AI & Very long tech1 Data; Can This Be A Problem for the AI?

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 6:54 am

When I was trying out the Star Trek Armada II Mod "Birth of The Federation" that I found on another A2 site, I read that the AI wouldn't play past the Pre-Federation Era, an Era that I call "The Enterprise NX-01 Era" ( or ENT Era) in my version of mod that I created from a totally clean install of STA2.

I was wondering if this had anything to do with the AI itself for that mod or had something to do with their tech1 file. Or could it have been related to something totally different?

Lately I have been trying to make AI files or edit the stock ones. I have had pretty good success with the Hirogen AI, the Vulcan AI and the Ferengi AI. My Suliban AI might be causing a crash or something else with the race because I get a crash with the Suliban race both when I attempt to play as them and when the AI is set to. Makes me believe its an ODf file but with Exception Files (bug reports) not showing up on Windows 7 it's a lot to hunt through, but I'm confident I will find the problem since I'm going through every races ships and station ODF to do some minor editing.

Attached is my tech1file, I have modeled this file after another one that I have seen with the same mod type concept.

Attachments

tech1.txt

My Generational Techtree

(176.04 KiB) Downloaded 920 times

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 12:42 pm

Last night after posting, an idea came to me, and I'm wondering if this would work. I think we've all noticed that the AI for each race is divided into sections, I'd guess you'd say early base, research, primary shipyard (yard1), advanced research, secondary shipyard (yard2), and endgame where the AI list is the longest.

Ok, here's my idea, could it work: "If prior to the stock part of the AI and the TNG-Future Eras units, a small portion (like what primary yard (yard1) looks like? It's short and most of the units for those eras are short lists as well.
What I'm thinking is the coding could be saying to build 5 (maybe 6) of the ships of those eras at a time, and possibly 1 (or maybe 2) of each/some of the stations depending on how important they are."

I like to know what others think about this and how plausible this idea is or if I should go back to the drawing board for the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan AIs?
Of course this AI idea will go slightly different for the Cardassian race (labeled as: "The Dominion Alliance") and the Borg.

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 5:56 pm

I'm pretty sure it is down to laziness on their part...

you see the AI just follows a buildlist and how many of that item to build. When it is destroyed the AI replaces and the continues unless it can't build it again, in which case it has the nasty habit of just stopping the loop and building nothing...

Even FO use to suffer from this with their mod when the main starbase was replaced and the AI couldn't build the starting unit again, though FO got round this somehow.

You'll find with mods that expand multiple eras in one game can be a pain to write an AI for as when they advance to a certain stage and something is destroyed from the previous ones it might seem silly for it to build a ship no longer needed or a station no longer required, or if it can't it gets stuck.

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 8:23 pm

Is there away to get the AI to go around being/getting stuck?

How did FleetOps get around this?

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 8:51 pm

you see the techtree is fine as it is the same techtree you will use so you don't need to mess with that.

What you need to do is make a buildlist for the AI and build it carefully so that it can't get stuck trying to repeat a loop though it will always want to replace units from the ent era for example even when in the tng. If you construct it carefully you can probably get around it but haven't had a look at the AI in ages so can't remember all the choices.

Fleetops only involves one era so it didn't really affect them too much, only if you destroyed the starbase the AI started with. They got round it by changing the starting starbase for the AI so it can rebuild it.

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 9:35 pm

What I'm thinking I'm really going to need is to find some coding that could prevent major looping back to say "a bygone era" that the AI shouldn't be trying to go back to it when it doesn't and shouldn't need to.

Is there something in the FleetOps game engine to prevent this from occurring or a way to do so in stock Armada II?

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 9:36 pm

Not sure if you've checked out the Artificial Intelligence section in the guide on this site, but it is extremely helpful?

You might also want to look at the AI and build list info at Starbase34: https://sites.google.com/a/starbase34.net/tutorials/

There is also a lot of talk about AI, some by me as I too am working on my AI for my personal build, on the A2 Files Forums: http://forums.filefront.com/star-trek-armada-ii-136/

Sounds like you would be best served by using the tech level designation in the build lists to divide up each era. You can make it so that once you get to the TNG era the AI won't ever try to build anything from the ENT era. That way you'll progress up the tech tree/build list and keep getting better stuff while phasing out the older ships.

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 11:32 pm

Thanks for the links, I added them to my Bookmarks section on my iPad which automatically connects to my Windows 7 Favorites Webpages through iCloud. Now I can get to them at any time.

From what I am thinking if I'm understanding what I have read correctly, a -1 in the AI list for any given ODF file refers to a unit that the AI will build in a loop if it ever loses one or more of that specified unit. Is that correct?

If that is the case, then here is my idea: "Every unit in the eras from the Enterprise NX-01 (ENT Era) all the way to the TLE (The Lost Era) or early TNG Era shouldn't have a -1 in their AI Build Lists so they don't end up lopping back and rebuilding them. This can be done for all the non-stock units in the game that already have the -1."

How does that sound? Any advice on that idea/plan?

posted on February 4th, 2013, 1:34 am

You're thinking is correct. Typically you would only want a -1 for bases, research, perhaps mining, etc......

"fscout", 1,0, -1, 0, // scout
"fdestroy", 2,0, 8, -2, // destroyer

In the example above the scout will get rebuilt upon its destruction every single time forever. The destroyer will get built a maximum of 8 times but only up to tech level 2. If you've only built 4 destroyers and are at tech level 2 or later then that's all it'll ever build from that line.

Note however, that you can have a -1 for the build quantity and like a -2 or higher number for the tech level so that the line will be built an infinite number of times but not after reaching tech level 2 or whatever you determine.

posted on February 4th, 2013, 6:54 pm

Is there any number other than "-1" that can be used with the AI for it to rebuild in a loop for a certain ship or station but to then say stop that loop after a certain amount of time?

Or is using "1" and later on putting the same coded line effect for any given ODF file for the equivalent ship or station to have another one if its destroyed. But wouldn't this affect the AI if the given ship or station (or even research pod) is needed for another unit between the other units within the AI build list for that section between the two identical coding?

(Hence I'm guessing literally stopping the AI?)

posted on February 4th, 2013, 8:10 pm

-1 is the only number you can use to indicate infinite build or "looping." There is nothing to indicate to the AI to stop building after a certain amount of time per se, that's where the tech level designation comes into play. You can stretch out your tech levels longer is all you can do to give the impression of longer time. Hope that makes sense.

If you have a ship or station that is required to build another ship or station, then the only way to prevent the AI from getting stuck is to make that ship or station always be built with the -1 line otherwise if it gets destroyed and you only write the build list to rebuild it once the AI will run stuck and stall out.

[Je_mezu24]

posted on February 5th, 2013, 7:03 am

Last edited by Je_mezu24 on February 6th, 2013, 1:25 am, edited 5 times in total.

I'm thinking about editing my Borg AI in a few days since it is the first race that has a "Generational Setup" but its the smallest due to the fact that it starts in the early half of the TNG Era.
Ok really there is an ENT Era half with a Cube ship and a Sphere only because I couldn't find what I really wanted, the Assimilated Arctic Transport from the Star Trek Enterprise episode "Regeneration". (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Regeneration_(episode)).

Has anyone created this ship, I've been having trouble with creating it on my own, it's looking pretty ugly and inaccurate, so I've been deleting my attempts with it.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Arctic_One







EDIT: Image Fixed But Had To Use My Computer

posted on February 5th, 2013, 8:54 am

no hotlinking (or even just linking directly to the content) of EAS images. they can't afford the bandwidth for images.

posted on February 5th, 2013, 2:11 pm

@Myles: According to definition, they are not EAS images.

Plus what you're saying isn't even helpful. Especially if you are not answering the question.

For of those actually being helpful, right now the ODF file named barctic.odf is a scaled down version of the btngdominater.odf.

posted on February 5th, 2013, 2:14 pm

I happen to have copies of each of those pictures on other sites and they are all fine there.