would never have to have stopped clicking on your current task, the base would fix itself.

I know most buildings have rally points, but to "keep pressure on enemies", you could make units replace themselves. If a unit is destroyed and is set to replace, it makes the unit and then sends it to its old position and to do it's last orders. If a unit is part of a group and is destroyed, it will return to the group, BUT IF THE GROUP OR PART OF THE GROUP IS DESTROYED, it will build all units in the group and send them all at once from the buildings natural rally point, so they all travel back together in a group.

These would make "keeping field presence and base pressure" less micro, where I don't think they are ever done in grand scale only because the time spent clicking distracts you from progress in base and on smaller precision strikes against enemy fortifications.

Replaced by who with what resources? To me this is the issue that makes this kind of intelligence a problem. If you are running on the ragged edge of resources then rebuilding something at the wrong time could cause you the game (e.g. can't fire d-gun or did not produce another unit in time).

Instead I like the idea of removing micro from this by simply having units slowly regen health so you don't have to micro repair. In addition it would make sense that you can use patrol (which is effectively repair) to rebuild a structure (from it's corpse or possibly a ghost) so it's not as intensive as having to do the actual base layout again (area patrol command, done). But the player, in my mind, has to be the one to make the decision.

BTW just throwing out a random idea here but would it be interesting at all for people to play on the same side as the AI? E.g. the AI does it's thing controlling your units but you can also give orders that override the AI. If we made this configurable we might even be able to do things like only turn on the base building AI, or only turn on the attack AI (e.g. you build a base and the AI attacks for you or the opposite). Thinking out loud here <--- not a promise.

I am thinking that is what most people is leaning torwards myself, except it has to be as far away from "going against your orders doing it's own thing" as possible.

It can't be too difficult to override it's ideas, it shouldn't be able to take orders, change it as soon as you stop looking, and you have to fix it again.

Also, it would have to have multiple flavors. Thus, setting things on either rebuild or not, replace or not, produce or not, focus fire or retreat, ect.

I, however, would place my opinion as: The AI making decisions is fine if it would do things intellegently.

If I could set the AI to either make other units come to attack if one unit is attacked nearby (like "Zombie Pigmen"), or simply retreat from nearby detected enemies beyond enemy fire range, then yes.

If I want the AI to hold fort until I come back and it starts selling random stuff for seemingly no reason to try to "balance the economy", then no.

ALSO, it would be a great "trainer" for newbie players, to watch an AI build their base correctly for them, so they have a template of how to do it themselves next time.

Hey, why don't you make a poll? Everyone else has, over much more useless things :roll:

I think this is a great idea! I'd love to try something like this out.

Like thetrophysystem said it would be important that the AI be as configureable as possible with a strong adherence to any orders you gave it. I know a fair few people who want to play this game but would need RTS training wheels so to speak.

If the AI had enough options to tweak beyond the presets, I think it would still remain relevant for more accomplished players, particularly when you are fighting across multiple battlefields.

Would be interesting, but I'd kind of want to limit where the builder AI operates.

Having it go off and build whatever it wants, wherever it wants, completely unrestrained could cause problems.

I certainly wouldn't mind telling the computer to capture some metal deposits and throw up some factories near them. Though the question of how many factories should the computer build remains.

This is a compilation of some of the best ideas I've seen here on the forums.

I guess it would come down to how configureable the AI would be, It would need to be able to satisfy more advanced players desiring more specificity. Certainly it would need to be an option so that it could be turned off altogether (even within a match).

In any case I'd love to test something like this. I havent played an RTS with this kind of feature before and I think it has a lot of potential.

the AI would then essentially be acting like a sub commander, issue a generalized order, ie., 1. go here
2. set up a starter base
3. produce "X" Unit/s

given the scale of the game it could almost be said to be a requirement, to have the ability to utilise several of these "sub-commanders" to expand your reach and production capacity while you concentrate on other things

Lots of good ideas here. I mentioned the Empire Tree from Sins of a Solar Empire already, but nobody really paid attention to it. It doesn't necessarily need to be copied into PA, but there's a lot of inspiration that can be had from that concept.

As for deciding whether engineers/repair turrets/etc should be able to rebuild destroyed structures, one potential solution to how far they take this could be to implement it in their unit stance. Since engineers can't attack, their level of "aggression" can determine how they rebuild and repair. Low aggression means they only build when you order them to, and repair while patrolling. Medium means they rebuild and repair automatically while patrolling. High means they don't necessarily need to patrol to be doing these things. So if your buildings are destroyed and your economy is low, just set your engineers to low aggression, and they'll only repair as needed. Once you have your economy rolling again, set them to high aggression and let them loose.

I would personally love to be able to assign AIs to simple tasks. It's good at some things, and terrible at others, why not make it a proper symbiosis of player + machine?

The key here, though, and the key to ALL these suggestions is player control. This kind of thing is completely unprecedented by any other game, which means you'd have to design and test brand new interfaces to give the player the controls needed to make the AI make the right decisions.

Additionally, I would much prefer to change the paradigm so that you're not 'playing with the AI on your side' but rather, you're assigning an AI 'brain' to a particular area or task.

Some ideas on how to make player assisting AIs work:

- Just like ally sharing, allow players to designate a portion of their resources to AI projects, so that you never have to worry about the AI making a build decision that will interfere with critical moments.
- Define an API whereby an AI can request input from players, and give players information. Input such as 'avoid this area' or 'travel this route', or 'rebuild these units'. Information could be returned like 'warn of attack', 'project complete', 'Resources being wasted'. A common library of well understood interactions will make it easy for the player to understand and control his AI.
- Make the AI brains into plugins that can be modded and shared around. Give the server host control of which AI plugins are available so that ranked games can have everyone on the same level.


On the topic of replacing buildings, if we have orders as a first class entity, it should be relatively simple to KEEP the orders for buildings, and simply assign a construction unit to those orders once again ( or the player has a group of engineers assigned to the orders and they replace whatever is destroyed). Again here it would important to have a way for the player to 'reserve' a certain amount of resources.

Yes.

Agreed. So how about…

Stored Opponent Data
Your spy plane flies over an opponent's base (your focused elsewhere) and discovers two land factories, considerable energy structures and weak defenses. A tally of these findings is stored along intel your other units have collected—all this is aggregated into a simple visual overview about your opponent. It displays things like his economic strength, alerts about his base defenses and estimated data accuracy based on your intel coverage.

The big idea is, why do I have to remember all the intel when my computer excels at storing and retrieving data? Why not let the game remember.

As a bonus…

Glance-able Opponent Data
While the computer is busy storing my intel why not organize it into an accessible format for my easy consumption. Just sayin’

</rant> (aka, I'm hungry)

Intelligence vs. counter-intelligence, I dig it. Adds a deep layer of strategy. You nuked his base? But did you really nuke his base? He's building engines all over that asteroid. But is he really building engines all over that asteroid? Never stop questioning the nature of reality, it's something Tommy taught me (obscure reference, http://youtu.be/FxXi09kRdrM).

Yes? I mean… yes.

Ideally, I'd like to see the AI taking some basic control of units within certain limits. The AI shouldn't charge your units off to the other side of the planet on its own for instance but should be empowered to make minor micro choices for units placed near a battlefront. Ideally selected units could be set to one of a number of AI behaviours.

I am not in favour of the AI making building choices for the same reasons you outlined.

Something that just popped into my head about building... in SupCom, ZK, holding shift allows a line of a selected building to be placed. How about instead, holding shift with a building selected, the player can draw a freehand line. If it's a straight(ish) line then the structures would be placed like they are currently, but if it's a curved line then the AI will do its best to fit the structures along those curves.

Maybe an area command could also be useful for building. Perhaps multiple structures could be selected, an area drawn, and the AI would then place build orders for the selected structures in a sensible arrangement within that area.

Health regeneration sounds good.

I quite like alcheon's interpretation of having giving the AI assistant separate parameters to follow on a planet by planet basis - in fact I think it would be essential given that conditions and priorities are likely to be dramatically different between planets.

^ This: giving the AI access to a set amount of resources (or maybe a percentage of the income rate?) would ensure the AI doesn't have the capacity to inadvertently drop you into deep water. Even if the Planet1's AI assistant is making the best possible decision on one planet it could be that Planet2's needs were more dire and is left without enough resources to execute it's defenses a minute or so later.

I guess then it is up to the player to manage what margin each planet has and then it would be the players fault if they didn't give a planet's AI and/or themselves enough of a margin for a given event.

I like and dislike this idea. I like the idea of players spending time with their AI assistant and customizing them to suit their style of play. Swapping configurations would be cool too.

I think the part that makes me pause is the idea of modded AI's as I could see gameplay devolve into battle of the pre-programmed AI's. On the one hand I would like being able to play with all of the intricacies of that, but for standard games I think having a standard set of AI tools to play with would ensure that every player has the same tools and the win and advantage would be in the players creative use of those same tools.

Perhaps having mod AI games and stock AI games would solve such an issue as the players joining them would know what to expect.

*yawns*

why do players that clearly sucked at supcom keep feeling the need to project their poor understanding of the game onto us?

I asked somewhere if things like that would be moddable, but having it into the game would be great!
Some people evoked Distant Worlds in other threads, which has something similar. Apparently, in this game the AI can even play by itself if you let it do. Or you can affect it to specific tasks, from micro-managing fleets and planets to managing whole sectors, with some control on its behaviour. Unfortunately, said AI seems to be quite poor, so most people feel forced to micromanage everything, but still it may be interesting as an example.

As others said, the key is player control, to be sure that the AI does what the player wants. Affecting given resources/income is an interesting idea, and there must be ways to assign objectives to it ; again with a powerful UI.
And obviously, the AI needs to be good. New players will use this feature to learn the basis, and competitive players will only use it if it doesn't penalize against micromanaging everything.

And the AI-given orders should be visible and modifiable like player-given orders. For example, you may want to move an AI-placed future building, or change the unit build order, or add a non-repeating unit in priority to it... And the AI would have to adapt to it.

Just make controls for the AI. Make it setable, where you can turn on or off seperately, its base building, its unit production, its ability to move units to respond to enemies, and where you can dictate what it does for those, as far as what it builds, where it builds at, what it produces, and what it tells units to do.

I would love if it could literally play the game on it's own, but you could control what it is in charge of, while you focus on something else entirely. Newbies could have the AI do everything while they make small strike forces for their own use. Veterans could use the AI to move units while they build base, then move units while the AI builds base, and switch constantly back and forth as they attack and build, attack and build.

I think a system like this would help dramatically cut down on the micromanagement of operations on multiple planets. Switching back and forth to check on bases on multiple worlds will of course be important (particularly for more competitive play) and still be one of the biggest deciding factors in victory between advanced players.

However on larger enough maps it is going to get to a point (maybe not for all players but certainly for a lot of players) where production and development will slow down on a world by world basis, particularly if there is a battle happening on one or more of them. This is where the AI would shine as your assistant to handle affairs on a world while it isn't the focus of your attention. I'm quite excited with the potential this concept has.

I don't think AI make bad decisions, but they don't make great decisions either based on the way that I have seen the previous games played.

Here I am talking about vanilla AI just for the record. My experience with SC was that however good the programmers thought they were making the AI, the online community who played the game competitively found better ways of playing the game and, particularly in SC - the AI was easily bested even on hard. This is why cheating AI was made. This is not a new concept as the AI in TA cheated. T1 units building T2 structures and such like if memory servers me correctly. They totally rehashed the AI for SC:FA and players still walk all over it today. Hence Sorian AI. Sure anyone can make an AI that multi-tasks like a mofo and can beat the player by sheer omnipresence. But in the interest of balancing the game so that the player gets the best experience as well as a challenge is at the core of the matter.

As a teaching tool I think the absence of a SP campaign that would teach the player the rudimentary rules of creating a base and managing their economy in a step-by-step fashion paves the way for some kind of tutorial video or training mission section to allow the player the basics. Having an AI do it for you is just not going to help you if you really have that little idea of what you are doing. If anything, it's just going to stop you from learning for yourself while the AI continues to make mediocre decisions for you. You'll never be much better than the AI if that is your only source of reference. This is why skirmish is really only OK to grasp the basics and for a bit of casual fun.

For those who have mastered the basics and fancy a go at the online game; for me the best tool to learn was by going into the replay vault and watching the top players in the world battle it out. You can see their initial build orders and see what they see. You have access to all the information they do and you don't even need to watch it in real-time. Speed the game up if you get bored, but learn to understand why they do what they do and use it to improve your own game.

With regard to the interface: That's something I'm not going to comment on too heavily here. I've already made some contributions in other topics. Mostly along the lines of "there are already features in TA/SC/SC:FA/SC2 that do almost exactly as you are describing. It's not a new idea and with minor tweaking could be made much more powerful tools for the player". Yes I think there is a need for better tools in PA. But no, I don't think they need to be radically better than those that have preceded them. The player just needs to learn how to use the full range of tools/commands effectively. That is what defines a great player from a good player.

Just to make myself completely clear - I do not advocate in any manner that you should be able to hand of control of your entire forces to an AI player (even if Neutrino suggested it ).

I do support being able to give orders that are much more complex than 'move here' and 'shoot that'.

I want the 'Player Assisting AI' to be invisible - interacted with via a clear UI to give the player 100% control.

Examples would be:

- Creating a plan overlay, assigning units to the plan, and executing a coordinated attack whereby the 'ai' figures out how soon the units have to roll out to make sure they all arrive at the same time

- Selecting a part of your base and toggling a 'rebuild' switch, which would instruct nearby engineers to pause their current orders and rebuild the identified buildings, and then resume their previous project.

- Have 'smart' base templates where you pick your template (firebase, resource generation, production yard), click on an origin, drag out a direction, and the 'ai' gives you a ghost view of the base to be built, adjusted for the terrain. Hold down shift and scroll to increase/decrease the density of buildings. Defenses get built facing the direction you chose. An interface to customize which buildings you want would be nice too.

- Give the players a clear resource interface that allows them to select on a global level what their priorities in construction are going to be. Let the 'ai' then allocate resources to your priorities. Allow local individual overrides so it's easy for the player to focus their entire economy on a single project when necessary.

All of these things can be done with a more powerful UI system, and I think that's the point- a more powerful UI means we need more brains behind the UI.

Nice summary Paws. After contributing to a few of the AI assistant discussion threads, (in particular this one http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=37999) I have for the most part come down on the side of UI power and intelligent units. I first came across the concept with Neutrinos idea above but I think this is a nice refinement of the concept.

In particular I think you have nailed it on the head with AI assistance being "invisible" so to speak. An AI indistinguisable from the UI and an extension of the players brain, rather than having an independant AI brain.

The one aspect that I am still thinking about was a situation I have mentioned with people co opting control of a single force. It has been mentioned that this likely to be an option in the game, what are your thoughts on that situation? I initially thought if there were 3 players in a 2v2 game, one could opt for the AI buddy while the other two players paired up, but I am unsure how something like this may work effectively upon reflection. Certainly I think your summary for single player per force games is one of the better solutions I have come across in relation to AI assistance.