PTE build 79538-pte

Rename normal to easy and hard to normal pl0x?

It is a bit difficult when I first bought it because of the lack of a tutorial. Now it's super easy, but it was very difficult at first.

Whai?

Thats....im not sure why you dont want to rename AI difficulties, let alone add new ones.

How about a slider with a text giving a brief summary of the AI. Maybe even add a ultra easy one that suicide bombs

I thought that was the normal ai

Because plox and whai?

What is "pl0x"

Use google pl0x it's your friend bro.

My guess is the AI naming scheme is justified by the same reasons helpdesks have medium priority as their lowest priority ticket,

It kinda blows my mind each time I see a post where someone states the AI is dumb or too easy, then when asked what difficulty they're playing on it turns out it's not the hardest one.

Yes. There's an AI Personalities mod by wondible which introduces all sorts of variations on the Absurd AI. You can do the same. Or for the lazy approach you can directly modify the file itself:

\Planetary Annihilation\media\ui\main\game\new_game\js\ai.js

Change micro_type on Relentless from 1 to 2.

Levels below Relentless don't micro units at all.

Absurd all day erry day.

Even if the bots wins!

The land_attack neural net is getting retrained before release, right?

Not exactly. Even before the weapon bug, the AI had a tendency of mixing Infernos into larger, mixed groups, and had them kite together with their whole platoon, effectively keeping them out of weapon range quite often.

Pure Inferno platoons worked fine, even after the misstraining caused by that bug. Once they are alone, the AI goes in for the kill and stops pulling them back. It is even willing to sacrifice Infernos for kills.

And when it successfully sends in a mixed platoon, it results in Ants and other units staying close to the Infernos where they are then shredded by enemy short range units, ultimately resulting in a full wipe. EDIT: It's as if the Infernos somehow got mixed into the same squad as the other unit types, even with the Absurd AI!

PS: Please have another look at pathing at the coast. I've seen multiple battleships steering into small bays, and never getting moved from there even though they no longer had any valid targets in range. Also happened with destroyer class ships.

The AI is also getting confused by attacks FROM land TO sea. I saw multiple commanders barely touching water with their feet (they were not submerged), but the chasing platoon turned away the moment the commander got wet.

This appears to be a generic problem, that the AI does not consider naval units to be valid targets for land units, at least not while there are ANY other targets on the entire map. Land units are neither attacking naval (water surface) units, nor are they ever kiting from them on purpose.

The AI appears to have some platoons where battleships are not paired with any type of AA support, so they are easy to kill by bomber. And yet, the enemy AI doesn't appear to consider unprotected battleships as priority targets.

Something is wrong about the LoS test for multiweapon units, such as the battleship. The unit will happily settle for positions where only the front turret is capable of hitting the enemy while the back turret is firing into obstacles.

And a problem with wreckages. I've seen it twice that a factory got destroyed and a different target was now occluded by the factory wreckage (in one case it was a pgen, in the other it was a commander). Units kept trying to shoot THROUGH the factory wreckage - which is pretty much futile, given the HP of a factory wreckage. That's especially bad, when even the commander keeps firing the D-gun straight into the wreckage over and over again, ultimately even dying since the Uber canon did no damage to the enemy at all, while it got slowly picked away be grenadier bots.

Have I mentioned orbital yet? The AI takes very long to build an initial orbit launcher in single planet systems. But it does make heavy use of orbital units (especially radar and SXX) the moment it finally gets one. Looking through the rules, I can't see any rule which would even allow the AI to build the orbital launcher, unless it requires one for orbital transport. I'm missing a rule where the orbital launcher is triggered by the need of intelligence.

Another problem with orbital, the AI isn't building deep space radar early enough. It only starts construction once it has already seen first enemy orbital units approaching, but that's too late. Especially as the construction of Umbrellas depends on the orbital threat level, which is ~0 as long as enemy orbital units remain unknown.

About Umbrellas, why is the construction of Umbrellas only tied to the number of factories or advanced pgens you have in your base? I understand that this should hinder the AI from investing resources into protecting an underdeveloped outpost. But then again, the base which currently holds the commander requires Umbrella protection as well, even when it does NOT fulfill the factory requirements yet/any more. Otherwise, an SXX rush/snipe is almost guaranteed to work against the AI as it will no longer be able to deploy defenses once it is in position.


All observations made with Absurd AIs, of course.

PPS: That neural net looks like pure madness... 51 inputs, 510 hidden nodes in the first layer, and a total of over 300k calculations for making a single decision...

True that neural nets require a lot of computing, but they are incredible at producing ealistic behaviours. Also, It doesnt seem to much as it is simulation that is the bottleneck, even with 20 players

How about ADDING easy (-> it´s not the default, you have to ACTIVELY want the AI to be easy) and restoring all others to the old way?
@earth75´s Diagramm sums it up: Right now there is only one AI that´s doing what it´s name suggests! (and even that one was quite weak in several builds, but this might have had something to do with the balance changes!)

Oh for goodness sake, the entire purpose of difficulty levels is that the first one is the easiest and the last one is the hardest. That's it. The name is just a cutesy thing.

Beating normal? Play hard. Beating hard? Play the next level up. And so on.

Have you played against the normal AI lately?! It's hardly possible to make a personality more easy without making it walk up to you and suicide into your base!