Unit voices in AI War 2

[qipoi]

Player made unit lines definitely will be possible to mod in, yes.

Might want to throw it on mantis just so I don't overlook it, but it's not a problem whatsoever to add it.

I put it on mantis, as a Feature, under Audio. Thanks for the input everyone!

[BadgerBadger]

In terms of budgeting, I think I was down for an AI Taunt from the kickstarter; could I use that to add a line for the AI to taunt you with when a cpa is 1 minute away? Or is that not what it was intended for

[BadgerBadger]

So Mantis 0019065 was opened for this, but it turns out that it was opened against AI War, not AI War 2. I don't see an obvious way to move it. Chris//Keith, could you move it? Or should we just open a new request tagged to AI War 2?

[x4000]

Looks like I can't move it, so I closed it and another can be opened instead in the AI War 2 project: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=19065

[TheVampire100]

I thought the player ships are controlled by an AI and not piloted by humans? Or am I wrong on that end?
Would they than have an robotic voice?

I'm a little torn about voices on units. I remember the voices in Bionic Dues and while they were funyn at first, there were so little lines that they repeated themself already on the first mission. Since Ai War is even a bigger/longer game, you have them repeat even more.
I do like voices on units in some games. Blizzard did some excellent work on Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and they itnroduced this "portrait click" feature, if you click repeatingly on the portrait of a unit it will say something clever or humorous or even break the 4th wall and comments that you should stop clicking on it.
However, I'm used to the typical "boop" sound when giving orders, so voices might turn me off. Maybe.

[BadgerBadger]

I'm not sure if I'll want to play with voices for all the units, but I really would like the AI to say nasty things when it's destroying my planets, sending in a wave, sending an Exo, launching a CPA, and so on.

[Draco18s]

Ya know, the default built-in could just be a bleep.

[keith.lamothe]

Ya know, the default built-in could just be a bleep.

That would often be an appropriate summary of what the unit is thinking.

"You thousand ships, go throw yourself into that wall of turrets and chip a few off"

"BLEEP!"

[z99-_]

I thought the player ships are controlled by an AI and not piloted by humans? Or am I wrong on that end?

The topic has come up multiple times, and there's never been a definitive lore statement as to which, if any, ships and structures have humans on them (at least to my occasionally faulty memory). I think there's a general consensus that the fleet ships aren't piloted, but starships and structures are more up in the air.

[x4000]

Originally I felt they were pilotless, but that command stations had people in them in particular.  Now I'm kind of open, I'm not really sure which is the case.

I have also been looking into the VO stuff a bit, and I think there might be a way to handle this well, and without breaking our budget.

[TheVampire100]

Well, ou throw tousand of them intot he abyss, hard to believe that you throw that many so happily to their demise if they are piloted by humans, especially if the human race is nearly extinct. Also the initial store page said something from "we use ships that use a safe AI".

[keith.lamothe]

It seems unlikely that a space dock you put up on some isolated planet has an endless supply of humans to pack into that swarm of fleet ships you keep pumping out from there to attack the neighboring planet.

Human control makes sense, with the controllers all at your home command station (Ark) or other more-secure location, if you can handwave some kind of FTL communication that the enemy is incapable of spoofing. Which the game evidently does, since you can control all your units in real time.

[Draco18s]

if you can handwave some kind of FTL communication that the enemy is incapable of spoofing. Which the game evidently does, since you can control all your units in real time.

Who said it can't be spoofed? Reclamation and zombies are a thing.

[x4000]

I had read Forever Peace not all that long before writing the story (small as it was) for the first AI War, and I had remote-piloted drones in mind at the time, I think.  But with added AIs in there to compensate for slower human reaction times, and humans having to coordinate multiple ships at once due to shortages of staff, etc.  The sort of "safe AI" that is really just non-intelligent algorithms for autotargeting, etc.  It's running an algorithm and coming out with a certain result, and the humans' job is getting them in the positions where the algorithms will do the right thing.

As a fan of Ender's Game, I was also figuring on something along the lines of an ansible.

[keith.lamothe]

Who said it can't be spoofed? Reclamation and zombies are a thing.

But those appear to require physical access to the ship, rather than being something that can operate at a distance.