PTE build 79538-pte

infernos have always been a bit of a weird case for the AI.

One thing I've been thinking that might help with this is to put infernos/vanguards into their own platoons, and have some mechanism of "linking" platoons together. Linked platoons would receive the same strategic level orders, but behave differently on a tactical level. (ex, ant heavy platoons would try and stay at range while the infernos would charge in)

Kinda spitting in the dark here but makes sense in my head and I don't think it would be all that hard.

I just tried Pacific (PTE 79493) with a single AI on hard and its comm went idle on the start island after building the short queue of structures seen here:

...note the single vehicle factory :/ At this stage no shots had been fired yet and the comm remained inactive until I took out the factory, at which point it decided it should build a vehicle factory (face-palm). I've tried variations on this same experiment in all of the recent patches - PTE and stable - and I've yet to have a satisfactory 1v1 AI skirmish on Pacific.

I've seen that one and I actually like this bug. so peaceful lol

Sorian, this isn't a hard AI. It's a peaceful AI on vacation. Please make it prioritize naval to some extent. Naval has the most powerful units for metal cost in the game - there really isn't a reason for the AI to not build them, regardless of skill level.

OP Update with:

-Fix for units not attacking
-Fix for local save/load

BWOOOOOOOOOP. Cool stuff!

That's already how it works. Each platoon is broken into squads, the Infernos exist in the "close" squad, which means they're managed differently from units in other squads. On Absurd the AI will micro at the squad level.

As I get it, Absurd is the only good AI and the others are all broken? Maybe its fine for the lowest difficulty levels, but maybe we can have something different? I don't know I never wrote an AI

I think the normal AI should be half that height.

Ah, that explains why I didn't see that behavior, last few games i played was with a friend and we were up against relentless.

Is it possible to mod this behavior into the weaker AI? I took a quick look through the files but didn't see anything.

By doing that wouldn't you just end up with an Absurd AI anyway?!

*in Skirmish* the Absurd AI doesn't get any cheats (like eco boost of free vision), it's just not been made deliberately worse. I wouldn't let the name put you off- it's a very worthwhile opponent these days (and as a hint it is beatable, but the key to doing so is speed- attack quickly and you can quite easily contain it, give it too long to build up though and you might be outa luck!).

The reason I ask is I'm pretty sure there are more things than just this that weakens the other AI. Could be wrong.

The limiting factor in those games was the friend, not me The only difference for me is a relentless takes 10 minutes and an absurd takes 11. it only really poses a challenge on large, metal infested maps (seriously, set a metal planet to max metal values across the board, make it 1k - 1.2k radius, watch the horror ensue)

I think Relentless is slighly below absurd, but otherwise accurate, my friend is having great difficulty going from hard to relentless (compared to normal and hard)

What about adding 1 or 2 more AI difficulties Sorian? =)

Suffered through an hour long game on stable against a hard AI that had a 700 command rate for half the game. I don't even want to meet absurd AI. I just want the nightmares to go away.

lol, they never will, half of those commands are actually infecting your computer, adding a subliminal message to the PA icon, so that every time you look at it the nightmares of your last crushing defeat will return.

Still no fix for Offline GW stuff >-<

Can we make it negative? I've never understood the normal AI. I always feel like it's that one machine that decides to be different and starts foraging for food and hunting wild animals. The lack of an strategic or tactical thought is disturbing.

That said, it is the noob AI. And I've seen some pretty bad noob things.