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Emakep

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  1. Im really busy atm, but Ill help if I can. GMT+1 I made the fightermod and some other scripting for warlords, so scripting is what I can do.
  2. The points are supposed to represent areas of strategic inportance that your superiors want you to capture, in most RTSs the game gets easier the more of the map you control, but I wanted the opposite in this gametype so I dont want the points to actualy give you anything besides bringing you closer to winning. Most RTSs tend to use resource gathering as the incentive to take and hold areas on the map, this often means the game becomes easier the more of the map you control. This in turn often leads to knowing that youve won half-way into the game, the rest is just mopping up, I hate that. So, in an effort to avoid that I invented the capture the points system, it actualy gets harder the more of the map your controlling, self-regulating difficulty if you will, the incentive to take points is that it will help you win, makes for a more fun match imo. Thats only half the reason though, not having to worry about resourcing while designing the AI makes it so much easier. Some type of civilian station that can dock a fightersquad and has a handfull of lasers and TLs, nothing fancy maybe in the 30-40k range. An alternative would be a simpler XQ1 similar platform (I belive there where a couple of those in TIE-fighter) just give it fewer guns, less hitpoints and fewer fighters.
  3. - Im going to increase the size of the volume of space around the points that the AI will defend, I dont want them chasing after your ships once you get too far away though, but it needs tweaking yes. -It only has buildlists for rebs and imps, anything other than that will not build anything. I have run it with several AI players, so that works, but alliances do not, or rather the AIs will treat its allies like everyone else. -Im assuming you mean the ingame message telling you the AI has errored and will not function properly, Ive heard this from other testers as well, and I will look into it, its basicly a crash in the AI, I'll paste in the explanation I gave in the feedback email, incase someone is wondering. This message is not supposed to show up, EVER. If it did then a really bad bug occured and the AI most likely will not function properly afterwards, you could compare this to a hang or crash in a regular game, its not supposed to ever happen and it will kill your game (most likely). Comparing it to a hang is actualy very accurate, it happens when the AI has found ships in its fleet that isnt assigned to do anything, it goes into a loop to try and put them into point-defending fleets but if it runs the loop 10 times without actualy acomplishing anything and there are STILL unassigned ships in its fleet it will drop out of the loop (other games might not have this feature and simply keep looping, a classic "hang") and display the error. If this happens, save the game and send the save file and the log file (hw2.log in the bin\release folder) to me. As for the positive, thanks but that is really evilles work, my AI just attacks, his attackscripts do the rest. Having it put stations on captured points is high on my todo list, I would like eville to add something below the XQ1 in price though, its rather steep if your not playing with loads of injections. I dont want to change anything on the maps, Ive tried to put the points on stuff already there but on some maps thats not possible, I might do special maps like the big earth map (this mode needs bigger maps anyway, or rather warlords needs bigger maps anyway...) but its not high on the todo list, I might have the gametype spawn buoys on the point though, that could work. Thanks for the feedback, I'll be sending out a new version once I find the cause of the AI "hang".
  4. Sent you another one, send me an email if you dont get it and we'll work out some other way to send it.
  5. Any discussion about the scripted AI should take place here, to make things manageable for me Ive only allowed 4 testers so far (I don't want 20 emails all telling me this and this doesn't work whenever I turn off a feature for testing). Not that it looked like 20 people where interested in testing it though . If anyone else wants to join in I might accept a person or two, but not more, to make things easier for me I closed down the application thread so you'll have to let me know in this thread, no PMs please. Ill start off the discussion by telling everyone why I'm doing this and what my goals are. I'm doing this because the stock HW2 AI sucks. It builds oddly and unpredictably, it doesn't check if it can actually afford something before building it, it has stupid "counter building" that is unrealistic and can lead to very poorly balanced fleets, it doesn't work well with some features of warlords because of how rigid its system is, its only military tactic is to attack your mothership, warlords ships cant be hyperspaced (not that *I* would want that though) and its horribly unreliable and can break down seemingly for no reason. I want an AI that can: Take and hold areas of space, sending reinforcements to help the most attacked areas. Defend its harvesting operations in facilities mode. Only build factories it will actually use. Build from simpler lists and make sure it can afford something before building. Dock fighters when they get damaged. Dock capitalships with yards or special drydocks that only repair (been bugging eville for this for a while now). Kick your butt without cheating (this will likely never happen). I don't think this is going to happen over night, I also work on the fightermod and have a lot of things I want to improve there (not to mention a real life), and these things tend to take time. Currently the beta of the scripted AI only function with a new gametype I designed, its called "capture the points" and works like this: -You build from a build buoy just like reinf mode. -You get RUs from injections just like reinf mode. -You win by taking and holding points on the map (bet you didn't see that one coming). I really prefer reinf mode to facilities but Ive always been bugged by the lack of "game" in regular reinf mode, I needed a reason to get out of the starting location and actually do stuff on the map, with this mode I have that. The AI only works with this gametype atm and most likely for a long time, getting it to work with regular reinf mode wound not be too hard though, so I might do that if there is demand for it.
  6. Ok, I got all the testers I need, if someone drops out or I need more for some reason Ill reopen the thread.
  7. Could still use 2-3 more testers, dont be shy, I dont bite.
  8. I'm working on a 100% scripted AI for warlords, it's currently based around a new gametype but will most likely work with the current gametypes at some point. It already outperformes the stock HW2 AI in some areas (taking and holding areas of the map, defencive play), but is lacking in others (building from facilities, harvesting resources). Ive gotten to a point now where I need feedback from players and evillejedi just doesn't have the time, I need beta testers. I'm also the guy responsible for the fightermod so Ill prolly want the tester(s) to try out some new ideas there as well, but using it is not a requirement for testing the AI, it works fine without the fightermod. Reply in this thread if you're interested and we'll work out the details of communication, email and MSN messenger work well for me.
  9. The problem with simply making them more cost-effective is that with the current system you'd have to make them MORE cost-effective to make them usefull, and then you could simply build them only. Caps are something I thought about while writing my last post, but I hate static caps, and its not possible to alter the caps with script so some kind of dynamic caps aren't doable. If the assault corvette was the one that could capture ISDs filled with hundreds of stormtroopers and 30 000 angry crewmen, with 30 odd rebels, then you should realize yourself the problem with that. Reducing TLs accuracy vs corvettes is a possibility, but EJ might have a good reason for the very high accuracy currently in place though.
  10. Larger ships are more cost-effective, at least in warlords, the reason why there are corvettes and small frigates (also not very usefull) in starwars is when your on a limited budget and need to defend several places, then you'd rather send a corvette and a couple fighters to each point, than build one ISD and hope the enemy attacks whatever its defending. The problem with this is that currently the AI is VERY predictable, and you'll pretty quickly figure out where the AI is attacking and defend there only, hyperspacing also reduces the need to spread out your forces. Also if the budget only allowed for 1 ½ ISD you'd have to build smaller ships to use up the rest of the budget after the ISD is built, in warlords you can simply wait another 20 seconds and build another ISD, because of the fact that larger vessels are more cost-effective this is generally always a better move. IMO the solutions to this are: 1) Slowing down resource gathering, in mining mode this means making moles capacity larger and/or reducing mining speed. In station mode it means stations give a lot of Ru's, but very rarely, same for injections. 2) Make a gametype that requires you to spread out your forces, and an AI that will do the same (this is something I have worked on a lot, and had quite some success with) En masse hordes of corvettes are due to their short range and vulnerability to turbolasers simply not cost-effective at all, try a reinforcement game without injections and build corvettes for all your starting Ru's, unless the AI screws up and only builds for 50% of its Ru's or something like that you will get your butt kicked. What EvilleJedi said is true though, having several units that serve the exact same purpose and can be built at the same time is something commercial games fear like the plague, and its one of the things that stand out in warlords. Making sure that they are all built by the AI, using some kind of randomization, would make sure that you get to see all the great models Eville has made for the mod, and it would make the battles more varied and unpredictable, and is something Ive been working on in the passed but never really figured out, if/when I remake my strategic AI for this version of warlords Ill try and include that, for the old version I simply figured out the most cost-efficient ships and hard-coded it to build that only, heh, it was tough to beat, but not very varied.
  11. I made the original fightermod and Ill be making this new one as well, last time around I recieved almost no feedback what so ever from the community (with the exception of some folks saying they could/would NOT use it). This time around Ill need more feedback from folks who use it so I can make it into something youll want to have in your games. I made a variant or the original script where you could cut the number of spawned fighters in half in the gamesettings (it had the 'true' ammounts if this option was not selected), if someone wants more or less fighters than what we offer now I could possibly re-add that option. Having them autodock before going into hyperspace is something I have looked into and I dont think its possible (personaly I think hyperspace should always be disabled becouse the distances are way to small for starwars HS travel), but I could have them de-spawn (simply removes them, no death anim) if the capship HSs and then they would respawn as normal when it reaches its destination, that would make sure capships arent fighter-less for half an hour while the fighters catch up in normal space. The old fightermod did not allow you to build fighters, all fighters where spawned from capships, this was done for a number of reasons, firstly it would prevent players from spamming tons of bombers, secondly it reduced alot of micromanagement since all fighters managed themselves (they guarded after they spawned, attacked enemy ships that attacked their mothership, docked if damaged etc.), most inportantly however was that it allowed me to write an entire new AI for computer players, however it did eat up alot of CPU power. Most of you are prolly not aware of the stupid system for havings scripts handle fighter squads relic built into their game, long story short its not possible to make an AI that builds and uses fighters if you want to script the ENTIRE AI yourself (and thats what I was doing). My solutions was to have all fighters spawn instead, so the AI didnt need to worry about that, I made a proof of concept AI that worked IMO better than the stock HW2 AI, it built ships more intelligently, it took and held strategic points on the map, whereas the stock HW2 AI builds fleets and sends them one by one to kill you. EvilleJedi tried it out once and I think he liked it, and if this version of the fightermod works out I might attempt to ressurect the AI project with a no-build-fighters variant of it at some point, if I can convince the community that a good AI is more inportant than building fighters that is.
  12. I once made a small vb.NET app that let you build starting fleets and it would automaticaly generate the files needed, it even had the ability to copy .ship files and create essentialy new ship types with names specified in the app, completely automaticaly. Put simply you could build up fleets by clicking on ships in lists and then name them and even change some of their features, then start the game from the app and play with your custom starting fleet. Ive looked around for the app or the source but havent found it yet, making one that simply builds starting fleets is a doddle, reimplementing the custom naming might be tougher.
  13. Bombers seem to have become very powerfull again, and the AI seems to be having problems building enough anti-fighter ships (not to mention that most non-fighter anti-fighter ships suck) I thought maybe something could be done to give the AI (and the players) an automatic or semi-automatic helping hand in fighting off those pesky bombers. An idea I had was that maybe a script could be devised that automaticaly spawned and launched fighters to defend large capital ships like SDs and MonCals. The difference between this and simply upping the abilities of the capships PD guns is that having them spawn defensive fighters every once in a while can still be effectivly countered by defending bombers with fighters, whereas better PD guns would likely either not help enough or make bombers useless again. Another crazy random suggesting would be that carriers (who currently serve no purpose what so ever) could spawn bombers as well, to aid them in battle against enemy capships, anyway, just a random idea, the breathtaking amount of hard work it would take scripting this means that it will prolly never get implemented...

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