AI Patching requests

[Suicide Junkie]

Does your mod require tweaks to the AI files for them to function properly?

I can include support for your mod in my AI Patcher.

[Atrocities]

What exactly does your patcher do? Forgive the dumbass question as I really don't understand what its does. I know it patches AI, but what do you mean by "patch"?

[dumbluck]

Personally, in this particular topic I think the answer would be "What do you WANT it to mean?"

His first AI patcher patched the ai general.txt and the ai ship design text file from the standard movement system to his Quasi Newtonian Physics movement system for P&N 2.x (ie a dreadnaught with only 2 engines isn't going anywhere). (I think it might have tweaked it in a few other ways, but I'm not a computer expert so I'll let him get into the specifics )

[Phoenix-D]

Ooo, maybe I should have went here first instead of "complaining" in the Pirates thread

I'll have more information ready once I get everything planned out. No Gold yet, so I don't want to do a huge amount of work only to have to re-vamp everything for gold.

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

I can always update things later, and from what I gathered from your other post was that your mod should be a simple cut and paste from what I've already got.

Dumbluck:
Precisely. Any sort of simple, repetitive change to the AI files I can do.
As long as you have some fairly simple rules on what and how to change things... It's not an AI program to write AIs for SE4

As an example of moderate complexity:
In P&N2, for the AI_general file, I:
- skip ahead to the "*begin*"
- skip ahead until "num advanced traits" appears in the text.
- remember the first nonzero value in the text string (eg. "race opt 1 num advanced traits := 2")
- check the value of this line, if its zero, then decrement the value of the previous line in the file. (To free up some racial points so the AI will choose the adv. trait)
- increment the value of this line
- skip ahead until the first number in the line equals the old number of advanced traits
- insert "Race Opt "(number remembered above)" Name "(new number of adv traits)" := Normal"
- repeat from point 2 until EndOfFile

[Andrés]

Ok AI patching notes for my "Ultimate Vehicle Size mod"


***************
research
***************
increase
ship const x3
base const x3

Add near the start
bases 2
sats 2
early

***************
design_creation
***************

Name := Attack Ship(small)
Design Type := Attack Ship
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 1
Size Maximum Tonnage := 400
..
Minimum Speed := 2
Desired Speed := 4
...
Majority Weapon Family Pick 1 := (a weapon less than 25kt e.g. UDC (weapfam 25))

Name := Attack Ship(normal/big)
Design Type := Attack Ship
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 400
Size Maximum Tonnage := 5000
...
Minimum Speed := 6
Desired Speed := 6

Name := Attack Base
Design Type := Attack Base
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 5000
Size Maximum Tonnage := 65000 (40,000)
...
Minimum Speed := 6
Desired Speed := 6


Name := Colony (...) (Small)
Design Type := Colony (...)
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 10
Size Maximum Tonnage := 260
...
Minimum Speed := 1
Desired Speed := 3

Name := Colony (...) (Normal)
Design Type := Colony (...)
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 260
Size Maximum Tonnage := 500 (370)
...
Minimum Speed := 5
Desired Speed := 6

Name := Base Space Yard
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 430
Size Maximum Tonnage := 65000?

Name := Carrier(small)
Design Type := Carrier
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 20
Size Maximum Tonnage := 2500
...
Minimum Speed := 1
Desired Speed := 6

Name := Carrier(big)
Design Type := Carrier
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 2500
Size Maximum Tonnage := 65000 (31400)
...
Minimum Speed := 6
Desired Speed := 6

Name := Small Fighter
Design Type := Fighter
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 5
Size Maximum Tonnage := 15
...
Minimum Speed := 2
Desired Speed := 6

Name := Mine
...
Size Minimum Tonnage := 5

[Suicide Junkie]

Right. Now to translate that into a programmable plan.

Research:
- skip to "*begin*"
- insert block text of orders to research bases2/sats2.
(Note: Must find an exact quote of the desired research command)
- skip to next instance of "ship con" or "base con"
- multiply value of entry by 3
- repeat from step 3 until EOF

Design_creation:
Not quite sure what all the changes here are...
- do you want to copy-paste the attack ship, colony ship, and then make two flavours of edits?
- for the others, do you just want to set the properties after the "..."?

Note: arbitrarily setting the majority weapon family could be dangerous, since the AI might not do any research in that area.

[ 11 February 2002: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[Phoenix-D]

"I can always update things later, and from what I gathered from your other post was that your mod should be a simple cut and paste from what I've already got."

Well, let's see..
The engine scheme currently works just like P&Ns, which is what I was using the patcher for before. I've changed the names of some tech areas, as well. Other than that it's probably too complictated- too many changes. I've got *7* diiferent ship areas, for example.

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

Phoenix:
So, you've got a code copy-paste, a couple search-replaces, and something crazy

How do you go about the manual patching of AIs to use the 7-way ship areas?

[Phoenix-D]

Very carefully. The tech areas are (early names, trying to find shorter ones):
Starship Construction
Escort Class Construction
Advanced Escort Class Construction
Crusier Class Ship Construction
Advanced Cruiser Class Construction
Capital Ship Construction
Advanced Capital Ship Construction

So for each AI, I have to decide what type of ship they are going to focus on. The goal here is to make using small ships a viable option instead of the rush for capital ships that is normal SE4. "Starship construction" is like normal SE4, but cheaper, and the ships are of lower quality (very slow, easy to hit, maintance increases). An AI using just that would have to rely on "rush" tactics, and would be woefully outclassed one-on-one.

Complicating things is the advanced level of ship construction. That doesn't just give hulls- it gives special bridges, components like maintance reducers or weapons, and what I'm calling "specialization modules".

Each of those has an auxiliary control ability, so you can only mount one, and they give bonuses. So for example you can either have a combined LR sensor, combat sensor bonus, and slight speed increase or a full-spectrum cloak, ECM increase, and minor minesweeping ability. I haven't gone into getting the AI to use them..

The simplest way to get a SE4 Ai running, now that I think of it, would be to make them research escorts then cruisers then capital ships then advanced capital ships.. that's the most similar to what standard SE4 does. Dunno how hard that would be to program though.

Phoenix-D