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Dumbing down bots

Oct 21, 2008 brigadon link
As someone who has, in the past, developed AI for a few games, I know that one of the hardest problems facing an AI writer is not 'making bots hit' but rather 'making them miss realistically'.

As it stands, a majority of the NPC's players face are, literally, too hard. They use auto-aim, and unless a player takes some (often extraordinary) measures to disrupt this aim, the bots will always hit.

Unfortunately, some of those measures that are virtually required are extremely counter-intuitive, if not downright non-fun. 'rolling strafe' and 'rolling reverse strafe' for example, is a technique I will never master because it literally makes me sick. Even when a technique like this IS used, often beating what could be considered 'entry level' npc enemies can take perversely huge amounts of time.

To exascerbate this problem, virtually every location that contains one bot contains 30 more. There are NO worthwhile locations away from a station that are NOT infested with bots, and tactics such as dodging through an asteroid field or other 'exciting' ways of fighting npc enemies are utterly useless against anything more difficult than a collector or transport.

If one player wishes to mine an asteroid field away from a base, there is basically no way for another player to protect them. No matter how skilled the other player might be, bots arrive frequently enough that engaging in a game of 'backrolling away from the guardian' means that within a few moments ANOTHER guardian will arrive and kill the miner.

My proposal is to create more classes of bots and replace many of the existing bot-infested asteroid fields with these new classes. They would bridge the gap between 'orem collectors' and 'guardian' or 'assault' class bots, and be able to be fought with slightly less skill in a 'conventional' attack, IE. fighting or strafing without requiring mind-numbing tailchases and with lowered 'suicide' bot tactics.

In addition, some of the existing classes of bots should be 'dumbed down' slightly, with say, a few degrees of random variance from perfect auto-aim in order to allow players to use more conventional attacks without knowing that they will be destroyed in heartbeats, but with more exciting close calls as the random variations make bullets fly past their ship or spang across their cockpit when they accidentally maneuver into the spray of bullets.

They should also have a shorter 'break off' range, and it should be possible to flee for many players in a straight-run burn.

It is still entirely possible for them to kill player ships, but with the new increases in ship costs and increasing value of actual money in the economy, trading 1 for 1 or 2 for 1 ships with drones makes botting an incredibly unattractive proposition, and many of the bots, as they currently stand, make sectors of space virtually useless.

Another possibility is lowering the bots energy reserves or at least include energy into their firing equation... The constant triple stream of plasma gets very tiresome, and when you think about it from a logical point of view, why are bot ships so superior to players? These are disposable drones designed for swarm tactics, and yet many of the drones are armed and armored and have turn radii, speeds, and loadouts that are virtually impossible for a player to achieve.
Oct 22, 2008 diqrtvpe link
I would like to respectfully disagree on some points. In my experience once you learn the trick of dodging a certain kind of bot you can dodge it forever. Whenever I do faction runs to gain docking privileges I always use Tycorp Assaults in order to speed things up, and I can bot for hours without having to repair, if I'm paying enough attention. If you change strafe directions every second or two they won't land anything at all, with few exceptions. The key to defeating autoaim is acceleration, and once you have that down you're pretty golden. I wouldn't try faction botting with Aputechs, but one or two of them can also be handled similarly. Of course, before you get in the groove of dodging, and before you get the hang of it, it's really damn hard, but after awhile it stops being impossible.

On the subject of mining in an asteroid field, I have done so many times, in fields infested with assaults and guardians, and, while the bots do make it somewhat more interesting, it is possible to continue mining while dodging the bots. Generally only two or three will come at you, and you can, with practice, keep the roid between you and them. Sure, they'll land a couple hits now and again, but that's the price you pay for getting the good roids. I do think that more good ore needs to be placed in heavily-infested bot sectors, to increase the reward for the risk, but I don't think the risk needs to be reduced.

As for the ships and weapons the bots use, they are not as heavily equipped as it seems. The assaults fire a nearly constant stream of shots, until they run out of battery, and that battery is the hive fast charge cell. It's actually not quite as good as the regular fast charge cell. It has a larger capacity but a slightly lower recharge rate, allowing for longer bursts but non-constant boosting. Their ships are also not faster than most combat ships, at least the higher models. The Vult MkI has a top speed of 210m/s, and that should outpace all bots. Heavily-laden trade ships can't necessarily outrun them as easily, but again, that's part of the point.

I guess my main point is that sure, it's pretty hard to face things like assaults and guardians when you're learning to go up against them, but that the challenge is good. It encourages improvement, fosters a more competitive attitude. Granted, a new player going up against an Aputech is going to be way out of her league, but that's good, that gives them something to aspire to. I know that when I started being able to take out Aputechs with some regularity I felt great, it was a great achievement. I guess in general I don't see the severe stratification of bot difficulties that you do. I found them to be a quite adequate upwards progression, leading me towards a decent fighting skill.
Oct 22, 2008 bojansplash link
Actually... a few years ago VO bots were a bit dumber.
Their autoaim was not so good and their dodge patterns were more predictable.

I remember times when I could juggle around 30 ctc escort bots and kill them all without getting hit once and I must admit I liked that dumber bot AI more then the one in effect now.

IMHO, a new player just making his way to combat 4, 5 and above is in for a very hard time with bigger and higher ranked bots.
We were all newbies once and I hope seasoned players still remember how it was.
Maybe there should be a stratification of bot AI so new players are not discouraged to keep on learning to fight better AI and progressing to PvP.
Oct 22, 2008 Puciek link
Well as a new player i must say that ai is ok. Only problem i've met was when i moved to new kinda bot (ie. from aputech-5 guardian to gray sec ones) but after some time i could kill many many many aputech-5s and not get hit during it.
So i would say that ai is fine, especialy considering that i SUCK at vo and i stil manage to kill them without dying :D
Oct 23, 2008 vernes link
Perhaps it's a good idea to make the bot dumber everytime you hit it?
I mean, it makes sense.
bot-ship = bot-hardware = bot-brain

You're taking potshots at flying computerhardware.
Can't imagine software running well on hardware that's being shot at with plasmaweapons and explosives.

So it is a challange to hit the bot, but the chance to win increases after every hit.

If you damage all bots a bit first you are again able to juggle around 30 ctc escort bots.

Dumbing down bots by damaging them.

(edit)

You could add a new type of bot.
The self-repairing bot.
That would be a nasty surprice for the more experienced fighters.
Oct 23, 2008 IRS link
Oddly, the most of the changes suggested here would actually make bots harder. It's the very fact that the AI is good, that makes bots easy to deal with. They've got autoaim, they always use it, and by using that knowledge, you can throw off every single shot because you know exactly where they'll fire. Introducing random elements to their firing makes it more likely that the bot will just "get lucky" and land a hit. This is why I'll take a horde of any type of perfect-aim bot over a single one armed with Fletchettes. God help us if the bots ever use probability cones and randomly swing their aim accordingly (which, incidentally, would be a side effect of simulating battle damage).

All you need to do is keep your ship's vector changing, and backrolling isn't needed to do that. Just pick any direction perpendicular to the bot's firing vector, and keep turning to face it as you move (strafing). Really. You don't even need to touch your roll keys. Add in a backward thrust if the attacking bots begin to surround you. Use short bursts of fire to herd the bots and keep them from flanking you- they'll slip farther away and leave the attack range. Ideally, you want them to get stuck between trying to turn towards you, and using turbo to reach you as you fly in a big circle around them. Done properly, you can get it down to the point where you pop a bot every five seconds.
Oct 23, 2008 Roda Slane link
I don't think I like the idea of adjusting bots to suit someone that has trouble with 3d combat. That would kinda defeat the purpose of having 3d combat.

On the other side, I wouldn't mind at all if bots alternated between autoaim on and autoaim off, just to give the autoaim dodgers a hard time. The fact that this might actually make bots easier for newbs is inconsequential.
Oct 25, 2008 stackman122 link
A couple of notes:

1) Inc has previously stated that the damage model is run like this: you take hits until you hull can withstand no more, and the next one will do you in. With bots it would be much the same, they take hits until the hull lets one through and damages any number of integral systems.

2) There are a variety of uncharted roid sectors that you can mine in. In fact, many in Sedina (of all places...) have lanth and denic ore...
Oct 25, 2008 davejohn link
Well, I think the bot ai is pitched about right, from collectors that just sit there right through to the bs bots or valent a3s which can be quite nippy . If anything it is the relative xp that should be adjusted to give a better reward for the extra effort required to kill guardians over assaults.