Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

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Jorgen_CAB
Posts: 776
Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:53 pm

Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

Post by Jorgen_CAB »

I have played around with the template designer and there are a few things that makes it really frustrating about how the AI place weapons.

PD for example are ALWAYS placed in the mounts with the widest arc, starting with smaller and work their way up.... the problem is that many ship designs have large mounts that are wider than the small and the AI then put PD in them and choose to put regular weapons into the small mounts. This makes for some really weird ships, take the Zenox destroyer for example where the AI put PD in the two large mounts!!!

We also need to be able to control in the design template what type of mount it should place weapons... it would be fine if I could choose large, medium or small. The AI can then put them wherever on the ship, that is generally fine.

But certain ship designs are REALLY annoying trying to put weapons into. It is also annoying when seeking weapons steal the best mounts from direct fire weapons, the AI should be able to know to put direct fire weapons into the best and widest mounts. Like if you put stand off and direct fire into a Boskaran design and they put torpedo launchers in the large wide mounts and close in weapons in the small low arc ones... you clearly want that in reverse.

For PD the AI should always choose to put them into small mounts before medium and then large, usually starting with the wider arcs first etc.

If I can't get to decide what type of mounts they go in, then at least give me some tool in the designer to decide in which order the AI decide to put weapons on the ship and starting with large mounts and going down the list... or something. In the current situation often frustrating.
AKicebear
Posts: 616
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:11 pm

Re: Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

Post by AKicebear »

I'm more and more of the mindset that this isn't a problem that will be easily solve by an algorithm front to back.

Instead, probably more feasible to:
A) Implement some type of semi-automatic ship design that allows "locking" a type of weapon to a specific weapon slot - eg only use rail guns on this one, or torpedos on that one, etc. The automatic upgrade would then be restricted to that type of component for that slot in future automatic upgrades, but have a free hand in "unlocked" slots. Note: I think the current categories used to upgrade components are too coarse - eg missiles and torpedos are both seeking, but should not be interchangeable. Many of the frustrations in the current manual upgrades arise from being too coarse in these categories.
B) Have the AI templates able to more easily use manual ship designs from prior games. Rather than edit design template XMLs by hand, let me export one at the end of an Ackdarian game that future Ackdarian AI will use. This could include the fleet compositions and research order I followed, too
C) Allowing users to opt-in for their end game data in B to be anonymously sent to Matrix, in particular making data sortable by: which hull, which weapon types and fire types on which mounts, which non standard components, and tactics settings. Perhaps make this meta data available to the community too.
D) Analyzing the data on a per hull basis to then feed into default hull templates for the AI to use itself. The suggestion is for this data to be available to be curated for what makes most sense, not to take the simple average. There could be some randomization as well between default and user submissions.

C/D are nice to have to solve the problem of what to tell the default AI - clearly Matrix gets it wrong sometimes, understandable given nearly 1000 hulls (?) in game, across so many permutations of tech levels.

But really A is the key one - to solve both manual user frustrations, and provide a better tool for at least modders to customize the instructions going to AI design templates. B would also help a lot - don't force the (best) players to mod the game by text editor when they can just export their preferences from their last save.
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iancmtaylor
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Joined: Wed May 09, 2012 6:38 pm

Re: Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

Post by iancmtaylor »

Add minimum size for weapon mounts, create 'PD' mounts, make all non-PD mounts have a minimum size larger than PD.

Racial balancs options are expanded, massively improves Auto Design.

I have not tested yet, but it seems Auto Design is aware that PD weapons should go in small mounts, but it isn't given enough to satisfy its urges, so it makes do with other mounts.

This has been on my mind for a while, would really help the game.
I am /u/SharkMolester, moderator of /r/DistantWorlds and BFHKitteh, admin of https://dw2.fandom.com/wiki/Distant_Worlds_2_Wiki.
Jorgen_CAB
Posts: 776
Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:53 pm

Re: Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

Post by Jorgen_CAB »

The major problem with PD is that the AI seem to put them on the ships first... so if I have a design like say Boskaran ships they will generally populate their heavy mounts with PD first because they have a wider firing arc than the smaller ones. The AI seem to prefer wider arc before size. If there are two mounts both with the same arc the AI will put them in the smaller first.

There are a few other things I also noted, such as the AI also pacing Stand of Weapons before Close in Weapons. This also cause some issues, especially with Boscaran ships.

Just having the possibility to decide in which order the AI place the weapons would solve ALLOT of problem and should not be impossible for the developers to do.

For the most common weapons types the order I think is "Stand Off", PD and "Close In"... in that order. Not sure if it is possible to influence this somehow... You can set some values in the policy files but not sure it it works for this purpose.
Jorgen_CAB
Posts: 776
Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:53 pm

Re: Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

Post by Jorgen_CAB »

When it comes to PD I think I found out that it will favour larger mounts if they are wider than 180 degrees... so that is why I had trouble with... say Zenox ships where their large mounts often had 270 degree and their smaller only 225 degree... making their smaller 270 also or the larger smaller to 225 would fix some issues for the design template.

One other problem though is that seeking weapons generally favour wide arcs as well even though they have no use for them. These weapons should always favour the most restrictive arcs first, no reason not to in my opinion.

For example I designed the Boskaran Destroyer and the single torpedo mount always claimed a 180 degree rather than the 90 degree in the centre so no option to add the stand of weapons for them.

I understand that a stand of weapon could be a non seeking weapon... but once the AI selected the component it should know it is a seeking weapon sand place it accordingly.
Jorgen_CAB
Posts: 776
Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:53 pm

Re: Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

Post by Jorgen_CAB »

Here is an interesting Boskara Destroyer concept design by the AI using one of the templates... ''

Image

This one have some issue with fuel... but could eventually ditch a collector for an additional fuel cell, or it might use different shield type.. I will likely encourage the AI to research less energy hungry shields for the Boskara.
Jorgen_CAB
Posts: 776
Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:53 pm

Re: Please, change how AI put weapons into mounts!!!

Post by Jorgen_CAB »

Well... I'm answering myself here again...

I have started to experiment a bit with a more nuanced size restriction scheme for weapon mounts for all races ships, including changing and restricting or widening some weapons mount arcs as well.

In addition I also overlooked some weapons sizes to conform to these new weapon mount sizes

My current sizes are...

Very Tiny - 14
Tiny - 19
Small - 26
Medium - 39
Large - 49
Heavy - 69
Super heavy mount - 120

This way I can more easily fit weapons into slots where I want them due to how the AI choose to put them. In the above ship I could then place a torpedo mount (heavier stand-off mount) in the middle as it did not fit into the two smaller mounts beside it. By having more sizes I can also make sure the AI does not just place gigantic weapons into all the large slots and nothing in the smaller ones.

In general in the "Very Tiny" mount all guns and PD can fit but not missiles or torpedo type weapons.

In the "Tiny" mounts you can fit small missiles and torpedoes mounts.

In the "Small" you can fit all beam and other direct fire medium mount weapons.

In medium mounts you may fit medium missile and torpedo's and some area weapons.

In the large mount some heavier guns and area weapons will now also fit.

In the heavy mount most heavy missile and torpedo mounts will fit.

"Super heavy" will fit even the largest of weapons and will generally have quite restrictive fire arcs for the most part.

This will turn out to be more of an overhaul mod than I originally thought it would be, but the main idea is to have the AI play better and for each race to become even more distinct in how their fleets operate.

Most ships will become a bit more restrictive in what sizes you can use and I will also overall restrict fire arcs a bit more (some will be better though) than vanilla to encourage more diverse fleet doctrines.
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