Some thoughts on automation

[Deathball]

So I've had this idea what automation might look like for Distant Worlds 2 and wanted to share it and hear some thoughts.

Instead of having predefined packages in form of different ship roles, i.e. escort, cruiser, etc. the player would be able to define ship roles and their behavioral patterns himself through a set of directives in the form of

when <conditional> <command> <parameter>

A ship class would consist of a list of such directives that the AI would work through from top to bottom. For example a destroyer class could look like this:
when <at war> <attack> <mining bases>
when <always> <attack> <pirate bases>
when <always> <patrol> <colonies>

When creating a ship design the player would then assign it the role "destroyer" and when automated, the ship would check first for enemy mining bases to attack. If the empire is at peace or there are no known enemy mining bases in range it would search for pirate bases to attack. If no pirate bases are found either it will default to patrolling player colonies.

Another example could be a frigate class like this:
when <in fleet> <escort> <ships in fleet>
when <always> <patrol> <mining stations>

This frigate could be a lightly armored missile boat to be put in a fleet with capitals, where it would tag along with a capital to soak up enemy fire supporting it from long range. If not part of a fleet it would default to patrolling mining stations.

To expand on this system there could be a number of additional parameters used in ship AI decisions such as a preferred target size, mission range, etc.

The advantage of this system would be that instead of having a set of ships that all do pretty much the same the player would be able to define his own specialized ship roles using more complex behaviors in accordance with the ship design and player needs. So you could create the above destroyer with long range weaponry to snipe enemy stations, a cruiser with hyperdeny and lots of fuel to hunt freighters in enemy systems, capitals decked out with weapons and shields to seek out enemy combat ships, etc. massively increasing the depth and complexity of the ship design part of the game without being overly complicated.

[Deathball]

37 hits and not one opinion? No yay or nay or anything?

[hardcoregamer]

ORIGINAL: Deathball

37 hits and not one opinion? No yay or nay or anything?

Yay.

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: Deathball

37 hits and not one opinion? No yay or nay or anything?

Nay.

Darkspire

[ckammp]

ORIGINAL: Deathball

37 hits and not one opinion? No yay or nay or anything?

Anything.

[Deathball]

I'll just take that silence as consent then

[hewwo]

hmmm first I thought: dude that's way too much for in a game, but actually it would be really awesome, so yes, I 100% support this idea! Our own little programmable fleet AI.

[Spidey]

Of course it's going to end up being rather complex to make ships do exactly what you want them to do, and then the scripting impaired rookies among us will probably complain about how hard it is to make the automation work.

The concept isn't bad at all, but I'd rather hope the feature wasn't very easy to find and came with plenty of warnings so people don't mess with it for no reason, as well as a rather alien look. It should make you feel like the first time you hit Alt + F11 in Excel and saw the VBA editor fade into existence, only with a much more passive aggressive personality.

"Error. Could not compile line x. You've probably done something stupid."
"Error. Could still not compile line x. You've definitely done something stupid."
"VICTORY!! Managed to compile line x. Thank you for not doing something stupid."

Maybe it's a bit harsh, but I think it's the only way to keep the masses from totally screwing up their AI ships and blaming it on the game.

[Deathball]

ORIGINAL: Spidey

Of course it's going to end up being rather complex to make ships do exactly what you want them to do, and then the scripting impaired rookies among us will probably complain about how hard it is to make the automation work.

The concept isn't bad at all, but I'd rather hope the feature wasn't very easy to find and came with plenty of warnings so people don't mess with it for no reason, as well as a rather alien look. It should make you feel like the first time you hit Alt + F11 in Excel and saw the VBA editor fade into existence, only with a much more passive aggressive personality.

"Error. Could not compile line x. You've probably done something stupid."
"Error. Could still not compile line x. You've definitely done something stupid."
"VICTORY!! Managed to compile line x. Thank you for not doing something stupid."

Maybe it's a bit harsh, but I think it's the only way to keep the masses from totally screwing up their AI ships and blaming it on the game.

Compiler errors are more "Your grammar is awful" since the computer can't actually tell if something makes sense or not. My proposal would just feature a bunch of drop down menus so no actual knowledge of coding or syntax would be required, just some basic logic. And given the audience of Distant Worlds its probably safe to assume they have enough brains not to stab themselves with a fork so they'll probably be able to figure it out. If not there's always automation.[;)]

Also if you ever played Dragon Age, that game did pretty much the same thing where you could define party behavior through statements like "when <health below> <20%> <use health potion>" and I didn't hear about anyone who made his computer explode with it.