AI Fleet Tactics Suggestion

[I-KP]

I have posted this in the dark corners of this forum that posts go to die, so I've plonked this headstone in a place more difficult to ignore.
 

[jordot42]

     One way I've thought of to fight this strategy is to hit the fleet while it's grouping up.  While the AI ships are rallying to the starship or other rally ship(s), they aren't doing whatever mission they were sent to do. 
     A combined approach might be best; i.e., send some "kamakazi" ships as usual to rush the assigned target (like they do now) while other ships rally.  Maybe give a simple 70%/30% chance of either behavior per ship or something.  That way, we meatsacks will have to work much harder to counter the AI fleet.
     I agree with you on maybe doing this strategy on level 6+.

[I-KP]

Hitting a Battlegroup as it is forming is a sound tactic and if you can pull off the timing you deserve to reap the rewards IMO; history is littered with such events.  More power to you if you can accomplish it, I say.

[I-KP]

...and yes, agreed, some form of fuzziness to the proportion of ships that answer the Rally calls would prevent the AI from becoming completely predictable.  Keeping a subset of Fleet ships in a skirmish capacity, i.e., the ‘selfish’ behaviour that all ships currently display, would indeed provide an effective ‘screen of noise’ for the more organised forces to exploit.

[deMangler]

It would be cool if individual ships could fuzzily 'choose' to support other ships given certain conditions.
Then some kind of fleet behaviour might emerge.
I have instincts that are telling me that this would have to be quite unlikely probabilistically to avoid 1) crafting certain behaviour rather than having it emerge (really screwing with unpredictability) and 2) Making a change that simply results in the AI seeming to have a human command structure, which I am not that keen on.
Anyway, maybe this ability is already in there, I haven't played hundreds of hours, but it does seem on superficial consideration that it is easy to manipulate the fact that certain types of ship will tend to form swarms of a single type just because they all move at the same speed, without supporting, other types of ship.
hmmmmm......
dM
<edit> Perhaps an enhancement to the AI behaviour like this would help to balance against the player Formation Movement Mode feature suggestion that is so popular in the poll http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3495.0.html at the moment, should it be implemented. <edit>

[I-KP]

Fuzziness is at the core of variety and this property should remain fundamental to any AITactic routines, of course.  I believe that the above linked topic explains several  areas in which unpredictability will be increased by such a measure rather than reducing it; Fleet Tactics is not a lock, stock and smoking barrels AITactics replacement but more another tool to add to the AI’s arsenal.

Agreed, attempting to replicate meatsack behaviour should not be the driving force behind any mechanic; however, there is no other way to make the AI exploit the elements of the game that meatsacks do as a matter of course.  Presently – at least IME – any nifty combined arms events that occur in game are purely co-incidental; different kinds of ships just happen to be given the same Move order and all just happen to move at approximately the same speed or emerge from the wormhole at the same time.  Whilst this is utterly unpredictable (to a fault one might say) it’s rare and  isn’t a move that makes even the least use of a cogent combined arms strategy.  Meatsacks perform these grouping assessment considerations often as a matter of course.  All I am suggesting is that perhaps the AI should do this a bit too (with suitable fuzziness in the Rally Selection Preferences for each ship type to ensure that, for example, Electric Shuttles don’t always end up supporting Frigates but also sometimes answer Rally calls from Bomber groups).

The AI’s apparent lack of Group Move is at, yet not the sole cause of, the root of the issue.  As explained in the above linked topic, there appears to be a very simple solution (at least in theory) that could hit many nails on the head with but a single swing.  Imagine, if AI fleets could operate with a degree of coherency their actions would be far more impactful and the AI may not necessarily need the numbers of ships that it does now in order to pose a comparative threat.  Call me a whinger if you wish to but ever larger groups of ever higher Mark ships does not equate to a more competent AI in my book; a more challenging game, for certain, but not a ‘cleverer’ one as artificially stacked odds will never be more than artificially stacked odds.  Two thousand of anything is going to be a threat albeit a no-brained, brute force one; there is little or no room here for elegance.  A couple of Task Forces made up of complimentary ship archetypes, all advancing in good order and centred around a core of Starships, even if numbering only in the low hundreds, will likely test the meatsacks every bit as much as a several thousand strong mono-type wave would but for a fraction of the ship count.  (Schizophrenic wave types perform slightly better than mono-type waves but they’re still only brute force tactics that continue to fail to act as a coherent force.  How many times have you seen the enemy form a nice orderly line with crucial force multiplier assets like Starships and Munitions Boosters left to drift through the expanses all on their lonesome?  Often, I’ll wager.)

No-one is suggesting that AITactics need to be hamstrung into forming Battlegroups and Task Forces in 100% of situations, not at all.  Perhaps only up to a half of all present AI assets could respond to Rally calls leaving the remaining majority to act as they do now, selfishly; however, I would perhaps advocate that AI Starships almost always issue a Rally call to nearby Fleet ships for the purposes of screening (with perhaps a few exceptions for things like Raids – assuming that the AI issues Raid orders to small groups of Raid Starships) because sending in Starships unescorted is plain foolhardy and inviting failure.

When the Formation Movement idea was mooted I immediately thought that perhaps these two topics could be combined into one glorious overhaul of fleet dynamics in general; the two topics certainly aren’t unrelated and could well share algorithms. 

Footnote:-
After all that moaning it should be made clear that I do actually enjoy playing AI War, even if the above gives the impression that my typical gaming experience feels roughly comparable to being dragged naked over broken bottles of Newcastle Brown.  If I wasn’t passionate about how this game evolves I’d not bother posting anything at all and I’d go and play Company of Heroes or Left 4 Dead 2 instead. 

[jordot42]

Agreed, attempting to replicate meatsack behaviour should not be the driving force behind any mechanic; however, there is no other way to make the AI exploit the elements of the game that meatsacks do as a matter of course. 

     Why shouldn't meatsack behavior determine AI tactics?  After all, a human created the game (and a very intelligent and creative one at that).
     Remember the Terminator 4 movie where Skynet nearly beat the human resistance by sending the false signal the supposedly disabled the machines?  The leaders of the human resistance tried to exploit that supposed "weakness" but, Skynet was able to pinpoint the leaders' location instead and eliminate them.  Skynet engaged in a very human behavior:  subterfuge; in other words, lying. 
     It seems, from plenty of reading the forums, that the hardcore players have the AI figured out to a large degree.  And from what I've read, it seems like the main strategy the AI uses from which the tactics spring for attacking objectives is the Joseph Stalin tactic:  CHARGE! and casualties be doggoned!!
     Another strategy could be based on the group assault methed that KP mentioned.  You could have the rallying ship move at 25% speed while the support ships catch up, and then have the combined fleet do the group move thing, or you could have the rallying ship actually retreat momentarily to the group(s) that will support it and then do group move to the objective, and other tactics that spring from the grouping strategy.
     Or the 2 strategies can be combined (some ships rally while others beeline themselves as discussed previously).
     So you now have 3 general strategies that the AI can fuzzily choose from:  grouping, all ships rush the objective, and a combination of the 2.  I think these will create more challenge for people (but please implement these things at levels 8+.  I just started a level 5 game [jumping from level 2] and the difficulty has jumped way up for me).   
     
     

[HitmanN]

I support the suggestions here.

1. I'd like to see AI starships prioritize either seeking support or getting supported as well. They seem to act alone all the time.

[EDIT]One solution could also be to have a portion of AI starships be placed in same manner as any other ship. Some guarding a guard post, for instance. I'd find it delightfully annoying to have couple of dreadnoughts stationary right next to a command station or guard post, in the middle of possibly hundreds of small ships. Dreadnoughts tend to always be FRD, away from any other ships or points of interest, making them way too easy targets to run down separately. If they were surrounded by a hundred other ships... it'd make it a whole different story. Or maybe have a tiny percentage of ships on a planet move along with the FRD starships? Like 2% of total ships on a planet for each starship. They could simply replicate the movements of the starship they're assigned to, to minimize CPU work, and thus appear to be tagging along the starship as if supporting it.[/EDIT]

One of the things that I bought the game for originally were the talks about unusual and unpredictable AI and whatnot I saw advertised in many a place. Right now it seems like most of the time the AI simply chooses a target, rushes towards it with a bunch of ships, each acting independently, forming a line that can extremely easily be countered by switching what ship types to keep in front. This happens all the time, lacking any unpredictability in that part whatsoever. First come the fighters, then the bombers, then shuttles and frigates. At least on difficulty 5-7 this hasn't varied at any point.

2. Even the occasional AI controlled blob would make the battles more interesting in that regard, as there would be multiple ship types to counter at once.

3. Another thing that would be nice is some dispersion in the attacking AI ships, even if they all attack a target in same direction. Maybe forming a tiny fan-shaped pattern when they attack, rather than the straight line. At least occasionally. It'd cover more area and could make short-range flanking moves harder in some situations.

4. Cloaked AI ships (and why not some visible ones as well) could also have a 2-phase attack. First they select a position to move in, which is somewhere near the target, but not straight on the target, then when enough of the cloaked ships reach the point, they start phase 2,which is to attack the target. A simple event like this can make it appear like the AI is trying to flank or surprise the player. Of course, attack patterns like these should only be used by the AI when they're not in a high-priority situation, like defending a command station or whatever.

Overall, what I'd simply like to see is less straight-line AI attacks, and more unpredictable patterns and groups of ships attacking simultaneously. Even if they're not more efficient, they'd at least make things more interesting than using the same tactics to counter the straight-line attacks every time.

I too enjoy AI War as it is, and don't believe that replicating a human opponent should be a goal, but the repetitive straight-line attacks feel a bit boring at times. It'd be nice if the AI could overwhelm the player with sudden decisions regarding its ship placement and routing too, and not just with massive rows of ships. ;P And hey, if some people don't like this, just add yet another on/off checkbox in the game settings for 'extra AI fleet behaviours' or whatever fancy name it could have. I'd take a more random AI behaviour over a predictable straight-line attack myself anytime, but perhaps others wouldn't like complicating AI movement beyond the current setup...

[deMangler]

     Why shouldn't meatsack behavior determine AI tactics?  After all, a human created the game (and a very intelligent and creative one at that)....
    
    ... So you now have 3 general strategies that the AI can fuzzily choose from:  grouping, all ships rush the objective, and a combination of the 2.  I think these will create more challenge for people (but please implement these things at levels 8+.  I just started a level 5 game [jumping from level 2] and the difficulty has jumped way up for me).  
    
    

My answer to this as a player is that the reason I like AI War is that it doesn't have an AI that fuzzily chooses different types of behaviour. Other RTS's have these and other methods of 'AI', it is (if I understand correctly) really just another type of simple decision tree type approach.
I like AI War because it has collective behaviours that emerge from a mix of tendencies, or properties, or behaviours, of individual ships (again, if I understand correctly).
This is why I go along with the idea that perhaps there could be a fuzzily random based on conditions tendency for a given ship to support another ship. Because that seems to me as a player that it might lead to a kind of fleet-ish behaviour emerging.
However, as a player and someone with a bit of experience studying other chaotic systems with emergent qualities, I doubt it would be as simple as that even if it were desirable to slip into that methodology.

[jordot42]

     
 

I like AI War because it has collective behaviours that emerge from a mix of tendencies, or properties, or behaviours, of individual ships (again, if I understand correctly).

     But it seems, from what I've read and from the few games I've played and completed so far (just 2) that the grand strategy the AI uses is the "Oh there's the target!  Time to attack? Full speed ahead! Charge!" technique.
     By using a "grouping the ships" grand strategy as well and having the AI develop emerging behavior derived from that root process, a lot more variety and difficulty can be achieved I think. 

     So you now have 3 general strategies that the AI can fuzzily choose from:  grouping, all ships rush the objective, and a combination of the 2.       

     To provide even more variety, the above strategies can be chosen each time an action happens on a planet; e.g., you invade planet Mimpo, the AI decides to use grouping strategy, and you're overwhelemed, forcing a retreat.  "OK", you tell yourself, "I'll bring lots of AOE units next time."
     So you reinvade with lots of AOE units. But this time, the AI uses the beeline tactic, attacking from all directions fast and hard, killing your AOE guys and forcing another retreat.  "What do I do now?", you say.  "The AI is too good.  I don't know what to do."
     A simplistic example, but I hope you see my point.  More varied response = more fun and challenge.

[RCIX]

     
     But it seems, from what I've read and from the few games I've played and completed so far (just 2) that the grand strategy the AI uses is the "Oh there's the target!  Time to attack? Full speed ahead! Charge!" technique.
     By using a "grouping the ships" grand strategy as well and having the AI develop emerging behavior derived from that root process, a lot more variety and difficulty can be achieved I think. 

See, pretty much all of the behavior you see in ships is programmed at a per-ship level. This lets ships behave reasonably intelligently in attacking conditions where large raids will effectively select multiple targets and split up to hit them. If you add an overall behavior to fleets it will then shoehorn the individual behaviors and severely constrain them. If we were to add some code in to per-ship-logic though, something maybe a little like this:

    if we are on defensive then
        if there are a bunch of ships sharing the same target then
            drop speed to form up with the slowest in that group of targets

it might help a lot!

[deMangler]

   
 

I like AI War because it has collective behaviours that emerge from a mix of tendencies, or properties, or behaviours, of individual ships (again, if I understand correctly).

    But it seems, from what I've read and from the few games I've played and completed so far (just 2) that the grand strategy the AI uses is the "Oh there's the target!  Time to attack? Full speed ahead! Charge!" technique.
    
     A simplistic example, but I hope you see my point.  More varied response = more fun and challenge.

I see your point.
I agree that certain perhaps interesting and desirable behaviours are missing from AI War.
My point is that the reason they are missing (I assume) is because there is no, as you say, 'grand strategy the AI uses', and I am throwing into the forum mix my reservations about introducing goals and decisions and the like, to try to make up for that percieved absence.
I would love it if the AI did some of the stuff you suggest, and I would be orgasmic about it if that behaviour was emergent, otherwise it would bore me just as much as the intelligent and interesting behaviour of the AI in other RTS's bores me.
Mind you, the game wasn't written just to satisfy my weird and unusual desires  

<edit> Damn, RCIX got in there while I was typing..... Anyway yeah....what he said.. ^^    <edit>