This twitch channel, twitch.tv/therealsorian is a developer right? And it's the same Sorian that created SorianAI for SCFA? If so, get that guy off dev and onto AI. SCFA was one of the VERY few games I could stand to play vs AI, because the SorianAIx things were actual challenges. Much love to that guy!
Mike 'Sorian' Roberts has already been featured in a couple of the Livestreams, He was working at Gas Powered Games prior to coming over to Uber as well. Mike
Whattttt?! I genuinely thought he was some SCFA player who made a mod. I seriously hope we see difficult AI like SCFA had. Most games of this genre are hopeless offline, only the online is ever a challenge. That Sorian AI was the best I've ever seen.
Well he was that before working at GPG as well. Although this will be hist first time working on the AI from scratch. Mike
Sorian talked about the process of 'teaching' an AI neural net in order to achieve the level of competency and difficulty we got from his SupCom AIs. It is fairly long and involved process and if too many adjustments to the game is made, all your earlier training can become obsolete and require starting over from almost scratch. Its likely hes doing as much groundwork as possible in order to make his life easier in the future, but a functional AI is likely quite some time away yet simply cause making on in the current game would pull a dev away from helping finish new content and the AI would become broken within a short amount of time (as soon as orbital is introduced for example). Suspect a functional AI probably very shortly after the game is 'content complete', meaning metal deposits, orbital layer, interplanetary travel, and asteroid strikes. When those are all at least bare bones implemented I'll expect the first AI. Perhaps October?
I'm confident the Sorian AI in PA will be beyond magnificent so the pirating sluts can enjoy the game as well.
Need to do some more research before you post these things...especially when its not about the Alpha at all. Sorian isn't just doing AI as far as i know, he is working on other things as well. No point in having AI when nothing else works with it.
Maybe we'll have a "bug" that keeps the AI at the hardest setting in the first full release of the game...
That's unfair: Awesome Heads for strat icons. And strat icons at all zoom levels. For everything. Every pixel.
That actually make me think of a neat marketing strategy. Allow spawn copies, like LAN mode available even if the game isn't owned(so long as they're playing with someone who has a license), but only allow players to play against the hardest AI. Would be a great way to get PA going at a LAN party where some players might not already own it, everyone loves a comp stop. You can compare it to Starcrafts new spawn mode, where as long as one of the players has a license, the others can access their multiplayer content(maps, expansion units, etc).
Or just forcefully put an highest level, cheating AI into every single skirmish unless someone in the party has a license. Don't show it in the lobby, just add it at the start of the game if there are no licensed copies used by any of the players. Name it by any of the Uber employees names. And then just wait for pirates to complain why "neutrino" or "Sorian" is kicking their *** when they only wanted to "practice".
