Heres a thought:

Why don''t you have the whole keyboard able to be set up to binds, and have all your major functions on the F Keys. So like, F1 would be help and F2 would be load the save menu, or something like that.

But now you have certain maneoveurs scheduled to different keyboard keys on the players decision.

For example:
Tell your commander to train your troops:
Hit Q: Show your troops the standard retreat movement.

Tell your commander to train your troops:
Hit W: Show your troops a retreat, where 10 units stay behind as bait.

Tell your commander to train your troops:
Hit E: Show your troops a retreat, where one group heads left and the other group heads right.

This prevents the player from being limited to certain amount of maneuevers, as they effectively have roughly 35 (alpha keys, + some) to have different maneuvers set up, and they can macro the keys according to their own preference in a way they will remember.

Just a thought.

Estauns: That is pretty much exactly what I was aiming at... I think you could use all the lettered keys for signals (only 26, but that is still a fair few manouevres. You could have more if you allowed SHIFT/CTRL/ALT combinations, giving you as many as 78 possible commands, although this is probably far more than any player is likely to come up with and remember...) and keeping the numbered keys for unit assignment (I dont want to overcomplicate things for players who want/need to take control themselves, so the standard RTS controls should apply as much as possible)

Harder to implement would be teaching the computer to respond to the enemy on its own... eg how to respond when being flanked, or attacked in a pincer movement... or what different units should do when attacked...

You should onyl have to train your commanders, as your troops should be trained in current tactics. So, when you want to create a new action, your commanders first hvae to learn it (by looking at maps, etc), and then training the troops. If you implemented this, there wouldn''t be any more "idle" time for troops, as they would always be marching around training =). Also, since troops are begin trained in current tactics, the more actions the player has bound, the longer it takes training (unless you "rush" the training, something more to add to the RTS toolbox =).

Z.

I thought that your idea is what genetic algorithms is about. Where agents that learn a skill pass on this skill to its children. If this is the case, its not "new." All this elaborate "training" you want to do can be done by simply passing on the "genes" of the Lieutenants to his men in training, or only some of his genes, so they are not as perfect. Now you just gotta figure out how to implement AI into your game.

GalaxyQuest:

Actually it is a lot simpler than you seem to be suggesting. Basically, the "commander" (which may have an avatar, but it may simply be a concept) acts a bit like a computer player. At the beginning of the game, it is a very stupid computer player, which does very little. The idea of the commander is not to win the game for you, but to take away a lot of the grunt work in coordinating your strategy. By teaching it tactics , you as a human player are left free to focus on the more important things, like strategy

As an example of what I am getting at, have you ever tried launching a massive Zerg rush on a computer opponent? StarCraft only allows you to control 12 units at a time, so a zerg rush consisting of 100 zerglings is actually quite difficult to implement. On some maps it is nearly impossible, as your zerg get split up by the scenery and end up arriving in ineffectual dribs and drabs, which are easily eradicated. The computer on the other hand, can execute these rushes flawlessly, since it is fast enough to babysit each unit individually, preventing it from getting lost, and easily attack you from four different directions at once. Even while simultaneously coordinating an attack from the air.

What I want to do is give the player a computer assistant that he can use to help him coordinate complex tactical manouevres (who would have thought a zerg rush would ever be considered a complex tactical manouevre? ) But how does the computer player know what you want him to do? You teach it, by showing it various manouevres.

The idea of individual units learning is great, and I would love to do that, but I really dont think that it is doable just yet, not unless your army is really small.

Zaei: Thats pretty much it, although you will only have one commander. It is more of a concept than an actual game unit..

Edited by - Sandman on October 24, 2001 6:10:24 AM

I''d love to see this implemented in a campaign mode.

My personal design has the player take control over a small army and lead it through victories and defeats, much like players now control single characters in rpg games.

With a ''smart'' commander, you would really be able to teach the commander all the player''s favorite moves. After ten battles or so, the commander will have noticed that the player retreats if his troops are X % dead. The commander might anticipate this and warn the player that X % of the units have died. ''Do you want to signal retreat?''.

I guess the commander should act somewhat like ''ghosts'' act in certain games (in ''ghost mode''). They should be a reflection of all the actions the player has taken in the past and based on that should be able to somewhat act on its own to support the player.

Ok, so your taking about "simulating the chain of command" so to speak, where *agents* below your command perform the micro-managment actions that you require. If you can come up with a design for this, it would really be cool. Computers are just so much faster then us at performing micro-tasks that games become a complete "click-fest" just to perform an attack or build up an army (no fun for me).

Do you have any such ideas as how to design this?

Maybe you can incorporate a rank for the player to move up, with AI NPC''s which are both below you and ABOVE, such as generals. Dont really know where that would go, but im sure you have thought of it.

Good luck.

Why not ressurect an old post?

I noticed that you wanted one controlling AI instead of having Autonomous agents within each subgroup. I can see how that would drastically reduce system resources and would make "learning" a lot easier.

I think the only difference between our approaches is that in mine, there is an Agent in every single Organized Unit. On the scale that I''m thinking about, this is an issue, as I can envision having literally thousands of OU''s in play at a time, each one requiring a Commander. I could have the game go turn based, which would relieve a lot of computational strain, but I don''t think it would do justice to what I have in mind.

The reason I was thinking of having lot of little commanders rather than one big one was to watch how they all interplayed with one another as well as model how decision making capacity flows.

I was wondering if in your style, you would have customizable maneuvers/formations/tactics. WHen you design your military from the ground up, the other player will never know exactly what he is facing, and therefore the dilemma of RPS is abolished.

I also agree entirely on story. I want to have a backdrop story in a campaign mode. Indeed campaign mode will (or should be) the most fun to play. I''m not sure if I want ala StarCraft style or not though...I''m still trying to figure out how to integrate that.

There is something to be said for being able to tweak parameters before a game is actually played.

For example, if people are familiar with Dark Reign, in that game you could set some different behaviors for units, like how aggressive they are, when they retreat, etc. Many units really benefitted from the proper settings. The problem was, you couldn''t do it before the game started, you had to do it when you first produced that type of unit. Which was very annoying because you had many other things to think about. And you ended up with the same settings every time anyway. There is no reason why you couldn''t define a set or multiple set of preferences before hand.

Anything that offloads that sort of stuff to the leisure time between games would be nice.

quote: Original post by Dauntless
I think the only difference between our approaches is that in mine, there is an Agent in every single Organized Unit. On the scale that I''m thinking about, this is an issue, as I can envision having literally thousands of OU''s in play at a time, each one requiring a Commander. I could have the game go turn based, which would relieve a lot of computational strain, but I don''t think it would do justice to what I have in mind.

The reason I was thinking of having lot of little commanders rather than one big one was to watch how they all interplayed with one another as well as model how decision making capacity flows.

I agree, it would be awesome if every unit had it''s own AI. You could then make clear distinctions between veteran and green troops: veteran troops have a more evolved AI, but may or may not have been trained in the manner you want. Furthermore, they learn slower. Green troops on the other hand, are fairly stupid, but they can be moulded to your wishes. Eventually, if your units are persistent, they will become valuable veteran troops, trained just how you want them.

An alternative, more feasible solution lies somewhere between the two extremes. One idea could be one or more ''Lieutenant'' units. Each Lieutenant unit has a learning AI, whereas ordinary units have only a basic, fixed AI. An OU with no lieutenant interprets your orders according to the fixed AI: an OU with a lieutenant carries out orders to your lieutenant''s interpretation of your orders: however he has been trained. At the most basic, the lieutenant simply parrots your orders, so there is no disadvantage to using green lieutenants, but as they learn they become a very useful resource.

One thing is clear, I need to do a lot more research on this subject before I decide exactly how it should work. Time to start hanging around the AI forum a bit more methinks.

quote:
I was wondering if in your style, you would have customizable maneuvers/formations/tactics. WHen you design your military from the ground up, the other player will never know exactly what he is facing, and therefore the dilemma of RPS is abolished.

This was pretty much the motivation for the concept. I envision training your units to use set pieces. Take Star Trek, when they say stuff like ''Attack Pattern Delta'' and the pilots then go off and execute a complex series of manouevres: I would like to be able to train my troops to use learnt attack formations at a single keypress.

quote:
I also agree entirely on story. I want to have a backdrop story in a campaign mode. Indeed campaign mode will (or should be) the most fun to play. I''m not sure if I want ala StarCraft style or not though...I''m still trying to figure out how to integrate that.

For the time being, I''ve decided to drop storyline almost completely. The main reason for this is that I am looking to produce a kind of proof of concept which demonstrates the gameplay principles in action, rather than a ''complete'' game at this stage. However, persistent AI units in a campaign game remain an interesting possibility. Maybe for the sequel....