Jump to content

Plan usage frequency


Recommended Posts

In the AI plan editor, there's a drop-down for how often the plan gets used. I wonder how useful this feature actually is. Of course, the "Not Used" setting is important, and having a "use this plan" setting to toggle the plan on is vital, but I question the usefulness of "Used Sometimes" and "Used Rarely". Do they really add replayability? I can sort of see that if someone uses the same QB map or scenario the same way round against the AI over and over again, they might get used to the plans that are "used often", and it might be a nice surprise for them to have a "used rarely" plan crop up that they hadn't seen before. But how often is that the case, and how often does a designer make a plan that they only want used "once in a blue moon"?

Perhaps its a failure of imagination on my part, but I don't see that having a surprise on the nth iteration beats having an extra plan that could crop up with the same frequency as any of the other plans. Maybe in the days of SF when QB maps were rare and exotic beasts and you needed to be able to get as much variety of use as possible out of any one map, it was used to effect.

The downsides of retaining the feature are relatively minor. It's already in the manual and it's a relatively easy concept to grok if you are learning-by-mousing. And removing the two "apparently-redundant" options might need a minor amount of testing (though dropping two options from a dropdown shouldn't really need any more than a "did it work" test). I guess I'm just maundering about design concepts and decisions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm well I have used it to a degree, mainly to make a particular AI plan possible, but not likely simply because it might be too much. In Out on a Limb as an example the coordination between the two German counterattacking units is normally kind of haphazard. They are meant to be from two different organizational structures and uncoordinated. However just for some variation I had one plan where they strike in unison at the vulnerable player force. It is not a plan that really matches my overall intent but does spike up the difficulty level.

As to how useful it is, I honestly can't say. I have no idea how other players approach the game and replay. I figured that it couldn't hurt to have, if they don't use it no big deal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There has been a lot of discussion about this particular 'feature' and one of the best suggestions was to have the game track which AI plan was used and to automatically select an unused plan the next time a player chooses to play a scenario. Don't get too excited about this though because I doubt we will be seeing this any time soon.

However, not every scenario is suitable for multiple plans for the simple reason that the designer needs to create the best possible plan in order to give a reasonable challenge for an average player. Once the best possible plan is created there may be possibilities to create alternate plans that are equally decent. However, often times the designer would be making a plan that was not as good as the first plan and you never know if that plan is going to be the one the player gets the first time which will then form their opinion about the scenario overall. From the standpoint of stuff for the DVD there is also a time factor involved because there is time pressure to complete your scenario before the game is released. It's not always possible to create multiple plans.

Ideally with the addition of more advanced triggers you would have a scenario with one basic plan - the best one the designer can develop - which can branch to account for what the player is doing. In the case of advanced triggers it may no longer be necessary to have the game select different plans whenever the scenario is played. You can have one plan that is flexible enough to give a reasonable account of itself based on what the player is doing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There has been a lot of discussion about this particular 'feature' and one of the best suggestions was to have the game track which AI plan was used and to automatically select an unused plan the next time a player chooses to play a scenario. Don't get too excited about this though because I doubt we will be seeing this any time soon.

However, not every scenario is suitable for multiple plans...

I have nothing whatsoever against the concept of multiple plans for one QB map-battlesize combo or scenario; it's certainly an addition to replayability, where it's appropriate. I just don't see that anyone would actually notice if Plans were only either "used" or "not used". You'd have to play the same map/scenario the same way round more than a dozen or so times to realise that a "rarely used" plan was, indeed, rarely used. Possibly even to realise it existed :) For the vast majority of players, having a "more challenging" plan categorised "Rarely used" would mean they either thought the map was harder than others did, or harder "sometimes" because they won't play the map enough to realise that that once the hard Rare plan was chosen is, indeed, rare; they'll just think they got lucky and it didn't come up.

I don't think it's an evil thing. Just a bit nugatory, is all, and I appreciate that the work to remove it, even if it's never used, or never has a perceptible impact on an individual player's experience if it is used, might be unwelcome and have consequences.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...