AI Type Brainstorming thread

[Philo]

I want to add one more piece, there are other games that have AI types. Chessmaster for example. In that game, you can choose what the AI values most, the types of games that it tries to engage in (open, closed, aggressive, technical, etc.), depth of moves, and so on. That game doesn't allow for spamming rooks or queens; they are personalities.

I agree with this. Just having the AI plant more of one same structure makes one hell of a boring gameplan. Fortress Baron - or whatever I can get since it's such a powerful building it will alter your strategies a lot, and the fort placement will be different for each planet giving you unique situations.
But just spamming more eyes and Special guard posts, Alarm posts etc.  just makes no sense really.

The aggressive/technical/defensive/whatever setting is a good idea imo. Just let that type be randomly selected (and chosen if the player wants so) and with the other stuff it will create even more interesting stuff.

And thus, we have created more stuff.

[Nalgas]

I'm generally in agreement with avoiding "one trick AI" stuff like filling the map with AI Eyes and prefer things that change how the game plays in a more interesting way, but some of the AI types that have made for particularly "interesting" games for me don't really have anything special about them other than the units they get.  There's a little variety in terms of wave multipliers and things like that, but ignoring that, playing against something like a Spireling compared to Vanilla is a very different experience, purely because of the ships they use against you.

The dramatically different feel of how the game plays in that case comes entirely from how the existing AI mechanics act differently depending on what resources the AI happens to have at its disposal, not because of additional AI mechanics.  With well thought out starting conditions (units/structures available, wave modifiers, etc.), you can actually get a decent amount of variety in results even with the same ruleset of AI behaviors (although adding extra behaviors along with that increases variety even more, of course).

[Sigma7]

Two-Prong: The AI launches two half-sized waves during a warp event.  Could be an AI option rather than an AI type.  This tests the defenses a bit more, especially in vanilla AI War where there's less freestyle aggression.

[Orelius]

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3676

Just put another up on mantis:

Text here:

The basic gist of this idea is to have an AI that is unrelenting in their assault, and can not be held back.

So, this would be a hard or medium AI type wherein all AI ships are immune to tractor beams, gravity effects, black hole machine, engine damage and anything else that could potentially impede movement. They can also move through forcefields, but not shoot through them.

Furthermore, when a wave is warped,it spawns the normal amount of ships in addition to a mobile AI eye. If your ships outnumber theirs by a 2:1 ratio or more, the mobile AI eye triggers a thirty second wave timer (adjusted according to wave size) and launches a reinforcement wave of zombie ships of a different ship type than the one before it. After the wave is launched, the mobile AI eye destroys itself to make sure that it can only reinforce once.

However, if you manage to destroy the mobile AI eye before it warps in a wave, the wave timer is cancelled and that wave will not occur.

This mobile AI eye will also be in use for all forms of exo-waves, including the hard spirecraft/golems and fallen spire minor factions.

Note that these mobile AI eyes will be relatively durable (10 million hp, ultra heavy hull), and have a lifespan of ten minutes. So, if an AI warps a wave to one of its own worlds, you likely won't have to deal with that one-shot AI eye since it expires in ten minutes.

Comments and criticism are appreciated!

[Coppermantis]

Pretty much any behavior like that would be best put into the AI in general to make it smarter, rather than sticking it into a specific AI type that many players will never encounter.

Kamikaze AI
-----
AI that likes to suicide units, particularly into low HP targets. AI creates suicide fleets that go on bombing runs.

I had an idea similar to this, but it was that the AI (Which I nicknamed "Divine Wind") would use Spirecraft Rams and mini-rams extensively, with fighter escort to protect them from smaller ships.