Improve AI

[rany]

I love battletanks, however, I only play solo.
IMO, many things that the AI doesn't do have made them too weak, giving human players too much advantages, as described below:

1. AI doesn't buy 6 weapons even if they got money.
2. AI doesn't use other items like factory, mines, batteries, hull, teleport, repair robots, upgrades, etc.
3. AI doesn't buy center map weapons.
4. AI doesn't buy 3rd tank even if they got money.
5. AI doesn't respond to attacks during healing.
6. AI doesn't use long range weapons, combine with no 5, making them easily killed.
7. AI doesn't use Tinkers or Trade Zeppelin.
8. AI doesn't built towers over destroyed ones.
9. AI doesn't press on attacking to kill opponent, instead they back off when halved their HP.
10. AI doesn't cooperate, they just head off after spawn, in cases they should group up to go against multiple opponents.

[SCorpA1]

hmm i think before improving the AI, exo should fix the AI chrash bug, because otherwise its not worthy, because the game chrashs too often

[rany]

Great!

The AI buys center map weapons now..
They even wait for eachother to attack.
They use speed packs, hulls and I love it when I thought they were walking into their death, and they TPed out to safety!
Love to change, thanks!

If you guys have the time, make them rebuild towers or sell inferior items too, or the retreat path?
Thanks again. Love the map.

[Dr.McNinja]

Haha.. from what ive gathered:

You play solo, i.e. only against bots
You take a long time to reply
Those are your only two posts
You must have a lot of fun with ai to play that long. Nice work.

Yes well, ai is very hard to perfect, Exo has put a lot of effort making the ai smarter, even if slightly. I think to make AI rebuilding towers is.. unnecessary because its hard for [exo] to determined when its good or helpful to buy a tower. I find them to be rare by better players. And we dont want AI to 'noobify'.. thats just how i see it. To take a point with rebuilt tower/barricade? that would be good.

Making AI have beter judgement > selling inferior items when the time is right, is... hard? I think the 'higher' thinking is harder to create in an ai.. They follow rules such as always retreat when under 50% hp. This has no consideration for nearby enemy tanks, actual hp, weapon damage and enemy weapon damage.. So leaving it at 'retreat when under 50% hp' works and is sufficient. Any more, and they'll could be outplaying a lot of players or become skynet.

I dont know if there are levels of AI, are there? like easy, normal, insane. If there are multiple levels of ai (strongly doubt) then single player btanks could be very very interesting.

OK lets say Exo wins the lotto and says fuck everthing except for btanks and works on btanks 24/7, AI is improved a a few trillion times, then what will btanks be like? AI would be using different tactics against enemies, chase and fight below 50% hp, gank, control point teleport simultaneously, set traps, lure, gank. That would be insane. You wouldnt know the difference between the AI and pros.. Hell fun too. And scary. Then the AI crashes your game and escapes. With a titan. Loaded with 5 upgraded frost lasers. Look what youve done now.

[Exodus]

Ok, first, the AI already has a function for selling the cheapest items, and I believe I've seen the AI using it, but maybe there's some reason which prevents the AI from using it.

The AI claims in no way to be really competitive, thatswhy we only work very rarely on the AI.
But actually, there are different difficulties. On easy, the AI won't use it's "finishing" abilities. There is a function, which lets the AI use it's abilities to kill a low HP hero, this is disabled on easy. Furthermore, the AI won't buy items, beside the normal weapons.
Those two options are active on normal. On hard the AI receives 1.5 times the income every second.

The AI only retreats when it's under 50% HP, because there's always a little delay between the actions of the AI, thatswhy it's better to play in a safe way. The AI is already feeding enough in some situations.

Of course it's possible to improve the AI even further, but I'm no AI programmer and it takes a lot of time to work on it. So I only concentrated my work once on the AI to improve some aspects, which bothered me when seeing what the AI did, but there are still some things left to do. But right now I'll concentrate on the other aspects of the map again, which are more important.

[horselance]

Ah I was going to suggest this yesterday, now i recalled.
Why there is no commands to control AI movements like in Dota. Some commands like (-AI x mid,down,up) (-AI x def), (AI x creep), (AI x aggres) etc..
for def: AI does not move far from its current CP
creep: AI only creeps and when sees a hero, it retreats for 1500 range.
aggres: AI uses its 75% hp instead of 50%
there can be other commands also.