AI Mapping / Component Prioritization

[Teh Celery's]

This is a big idea, and can't be easily employed

As a programmer, I'd like to see the Objects on the Ship be able to get "sectioned off" for the AI / Player. 

I'd like for you to imagine this as almost a "recommended area" sort of thing. 

The Captain does all the wire-framing themselves, think of it like Loadout Recommendations, in the Ship Editor; but for Components to Keep an Eye on.  This would require the introduction of a new menu, of course, but I honestly feel it has a lot of promise.

The most simple and basic functionality I am trying to suggest here is that you could Recommend a Player (or designate the AI)  to shoot a SPECIFIC gun, like, Port Side Middle on crusader.  And let's take it a step further and add "Hull" to that to-do list.  The AI would then negate just about everything else and only fix hull and fix / shoot port middle gun.  If it's a player, obviously you can't suggest them to "disable Free-Will," but at the very least, it's a way to communicate to a new player "what they should be doing." 

In the Ship View, the recommended components would almost "glow" a little with an outline. 

This is my "biggest" recommendation to the game I've ever come up with, and it's sort of just been in the back of my head for years now... 

Thoughts / input is welcome.



inb4 "this is redundant, people just need to learn to play / you just need to communicate with the other players"
please note, once more, the "glow" functionality.  This is for the game's current state, of "barely alive."  to ease the frustration of having truly absent-minded crewmen.   and to give a bit more "nudge in the right direction" for the noobs who have no idea what you mean by "No, not that Hull, the other hull.  the balloon.  dude it's right next to you.  omg.  why.  why God, have you forsaken us" etc


Signed,
[CHP] Lucar the Unliving

[Natani of Faron]

Interesting. I like the idea.

[SteamBrains]

Things like this have been discussed throughout the ages, but I believe muse is content with the state of the AI. The pathing has been reworked and tweaked a bit here and there, but full command control has not been given over them because they still want people to be better than ai. A person at least has the possibility to listen or adapt. Of course it always is frustrating when you get in a lobby with skeleton crews, but even then there are ways to make the ai useful with only 1 or no crew members.

[Schwalbe]

Well... theoretically... making AI focus more on certain components shouldn't be that much difficult - although this depends on how the calculations are done.

I would probably divide the components into three-four classes, each class would be scored with a weight to a decision making value, and I'd make a presets for prioritizing each class of components over others; an example of the class:

Class VITALS
Vitals 1.0f
Engines 0.8f
Guns 0.5f

So, when focused on vitals (hull + balloon), AI would more likely choose one of the Vitals to Repair, Engines when Engines are much more damaged than Vitals, and Guns when Vitals and Engines are a-ok.


But as I've said - the ease of implementation is very dependable on implemented decision making system.

That being said. I too agree, that yes, Player should be better than AI.

As for the AI having designated Area to cover - I think this would be very challanging to implement in terms of User Interface. Either you would have to have designers create an additional aerial data for each ship that make sense, or you would have to have literally entire team create a Player interface to create such zones at his whim - which would be very difficult to pull off to be UX friendly.
It too, perhaps surprisingly, would depend much on decision making, more specifically - it may actually impair the existing decision making system, cause glitches, so generally a fucking costly bother.