Spring RTS Engine

I didn't know where to put this. Just read the title.

TBH, I've never seen them used in any other games, either.

If the transport has more speed than a unit, I guess it should be a valid candidate for usage.

I use Transports in a number of games.

Transports are particularly important in S44 on larger maps. It would be really nice to see AIs take advantage of them, if it is possible within the interface.

The AI needs to properly handle more basic tasks first I'd imagine. Something like proper use of transports involves writing navigation code for the transports as well [think combat airdrops and avoidance of enemy AA for airtrans for instance]. Also needs to know what units to pickup, etc.

I demand a dedicated AI forum!

*looks at the AI forum*

oh...

AI threads go in the AI forum

AIs do not handle transports for numerous reasons:

Its not a simple issue, you have to figure out what type of transports are available, which to use, what type of transport it is, how many are needed, how many units should be sent, whether they're particularly vulnerable, and to vulnerable to what types of units, are they weak against anti air like air transports? Or is there a row of torpedo launchers along that coastline? And where should the transport drop off its cargo? will the units be able to reach their destination from the drop off point? Is the transport pointless?(sending units via sea transport to an island despite the giant land bridge blocking the way).

Now once you've figured this all out what your left with isnt that special to justify the effort. The same effort put into economics and general logic would give vastly greater improvements. Remember, our AI scene is relatively slow moving, and all AI developers have other commitments of higher priority, it would be very easy for our AI scene to just dry up into nothingness in a matter of hours, there just isn't the time or motivation to implement fancy features like transports.

moved

Snipawolf wrote:TBH, I've never seen them used in any other games, either.

try Starcraft, Age of Empires, C&C Tiberian Sun (undergroundBMT...)

Now once you've figured this all out what your left with isnt that special to justify the effort.

I agree. Also most mods have con-planes/amphicons and a good airforce, so even on island-maps you do not really need transports.

I was wondering it because the AI would use more tactical attacks, but mostly because everyone knows that no AI will ever work with BloX because of it. >_<

There's nothing stopping you fixing support using lua gadgets, or even implementing an entire transport manager sub system for AI use.

In the meantime you havent even explained your problem to an AI developer, you've just complained that AIs wont work with blox and then changed the subject. You should start a thread detailing exactly what the problem is.

AF wrote:I demand a dedicated AI forum!
AIs do not handle transports for numerous reasons:

Its not a simple issue, you have to figure out what type of transports are available, which to use, what type of transport it is, how many are needed, how many units should be sent, whether they're particularly vulnerable, and to vulnerable to what types of units, are they weak against anti air like air transports? Or is there a row of torpedo launchers along that coastline? And where should the transport drop off its cargo? will the units be able to reach their destination from the drop off point? Is the transport pointless?(sending units via sea transport to an island despite the giant land bridge blocking the way).

++1

that sums up the most important issues you have to deal with before being able to use transports efficiently. i dont think any ai will be able to do that (using a sensible ammount of cpu power) in the near future

Indeed, in a starcraft or age of empires scenario the vast number of possibilities available declines enourmously and transport AI complexity is vastly reduced.

However the same systems would work to an extent in TA settings, only they would be full of holes and us AI developers would get hassled for such horrifically poor support, and for the huge list of dumb obvious mistakes they'd make like flying into a solid block of anti air turrets or trying to send a sea transport across a small pond or even building a shipyard in the wrong body of water.

The problem I ran into, before XP died, was getting the pathfinding routines to acknowledge that the shortest route between two points was through a transport beacon.

I'd have put it up for testing, but it's trapped on the disk with the rest of the rest of the stuff.