In defense of the combat AI.

[Mightysword]

As I see it games have two difficulty levels, possible and impossible. Either you win a fight, and the game is easy, or you can't win a fight, and the game is too hard.

Not really, that might be true for certain type of player who if he trample the enemy he think it's too easy, but when he got trampled then he declare it's impossible before trying.

The most fun out of a competition is when you come up with something of the same caliber. Think about it's like chess playing, the best opponent to "enjoy" a match is to play with are those of the same level. It's no fun playing with someone who totally outclass you, but neither it's exciting playing against someone you can win half-heartly. It's fun when you have to think and do your best, a win is not guarantee no matter how much you try, neither a lost is certain because you suck.

[caleb]

I think the combat AI should be decent enough for a good challenge. Everyone has different skill levels, so that's where the strategy comes in.

Some people are really good, and may be able to beat an AI fleet using an M5 with one LRE.

Others are pretty decent and will be able to beat the computer on a matched fight.

Others not so great, so will need superior numbers to win.

The good thing with a game like X is that we can have all that. Action oriented players will go out in the first ship they can and shoot anything that moves. Less action oriented players will build up their fleet before attacking. However, what there should be in common in call cases, is that the AI is decent and puts up a good fight (in dogfights, and tactical combat). That way all kinds of players will feel good when they win.

[Chris0132]

As I see it games have two difficulty levels, possible and impossible. Either you win a fight, and the game is easy, or you can't win a fight, and the game is too hard.

Not really, that might be true for certain type of player who if he trample the enemy he think it's too easy, but when he got trampled then he declare it's impossible before trying.

The most fun out of a competition is when you come up with something of the same caliber. Think about it's like chess playing, the best opponent to "enjoy" a match is to play with are those of the same level. It's no fun playing with someone who totally outclass you, but neither it's exciting playing against someone you can win half-heartly. It's fun when you have to think and do your best, a win is not guarantee no matter how much you try, neither a lost is certain because you suck.

If you want to use the chess example, either I have the means to predict my opponent's strategy accurately, either by seeing it on the board or by reading their playing history and using it to give context and understand probable decisions they're going to make, and if I do all that properly I am playing well and thus should recieve rewards. OR I don't have the means to do that and therefore guess randomly and hope I win, and that's pretty boring.

So, either it's easy because I know how to win, or I don't know how to win and it is impossible to do so, barring exceptional luck of course. A player closer to my skill level would make the game take longer, and thus would provide a more worthwhile experience (time spent enjoying a game to time spent setting one up) but they don't make the game any easier or harder.

So like I said, easy but takes a varying amount of time, or nor reliably possible.

I find this to be true of more or less everything in life honestly. A test is easy if you know the answers but might take several hours to complete if it's a long test, if you don't know the answers the test is not reliably possible to complete. Same goes for building a device or preparing a meal, easy if you have the instructions or the means to deduce an approach from what you see/prior knowledge, not reliably possible if you don't know how.

[Gazz]

Take a look at an old Reunion mod, Fight Command Software Mk 3.

It shows that not only is it possible to create effective dogfighting AI, but you could do it within the architecture of the old X3R engine.

But if you look at the Example XRB AI Script that was posted, you can't help noticing that it is anything but excessively advanced.
It's a rather uhh... lean... minimum possible effort affair.
Take out the white noise and you have the SE-equivalent of a 40 line script.

Doesn't look Turing-capable.

[Mightysword]

If you want to use the chess example, either I have the means to predict my opponent's strategy accurately, either by seeing it on the board or by reading their playing history and using it to give context and understand probable decisions they're going to make, and if I do all that properly I am playing well and thus should recieve rewards. OR I don't have the means to do that and therefore guess randomly and hope I win, and that's pretty boring.

Never played chess do you? Seriously playing at least

If you can always predict your opponent's move and win every time you try it, then no you're not playing with someone of your caliber, rather a lower level opponent. The point is sometime you success, sometime you don't. Sometime you manage to predict your opponent, sometime it's your move being predicted. No offense meant to you ... but I think most serious chess players would find your comment quite ... offensive

So, either it's easy because I know how to win, or I don't know how to win and it is impossible to do so, barring exceptional luck of course.

That's why you missing the whole point. Take Ninja Gaiden Black for example, on high difficulty sometime I can kill a type of enemy in 3 second flats, sometime it is me that got killed in 3 second flat, sometime we have a stand off for a good minutes or two. That's what it meant to fight someone of your caliber: if you try your best, you have a chance to win, if you don't try your best you will lose, it's unpredictable, and that's what makes it fun.

To be frank, given the history of your posts in various topic I think I'm just the opposite type of player comparing to you. If it comes down to that I "HAVE" to choose between completely and utterly trambling the AI every time and repeatedly getting spank that would turn me on hotter than going to a strip club, I would go with the latter ... as long as I'm not fighting against the system that is

[Chris0132]

Never played chess do you? Seriously playing at least

If you can always predict your opponent's move and win every time you try it, then no you're not playing with someone of your caliber, rather a lower level opponent. The point is sometime you success, sometime you don't. Sometime you manage to predict your opponent, sometime it's your move being predicted. No offense meant to you ... but I think most serious chess players would find your comment quite ... offensive

No, not really. I don't enjoy chess, because people are inherently unpredictable, and I don't know how to go about developing the near-psychic intuition required to tell what any given individual is planning. I know how to play it, but I don't do so. Much prefer predictable things, things where I can reasonably expect to find a perfect solution which solves things with the maximum efficiency within the timeframe I have available. If I were to play chess, I would design chess playing programs rather than actually play it myself.

That's why you missing the whole point. Take Ninja Gaiden Black for example, on high difficulty sometime I can kill a type of enemy in 3 second flats, sometime it is me that got killed in 3 second flat, sometime we have a stand off for a good minutes or two. That's what it meant to fight someone of your caliber: if you try your best, you have a chance to win, if you don't try your best you will lose, it's unpredictable, and that's what makes it fun.

To be frank, given the history of your posts in various topic I think I'm just the opposite type of player comparing to you. If it comes down to that I "HAVE" to choose between completely and utterly trambling the AI every time and repeatedly getting spank that would turn me on hotter than going to a strip club, I would go with the latter ... as long as I'm not fighting against the system that is

The way I see it, if I know how to do something, and I can execute that solution to a reasonable degree of accuracy, I've won. Whether the game chooses to acknowledge this or not is up to it. If it doesn't then it's just being difficult and I'll probably cheat or mod it to make it do what I want. I prefer intelligent solutions to problems rather than ones that rely on muscle memory. Working out how to do something is the fun part, repeatedly doing it over and over to train my muscles to do it perfectly is the tedious part. I'll skip it if possible.

So it follows that every game I play is either solvable, and thus easy, but potentially time consuming if it involves lots of reflex-training. I can beat those sorts of games with reasonable frequency. Or it is unsolvable, and thus based entirely on luck once I've figured out how to play it. I generally don't play games like that for very long as it isn't very engaging to have the game randomly one shot your character or spawn an excessively difficult group of enemies out of pattern to kill you, or start you in a randomly terrible position, all of which effectively cripple your ability to play the game regardless of skill level.

Most games don't do that though, they keep a fairly consistent level of 'challenge' throughout, which means there's always something to do and it's usually engaging enough to keep me interested. I like mario, I dislike mario romhacks, I suppose you could say. One is mostly about solving jumping puzzles, the other is about memorising level layout and perfectly timed button presses, no thinking, just trial and error and generally good muscle control.

[A5PECT]

But if you look at the Example XRB AI Script that was posted, you can't help noticing that it is anything but excessively advanced.
It's a rather uhh... lean... minimum possible effort affair.
Take out the white noise and you have the SE-equivalent of a 40 line script.

Doesn't look Turing-capable.

I saw that, and I hope that it's simple because Apoch threw it together to show off the language, not the code itself, and the actual dogfighting code in Rebirth is much more sophisticated.

I hope.

[Mightysword]

No, not really. I don't enjoy chess, because people are inherently unpredictable, and I don't know how to go about developing the near-psychic intuition required to tell what any given individual is planning.

The point is you don't, and you can't, BUT you can get better. If the argument is as simple as you state there there would be no skill in chess, one will just play blindly on pure luck.

So it follows that every game I play is either solvable, and thus easy, but potentially time consuming if it involves lots of reflex-training. I can beat those sorts of games with reasonable frequency.

Well, define "Reasonable", in what term? Depending on your term, the developer term, or the average term. You sound like you would enjoy World of Warcraft's raid boss. Their behavior is specific.

- They will cast spell A right at the beginning.
- They will do this ability every 20 seconds.
- They will hit a target with this condition at this hitpoint % ...etc...

So yeah, once you figure that out, it's easy. The first time or the 100th time you fight that boss, he will follow that exact pattern. As long as you follow a certain counter pattern, you're guarantee a win. The thing is ... we call that a "scripted" behavior rather than "AI". Even when your group have set up everything for the boss's next ability to fail, he will still do it anyway. You might like thing like that, I don't. Chess is a good example, and it's funny how you say you will want to program chess instead of playing it, I don't think you know what chess programming entail. Are you aware that pretty much every single AI algorithm available started from, or have something to do with chess at one point or another? It won't be far fetched to say Chess is the corner stone of most AI algorithm. After all the counter-existence to established pattern is an adaptive behavior.

For example: the reason we think the current combat AI suck because it's not very adaptive. If we fire our weapon at it on certain condition, we're guarantee a hit since they make no effort to evade. However A good adaptive AI doesn't mean all of our shots will become pure luck. A well placed shot will still have much better chance to hit than a random shot even in the event the AI does try to dodge, it's just no longer a boring fire and forget guarantee. Just like a good chess player will have a better chance at winning the match even if he can't fully read his opponent .

And luck is another big factor, the way you're talking you make it sound like a bad thing. Pure luck is indeed bad, but a decree of luck or uncertainty I believe is what make most of the system fun.

[Scoob]

The thing is, and AI doesn't actually have to be smart to appear smart. Cheating is perfectly acceptable to me if it means there's a perception of fighting a more talanted apponent.

As a player we just see what we see, via looking out of our ship, or checking our instruments and sensors.

If the developers chose to, they can give an AI pilot access to much more information than we as a player get.

In classic RTS speak, it's like the enemy "knowing" exactly where your units are, despite them not having spotted you yet, either visually or on radar. Or in an FPS the bad guys knowing where you're hiding despite you being perfectly hidden.

Letting the AI have information regarding your position, heading, weapon loadout etc. etc. it shouldn't usually know can give it an edge in combat that might be perceived as more intelligent behviour - if done right.

Personally, I'd like a truely smart AI that relies on the same visual and sensor input I do, yet still reacts well. So, if a ship has a longer range scanner than me he WILL see me first, rather than just "know" where I am. However certain "cheating" aspects can give good gameplay with a smaller CPU cost.

You know, I do fully expect the AI to be good enough for it not to be a foregone conclusion who will win in a one-on-one dogfight with everything else being equal...we shall see.

In prior X games we were the single best pilot in the universe, put any AI in the same ship as us, or potentially a class or two above, and the player would win...even without cheat-strafe lol. Sorta cool to start with, but after a while it gets silly. One of the reasons I like to command fleets of ships...but then they'd often just die by doing really daft things, or simply spent and age "avoiding...NULL" in the case of capital ships in busy sectors...

Scoob.

[Syock]

In classic RTS speak, it's like the enemy "knowing" exactly where your units are, despite them not having spotted you yet, either visually or on radar. Or in an FPS the bad guys knowing where you're hiding despite you being perfectly hidden.

Letting the AI have information regarding your position, heading, weapon loadout etc. etc. it shouldn't usually know can give it an edge in combat that might be perceived as more intelligent behviour - if done right.

I always was frustrated with that and considered it broken game mechanics.

[VincentTH]

I fare very well without strafe drive. Just sit back 30km away and spam missiles. Oh, wait....that's something else the AI can't do worth a damn.

Just try XTC, the AI there does know how to spam missiles