Final Fantasy Gambits

[Edymnion]

Something that literally just hit me as something that could actually work well in Starmade.

In I believe it was Final Fantasy 12, a lot of the game's combat engine revolved around Gambits.

Gambits were basically fragments of AI that the player could piece together in order to basically let the game play itself.

In FF, that kind of ticked me off until I realized how to make crafting the perfect AI Gambits was a really fun mini game in it's own right.

The way it worked was that you had two sides to a gambit, one with a setup status like "player health <= 50%", the other side being the action to take, like "Cast healing spell 1".

You had a list of these you'd set up, where the ones at the top of the list took priority over the ones lower down.

The trick was setting up everything in the right order so that most of the time your gambit AI could handle itself with you only intervening when something went seriously sideways.

That could translate into Starmade blocks fairly easily, I think.

Instead of having the devs try and build a super robust AI for us, we could build our own like it was logic.

So we could have a target block connected to a missile recognition block. Then link that to a recognition block for ships, and a shield recognition block for over 50%, then another set to target turrets when shields were under 50%, and finally just a target ship and fire set.

That way we could build our own target priority list, which we could then link into the Bobby AI as the driver for it.

Have things to recognize ship sizes, distances, etc so you could set it to target the nearest ship, or the ship with the weakest shields, etc.

Basically make AI creation in Starmade a full blown build system instead of just a drop down and a checkbox.

 

[Zaphord]

Not sure I'd want this to use blocks though, that could get really big really fast. Someone also suggested a similar system a while back, but using a flowchart of sorts. You just drop the conditions and behaviors into the chart at hit run program.

 

[Edymnion]

Nah, it would only get as big as you wanted to make it. Current turret functionality could be replicated with only 2 blocks on your turret/ship.

 

[sayerulz]

I do like the idea of being able to make your own AI.

 

[Ithirahad]

Yeah, not a bad idea. The "condition" blocks could also tie into logic.

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, not a bad idea. The "condition" blocks could also tie into logic.

Agreed.

If you had a block for "Target Closest", you could then run an activator off of it as a combat detection signal.

I could also see value in being able to logic off of a fire block that would signal when the array was about to fire so you could logic up some special effects that go off (like arrel recoil).

 

[Ithirahad]

Yeah. It would be awesome if we could somehow get cooldown info off a computer... That way we could have a "charging" logic animation timed to a long-reload weapon like a beam/pulse.

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah. It would be awesome if we could somehow get cooldown info off a computer... That way we could have a "charging" logic animation timed to a long-reload weapon like a beam/pulse.

Heck, I'd be happy with it being able to show the cooldown remaining on an inner ship remote.

 

[Trekkerjoe]

Now, if this system could support receiving and carrying out orders(perhaps with waypoints/pathfinding), and multiple process support, I'm all for it.

 

[Edymnion]

Now thats an idea. We have inner ship remotes we can name, what if we had coordinate AI blocks that you could "name" by typing in coordinates? For a ship AI, it would then fly to whatever coordinates are in the block.

Make your attack AIs first, then at the tail end make your coordinate blocks that loop back onto themselves. You've not built and programmed drone AI to work a patrol. It would have the attack protocols up first so that if it saw an enemy the attack blocks would override what was beneath them and the AI would fight. If there is nothing hostile, it would go to the navigation loop and proceed to the next waypoint.

 

[Blaza612]

My only problem with this, as Zaphord pointed out, it could get really big, really fast. It would be a pain in the ass to fit targeting logic into a small point defense turret, which would suddenly become bigger. The are two solutions (that I see) to this problem.

A) We have a flowchart sort of thing that's built within the AI module, you don't need to place a single block and aren't limited on resources. (you could of course then have a copy/paste system very easily integrated)

B) All of you AIs are stored as BPs sort of. On a station of some sort, you can design your AIs like logic system testing, then store the info on each AI in a BP converter, which will create a BP copy of said AI. This AI BP would then be placed into every AI module you wanted it to go into, and the AI module would use the AI BP for the logic AI systems, saving space, still limiting you with resources and having a way to permanently lose your AI systems, but could provide you with the blockiness you desire.

 

[Edymnion]

My only problem with this, as Zaphord pointed out, it could get really big, really fast. It would be a pain in the ass to fit targeting logic into a small point defense turret, which would suddenly become bigger. The are two solutions (that I see) to this problem.

Again, it could be done in as little as one additional block, a "Target: Missiles" block. Pretty much all of the current AI settings could be done as a single block. Target: Any, Target: Player, Target: Missile, etc. Then leave the ship/turret switch in the actual Bobby block.

I don't think 1 extra block is going to really make or break anyone's PDTs.

If you then want to make a turret that can scan the other ships in the area, determine the most appropriate target based on changing battle conditions on the fly, and then select appropriate weapon arrays, then of course thats going to get big, and you'll need a bigger turret to handle it, but the same can be said of a ship. If you want a ship that can scan systems, salvage asteroids, and jump you're going to need a bigger ship than if you just want to get to the shop in the next sector over.

 

[Blaza612]

Again, it could be done in as little as one additional block, a "Target: Missiles" block. Pretty much all of the current AI settings could be done as a single block. Target: Any, Target: Player, Target: Missile, etc. Then leave the ship/turret switch in the actual Bobby block.

I don't think 1 extra block is going to really make or break anyone's PDTs.

If you then want to make a turret that can scan the other ships in the area, determine the most appropriate target based on changing battle conditions on the fly, and then select appropriate weapon arrays, then of course thats going to get big, and you'll need a bigger turret to handle it, but the same can be said of a ship. If you want a ship that can scan systems, salvage asteroids, and jump you're going to need a bigger ship than if you just want to get to the shop in the next sector over.

Turret bulkiness is already a huge problem with making turrets look good, this will only make that problem even more severe. With the possible systems I've proposed, one still requires blocks to be placed down, just you can compress and copy it into your turret AI modules. Another solution (which I'm not that fond of) is building the AI systems on the mothership, and in the AI module on docked entities, they can choose which AI system to use, again saving space for the turrets/drones that don't need to get any bulkier.

 

[EMC007]

Turret bulkiness is already a huge problem with making turrets look good, this will only make that problem even more severe. With the possible systems I've proposed, one still requires blocks to be placed down, just you can compress and copy it into your turret AI modules. Another solution (which I'm not that fond of) is building the AI systems on the mothership, and in the AI module on docked entities, they can choose which AI system to use, again saving space for the turrets/drones that don't need to get any bulkier.

Or you could just use a wireless logic block, that way they don't have to make a whole new block for it

 

[Blaza612]

Or you could just use a wireless logic block, that way they don't have to make a whole new block for it

I'm talking about a drop-down menu in the already existing Bobby AI module. :p

 

[EMC007]

Oh ok, nvm then