AI War 2 v0.525 Released! "Targeting Priorities: So Many Things To Shoot, So Little Time"

[keith.lamothe]

Release notes here!

Lots of quality-of-fun improvements here, including much-improved support for having selections of stuff from multiple planets, helpful new info on the AI Defenses galaxy display mode, descriptions of many common units, and another round of basic balance changes.

But the main thing is definitely the addition of targeting modes for control groups. Now you can go into a planet with your fleet using "Defense" targeting, and it will defend itself against the main threats to your shield cover. Then you can switch to "Siege" targeting to have your long-range units focus on knocking out the enemy units that can hit you back. After that, you can switch into "Pre-Assault" to focus on neutralizing the things that would mess you up if you just charged straight through (tractors, shields, etc). Finally, during an actual charge, you can switch into "Assault" to prioritize tractors and shields in your way. If things don't go your way, "Retreat" prioritizes the enemies that can catch you, are near you, or can wreck your shields. Once you're done you can change it back to "None" and the individual weapon system target sorters will do their thing (as they will anyway if your group's setting doesn't have a preference between two targets).

Modders can also change these modes and add new ones. Look at the "TargetSorter_Siege" class in the external code project for an example (to add a new one you also need to add a line to GameData/TargetSorter/KDL_VanillaEntries.xml , but it's straightforward).

Enjoy!
Keith

[x4000]

I really like how those targeting modes kind of automatically get people thinking more strategically.  It's sort of a self-teaching thing where people who find those controls will then realize you CAN do that sort of tactic, and that there's value in it, and that all they have to do is click this button to make it happen.  Then there's the fun of actually trying to come up with larger strategies around it, rather than just having fleet blobs.

Frankly I think this is also the best defense against fleet blobs in general: now you might still have something that looks blobby (or not, given the formations stuff), but likely you'll have a few control groups that are doing different things.  This is far more effective of a counter (a carrot) than the AI Eyes from classic (a stick) ever was.

I'm sure this has plenty of evolving to do, but this seems like it's the start of the solution to a problem I never could solve.  Really awesome job.

[Draco18s]

Glorious~ 💗

[tadrinth]

So, I'm a bit late to the party on this, but WOOOOOO Octopus Map has the official stamp of approval! 

And BadgerBadger, love the map option to pick the number of arms.    It has a very minor bug: if you pick 2 arms in the octopus map dropdown, you actually get 4 arms.  That's because the dropdown is setting the symmetry factor, and it generates 2 arms per symmetry factor.  I would double the values in the dropdown and then halve the value when it's passed into the mapgen. 

[tadrinth]

I was going to try to implement these, but I don't think I'm going to have the brain juice for it any time soon with how work has been going.  So, BadgerBadger, if you wanna take a crack at these, feel free:

* The Octopus map sometimes decides to have one large central cluster.  When it does, it would be cool if it sometimes generated a concentric or encapsulated map there instead of a regular cluster. 

* Now that we can add config options to maps, I would love an option for the Encapsulated map type that puts 10% of the planets in the outer ring instead of 40%.  I played around with this a bit and it seems like it would be an interesting variation. 

Also both of Dracos18's maps are super cool. 

[TheVampire100]

The targeting modes are an awsome idea, they give the player enough control over their units without making it a micromanagement hell (like Stracraft *cough*).
Gives players also more than ever to think where they place their ships in control groups instead of placing them all in a "blob".

[BadgerBadger]

I note there's some refactoring going on in the pre-release notes for .526. Could I entice you to give a summary for the release notes of the major data structures in the game, the sorts of data they contain and their relationships? I think it would be cool for people to get a bit more insight into the game internals and it would be definitely helpful for modders going forward.

[keith.lamothe]

I note there's some refactoring going on in the pre-release notes for .526.

Yep, and that's out now. Not doing the usual posts because it's really just relevant for modders, but I wanted to avoid mixing other changes into it.

Could I entice you to give a summary for the release notes of the major data structures in the game, the sorts of data they contain and their relationships?

Hmm, that would be useful, but it would more time than I have right now to put together. I'll see if I can make time tomorrow.

[keith.lamothe]

Here's a stab at documenting the core gamestate. Not getting into the details of GameEntity or stuff like that, just a "map" of how to get around the fundamentals.

UML is pretty opaque to most readers, so I could add more comments like "World_AIW2.Instance is always available as a starting point", but I'm not sure that would suffice

But I think this is better than just explaining it all in paragraph form. Perhaps a combination of the two.

[Draco18s]

UML is pretty opaque to most readers, so I could add more comments like "World_AIW2.Instance is always available as a starting point", but I'm not sure that would suffice

I'm a software wizard and I barely understand them. I usually end up with a map in my head after trawling the code for a while, but most times I go "ok I need dis ting, where does dis ting exist?" and search for all references (to a type or method) in order to find how to reference it.

[chemical_art]

I am glad to see that things are coming along.

Whenever you are looking for more people to test, polish the taking of the first planet. Once you get that bottleneck cleared you will have a lot more testers who can break other things for you.

[BadgerBadger]

You can now click a "Start with first planet" toggle on the game start screen! Much more efficient

[chemical_art]

Wonderful! I will try it again then later.

[FalseMyrmidon]

That sounds like a fun mechanic from how you described it!