A Path Beyond Which maps should I prioritise adding bots for?

[Pushwall]

Now that the ever-irritating online bug with bot vehicle turrets is fixed, and a change to Metro has meant that its bots are sadly left without vehicles, I'm going to work on adding the option of botmatches to some more maps soon. Which ones should I try first?

If it looks like there aren't many maps in this poll, it's because there are a lot of maps where bots would still be problematic.

Bear in mind that bots wouldn't know how to use naval units (especially subs due to the specific circumstances needed for subs to attack) and that while they can use normal VTOL aircraft, they won't know how to refill their ammo. So the only option there would be giving them unlimited ammo which would be quite overpowered, especially since infantry bots being limited to 1 weapon prevents rocket soldier bots from having a Redeye/Strela on hand. So air/naval maps are out.

Since pathfinding sectors can't be added or removed midgame, any map that heavily relies on destructible blockades (Metro/Coastal Influence's wall of hedgehogs) or anti-blockades that turn into blockades when destroyed (Under's archway) is also out of the question. CI could be made like Metro where bots only use infantry but it wouldn't be very interesting, it works better with Metro due to the small size, no defenses, and no navy. And while Under could be made to have bots ignore that rear route, they'd be completely blind to players that are using that route.

Complex is also an odd duck; it heavily relies on an infantry-only lane (the side tunnel) and we don't yet have a way of telling the bots that there are some avenues of attack that only infantry should try to access. Under has the same issue with all of its infantry tunnels and the rear entrance. On top of that, a common Allied route involves driving tanks off the "upper" road onto the lower road, something that bots won't do because they can't see a drop as a valid route (at least not willingly, and when they do it accidentally it'll likely be sideways, resulting in a flipped vehicle).

[Ice]

River Raid might be the simplest one to start with, since it's a relatively small map with fairly direct routes to the bases. After that I might do Canyon River or Pipeline.

[Killing_You]

Personally, I'm in favor of KotG. That's one of our best maps, and I could totally see bots going head to head while players take alternate routes. It'd be great.

[ChopBam]

Canyon River and River Raid might be fun candidates.

[FRAYDO]

River Raid, but with every bot charging into battle driving forklifts.

[moonsense715]

@Pushwall You can give infantry bots a different rocket launcher that shoots normal rockets on primary fire and AA rockets on secondary. Priorities tell them which one to use against different targets and you can grant them the alternate weapon with the replace weapon script, set on the same soldier preset.

[Pushwall]

Just doesn't look right with them firing long range high velocity AA rockets from the M72 LAW tube though. But whatever.

And infinite ammo longbows would still be ridiculous

[moonsense715]

1 minute ago, Pushwall said:

Just doesn't look right with them firing long range high velocity AA rockets from the M72 LAW tube though. But whatever.

And infinite ammo longbows would still be ridiculous

Ammo refilling at helipads is on my list so it will happen, just later.

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, moonsense715 said:

Ammo refilling at helipads is on my list so it will happen, just later.

Neat! At some point I'd also like to see the option to exclude certain unit types from waypoints so we can actually have infantry organise attacks down infantry-only routes without vehicles attempting to join in. Or vehicle-only squads down routes that would be suicidal for infantry to take, like tiberium-heavy areas in TSR maps.

In any case, by the time all this happens, I'll probably have added bots to a few of the maps on this list, and at that point we can have a new poll including all the maps that become "unlocked" with these refinements.

[Raap]

Sorry to ask since I've been out of the info-loop a while, but was there ever a consensus on having scaling AI participants as a default gameplay feature until enough players joined a match for them to stop respawning?

 

[moonsense715]

2 hours ago, Raap said:

Sorry to ask since I've been out of the info-loop a while, but was there ever a consensus on having scaling AI participants as a default gameplay feature until enough players joined a match for them to stop respawning?

 

If the mapper decides so, any map can start with e.g. 20 bots, and they will leave the game one by one until 20 players are ingame (at this point there are no more bots that could leave). This variable is changable per map.

As for being a default feature? I'm using bots a lot of times to do stress testing and find crashes as they play matches themselves 24/7, but they add up to kill statistics right now, which is why they aren't a default feature in APB yet. Funny thing is I think I can make it so bot kills dont count, but I'm not sure if I can do the same for score collection, etc.

[Pushwall]

5 hours ago, Raap said:

Sorry to ask since I've been out of the info-loop a while, but was there ever a consensus on having scaling AI participants as a default gameplay feature until enough players joined a match for them to stop respawning?

I'd absolutely do this once the bots are more refined, particularly with regard to how they interact with stats. It's just that now we can actually enable them on the server without having to worry about people ragequitting over dying to seemingly nothing because the enemy vehicle turrets were improperly rotated for clients before. Still, right now it requires jumping through the hoop of disabling the rank plugin so that people who just camp in place with a sniper/roll around in a permacloaked phase tank for the express purpose of picking off riflebots all match to try to grind their KD instead of actually playing the game don't get "rewarded".

3 hours ago, moonsense715 said:

If the mapper decides so, any map can start with e.g. 20 bots, and they will leave the game one by one until 20 players are ingame (at this point there are no more bots that could leave). This variable is changable per map.

Though I'd prefer if one could choose how many bots get replaced by a single player. Games with actual players can start to carry themselves at around 12 players and at that point they probably wouldn't want any bots around, but that would mean only having a bot count of 12 - which would make them pretty inconsequential since they're still not particularly great at anything other than shooting what they can see, and half of them idle in their own base. If we could make it so every player joining causes two bots to leave so the default bot count could be upped to around 20-24, that'd be a bit better. In addition that would mean that both teams always have the same number of bots (someone joining kicks off a bot from both teams) so both teams have an equal chance to be points-screwed by bots charging headfirst into base defenses that they can't solo.

3 hours ago, moonsense715 said:

but they add up to kill statistics right now, which is why they aren't a default feature in APB yet. Funny thing is I think I can make it so bot kills dont count, but I'm not sure if I can do the same for score collection, etc.

^

I wouldn't mind if the score granting can't be "fixed". I mean, they have to be able to receive and give out points for a winner to be properly decided in bot vs bot matches that don't end in base destruction anyway, and nobody masturbates to how many points they can amass, whereas KD whores are abounds.

Another thing is that they rack up recommendation messages like nobody's business (and when they were first used, achievements which they've now unlocked). Enable bots on the server and every minute or so it's "None was recommended for killing 7 infantry/vehicles".

[Zwei]

I voted for River Raid but I wanted Canyon River. Having bots to defend all of the infantry tunnels and cliff pathways flanking each base would be great; having to climb that cliff to defend against a single camping rocket soldier takes you out of the game, having guard bots for those spots would be awesome.

[Pushwall]

4 hours ago, Zwei said:

all of the infantry tunnels and cliff pathways

 

On 12/25/2017 at 7:11 PM, Pushwall said:

we don't yet have a way of telling the bots that there are some avenues of attack that only infantry should try to access.

Thanks for pointing out exactly the reason why I shouldn't have had Canyon River on this poll.

[Raap]

Can the AI be easily scripted to send engineers to enemy-owned oil pumps on Pipeline and capture them or guard them if owned by the same team (and not stand there trying to capture something that already got captured)?

I ask because this would solve the tedium of Pipeline in low-population matches greatly. It'd be a great quality of life update for the map and perhaps something to keep around even in larger population matches.

If the AI understood the concept of water and submarines (or elevators) then I'd have looked into doing it for Hostile Waters bonus objectives as well, unfortunately I doubt this is currently possible and even if it is I can only imagine the hell scenario the gameplay logic setup would be in the development tools - naval already is a hell scenario to work with.

Edited January 1, 2018 by Raap

[Raptor29aa]

I do have an idea to fix all this. How about up the minimum player court to 4v4 (aka 8 players) before stats record. Meaning bot  kills won’t matter anyways. 

Here is my thought process: 1 player with 14 bots on both sides. For each player that joins 2 bots are removed. By the time it is 3v3 the bot count would be 4 per side. (Almost 50/50 human to bot) And the infamous 3v4 game would still have 2 bots to help (probably repair techies or shotgun infantry).

bear in mind it can be adjusted like ending at 3v3 and having it start off at 10 bots. And start the recording at 3v3. And by the time it’s 3v2 each side only has 2 bots. I just felt 4v4 would be optimal.

[Zwei]

3 hours ago, Pushwall said:

 

Thanks for pointing out exactly the reason why I shouldn't have had Canyon River on this poll.

LMFAO. River Raid can definitely have some bots though up the center at least. Thats a small low tech map with no defenses, right? It'd be good to have some cannon fodder, some guards, some techies repping.

 

Actually techies repairing is the best part of the bots. If all maps had techies at each building's MCT that would be awesome.

Edited January 1, 2018 by Zwei

[Pushwall]

3 hours ago, Zwei said:

If all maps had techies at each building's MCT that would be awesome.

And pretty overpowered for the Soviets who have automatic interior guards in the form of AP mines.

But then I suppose, in turn, that would make the spy more useful.

On the other hand it'd just make it harder to end games that should be over since you can't tell a bot to stop repairing, and killwhores don't want to go into buildings to stop it because they'd put themselves at risk. Which would result in more killwhoring.

[moonsense715]

Bots can use elevators fine, and if pathfind is generated underwater, they should be able to pilot submarines just fine.

[Pushwall]

32 minutes ago, moonsense715 said:

Bots can use elevators fine, and if pathfind is generated underwater, they should be able to pilot submarines just fine.

I don't doubt their ability to pilot them since they're just like any other VTOL except with a different flight ceiling. The problem is that they have to be surfaced to fire, submerge to avoid damage, and are by design unable to hit anything that isn't a boat, naval yard, or an idiot who strayed into the water. That's a bit too complex for the berserker AI who will most likely attempt to fire at land units, and fire at boats when it's too low to even shoot (and even if it were allowed to shoot, wouldn't be able to hit the underside of any boats from that height anyway). And likewise AI units will probably try to attack the sub even when it's submerged and thus immune to pretty much all damage that isn't rockets and gunboats.

[Einstein]

24 minutes ago, Pushwall said:

I don't doubt their ability to pilot them since they're just like any other VTOL except with a different flight ceiling. The problem is that they have to be surfaced to fire, submerge to avoid damage, and are by design unable to hit anything that isn't a boat, naval yard, or an idiot who strayed into the water. That's a bit too complex for the berserker AI who will most likely attempt to fire at land units, and fire at boats when it's too low to even shoot (and even if it were allowed to shoot, wouldn't be able to hit the underside of any boats from that height anyway). And likewise AI units will probably try to attack the sub even when it's submerged and thus immune to pretty much all damage that isn't rockets and gunboats.

So what you're saying is..... It would be worth it to see what funny behavior occurs when you enable all this in a test map Just for the giggles.

[Pushwall]

The other issue would be getting the bots to even enter the subs in the first place since that involves walking off a ledge to a tall drop which is only "saved" by the sub itself...

[moonsense715]

If they cannot reach subs already (I bet 80% they can), a minimal change to the sub pen should allow them to reach the subs.

As for subs being viable targets and when to shoot with subs, I'd say a script zone can handle that easily. Out of zone (water top) = can shoot and viable target for enemies.

[Raap]

If ships/subs end up 'joining the map' as a reinforcement from off-map then you don't have to worry about bots entering/leaving them using the APB naval gameplay rules, and also you bypass the 'traffic hour' at naval production sites.

As for submarines with AI, perhaps you can create a special AI version of submarines that are actually ships in terms of physics but with a model that dips below the water surface and a hitbox that only slightly hangs above it. Then perhaps you could figure out a firing animation sequence that moves the submarine's non-physical model upwards before firing, and then back down again. As for making them invulnerable, I think you should avoid making AI units invulnerable else you got other AI entities still trying to fire at them.

Just thinking out loud here, but the obvious downside of this route is that AI submarines will never truly submerge beyond ~2 meters in appearance.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Raap

[Pushwall]

Bit of a problem with that: bot vehicles under the new "smart AI" use the same preset as the player vehicles. Doing what you suggest would mean the naval maps would have to revert to the old "bots just spawn in the middle of the battlefield/battleocean already inside their vehicle, usually behind you and saying nothing personnel kid" way, which would prevent the naval units from being a part of the bot "player count", needing money to be "bought", and knowing how to form attack groups. But I may experiment with that for Pacific Threat sometime.

Anyway, bots for KOTG have been done! Since it's such a large and complex map, it's proof that I should be able to easily add them to any of the large maps while avoiding the dreaded "too many pathfinding sectors = LevelEdit crash" issue. (Of course there's still the issues of bots being unable to properly utilise helis/boats and not being able to exclude vehicles from infantry-only paths that make certain maps not bot viable, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

However, it's also made me realise that bots in their current state can't really use Mammoth Tanks or APCs properly - Mammoths as they think they're infantry-sized and thus have a very bad habit of slipping off roads/ramming trees, eventually leaving the pathfind grid and becoming stationary turrets for the rest of the match, and APCs as the "infantry bots try to ride shotgun" logic isn't applying to group rushes so infantry in a group that contains an APC will just continue to walk on foot and slow the whole group down as the fast tanks wait for the slow infantry to catch up at each waypoint. The APC bots were meant to prevent that to compensate for being mediocre combat units. Both of these were issues on Camos Canyon too. So by the next release the bot vehicle list will sadly be a bit more constricted, but hopefully these issues will be resolved in future and these units can be added back to botmatches.

Working on adding bots to River Raid now but now I realise that sadly it's another map with heavy reliance on infantry-only lanes (the upper cave, the cave leading behind the Allied WF, the beach path to the Soviet WF, and the hedgehog-blocked plateaus), and the only vehicle entrance may get log-jammed a lot due to bots trying to path around the ore truck. I'll give it a try and see how it works though. If OT blocking is too much of a problem it may have to become another "bot infantry only" map. Axing the hedgehogs on some of the plateaus isn't really an option as bot vehicles have a pretty hard time handling steep slopes that don't have much clearance around them.

edit 6 hours later: actually, having just put bots on RR, there's a different problem. Allied rifle bots Leeroy Jenkins the Soviet WF 1 minute into the game at an almost 100% success rate, because I haven't figured out how to make bots defend properly (on any map). But on the one instance where the Allies failed to do that, the game went on relatively normally with practically no blocking, so I think we're good on that at least and it will be a pretty intense bot map once I wrap my head around moonsense's method for making bots defend and repair properly!

[OrangeP47]

11 hours ago, Pushwall said:

However, it's also made me realise that bots in their current state can't really use Mammoth Tanks or APCs properly

Do bots at least know how to use the horn on the APC?

[FRAYDO]

Orange asking the important questions.

Unfortunately, they do not hence the properly.

[moonsense715]

If they are told to use secondary fire against non-intended targets (e.g. air units or whatever), then they can and will use the horn

[Pushwall]

11 minutes ago, moonsense715 said:

If they are told to use secondary fire against non-intended targets (e.g. air units or whatever), then they can and will use the horn

There's not really any "unintended targets" though. Even if they don't stand much of a chance against heavy tanks they should still deal what damage they can as they may not be fighting alone. So they never get to use the horn though it would be possible for them to do so as you said.

[Pushwall]

Well all of a sudden bots on KOTG are just flat out refusing to acknowledge the tesla coil as a valid target. Which makes it pretty impossible for Allies to mount an assault on most of the routes they take. So don't expect to see KOTG bots for a while (unless you want more delays). River Raid is cool though.