AI Design Creation Errors: ... Unknown value "Drone Attack" ...

[sachmo]

Geo,

I saw this the other day and it had me going loopy. I was cleaning up some races I had downloaded to gold, and thought I had solved everything, when a game with the Colonials gave this error each turn. Thanks for the info!

[Q]

This may be a stupid question, but what's the use of the standard "drone attack" strategy anyway?
Isn't the same as "ram"??

[capnq]

what's the use of the standard "drone attack" strategy anyway?
Isn't the same as "ram"??

No; if you look at AI\Default_AI_Strategies.txt, they have different secondary movement strategies; however "Ram" and "Kamikaze" are identical.

You should customize the strategies to suit your preferred designs and tactics. For example, you could have anti-ship drones ram, while anti-planet drones kamikaze, and some third drone design without warheads uses drone attacks, all with different targeting priorities.

[Fyron]

Hmm... I have sparked Geoschmo to make a new post here.

[Q]

Originally posted by capnq:

quote:

---

what's the use of the standard "drone attack" strategy anyway?
Isn't the same as "ram"??

No; if you look at AI\Default_AI_Strategies.txt, they have different secondary movement strategies; however "Ram" and "Kamikaze" are identical.

You should customize the strategies to suit your preferred designs and tactics. For example, you could have anti-ship drones ram, while anti-planet drones kamikaze, and some third drone design without warheads uses drone attacks, all with different targeting priorities.

---

But the secondary strategy will hardly ever be used when the first strategy is "ram"! It is clear that you can modify different strategies for your specialized drone designs (e.g. drones with weapons) with different targeting priorities, but wouldn't it be the easiest fix if you choose "ram" as the standard strategy for drones?

[Baron Munchausen]

I wish drones would form up into some sort of recognizable formation and move in a coordinated fashion. The best way to make effective attacks with them is to send large numbers ('mass quantities' as the Coneheads would say) and when moving in those haphazard clouds they often get in each other's way. They ought to be sorted into their moving order before they appear in combat so they can move and attack simultaneously. The traffic jams that they frequently get into only make it easier for their targets to shoot them down.

[ July 07, 2002, 15:40: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[capnq]

That's one of the things on my wish list for hardcode changes: improved pathfinding algorithms, especially in combat.