Home World Forum: The Academy » Player assistant "AI"

Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Player assistant "AI"

Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator
E-mail to friend

Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech

Sun, 05 March 2006 06:18

wumpus

Master Chief Petty Officer
Stars! V.I.P
Created tools and utilities to help the Stars! community

Messages: 114
Registered: September 2004

m.a@stars wrote on Sun, 05 March 2006 10:40

Main automatable/boring tasks:

I think you underestimate the "human element" that goes into doing a stars! turn well Smile

Plus, I think a lot of these problems are fairly difficult AI problems; consider that stars! has been around, more or less unchanged in all but (comparatively) minor details, for over a decade, and there are still a fair few different viable race designs and play styles - testimony, IMO, that the vast majority of situations in stars! have no simple, always-correct solution.

What I have been pondering is an X file analyzer which will warn of *possibly* strange orders or make suggestions; it might spot stuff like sending damaged ships through gates such that they have a vanishingly small chance of surviving (because the player forgot to take the existing damage into account), or targetting an enemy fleet 1LY away from a planet when you may have meant to target the planet itself, or chasing the MT at a speed which isn't going to work out, or setting a fleet to improbable orders (I've slipped up and set layers to "patrol" rather than "lay" a few times, ouch ;P). The scope for actually tampering with the players turn is fairly limited I fear :-/

Another thing that could be useful: an analyzer for finding out things about enemy races:
- Collects data on all the ship designs you've seen and tries to extrapolate tech levels from that
- Tries to guess enemy ship designs based on their weight and the guessed-at tech of their first production yea
- Tries to determine hab, PRT, LRTs, ...
- etc etc
There'd be a few potential snags to deal with - gifted ships being the most obvious - but this strikes me as a managable task.

But back to the matter at hand:

The MM in stars! is time consuming, but doing it "just right", taking all factors into account, is IMO one of the handful of points which can separate a so-so player from a really great one... emulating a so-so player might be doable (but far from trivial), emulating a really good one is probably very hard, if it is even viable at all without a direct tap to the player's brain Razz

.

Having said all that... my AI programming experience is extremely limited; if someone feels they have can formally express algorithms for doing some of this stuff well, then I'm all ears Smile

You know what kind of information is available to the AI (basically: anything visible normally in stars!, and very little else), so... Very Happy

In the mid-term, it may actually be easier to write a complete stars! AI, hopefully better than the existing ones, than to write a player assistant - since the AI then has complete control, and can plan and so on without having to take an unknown element - IE the player - into account.

Some specific thoughts on your suggestions:

Quote:

- Filling all your planetary Qs with your latest designs and/or removing old ones.

How does the proposed AI recognise an "old" design that you don't want anymore? How do you prevent it from removing intentionally "old tech" ships you're building? (EG contrast chaff, a cheap sweeper, and a state of the art weapons scrapper; depending on your general tech, these may all be scout/FFs with cheap engine and a single beam weapon...)

Quote:

- Mineral/pop balancing.

I can't even begin to see how to automate that without a lot of configuration possibility by the player. Having an AI doing it for itself could definitely be viable, but doing it for a human whose plans the AI can't evaluate easily at all, sounds Hard. Setting orders and letting the player change them *might* be viable, but I'm not entirely convinced this won't make more work then it saves.

Quote:

- Ensuring all your fleets get to their assigned destination at the correct speed and/or time.

How does the AI know what is "correct" other than by looking at your orders? Which stars! seems (to me) to be perfectly capable of showing and highlighting problems with all on its own. Granted, you could catch some of the "off-b ...

[ Show the rest of the message ]

Michael "Wumpus" Zinn
» Apply magic glue here «

Report message to a moderator

[Message index]

		Player assistant "AI" By: wumpus on Sat, 04 March 2006 16:54
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Sun, 05 March 2006 04:40
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: wumpus on Sun, 05 March 2006 06:18
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: Kotk on Mon, 06 March 2006 01:25
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Mon, 06 March 2006 04:10
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: Kotk on Mon, 06 March 2006 05:24
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Mon, 06 March 2006 06:29
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: Kotk on Mon, 06 March 2006 04:43
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Mon, 06 March 2006 06:22
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: Kotk on Mon, 06 March 2006 11:10
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Mon, 06 March 2006 11:41
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: BlueTurbit on Mon, 06 March 2006 11:52
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Mon, 06 March 2006 12:03
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: BlueTurbit on Mon, 06 March 2006 12:18
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Tue, 07 March 2006 04:16
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Mon, 06 March 2006 06:03
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: wumpus on Mon, 06 March 2006 12:43
		Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech By: m.a@stars on Tue, 07 March 2006 04:25
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: joseph on Mon, 06 March 2006 17:06
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Tue, 07 March 2006 04:37
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Kotk on Tue, 07 March 2006 14:25
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: joseph on Tue, 07 March 2006 17:05
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Kotk on Tue, 07 March 2006 19:43
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Wed, 08 March 2006 04:26
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Wed, 08 March 2006 04:22
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Madman on Wed, 08 March 2006 00:48
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Wed, 08 March 2006 04:33
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: NingunOtro on Mon, 06 March 2006 21:22
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Tue, 07 March 2006 04:44
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Kotk on Tue, 07 March 2006 14:08
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Wed, 08 March 2006 04:17
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Kotk on Wed, 08 March 2006 08:49
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Wed, 08 March 2006 09:41
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Kotk on Wed, 08 March 2006 13:37
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: joseph on Wed, 08 March 2006 16:54
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Thu, 09 March 2006 04:16
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Madman on Thu, 16 March 2006 06:45
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Kotk on Thu, 16 March 2006 12:40
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: PricklyPea on Thu, 16 March 2006 12:49
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: NingunOtro on Thu, 16 March 2006 19:26
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Thu, 09 March 2006 04:07
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: Kotk on Thu, 09 March 2006 08:16
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Thu, 09 March 2006 12:04
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: mazda on Wed, 15 March 2006 09:58
		Re: Player assistant "AI" By: m.a@stars on Wed, 15 March 2006 10:44

Previous Topic:	Minerals - mining and depletion
Next Topic:	Need a quick answer with detonating minefield question

Goto Forum:

-=] Back to Top [=-

Current Time: Thu Jul 04 10:11:41 EDT 2024