Apoch and the A.I.

[Mightysword]

It wouldn't have any effect on the peceived cohesion of the drone swarm. The target ship chases one drone, the rest of the drones chase the target ship. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever what direction they chase them in

Oh it does, like I said they will lose locality. The logic here is that their localtion will all way converse, hence the "swarm" coherent is maintain. If 3 drones are targeted, they will move toward the same point. Once there they will stay in the vincinity.

In erratic movement, what if 3 drones are targeted and move in 3 different direction? What if they are faster than their target? Will this result in the swarm being devided into 3 corner of the sector? I don't know if there is other constraint in the script, but going by what said here this will be most likely will happen. It is a lot more severe than just the mother ship gun, the concept of a "Swarm" that you're touting itself will fall apart pretty quick.

[Chris0132]

If you have three target ships, locked onto three drones, you'll end up with three bunches of drones, targetting the three ships, more or less. Or maybe you'll end up with all of them attacking one ship, I dunno. Probably the latter actually as it's stated that there's no organisation, what'd probably happen is when you launch the drones they all go after the closest fighter in the wing or whichever one you had targetted. Any that get targetted by fighters would fly off in random directions and split the wing up while the rest of the swarm hammers on one ship.

Once the ship is dead, they'd go after whichever one is closest.

Honestly I think the only major difference would be that keeping them all around the mothership would make catching the rest of the ships a lot faster, but it wouldn't make it any more intelligent looking. If the chased drones are significantly faster than the things they're leading that's a problem with either approach, as they're likely to lose their target. But in either system the target is likely to pick another drone and chase after it.

Focussing around the mothership basically trades speed of destruction due to supporting fire and a concentrated area, for safety of the mothership. If you made them go off in random directions they'd lead targets away from the mothership more often and keep it a little safer. Neither one is really more organised though I don't think. They're both emergent behaviours stemming from entirely self-centric AI.

[Gazz]

Although what you say about wing commander AI isn't actually too different, it's just on a slightly bigger scale.

Oh, it's radically different.
It's exactly the difference between the purely self-centric behaviour and organisation.

A command AI could decide to divide and conquer, luring away some enemies before engaging.
A self-centric fighter script could not do this because it would achieve no goal.


Using MARS as an example again (no, this is no MARS thread =P)...
The mothership is the goblins' command AI.
It uses those drones to protect itself by sending them to engage incoming missiles, it sends them to distract enemy fighters, diverting their fire away from the mothership, and it uses those fast drones to "fetch" enemies that are far outside it's own weapon range, extending it's own "zone of control".
The mothership does plan and organise.
It rates threats and deploys it's "fighters" to gain a tactical advantage, that has nothing to do with getting the fighters' firepower onto the target. When the M2 cannot possibly catch fast fighters in the vicinity, it ties them down with "skirmishers" and delays them until the M2 can catch up and flatten them with overwhelming firepower. It plans ahead.

None of those drone missions let the drone achieve a result that is advantageous to itself. They are... minions.
The extent of their own and completely self-centered intelligence is to stay alive as long as possible while executing those "orders from above".

[Mightysword]

Honestly I think the only major difference would be that keeping them all around the mothership would make catching the rest of the ships a lot faster

but ... that rather a significant difference isn'it. in fact, it's a difference between a working model and a busted model.

Using MARS as an example again (no, this is no MARS thread =P)...

well it serves as a good example

The mothership is the goblins' command AI.

This is what I am trying to say, there is a form of CnC at play for this behavior. Just like while the fire evacuaee may only act on their self-interest, the protocol and procedure they are following act as their coordination even when they don't talk to each others.

[Chris0132]

Although what you say about wing commander AI isn't actually too different, it's just on a slightly bigger scale.

Oh, it's radically different.
It's exactly the difference between the purely self-centric behaviour and organisation.

A command AI could decide to divide and conquer, luring away some enemies before engaging.
A self-centric fighter script could not do this because it would achieve no goal.


Using MARS as an example again (no, this is no MARS thread =P)...
The mothership is the goblins' command AI.
It uses those drones to protect itself by sending them to engage incoming missiles, it sends them to distract enemy fighters, diverting their fire away from the mothership, and it uses those fast drones to "fetch" enemies that are far outside it's own weapon range, extending it's own "zone of control".
The mothership does plan and organise.
It rates threats and deploys it's "fighters" to gain a tactical advantage, that has nothing to do with getting the fighters' firepower onto the target. When the M2 cannot possibly catch fast fighters in the vicinity, it ties them down with "skirmishers" and delays them until the M2 can catch up and flatten them with overwhelming firepower. It plans ahead.

None of those drone missions let the drone achieve a result that is advantageous to itself. They are... minions.
The extent of their own and completely self-centered intelligence is to stay alive as long as possible while executing those "orders from above".

But isn't that just like having a ship with a bunch of tractor beams and point defence turrets and long range missiles and whatever?

The ship thinks for itself, and uses its effectors (in your case drones, in my case various types of gun) to produce the desired results in the world. The ship itself is a lot more intelligent than a drone, but no less self centred.

So the ship sees an enemy outside its range, your version might launch a drone to go aggro it. My version would launch a missile to aggro it. The missile of course has its own AI of sorts, fly towards the thing and explode. And a projectile would have its own code controlling how it flies to the target, but there isn't really any what I would call organisation going on in either case.

Similarly the ship might have a chaff launcher in my version, which in your version would be 'launch drones to tie up M2 if M2 is in a positon to pose a threat.' Mine would be the same but with 'fire chaff launcher' in the place of 'launch drones'.

Basically it seems like one self centric ship launching a bunch of self centric drones to do self centric things because the self centric ship knows that doing so will benefit it.

Basically, think of the drones as being the arms and legs of the ship, just as the guns and engine are the arms and legs of the drones. It's a step up, but in a lot of ways very similar.

[Gazz]

Basically it seems like one self centric ship launching a bunch of self centric drones to do self centric things because the self centric ship knows that doing so will benefit it.

That's true but by using those drones in ways that does not benefit the drones themselves, the mothership becomes a tactical AI or wing commander of sorts.
That the mothership is acting out of self interest is no contradiction.

The point is that the drones do not act out of self interest. They are being commanded to achieve the goals of a higher authority.
Just luring a fighter somewhere serves absolutely no purpose for the individual drone and offers no chance of "winning".

[Chris0132]

Although if that's the case then the ship also doesn't act out of self interest because you programmed it to do cool stuff.

And you don't act out of self interest because the entire universe conspired to produce you in the state you are which resulted in the creation of the drone AI.

And so on.

Basically I seem to be having massive trouble seeing where the distinction is supposed to go. Might be because I play a lot of RTS and don't actually see the difference between an RTS and a slow paced FPS. I use my mouse and keyboard to move stuff around and effect changes in the world. Whether my mouse and keyboard control my movement and aim or the placement of little markers on the board doesn't really make much fundamental difference to me. Both are simply my effectors, my 'body' as such in the virtual world.

[Scoob]

Hi,

Anyone remember the combat AI in the original Xtended expansion? The one for X:BTF not the 3rd party mod for Reunion and TC.

In that EVERY fighter would follow the EXACT same path when engaging the enemy. Also the enemy would evade, or not, in the exact same way.

This led to an attacking ship getting right behind the target. If you'd commanded several of your fighters to do the same they'd all "merge" behind in the same position - imagine each of them were running "no clipping" and the models actually merged. When they fired, they'd likely hit each other first due to the model overlap.

Now THAT was basic AI with all ships behaving exactly the same - ok one on one, but two on one it sorta went crazy.

So, things in X2 and X3 were much improved on this original approach, but it's not unreasonable to expect more with XR.

Additionally, with Capital ships and stations being modular, the hard-coded "it's best to attack this class of ship from here" is no longer relavant. There must be a fair bit of additional AI added to enable smart sub-system targeting. Also, if a prior volly took out weapons system on one side of the ship, or the shield was weakest that side, will the AI be smart enough to take advantage?

It sounds like Egosoft have upped the game a lot from a tactical perspective, but will the AI be able to keep up?

Scoob.

[A5PECT]

There must be a fair bit of additional AI added to enable smart sub-system targeting.

In Apoch's post he says that he solved that by dividing the area around the capital ship based on viable angles of attack against each surface element. If a fighter wants attack a particular part of the carrier it will fly into the area of space associated with a particular surface element and begin its strafing runs from there.

Well, that's how the actual attack runs are handled. We don't actually know how fighters decide which surface elements to attack and when. Hopefully, fighters come with a built-in threat assessment system that lets them (somewhat) intelligently choose their targets, and the player can override that system with specific commands.

It sounds like Egosoft have upped the game a lot from a tactical perspective, but will the AI be able to keep up?

This is the big question.

We won't know until the game comes out.

Or Egosoft releases some kind of trailer showing off the AI.

[DeadlyDarkness]

There are lots of different ways to simplify the AI.

The issue with fighter combat is that more often than not there are a /lot/ of ships, so the AI has to be as simple as possible to avoid processing overhead.

However, with large ships, there are usually very few of them, they also move slower. This allows for more strategic decision making as 1) you can dedicated more threads to their AI and 2) they move slower so the tick rate can also be slower.

In the case of large fleet engagements, this is where the concept of "wings" can become useful. When 30 fighters are attacking one large ship, it is much simpler to just count the whole lot as one ship with 30 firing points. The angle of the individual ships doesn't matter then as long as the formation is facing the right direction. This can potentially cause collision problems however when facing enemy fighters. BUT, you can use a specific evasion algorithm. When a ship in the cloud comes under fighter attack, it could engage in a pre programmed evasion move then return to formation. This is exactly how bomber pilots in WW2 dealt with fighters using the "corkscrew" evasion manoeuvre. Basically collision on the individual ships is only considered when there is another cloud of fighters nearby.

Treating the fighters in a cloud as points in terms of weapon /targeting/ can also be advantageous, the obvious in game implementation of this is flak which would simply aim at the cloud of fighters. Of course you would probably still want to apply a collision box for hits since there might be a mix of flak and fighter attacks, but it would allow for more complex capital ship AI.

[Flaming Blastclaw]

The AI needs to be made more complicated, not simpler. Each NPC should have a unique personality and should have the basic instinct to survive. NPCs should try to retreat and repair their ship.
NPC's should also show some initiative for once and attack the player if the odds are on their side. Maybe even attempt to board the players ship with NPC marines.


Greatest PC game AI achievements:

-The soldiers in Half-life
-The soldiers in Fear
-Cossacks (doesn't cheat)
-Age of Empires 3 (cheats but the AI is very sophisticated)