Author Topic: Bad AI are killing us.  (Read 9947 times)

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Bad AI are killing us.
« on: October 28, 2016, 07:35:37 pm »
(copy/pasted) from email just sent to devs).

Playing with AI should be tolerable. Not only tolerable, enjoyable. I have heard the argument before that the AI should be bad so people want to play with players instead. This is simply wrong, especially when you have such a low player base.

This is what happens: People log in, see few people are playing and know they are going to end up with nub players or bad AI. They log out. Player count lowered. The few people left are consolidated to only a few matches, which generally end up stacked. New people start playing and have a horrible time playing with bad AI against stacked teams. They quit. 3v3 and 4v4 matches are rare or impossible.

Everybody has a bad time.

Now let's change the AI to be actually worth a shit. They are now pretty good, about as good as an average player. You can control them much easier, give them loadouts, tell them what areas of the ship to cover, and what to do when. You can create, name, and dress AI crew with earned and purchased costumes, just like players. You can tell them to spot by marking a ship with captain's mark. They are always there for you to pick, just like ships. You can actually trust them. You can even share your personally trained AI with friends. What happens now?

People log in and see that few people are playing. They know they might end up with nubs, but will have their trusty AI if they don't have a full crew. They play some matches. Player count goes up. Other people do the same thing. More matches are created since matches now start with more AI. People (well, most people) still prefer playing with other players, so lobbies gradually consolidate as the player count rises, still producing the same amount of partial AI lobbies on top of the full ones. New players don't hop on for a few minutes, bitch about how the game is dead because there are only X players, then leave. They can even start a 2v2 with 1 AI ship on their side. Hell, Any match that has the full team ready up with an empty ship gets a full AI ship on their team. 3v3 and 4v4 become common. You could even start Custom 4v4 games with JUST ONE PLAYER if you wanted. Why the hell not? If that is what you want to do, it should be allowed. More people log in to see either a thriving community, or at the very least a game that is playable with few players. Some people will tell nubs to get the hell off their ship, they would rather have AI Tarzan. These people are asses that say the same thing now. There would be many other matches to choose from. However, with Better AI (TM) making full lobbies not matter so much, more new players will be playing in novice matches, and more vets playing in vet matches (even if sometimes mostly empty), making MM actually work for once, since it would NO LONGER always be trying to make full lobbies, pairing vets with nubs. Matches start MUCH faster. Like, ridiculously faster.

Fewer people quit on account of having bad, stacked, or frustrating matches. Population and retention increases. Much fun is had.

But.... but Guns is all about playing with other peoples...

What other people? I sit in a lot of lobbies that go on for ages just WAITING for one more player because it would be ruined by having an AI. Then an ALMOST full lobby dies because no one comes. I get bored and log out, just like everyone else. With decent AI, we would just pick an AI from our "ready crew", set their position and behavior, ready up and go with it. Fun would be had.

Bad AI is literally destroying the community, one almost full lobby at a time.

Offline Solidusbucket

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2016, 08:36:47 pm »
plus with alliance it would be nice to play single ship by myself with good ai.

it really is a necessity to allow players to customize ai.

4 things we need to be in control of for ai

1). Components to repair
2). Components to buff
3). Components to chemspray
4). Gun to fire

The A.I prioritization for rebuilds and repairs works good enough. Their accuracy is fine. We just need to be able to slot them tools and ammo and be able to tell them those four things. I dont even care if I can't change their roles mid match. This would help so much. We don't need gunner A.I, either. They can be engineers. This helps promote playing with at least one other player for the majority of ship builds.

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #2 on: October 28, 2016, 10:13:53 pm »
Worst case scenario if AI become reliable:

-AI makes having people as engineers pointless

-The standard crew becomes Pilot + Gunner + 2x AI engineer, Groups of 4 friends now have to form a team instead of a crew

-Matchmaker fails at putting people into crews like that but they use custom lobby browser to avoid it

-Some matches screwed up by useless attempted engineers but not many more than currently

As far as I can predict it can only ruin things if the AI have some exploitable holes in their skills in spite of being better than too many players or if matchmaker fails to align with the kind of crews people want to play with.

Offline Solidusbucket

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2016, 11:25:01 pm »
yea, do this. email. where is jedi. #skynet or something

But really, A.I needs a revamp for alliance. I swear I will enjoy alliance at 5 am much more if i had good ai when the only other people on are my "rivals"

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #4 on: October 28, 2016, 11:27:28 pm »
Honestly, I see that as a better scenario that will keep more people around than what we currently have.

#AInet

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2016, 12:20:24 am »
Exactly, worst case excepting stupidity in its implementation isn't that bad.

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #6 on: October 30, 2016, 08:40:52 pm »
Just had this happen again. I jumped on to play a match or two and found a lobby that was only missing 2 players. After about 5 minutes of waiting, people started to leave. After 10 minutes of players trickling in and out, the lobby was half empty. After 20 minutes, we were back to only needing 3 players. I got bored and left, without playing a single match.

If AI were reliable and enjoyable to play with, we would have been finished with a match already. This needs fixing now. At least one person needs to be completely dedicated to making AI as valuable as a player.

Think about almost all other popular Team vs Team games. What is one thing they have in common? That's right, badass AI that will grind you into the ground if you are not paying attention to them. In Guns, we have AI that fall off the ship if you are not paying attention to them. Or, at least you wish they would to lighten the ship.

Offline Solidusbucket

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #7 on: October 31, 2016, 01:00:54 am »
yea, I mean. I don't mind ai to the point that I will wait for players as it is now. I just know I'm handicapped if Im on a ship or captaining a ship with 2 or more a.i.

My most hated reason is I only feel a few ships are okay to work with ai and so I'm usually stuck with those ships.

3 ai = squid. Ai are pretty decent with the gatling now and do good with banshee. carronade they will still shoot hull but w/e.  I put a flare on back and either gat banshee or carro/flame thrower. They repair the squid well enough to survive.

2 ai = goldfish. they do okay. Sometimes I will take a pyramidion, but it sucks because even though they are good at gatling it forces my gunner to remain on that mortar or else my main engineering ai will go up to the front gun. There is currently no way to prevent it.

1 ai = pyrmidion. They do good enough at main and seldom go up to the balloon if the engines are broken. Put them on engine repair and swap between that and f3 when hull takes dmg and they will usually always stay downstairs. Problem with doing a lot of swaps for the signaling though is the signal glitch where you lose control of the ship for like 5 seconds. It is deadly. It is another issue that needs to be addressed. It breaks the amount of safe micromanaging you can do to ai

Galleon is kinda difficult with any amount of A.I. I don't think its worth taking.

Junker does okay with one ai. I havn't really played much of junker with ai though so I dont have a strong opinion.

Havn't even tried with spire.

mobula. . .lol
« Last Edit: October 31, 2016, 01:03:24 am by Solidusbucket »

Offline Arturo Sanchez

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #8 on: October 31, 2016, 11:43:02 am »
this has been covered forever ago.

The bigger question is when is the major overhaul going to occur for the game in general?

Offline Unarmed Civilian

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2016, 07:12:32 pm »
I too would enjoy being able to setup anything other than a Pyramidion or Goldfish when I have an AI crewman. I personally love flying the Mobula and shenanigans with the Spire, but I feel that 90% of the time I'm picking ships based on my real crew count, which means more Pyra and Goldfish. I think it's the same for most others, hence why they are the most common ships if anyone is short any amount of crew.

AI are just too unmanageable for anything else. Even on those two ships, having two crew and one AI is worse than two AI on a Goldy because the AI is completely unpredictable, and two AI on a Pyra is only manageable if you can convince your one crew to be main engie or have them inside the top left gun at all times.

Offline Giersdorf

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Re: Bad AI are killing us.
« Reply #10 on: November 04, 2016, 04:37:28 pm »
I support this, I think generally everyone hates playing with AI.