Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Aardwolf on August 02, 2009, 01:11:33 pm

Title: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Aardwolf on August 02, 2009, 01:11:33 pm
So yeah, I noticed something.

The AI classes (i.e. "Coward", "Lieutenant", "Captain", "Major", "Colonel", "General") vary with difficulty.

On low difficulty, the Shivans are pushovers , because their AI sucks, and you have various other statistical advantages over them. On high difficulty, they can be pretty nasty.

Well, friendly ships use the same AI classes as enemy ships, and on an easy difficulty level, this means in addition to pathetic enemies, you've also got incompetent wingmen.

Thus, I have a proposed solution for modders, which is already supported by existing features:

Create separate AI classes for enemies and friends. The friendly AI classes should probably be approximately constant between difficulty levels, and the enemy AI classes should get "smarter" as the difficulty level goes up. This way, you won't suffer from 'stupid ai syndrome' on easy mode, and you won't have your wingmen doing all of the work on hard mode.

Comments?
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Wanderer on August 02, 2009, 01:22:54 pm
ai.tbl is a table i categorize as 'mostly harmless'...
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Spoon on August 02, 2009, 01:24:35 pm
Not a bad idea really, not bad at all.
Now that you mentioned this, i'll probably be using this idea. Never thought about it like this.
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Dragon on August 02, 2009, 01:27:00 pm
AAA beams are set up that way (though many campaign designers ignore AAAh beam and leave hostile Terran and Vasudan ships with AAAf-s, which results in them having pinpoint accuracy on easy and pathetic on hard, which is not the way it's supposed to be).
Adding separate AI classes is undoubtedly a decent idea.
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: General Battuta on August 02, 2009, 01:48:57 pm
AAA beams are set up that way (though many campaign designers ignore AAAh beam and leave hostile Terran and Vasudan ships with AAAf-s, which results in them having pinpoint accuracy on easy and pathetic on hard, which is not the way it's supposed to be).
Adding separate AI classes is undoubtedly a decent idea.

 :shaking:

I never thought of that. At all. Must be fixed.
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: SpardaSon21 on August 02, 2009, 02:32:17 pm
Just another thing WiH needs to do right then.
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: headdie on August 02, 2009, 02:39:20 pm
I think thats how TBP approaches AI looking at it through FRED and i know its how i am looking at it for my little project, if nothing else it allows greater flexibility in fine tuning behavior
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Aardwolf on August 02, 2009, 07:53:03 pm
ai.tbl is a table i categorize as 'mostly harmless'...

Wanderer is referring to something discussed on IRC shortly after I posted this. There are a lot of other difficulty-related factors which are in ai_profiles.tbl, which he says/said are more significant.
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Droid803 on August 03, 2009, 12:19:09 am
I'm thinking the whole "beam accuracy varies with difficulty" thing ought to be axed as it creates a goddamn balancing nightmare...
Also...penalizing friendly accuracy just makes the friendly ai worse than then already are...
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Wanderer on August 03, 2009, 01:57:33 am
Beam accuracy values are controlled in the weapons.tbl and are relatively easy to modify... Weapons.tbl -> BeamInfo -> Miss Factors
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Aardwolf on August 03, 2009, 11:48:54 am
I'm thinking the whole "beam accuracy varies with difficulty" thing ought to be axed as it creates a goddamn balancing nightmare...
Also...penalizing friendly accuracy just makes the friendly ai worse than then already are...

It's only significant for AAAh vs. AAAf, and if you get that backwards it's because you're an idiot.
Title: Re: Wingmen being dumb; also, Shivans are pushovers.
Post by: Colonol Dekker on August 03, 2009, 11:54:25 am
Play on insane. . .