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Skirmish AI and fire

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4 years ago
Im watching some of UltraGodzillas kodachi tests and one thing that sticks out is that skirmish AI wont make any attempt to avoid fire. Almost every other kind of damage, the skirmish ai will work quite hard to dodge shots and dance around damage. I dont know how many times i've found an isolated Ronin still fighting solo in some far spot on the map simply because the skirmish AI has kept it alive all on its own, dodging shots and kiting enemies around.

Skirmish AI is now tightly wound into the game itself, and it bridges alot of gaps that might make it impossible to play otherwise. A ronin duel between a 600ms connection and a 6ms connection would, in the old days, be decided by whoever could get their clicks in first. If you werent there to manually dodge shots, like if you happened to building some solars at the time, your opponent could take out your army almost for free. I was happy without skirmish ai, but now it exists I think its generally a good thing.

Against the kodachi (and firewalker) however the skirmish AI will, if anything, shorten the lifespan of the units it is controlling. This means that the gaps that skirmish AI fills dont apply to this one particular class of weapon, and the system thats supposed to reduce your need for focused micro actually requires focused micro, else it will be -worse than if it didnt exist-
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4 years ago
It's possible for the skirmish AI to pay attention to fire in principal. I don't know of any way to do it that makes units predictable. Perhaps making units move away from fire when idle is the place to start.
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4 years ago
That would really help circuit AI :-)
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4 years ago
quote:
It's possible for the skirmish AI to pay attention to fire in principal. I don't know of any way to do it that makes units predictable. Perhaps making units move away from fire when idle is the place to start.

Treat fire as an obstacle - for some units, not all - when pathfinding while under influence of tactical AI. Treat is not an obstacle otherwise.
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4 years ago
The more I think about it the more complicated it becomes. Im trying to think of some fundamental rules that skirmish ai would ideally always follow but theres nuance to everything.

- Units should never walk into fire
This seems like a no brainer at first, but in some situations the fire isnt the greatest concern. A high HP unit like a cyclops would probably suffer more trying to avoid a fire than to just drive through it.


- If inside a fire, it should try and move out of the fire
Also seems like a no brainer but it could have huge consequences. Napalm nukes especially could cause chaos and in a porky game, if theres enemy HLTs everywhere you probably want your commander staying put even if theres a fire under them


In conclusion I have less of an idea what im asking for than when I started
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4 years ago
Ground fire stacks also, which means an attack that doesn't mean much for a cyclops could start meaning something if a ton of fire units fired in the same spot.

The best bet would be to make fire avoidance something you can turn on/off and the default setting for each unit would depend of how much health they have.
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