[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Bram

Hmm, interesting question, unfortunately I have no answers..


I would probably take a few steps back and think what the automated planets want to accomplish and want restrictions/limitations they have to work in..

yes, something I've been thinking about for a worry

Originally Posted by Bram

Will they be working together? How many of them?
Will they be in an alliance?
Will they have intel on other alliances?
Will they be working together with other alliances?

I'd want them in one or more alliances. I wouldn't want them co-operating with in-game alliances.

I would want them working together - ideally, at least defending each other, if not attacking.

Originally Posted by Bram

The easiest way to gain roids is to bash noobs / planets not in a tag..

This discourages new players. If there are 100-200 bot planets at a similar, level, they would almost become natural targets and take some of the heat off smaller new planets.

Originally Posted by Bram

But that will hardly make the game noob friendly so seems like a bad path for automated planets

Another way could be too mass init roids.. Most alliance - in my limited experience - suffer with defence because members need sleep..
Automated planets do not need this so should be able to cover pretty much every incoming.
If there is a 60 tag alliance of automated planets then it would mean a possible 180 defence fleets.. Landing an attack on that seems difficult...

Letting the automated planets attack other alliances seems a bit trickier..
The best path to a successful attack is to know who you are attacking..
If they have no intel then it would be tricky..
If they have good intel then it might become easier but might still be difficult..

Originally Posted by Herbington

I think I'd add them as an extra nomadic "raiding" race, they swoop into random galaxies and attack, sticking around only long enough for their fleets to attack and return (and so, be retalled). After that, they'd disappear without a trace.

Maybe needs a bit of work on the logistics, but I think any AI player with a permanent planet would be roided fairly regularly and thus not provide many benefits.

My idea would be:

1) make bot planets that can initiate roids and do research/construction (somewhat coded, but needs tweaking, especially with the "new" shortened startup stuff to allocate, and also better logic for which research/construction to build)

2) make the bot planets produce reasonable ships -> no idea how to do this, currently it's a hardcoded thing and means each round someone has to manually allocate ships for the bots to randomly build. this is not wanted and why we removed the bot planets.
3) get some sort of basic combat understanding (so, at a minimum, they can hide their ships if it's worthwhile doing so).
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After this, there's the potential for putting the bots back.
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4) get the bots to defend each other "sometimes".

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advanced credit:
5) get the bots to attack based on (????) - worried if they end up deciding winning alliance, etc

I'd put bots in their own galaxies - either in a separate cluster (e.g. c100) or in galaxies mixed up with actual galaxies, if the bots were good enough. I don't think I'd ever mix them with human galaxies.


Edit:
So, back to the original point, what's the best way to look at identifying research/construction patterns?