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Passive attacking AI


wham

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3 minutes ago, RepsolCBR said:

Answer or no answer...i will just end by mentioning that any of my replies have not been directed at you personally...but generaly at any player.

And while discussing the quality/challange of the AI i don't think that a statement like this...

might be a fair description of the AI quality. If a player does that he is not even giving the AI the chans to win. Offering a human player a cease fire is one thing because he can reject it. The AI rarely will...Doing so would be cheaing the scenario and the result can never be considdered a 'major victory'. But you are correct though that i and i guess most others would do the same thing if we get bored. But a victory ? NO...

That is obviously the right way to do it if you want a real challange but H2H may not be an option for every player....for various reasons.

if you press the red button 10 times and there is no reaction I can't see that is cheating. If you want a Total Victory experiment what you can do. You may enjoy yourself. 

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20 minutes ago, wham said:

 If anything can be done in the current engine and level of AI, I think these tools might be key to creating interesting attack/defend scenarios that are playable as either side against the AI. However, this is speculation on my part, as I've never really studied the AI planning tools in any depth.

Imo the easiest way to improve these scenarios is to release two versions of the same scenario...rather than having both sides playable in the same scenario...with the same units....

These two option scenarios are doomed to failure...it is in no way realistic to expect the AI to be able to conduct an attack with the same forces as a human player gets when playing the same side....

We need two seperate scenarios. Each tailored to significantelly favour the AI regardless if it is playing the attacker or the defender...

Give the AI some extra units as opposed to what the player gets from playing that side...remove some of the player forces...tweak the softfactors like moral and experience to favour the AI...

Giving the AI a few buffs will increase the overall challange and funfactor of the scenarios.

Edited by RepsolCBR
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4 minutes ago, wham said:

While I see the merit of setting myself extra goals as the defender, I feel this is akin to modding the scenarios myself, which is not what I'm looking for when purchasing a game. I feel this issue could pretty much be remedied by admitting to the shortcomings of the scenarios and engine and AI, and adding a note either in the game description, manual or scenario descriptions that all scenarios are best played as attacker unless the mission is designed and tested to be challenging to play as the defender as well.

Multiplayer is a different matter, and I feel nearly all scenarios are perfectly playable as either side with an opposing human player, but as much as I would love to have one, I remain stuck playing with the AI due to the nature of the game making it difficult to approach or maintain focus in for a lot of people. 120 turns, with each turn taking half an hour to an hour or more to set up, is just too much time to invest for my friends.

Additionally, in some scenarios there are already such objectives in place in the mission design, with several touch objectives set for the defender far outside of their starting area, forcing the defender to push out of a secure position to capture forward positions before the advancing attacker can reach them. At least in non-historical scenarios, I feel this might be a suitable way to force the defender to be active as well, making it so that the defender cannot simply win by sitting still and being passive. Likewise, in many scenarios a key part of the defenders forces arrive later as reinforcements, but even in these scenarios the attacking AI currently loses due to a failure to advance past initial objectives, meaning that even with the defenders reinforcements sitting at the edge of map and never engaging the attacker, the defender ends up winning. If anything can be done in the current engine and level of AI, I think these tools might be key to creating interesting attack/defend scenarios that are playable as either side against the AI. However, this is speculation on my part, as I've never really studied the AI planning tools in any depth.

It is not the only scenario and there are more of them The Bridge at Varaville in Battle for Normandy. I took my objectives set out a defense. And waited for a counterattack. Same story this was an attack scenario. I as the attacker took my objectives and that was it. A platoon of Germans in trucks were waiting on the edge of the board. Nothing was mentioned in the scenario. But you can always experiment in the less entertaining scenarios. See what needs to be done to get a total victory. Defenders are supposed to have a patrol program if you think they are beaten I suggest organizing a sweep through the countryside. You may find a regiment heading your way. FB has 5 AI plans and the AI is limited. After 2 years the AI gets boring. AIb.jpg

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Two scenarios = double the work designing and testing scenarios, so unlikely to happen unless fans start to create modified versions themselves. 

Maybe in a few years Battlefront will develop a massive supercomputer AI in the cloud, and all the games can connect to it and a mega-AI that uses machine learning and algorithms to create the best AI in the universe will provide a challenge for us. 

Or, more realistically, maybe the games could collect data on player moves and use that to automatically generate more complex and efficient AI plans. And even this option would be a massive undertaking on the programming side, and considering the scope of the requirements I feel it's quite far outside the budgets and possibilities Battlefront is working with.

But it is nice to hope and dream.

Oh, I will be testing out the scenarios in Black Sea in the same way in the coming week or so, and posting their results on the Black Sea forum while linking to this discussion. Maybe someone will find it interesting to see a little bit of data on how the AI performs in different conditions and settings, and maybe it might inspire some scenario designers to tweak their plans.

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3 minutes ago, wham said:

Two scenarios = double the work designing and testing scenarios

No...it is not 😊

The map is done, the research is done, most of the unit rosters are done...

And remember...

In a two option scenario you need an AI plan for both sides also....No Major increase in work to make one AI plan each for two scenarios rather than two AI plans for one scenario...

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34 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

It's not a hobby but more like a duty.

Edit a scenario and let other people try your creation. You don't tell people what they should do you make suggestions. The game inside the game is the editor, I know how to dabble with it, but I don't call it fun. Some people do respect and admire their creations. Make a TLP, OPORDS, WARNOS, FRAGOS, RISS, KOCCOA, SOSRA. Six acronyms and you about cover it. RISS to Assault, KOCCOA to approach SOSRA to breach, walls, minefields, cross LDA, ODA's. If you can make each concept into an attack with the triggers good luck. The TLP, OPORDS, WARNO's FRAGOS to write a scenario, lots of times I must make sense of the scenario editing. You would write something to act as a trigger for the game. TLP To set the player up for example the C2 network. Make sure the different HQ's communicate and let the AI work for you. Your sniper will actually eliminate some enemies, your Firefly gets the first shot in etc etc. That is if you set up a TLP it means Troop Leading Procedure. This is not the place to write an instruction book, I am just a player finding some fun and remembering some stuff. 

Edited by chuckdyke
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There should be a manual on how to edit a game and you can play a game more than once as you may have more battle plans. For each game there may be say 5 different battle plans so each time you start you may face a different battle plan. Here is the reason units don't do anything. Out of the game manual: A scenario can have a Computer Player for either or both Axis and Allied sides. However, if the designer did not specifically create a Computer Player for a side the units for that side will simply sit wherever they start out and do nothing. Therefore, the scenario designer should make sure to mention in the briefing that a scenario is supposed to be played from a specific side only.

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1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

You don't tell people what they should do you make suggestions.

That's exactly what I did. I suggested that you edit a scenario, or a few, and change the experience of the side you play against the AI and I also suggested that you could play against people. But you didn't  like those suggestions.

Quote

the scenario designer should make sure to mention in the briefing that a scenario is supposed to be played from a specific side only.

That's exactly what they do. It is often mentioned for example Player Axis vs AI Allied. And by that you should understand that there are no AI-plans for the Axis.

Quote

if the designer did not specifically create a Computer Player for a side the units for that side will simply sit wherever they start out and do nothing.

That is the reason why the designers for the stock scenarios put those plans in the mode to not being used when playing the scenario.

Edited by BornGinger
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Just now, wham said:

I'm not sure what this is trying to prove? Evidently all the built-in scenarios have an AI plan, since most of the units move, and only a small portion of them fail to do so.

No each time you start a game you may have a different battle plan. In the editor there are 5 plans, this means first time you play against plan no1. For example, you lost, and you want to play again you may be confronted with plan no3. You will play a similar game but not the same game. In game no2 for example the editor didn't give the allies a battle plan. The consequence is they don't do anything. There are no more than 1 plan in one game per side. Here is what I read and explains what you experienced. 

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1 minute ago, BornGinger said:

That's exactly what I did. I suggested that you edit a scenario, or a few, and change the experience of the side you play against the AI and I also suggested that you could play against people. But you didn't  like those suggestions.

I decide who I play with and I have two people. I just explained to Wham why the allies didn't do a thing by reading the editor manual. Editing and playing is very similar each time you save a game you edited a new game. 

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2 hours ago, wham said:

You make it sound easy, but somehow I feel that if it was quite so easy it would already have been done a decade ago. Hence I suspect there is more to it all.

It is simple 😎...

You don't have to start anything from scratch. Simply load the player attack scenario into the editor and do the neccesary tweaks and save it under a different name....

for example...

Battle for the reichtag (A)

Battle for the reichtag (D)

A = player attack version D = player defence version

For example...

Player attack version...

The player attacks with a fairly depleted battalion supported by 2 StuGs and 5 PzIVs.

Player defence version...

The AI attacks with a full (atleast almost) battalion supported by 4 StuGs and 8 PzIvs.

In the player defence version improve the experience of some of the attacking the attacking russians, increase the leaderskills of some of the leaders...Perhaps add some extra troops like a platoon of engineers or something...

Changes like these will not all of a sudden make the AI super bright but it will most certainly improve its chanses somewhat...Take the pain of designing a fairly competent AI planfor the attacking russians as opposed to the way things seems to be now...A very simple one in the AI attack versions.

The map, the briefingscreen, the research etc, etc can remain pretty much the same....minor changes only at the most.

I can think a few reasons for this not having been done prior.

1. Not historically correct any more...Solution...make the player attack version historically correct and mention in the designernotes for the player defence version that some liberties have been taken with the historical accuracy in order to make the AI more challeging.

2. A risk off cluttering the games scenario folder with 'to many' scenarios....solution...NOT a problem ! 

What could make this take some more time as opposed to the current situation is the fact that the current player defence versions seems to have a very simple AI planwith limited testing. If the goal is to improve the AI behavior then the AI plan would need to be more seriously developed and tested....that might take some more time...true.

But the increased quality of the product would make it worth it imo...

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:

In a two option scenario you need an AI plan for both sides also....No Major increase in work to make one AI plan each for two scenarios rather than two AI plans for one scenario...

+1.  IMO much easier to make two versions of the same scenario.  

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