General Stock Armada 2 Questions

Talk about anything related to old versions of Armada.
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posted on June 28th, 2013, 3:21 am
Hi all,

Had a few questions.

In order to have a borg ship recrew without having to repair at a yard would I just give it a starbase classlabel? Or is that for the crewaccumulationrate or both?

If I use disableShieldsOnTransport=0 where would I put this line of code in the individual race.odf? From reading on the A2 forums it is a valid code for stock A2 correct?

Starbases have a minimum crew of 150, but can be recrewed to 1500. However, the AI only ever recews to 750 I believe. This is hardcoded correct? So to make it fair I'd have to make the max crew of all starbases be 750 so I couldn't have more than the AI?

Thanks again
posted on June 28th, 2013, 5:52 am
To recrew without a shipyard, Facility = 1.

Yes disableShieldsOnTransport is a valid stock A2 command. It is a Craft command and is placed in your craft's ODF file.

I'm not sure how this part of the AI behaves in stock, but it will probably only recrew to 600 - the point at which crew reaches green operating status. The AI doesn't care as long as the status is in green operating state for any unit.
posted on July 24th, 2013, 8:23 pm
Thanks DN. I have a question regarding attack priorities.

In the guide there is this:
attackPower

Float, Default: 1.0

Influences how the AI evaluates and compares Craft to determine attack priorities on a case by case basis for normal and special weapons. This affects how Craft without explicit attack orders determine which targets to attack as well. Note that Craft with negative attackPower will not be preferred until non-negative Craft (including 0.0!) are removed (in this case the more negative the attackPower, the less preferred).

The calculation for determining attack priorities is as follows: Current Hitpoints / attackPower = Craft Attack Value. Take the following example:

attackPower of target Craft-A is 5.0 and has 2000 total hitpoints (shield + hull hitpoints), which gives an attack value of 400
attackPower of target Craft-B is 1.0 and has 2000 total hitpoints (shield + hull hitpoints), which gives an attack value of 2000

If presented with both targets, an enemy Craft will be overwhelmingly likely to attack Craft-A, as 400 < 2000. If the total hitpoints of Craft-B are reduced to 400, the two targets are equally preferred. If the total hitpoints of Craft-B are reduced to 399 or lower, Craft-B is targeted exclusively.

Note that the choice of target can be influenced by which target appeared within sensor range first (add ~1 attack value) and distance to the target (closer targets are preferred).

attackPower = 42.0

In stock Armada II, attackPower only considered shield hitpoints.

So based on this the AI does in fact attack craft with lower attack values first correct which seems the reverse of what one would think? So because say a destroyer is inherently weaker than a battleship with a lower attack power and attack value they always get attacked first. So to counteract this and have a battleship attacked first I'd want it to have a higher attack power setting to get a higher attack value? Thanks
posted on July 24th, 2013, 8:43 pm
Yes, that's correct
posted on July 31st, 2013, 2:19 am
In the gcloak.odf the base cloaking file, there is this, "unsafeCloakDistance = 400.f" Does this pertain to the AI being able to cloak within a certain distance of an enemy ship/station? Like the game is telling the ship to get this far away from an enemy before attempting to cloak? If it is, the AI gets fired on anyway while cloaking out so why not make the range almost zero? It's either take your lumps now at close range or take em later at further range.
posted on July 31st, 2013, 11:33 pm
As far as I've been able to test it has no effect for the AI or player, in Armada II or FO.
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 2:18 am
I had another question regarding stations when the attack power=0.00.

attackPower of station-A is 0.0 and has 2000 total hitpoints (shield + hull hitpoints), which gives an attack value of 0
attackPower of station-B is 1.0 and has 2000 total hitpoints (shield + hull hitpoints), which gives an attack value of 2000

In this instance station-A is my research with no weapons and station-B is my base with many weapons. Does the game calculate those properly with a value of 0 so my research station would be the preferred target or does it cause an error in the translation?
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 3:04 am
'Attack value' is just something I wrote as pseudo-code to represent how the game interprets inputted values more or less. Nonetheless, a positive number divided by a value close to zero gives a very large number, not 0. All else being equal, the smaller the attack value, the less priority for attack the target is given.

Given your example of 0 attackPower, your station-A will not be attacked.
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 2:56 pm
Thanks D_N. I was thinking about this last nite and probably over-thinking it. I see in FO that stations have an IV of 0 and all the ships have positive IV so you've set up FO to have the ships be the priority targets and not the stations. I have mine opposite in that I want the AI to prioritize the stations as the targets and the ships are just used for offense/defense. So all my stations have positive IV and all my ships have 0 IV, but they are the units with that attackpower since they have weapons.

So to make my stations like research, mining, yards etc be the targets I would maybe give them an AP of 50 so the result is a really low value even though they don't have weapons? IV determines where to attack and AP determines what to attack when it gets there so if the station has the lower attack value compared with a ship nearby then the station will get attacked first correct?
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 4:46 pm
On this subject, I was always of the opinion that AttackValue controlled how many ships the AI believed it needed to attack a target (hence in my mod, Starbases being the fearsome defensive installations they are, they had a very high attack value) and that the "value" of a target was determined by intrinsicValue.

So, a mining station, freighter, cargo ship, construction ship etc would have a high intrinsic value but a low attack value. A scout might also have a low attack value but a high intrinsic value (you take out the enemies eyes and ears first after all). Something like a destroyer, or a light cruiser would be fairly middling in both. At the high end of both would be capital ships, starbases etc.

Am I completely wrong in all this, and need to redo all my intrinsic and attack values?
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 5:25 pm
Our v3 system really isn't ideal- we overhauled it for v4 so that different units have different target priorities etc :)

IntrinsicValue is still a bit of a mystery (at its most basic it controls where the AI sends vessels etc, but it probably has other functions as well), so I'm not sure the effect a zero value has. It's hard to test whether the AI conclusively treats all 0 intrinsicValue units alike, or if the value is dependent on other variables like for AttackPower. If you have all your ships at 0 attackPower for instance, they'll all be treated more or less alike.

What values you use is up to you, but as before, the AI does not use just the attackPower values to make a decision on what to attack - it's the interaction between hitpoints and attackPower that will determine which unit the AI attacks (as described before).

Having weapons or not doesn't impact the AI's decision making from what I've been able to tell. It's only attackPower and intrinsicValue that weight that particular decision-making. I know that 'having weapons' is commented in some A2/A1 files, but like many other comments, it seems to be erroneous.

@Squire James

As far as I know, intrinsicValue and the number of targets are the only elements that affect the value of a target when the AI has not already engaged (not considering threat mapping). Once engaged, attackPower and hitpoints are the only elements the AI considers.

What that means is that your mining station, freighter, cargo ship, construction ship having 'high intrinsicValue' and 'low attack value' will mean that the AI should send ships to investigate that area if it is scouted, but once there will attack the highest attack value units first.

However, I'm not convinced the AI can deal with vessels that have intrinsicValue. AI calculations are quite slow, and vessels move. The AI seems to be unable to deal appropriately with vessels that move faster than its calculations. This might in fact be linked with the is_starbase flag, but would require extensive testing that I don't have the patience for.
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 7:12 pm
I just wanted to clarify that the FO guide states that units with a lower attackvalue will be attacked first, but you just stated that units with higher attackvalue will be. Just wanted to be sure which is correct?

Test:
ship with IV of 0 has attackpower 1 - total hitpoints of 2000 so has attackvalue of 2000
starbase with IV of 0 has attackpower 2 - total hitpoints of 5000 so has attackvalue of 2500
research station with IV of 2 has attackpower 2 - total hitpoints of 3000 so attackvalue of 1500

I want the research station to be attacked first so according to the FO guide it has the lowest attack value and the highest IV so it should be attacked first then the ship then the starbase correct? Sorry if I seem dense, but just want to get my mod set up right. :)
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 7:29 pm
What's on the guide and what I wrote in that post are in accordance with one another as far as I can tell :). Remember that 'attack value' isn't attackPower (the flag). 'Attack value' is just that arbitrary pseudo-code way of showing a way that Armada probably interprets the inputted values.

A low attack value means the unit is high priority for attack. A low attackPower could be low priority (dependent on hitpoints of course, so it might be high priority if the hitpoint pool is small).

Yes, in your test, the highest attack value (1500) station will be attacked first amongst those 3, then the ship, then the starbase. :)
posted on September 23rd, 2013, 8:09 pm
Thanks D_N. It was the way it was worded that was confusing me. I didn't mean to sound like attackvalue (psuedo code) was attackpower. Sorry for the confusion. So I'm going to have to assign attack power values even on stations that have no weapons to get the priorities right. Whew :thumbsup:
posted on October 13th, 2013, 1:44 am
@ Dominus_Noctis:

I had another question. I am trying to work with crew numbers on the starbases and did some testing with results that don't make sense. Each AI starbase recrews at start of game to minimum green level.

My stock fed starbase has a crewYellowStatus = 0.4f so 40% of 1500 is 600 crew which the station goes to at start of game. If I change it to crewYellowStatus = 0.6f it goes to 900 crew which is also correct. However, if I put it at 0.5f which would be 50% it never goes to 750 crew. I got results of 884, 893 and 949 crew which don't make sense at all? I tried it at 0.50f thinking it needed the extra 0 on the end, but same effect.

It's like the engine can't process 50% of 1500. The crewYellowStatus code is in each race.odf, but if I put that code in each specific base.odf it doesn't register either. LIke it's hardcoded to read it only in the race.odf? Any ideas why it might be acting this way?
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