Automated Units

posted on October 26th, 2010, 1:01 am

Is it currently possible (or will be possible in the future) for automated units to be made? By this I mean the player constructs a unit and owns the unit, but they are fully under the AI's control. Some examples could be mining ships that automatically divide themselves between moons and ships that auto guard nearby stations (I think fighter craft might currently do this). I really want to implement automated miners for one of my factions, so this feature would be epic to have someday. I can think of several situations it might be of use in FO as well. 

posted on October 26th, 2010, 1:07 am

I am actually experimenting with this on my own.  What you can do, is tell it to ignore interface and it will be owned by you, you can build it that way, but it won't do anything.  now, if you were to give it a replace weapon, and could somehow get the replacementAction = 2 line to work.  If it does work, it would patrol the area under AI control, but you would still have to build it in the first place.

I"m trying to get it to work with warpin ships, but its not working well...

posted on October 26th, 2010, 4:22 am

Now if the AI flying our ships just wouldnt randomly break off from a formation and run into a enemy fleet alone.. just before getting veteran rank.

posted on October 26th, 2010, 4:43 am

I am actually experimenting with this on my own.  What you can do, is tell it to ignore interface and it will be owned by you, you can build it that way, but it won't do anything.  now, if you were to give it a replace weapon, and could somehow get the replacementAction = 2 line to work.  If it does work, it would patrol the area under AI control, but you would still have to build it in the first place.

I"m trying to get it to work with warpin ships, but its not working well...

I'll experiment with replacementAction and see what happens.  :2guns:
I suppose it's safe to say there's not a way to get mining ships to automatically go to moons at the moment that I know of... that's the golden grail I'm currently after. 

posted on October 26th, 2010, 6:28 am

Is there any way to trick a new mining ship into thinking it just popped out of a newly-constructed mining station, defaulting to the nearest moon?  (It just wouldn't try to take the resource back to the outpost, but rather the nearest station)

posted on October 26th, 2010, 6:37 am

Well, the trick is he wants an AI controlled ship to give him resources.  It's like having an ally in MP give you money, but the problem is how do you tell the computer to do that?

I think your best bet is MMM , as you could make a script saying, when race X (the ai controlled race) has gathered 500 resources.  Give 500 resources to Player Y.  Delete race X's resources.

AI controlled miners can be sticky, because the AI does silly things like sending miners and constructors to enemy moons or trying to take your ally's moon.  It tends to do more harm than good for an actual player.  Will the player have any form of control, TUN?

posted on October 26th, 2010, 6:53 am

Hehe, that's sort of what I wanted but not exactly. It will basically be your average anyday old mining ship, the only thing different is the AI tells it where to harvest from (the player can select it, just can't give any orders whatsoever).
I want to use this feature for the Ekoset in Sigma, as I have a feeling players will simply mass dozens of miners around one moon near their base when playing as them. With the AI in control there could be dozens of trails leading to all the moons nearby the base. It will almost give the sense that you have roots spreading from your big nasty central base all over the map, no pun intended considering the Ekoset are plants from hell 

posted on October 26th, 2010, 7:04 am

Oh, so you really don't need the AI at all, you just want to keep Wally Wannabe from holding up in his base and turtling with the race that turtles.

Can you use the old A2 orbiters?  Then you'd only have 1 miner per moon.  Or perhaps there's a way to build a structure on top of the moon that has simulated miners, but is really an invisible orbiter?

Then it looks just like you want, and can even have the "mining station" look like it has roots and give it a tree like appearance.  Problem solved.

posted on October 26th, 2010, 1:46 pm

if you could get that to work, it would be a good choice.

I actually, don't know what the effect of the replacementaction line would hav on a non combat ship, but maybe, if you were lucky, the game considers moons as the enemy of the miners and they will hunt them down to...well you get the picture.

posted on October 26th, 2010, 1:56 pm

die moon die, i'm gonna extract resources from u grrrrrr

posted on October 26th, 2010, 2:22 pm

MMM in this case wouldn't work either because it's singleplayer only (can't sync over a network yet)

posted on October 26th, 2010, 2:31 pm

Oh, so you really don't need the AI at all, you just want to keep Wally Wannabe from holding up in his base and turtling with the race that turtles.

There always are concerns for turtling, but I think I have found a way to pull it off. (Mining being one of them  )

Any method is fine as suppose, as long as there's trails of miners going from said moons back to the base. I just have a feeling AI miners would be the most efficient.

posted on October 26th, 2010, 6:27 pm

Hmm.  What you want is quite difficult.  Only easy way I can see to pull it off is to give them alternative sources of income like trading stations.  The further away a trading station was, the better.  Perhaps they need a third resource that can only be gathered this way.  Then you can have your "tree roots" from that.

posted on October 26th, 2010, 6:40 pm

Yeah, I have to agree with Mal - that would also take care of the "you don't really need to choose" problem (aka, what if your miners go through enemy territory) 

posted on October 26th, 2010, 6:48 pm

If the ships were like trade ships, and just went back and fourth, you could give them replace weapons that gave you resources, that way the longer they were en-route, the more resources you would get.  that way, spamming them to get them to just go back and fourth from your bass to a trading station really close wouldn't get you much.

hmm, but there are some problems with that idea too...