Allied Neinzul Enclave Annoyances

[TechSY730]

I may write up individual Mantis issues on these, but I thought I would put them here first, and then post them if requested.

1. They push around stuff, especially Spirecraft Shieldbearers. I guess the issue is that the Shieldbearer push priority needs to go up some (harder to push them around), and the friendly enclave push priority needs to go down some (so they won't push away things you have strategically placed)
2. They frequently move around when defending a planet (jumping from shield to shield in a random fashion), which doesn't help much, and just wastes CPU cycles. Can you have it be like the auto-knowledge gather shield seeking behavior, prioritize shield that contains the command station first, and as long as the shield they are under (if any) continues to satisfy that, they won't try to move to another shield?
3. They are too timid. Yea, I know they won't charge into a battle they feel they aren't safe to go into, but right now, that threshold is too low. They are pretty durable units, and can very likely retreat successfully unless very, very out-gunned. Can the ratio of "am I too out-gunned?" for them be brought up some, considering that they are tough enough to retreat successfully in most circumstances?
4. When the "prioritize homeworld" flag is turned on, they seem to prioritize it even if there is nothing threatening it and nothing nearby threatening it, to the exclusion of other behaviors at many times. (This one I have not put as much effort into verifying, it may just be due to #3, but this point isn't an issue at all directly)

[TechSY730]

Oh, and even though I am "complaining", I don't think the Allied Enclaves are too stupid for their own good. Even with these, they are still very great allies, which is much more than I could say for them in their first iteration.

[_K_]

Remind me, you can control their behaviour only with console commands, right? Are these documented somewhere ingame?

[TechSY730]

Remind me, you can control their behaviour only with console commands, right? Are these documented somewhere ingame?

Not yet. I think Keith is still trying to figure out if the "chat control" is a good idea before investing a bunch of time into UI niceties.

[TechSY730]

And for reference, copied straight from the release notes:

There are five basic types of behavior the coherent-fleet logic can do:

     Priority-defense of human homeworlds.
        If a human homeworld comes under any not-completely-trivial attack (for reference, this means "more than about 50 mkI triangle ships on high caps" or the equivalent), the next fleet-logic check will drop whatever is being done and send them all back to that homeworld.
        This takes priority over any other behavior.
        You may tell the enclaves to not consider this behavior by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves prioritize homeworld" through chat, and tell them to start considering it again by sending "cmd:allow enclaves prioritize homeworld" through chat.
    Defend human planets.
        Considers moving to any planet with a human command station and an AI presence.
        You may tell the enclaves to not consider this behavior by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves defend planets" through chat, and tell them to start considering it again by sending "cmd:allow enclaves defend planets" through chat.
    Assist human attacks.
        Considers moving to any planet without a command station or with an AI command station, if both the humans and AI have a presence there and the humans have a fighting chance (at least half the AI firepower).
        This behavior is OFF by default but you may tell the enclaves to consider it by sending "cmd:allow enclaves assist attacks" through chat, and tell them to stop considering it again by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves assist attacks" through chat.
    Attack independently.
        Considers moving to any planet without a command station or with an AI command station, and an AI presence.
        This behavior is OFF by default but you may tell the enclaves to consider it by sending "cmd:allow enclaves attack independently" through chat, and tell them to stop considering it again by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves attack independently" through chat.
    Idle rally
        If there's nothing else to do, rallies the enclave fleet to the human planet furthest from the human homeworlds that still prevents all pathing from an AI planet to a human homeworld. If no such solid chokepoint exists, it falls back on a human homeworld (if one of the homeworlds is such a chokepoint for all the others, it picks that one).
        This behavior is always available, you can't tell them to not do nothing if there's nothing to do.

[keith.lamothe]

The chat controls are temporary, but it may be a while before I can do a GUI for those commands.  So the chat ones are just to see if the underlying idea of those interactions is a good one.

[Wingflier]

3. They are too timid. Yea, I know they won't charge into a battle they feel they aren't safe to go into, but right now, that threshold is too low. They are pretty durable units, and can very likely retreat successfully unless very, very out-gunned. Can the ratio of "am I too out-gunned?" for them be brought up some, considering that they are tough enough to retreat successfully in most circumstances?

Agree with this.

During an enemy attack wave, I've literally seen the Allied Enclaves wait until a wave of 1,000 enemies is down to less than 100 guys, then come to the planet and unleash 500 Enclave Drones...like I didn't even need help at that point, why bother?

The maximum threshold at which the Enclaves will help needs to be lowered, and there needs to be a minimum as well. There's no reason to unload your whole Armada on a planet with 10 enemies. Also, when you turn on the "Attack Independently" Command, they don't make very good decision-making on which planets they attack. They'll usually attack planets which have already been neutered, which is relatively pointless, and just makes them blow their load on a planet that you didn't need them to, instead of saving them for an actual attack.

Despite all these flaws, I really like Allied Enclaves, and I think the mechanic has a lot of potential.

I would honestly like to see the next expansion focus more on really neat semi-controllable minor factions such as these, because IMO they really spice up the game. Pirates, Bounty Hunters, and Marauders which were their own factions would be an awesome addition to the game IMO.

[keith.lamothe]

I would honestly like to see the next expansion focus more on really neat semi-controllable minor factions such as these, because IMO they really spice up the game. Pirates, Bounty Hunters, and Marauders which were their own factions would be an awesome addition to the game IMO.

That's one of the ideas I've been considering for the next expansion, yes, and the allied enclaves experiment was a lead-in to that.  I'd really love to have some more prominent other factions to mix into the humans-vs-AI conflict, as an optional way of playing the game.

But the more I think of it, the more I realize it would be a ton of work to get even semi-acceptable "intelligence" out of the new guys, and if they're "stupid" then it's just going to be a complaint-fest which won't actually help anyone.

So currently I'm thinking of making expansion 6 about them, and focusing expansion 5 on something... uncomfortable   Anyway, you'll probably hear more about that before too long, we'll see.

[Wingflier]

Uncomfortable is good!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdJDAPDltMM#t=4m

[_K_]

Uncomfortable is good!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdJDAPDltMM#t=4m

Oh hey, i remember those guys and their videos. Some great quality, yeah. Too bad they stopped releasing new "movies" stuff ages ago.


Speaking of newer expansions, i have recently read the wiki article about AI/Neinzul Hybrid Hives. It is sooooo sad a major part of it is labeled "not yet implemented".

[TechSY730]

If you are going to go ahead and do some more work with "semi-controllable" minor allied factions, can you look at "Backporting" the fleeting logic and maybe the "chat control" logic to the human resistance fighters and maybe also Improving the intellegence of the allied to AI roaming enclaves (like fleeting)?

(Much later of course, once this kind of work starts up)

[TechSY730]

Saw you put in a fix for #3, thanks.


Should I post the other on mantis so the other points don't get "lost"?