AI - What do we know?

from Sins Forums

Essentially I'm making this post so as not to interfere with the SoA2 thread

Now, just to keep this on the right track, so it doesn't look like i'm picking on Major Stress for some reason, my experience with the AI is different than Major Stress, and I can probably assume other modders have different experiences with it as well. This thread is for discussion and conglomeration of what we know (for future use in the Wiki obviously), but from said thread:

Quoting Major,

StatCountTypes that are "must haves" for your AI to work. Scout, Colony, CapitalShipUtility0 (colony capital). That is the bare minimum I am aware of to get your AI to build. Of course you will need your research stations as well.

This is pure speculation. For your AI to fully function you will need every statcounttype in the game. Which means you MUST mimic a vanilla sins faction as far as ststcounttypes. It doesnt matter which faction you mimic. The roletype can be something different with the exceptions of the three i listed. If you cant colonize your AI wont build. If you cant scout your AI wont build. I would include "siege" in the list as well because if you cant bomb you cant colonize. I say this because of the past issues we had with the AI in SoA 2. Making sure we had every statcounttype seems to have fixed the problem. 

End of Major's quote
 


The requirement for Scout, and Colony, my experience agrees with, but I would contest the requirement for CapitalShipUtility0, in that our AI works without it (Scouts, builds, Conquers the universe etc), in fact we only use the Battleship and Carrier statcounttypes for Capitals. Research Stations are more of a research screen requirement than an AI one (with it crashing if you don't have both of them assigned)

We also basically only use the Light,Lrm\LongRange,and Heavy roleTypes\statCountTypes, So in my mind there is no need to fully mimic a Sins race.

Now to add some more observations to the pot:

I have discovered recently that, Note: this is using a set up where planets belong by default to a militia race, the AI Almost requires Militia ships around planets, in that if you remove militia ships the AI will, about 50% of the time, just happily ignore nearby planets, I think the start of some of the conquer\colonise AI routines involves clearing out the militia ships, and without them there it just does nothing.

The AI also seems to have built in limitations for SlotCount, in that even with available slots set to 20,000 i've never seen it use more than about 1,800.

 

modding
5,828 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Woot first post!

Honestly I dont know anything about the coding but wouldn't it be easier to ask one of the developers if you get some help understanding the AI, wouldn't they help?

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting panzerdragoonorta, reply 1
Woot first post!
End of panzerdragoonorta's quote

Congratulations for getting a post in a thread. Feel like contributing instead of chasing numbers in a sparsely visited forum?

Honestly I dont know anything about the coding but wouldn't it be easier to ask one of the developers if you get some help understanding the AI, wouldn't they help?
End of quote

It took ages to squeeze the hard-coded limits out of IC, we're not going to get an essay on how the AI works.

Anyway, my experience backs yours up - I have removed station-based and tier-based research entirely and the AI still seems to be okay with it. Obviously not assigning research stations does crash, but as long as they exist, regardless of how much you screw with research, the AI will do it anyway.

I'm not sure about the militia thing - I've noticed that the AI does indeed skip those planets, but when it is, it's making a large attack (and often wouldn't colonize anyway). Since this condition was based on the AI having a ton of ships, it might be inaccurate for that reason, though.

I've pretty much given up hope of the AI using more complicated routines (for invasion, etc), but for a few scenario maps I'm doing all they have to do is attack. I'm trying to game them into doing that right, so I'm going to be doing a lot of AI tracking in the next week or so, if I figure anything solid out I'll let you know.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Sorry to offend you, I thought that it was customary to be happy at being the first post and Im sorry that the developers aren't as helpful so sue me for having faith in people being nice.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting panzerdragoonorta, reply 3
Sorry to offend you, I thought that it was customary to be happy at being the first post and Im sorry that the developers aren't as helpful so sue me for having faith in people being nice.
End of panzerdragoonorta's quote

 

I'm personally a bit optimistic that the developers will at answer some of our basic quesitons eventually. Will it be an essay, certainly not, but it's better than nothing.

 

As to the OP, Requiem also doesn't use the Utility0 stat type, and the AI has in my experience worked just fine (though one person recently had issues with it, so I'll start looking at it again).