[DISCUSS]Bot Plannets

[Qdeathstar]

Being that we are facing dwindling numbers.. and bot planets have existed in the past.. .why not bring them back, although under new managment OFC..

As a way to make the game funner, both with more targets/attackers... why not add bot planets which attack/defend/build in our universe. As these are bot-planets, not real planets, they will have no fear of attacking bigger planets. Infact, the bigger you are, the more chance of getting attacked.

Additionaly there ticks could be 1/2 as much as normal planets..

This would add a challange to the game, as well as give the foundation for a playable-single-player demo that would spread the word. Instead of having to use Jolt's suver to give people a game, instead give them the demo they can play on there computer.

I really think this a good idea, although i does change what planetarion is (ofc) but, i mean, as PAteam has said.. a change is indeed needed

If its successfull enough, the demo, perhaps you may eventually be able to make it an addon to PA.. so people can play pa even when they are way from there internet connection..

THe biggest benifit would be that you would be able to submit it to places like fileplanet and gameshippo... ect

But the bots would be in game as well, to make the whole game more fun, and cut down on power blocking.. i think

[Appocomaster]

I think I've already suggested somewhere making planetarion a releaseable game on the shelves, and if it were to go that way, tbh, this would be the best way of doing it - an official version, free limited demo (of say 400 ticks) and offline versions. it's a possibility.

But bot planets might work, to beef up the players if nothing else. it'd add to the server load, obviously, and there would have to be real limits set up on what they could / couldn't do (i.e. all suddenly 'randomly' launch on the top gal), but it might be if nothing else part of the future

[Qdeathstar]

im saying to stop power blocks the higher your score, the more often you get attacked...

[Qdeathstar]

im not saying that my suggestion about makeing a releasable game is new, that was an afterthought.. im maining thinking about bot planets themselves.

[AndroX]

Ive been thinking this over with some mate(s).

The basic idea of those planets is really good imo.

Altho we feared that people would use these planets as farms. We expanded that idea a bit,
and came to a conclusion that if you put these 'fake' planets in a 'fake' alliance, then they can also defend eachother in some way. This to make sure those planets aint being used as farms by 2/3 of the pa players. ( not that the caping will be succesfull when 100 people attack at the same time, but still) The only thing that those planets should have is a mass load of wave blockers/jammers. So that the players cant scan them to get the coord list of this 'fake' alliance.

anyways, just some thoughts to add to this neat idea.

[mist]

Bots have been thought about, and a few details discussed. However, it because apparent there would be a large amount of design and coding required, while at this stage we're more worried about coding the game and bits needed to support it. hence bots are rather low on the list of priorities

-mist

[AndroX]

ya, but doesnt mean we can build up an nice discussion about things for (perhaps) the future of the game, right?

[dabult]

Call the fake alliance Borg?

[Qdeathstar]

well, i mean..the planets coords cood change daily.. like in the matrix, where they simply reloaded things everyday..

I know it takes a lot of coding.. but it would be neet wouldnt it :-)

The reason they wouldnt be used as farms is because they would defend/attack each other..

[Qdeathstar]

and they would be super-active.. and could always get defence.. makeing them hard targets..

[Killerbij]

It all sounds nice in theory; but if you are losing roids to a botplanet you won't be too happy with this feature. I guess you could use these bot planets to just target the top 1000 planets, but even then there will always be rumors that PA-crew coded the bots unfairly.

Remember what happened when in rnd 10 the research of an item suddenly was completed (or was it a construction; doesnt matter anyways). Quite a few people complained that they were at an disadvantage compared to others. Even when using random numbers there will always be accusations that these wont be picked fairly. If you want a bigger playerbase just let free planets join with limitations (I think that is the planning for rnd 11 anyways). I know there will be cheaters but at least these can be rightfully closed and PA can't be blamed for other people cheating.

[Andy_r]

I posted something similar to this idea back in about round 6, when the shrinking universe and lack of 'n00b' players was causing a lot of stagnation.

Basically, I suggested using bot planets to allow outside regulation of the flow of roids into the universe. PA has always has a problem that as the game goes on it beomes less and less worthwhile to capture roids, since fleets sizes grow exponentially but the total number or roids in the universe is virtually constant once everyone has got past the initiation stage. My bot planets would never attack or defend, they would just have sit there building ships once every few days, and initiating roids whenever the creators thought the universe was getting a bit dull.

This would also have taken a lot of the pressure off new players joining mid round, and people who had been bashed, since they could easily attack the bots knowing they would not be defended.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Andy_r

This would also have taken a lot of the pressure off new players joining mid round, and people who had been bashed, since they could easily attack the bots knowing they would not be defended.

Which in turn could of course lead to larger planets farming the bots

[gzambo]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Which in turn could of course lead to larger planets farming the bots

maybe but u could get past that by decresing the score limit on the bot planets

eg
bot planet 1= score 1 million can only be attacked by planets smaller than 2 million

would stop the bigger planets from gaining anything as its outside their limit after a few days

[Andy_r]

yes, that was part of the plan, the bot planets should not grow big enough to be hit by people outside the "bashed to bits" and "only just started" categories - which is the reason I specified that they should be following creator's instructions rather than completely automated, it needs need human intervention to determine if the roid supply is too much or too little, which is something that is missing from the current game.

[Leshy]

It's quite likely that top players would keep their planets small, farm bot planets all day long, get a huge roidcount, rely on their alliance for defense (if they're small, they can't be attacked by large planets as a bonus) and when they're near max roids, spend their millions of galaxy fund stored resources and continue to grow off of their 6k roids.

[Qdeathstar]

Leshy.. how can you keep yourself small, farm the bot planets (which in my implimation would be able to get defence from other bot planets) and get a huge amount of roids (which by the way would make your planet big) and still be a top 100 planet?

[mist]

wasn't one of pax's top 20 someone who'd stayed small the whole round and used covert ops to build up a huge galfund, before spending it right at the end and gaining loads of points?

same point with bot planets i guess

-mist
please note, the views expressed in this post are those of the individual concerned, only. they may well be wrong, infact, they're probably wrong.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

Leshy.. how can you keep yourself small, farm the bot planets (which in my implimation would be able to get defence from other bot planets) and get a huge amount of roids (which by the way would make your planet big) and still be a top 100 planet?

Who says anything about needing to be a Top 100 planet while getting roids?

Or do you think someone with 6000 roids who starts to spend his income and stockpiled resources isn't going to overtake a top 100 planet with 2000 roids?

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by Leshy

It's quite likely that top players would keep their planets small, farm bot planets all day long, get a huge roidcount, rely on their alliance for defense (if they're small, they can't be attacked by large planets as a bonus) and when they're near max roids, spend their millions of galaxy fund stored resources and continue to grow off of their 6k roids.

Bot planets need to be watched over by gamemasters. Some tools surveying roidflow can spot this kind of farming and they should exist anyway with the multihunting tools. I did that for PA and it delivered some really interesting connections

If you look at the comment from Zeus, that selling 2 accounts at once lead to much more multiing in that round, you know that you need some tool like that anyway to spot the ppl using 2 or 3 planets because of the way how credits are sold again.

And on a sidenote - just like battle calculators, alliance sites, irc bots and a lot other tools, bot planets have been done in the community long ago. I mean real ones and not those who listen to someone giving commands (http://www.codersger.de/bot3.gif - see how old it is by now, if you can

[mist]

Originally Posted by Ramihyn

bot planets have been done in the community long ago. I mean real ones and not those who listen to someone giving commands (http://www.codersger.de/bot3.gif - see how old it is by now, if you can

if you've got any design docs i'd be interested to see them, for my own interest

-mist

[cypher]

Originally Posted by Leshy

It's quite likely that top players would keep their planets small, farm bot planets all day long, get a huge roidcount, rely on their alliance for defense (if they're small, they can't be attacked by large planets as a bonus) and when they're near max roids, spend their millions of galaxy fund stored resources and continue to grow off of their 6k roids.

personally i would NEVER EVER do that to get to the top:PPPPP

heh it's so funny... people are still so naive to think people save resources for any other reason then to roid smaller people?

everyone always does it...every round...

[Qdeathstar]

does that really happen? I didnt know. its a Fascinating strategy indeed.. alhough, wouldnt it make you a target?

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

does that really happen? I didnt know. its a Fascinating strategy indeed.. alhough, wouldnt it make you a target?

Of course it would make you a target. But the smaller you remain, the less people who can hit you. If you're only about 750.000 in score, only planets smaller than 3.750.000 can hit you. Considering many players in small alliances manage to get that score fairly easily (let alone people in bigger alliances), the amount of people that can hit you is fairly low.

And those planets that do try to hit you are small, hence have little ships, and are easy to defend against by your alliance or galaxy mates who are several millions in networth.

[RealJames]

I must say, having read through, I am in Leshy's corner. It would be very difficult to make bot planets that were just right, and moreover the coders have more important things on their plate. Given they would run by a formula there would be some who would figure out how to exploit it. Players would not play the game, they'd play the bots.

Taking it from a different standpoint, the game has survived because of the community that has grown around it. If you start introducing these drones it will take away from this.

[Qdeathstar]

well.. i mean.. i dont know, i thought it might be a way for there to be less powerblocking and more lively attacking..

But your right about the effect they would have on the game.. and the fact that unless they are coded 100% perfect it would be disaster... Good thoughts..

Perhaps we could still do that for a launchable demo?

[Qdeathstar]

damn.. that is a lot of code.. (just by judging at the scroll).

Originally Posted by Ramihyn
bot planets have been done in the community long ago. I mean real ones and not those who listen to someone giving commands (http://www.codersger.de/bot3.gif - see how old it is by now, if you can

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by RealJames

I must say, having read through, I am in Leshy's corner. It would be very difficult to make bot planets that were just right, and moreover the coders have more important things on their plate.

IMHO :

PA is mostly just a game about numbers. A relatively few number of ppl at the top, attacks and roids a relatively large number below them. When the universe had 180k planets (not players , it wasnt such a problem as the average planet wasnt hit over and over again. The fewer players existed, the less fun it became to be at the bottom. The score/player distribution shows a clear pyramid and the roidflow generally goes from the bottom to the top.

Any try to add bot controlled planets into such a universe, was for me just to give the human players at the bottom targets _AND_ spread the hostilities from bigger players towards the broad mass of players at the bottom a bit. The first and most important thing a bot-planet should achieve, is relieving human players from beeing the bottom of the foodchain and giving the smallest human players a "easy" chance to have their own success.

Bot controlled planets in a PA universe would at first only imitate the behaviour of single, un-allied, occasional human players. Then you simulate the "behaviour" of a communication channel between a certain percentage of the bot-planets (like 20% of the bot planets act like they are on irc while playing). Like a virtual irc channel named "bots". So these 20% of bot planets would have a certain chance of getting defence from other bot-planets which are on this virtual communication channel and "active" at that time and also for example 40% of the active bot planets on the communication channel which dont have hostile incoming, can team up with other bot planets to attack someone. Chances could for example be (41 - N*20) for a teamed up attack where N is the number of bot planets which already join the attack. So the chance would be 41% for a 2 planet attack, 12.6% for a 3 planet attack and 0.126% for a 4 planet attack.

Adjust these values at will and put for example 4 pre-composed fleet-combinations towards any of the attack-types (1, 2, 3 or 4 planet attack). Choose by random between the compositions which are fullfilled by the available fleet and apply a slight random variation of the fleet numbers. Basically just simulate known standard behaviour of players and it is very easy/straightforward.

Do a appropriate target aquisition (avoid bashing of player planets etc.) and the bot planets will only influence the bottom end of the planets. They are mainly just fodder for human players. If you look at other games, you usually have low-end enemies which are played by the computer (NPC's). Human players usually slash those NPCs for a while and work their way up in experience and size/skills and once they are at a certain level, they start to target the more difficult enemies -> human players (PC's). On every MMORPG i can think about right now, there is this bottom layer of NPC's or "bot's" and i cant think of any right now, where this bottom layer doesnt exist.

Somehow historically PA never had these - which wasnt a problem with the huge number of planets PA once had.

Originally Posted by RealJames

Given they would run by a formula there would be some who would figure out how to exploit it. Players would not play the game, they'd play the bots.

The universe and the interaction with those bot-controlled planets, need to be constantly watched over. The chances and attackstyles, the self-imposed limits (we dont want a bot planet in top-5), the sizes etc. - they all are likely to be slightly adjusted during a round to fit the universes need.

As in other RPG's, players only combat the NPCs at the beginning - they dont provide enough fun nor enough income to win a game or become a top-char/planet. In PA this would simply be solved by artificially reducing the bot planets size and having a attack limit - also the bot planets can simply be dried of resources if exploitation happens - and they wont even quit because the game is very much unfun for them

Originally Posted by RealJames

Taking it from a different standpoint, the game has survived because of the community that has grown around it. If you start introducing these drones it will take away from this.

Does this mean you will consider bot-controlled planets once PA has finally completely died? Look at the usernumbers through the rounds - defending the status quo on the base that it is so successfull in making PA survive, is probably a dangerous position ...

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

damn.. that is a lot of code.. (just by judging at the scroll).

31.221 lines C for alliance site, public site, statistics tools, admin-tools, bot-code and other stuff. Another 6.621 lines in a irc bot interface so you can for example relay all infos into a IRC DCC chat while others controll the stuff through webpages. It gets most game-relevant infos from datafiles since it was ported from PA to 2 other clones and then backported to PA for rd9 (but never really used then).

Im certain i had some 30 lines of documentation somewhere - i guess my hamster ate it

[AllFather|away]

Bot planets sounds fun.
I got lots of experience with multitasking, so I could be paid to run them.

[Remy]

stupid idea

[JammyJim]

AI is being used in so many games now to simulate players i dont see why its such a bad idea tbh. However theory and practice are usually quite distant from eachother. It would require some masterful programming to make sure they wernt just farms or evolved in a matrix style super alliance.

[Qdeathstar]

It would require some masterful programming to make sure they wernt just farms or evolved in a matrix style super alliance

ofc.....

stupid idea

thanks for the magnitude of thought..

[CrashTester]

I posted this idea way back in round 2. Noone listened then and I doubt they will now.

Anyhow, the original idea I posted said that only the top 10 would be targetted. Having regular attacks against the top 10 would help stall their growth and the bot planets would provide a target for anyone wanting to launch an attack with a spare fleet.

This seems to be the best eay to take roids from the bigger top 10 planets and allowing smaller ones to take them.

But the game is much different now and the top 10 isnt as big as they used to be.

[Tollers]

Maybe you don't need bots at all.

Perhaps you could just get a few new people on the pa crew, perhaps ex winners. Not let them have their own planet but give them either one planet with amazing ships or control a few different planets. They could could pick whatever travel time they wanted to reach a planet and could scan whole galaxies at a time for free to see if the fleets present at the planets. Their main job could be to occasionally attack the bigger planets to control the sizes a bit. Also they would defend planets who were recieving no defence a lot.

Obviously there would have to be some kind of supervision of these planets to make sure there is no foul play. And the controller of the planet would have to back up the defences and attacks he does.

This would surely help balance and bashing and various other things. Not even much coding needed, just some new types of scans and ships.

[Qdeathstar]

Youve got to be kidding me. Adding subjectiveness to the outcome of the game is not the kind of thing that would do us any good. Most previous players will have ties to an alliance or something that will /slur/ there judgements, no matter how objective they try to be, or how many ::safeguards:: (which you didnt name) we have.

It needs to be entirly random, now, if you want to restrict their targeting to the top 50 planets or something, thats fine... but random within its boundries.

[Qdeathstar]

I also would thing combat should be fair no matter who you are, otherwise whats the point :-/ .

[Stew]

Why not limit the gal fund!!?

[Qdeathstar]

what does that hafta do with botS? (or did i miss something)

[wakey]

Adding NPC's to the game is imho getting into very dangourous territory. You have two ways of doing things either a) having the NPC's as farms or b) having them as skilled players who will keep the big players under control.

Now option a certainly sounds good at first as it gives the small players sources of easy roids but when you look at it greater it has worryinf consequences to the game play. You see what is great about PA is the humanb interaction and compitition, real people are just superior competotors than most machines can ever be and are much less predictable. The introduction of NPC's however is going to make the game at the lower end alot more about playing against the computer as these NPC's will no doubt be as they are to the big players, easy targets. We risk having a game where wave after wave after wave will head to the NPC's while those around them are ignored because they are less predicable and thus results arent as certain. These easy roids are then going to make all the small players look like great tragets to the bigger players who are going to find their bashing runs more and more profitable. Ultimatly the roids of teh NPC's will just end up in the hands of the big players. It just doesnt seem to acheive anything.

Now option b also has aspects which sound good at first but again I have to wonder about the benifts in practice. For starters when we are talking about introducing AI into the game we arent thinking about the type of real AI that we see in the likes of Big Blue as such systems arent available for projects of this scale, we are really talking about the Pseduo AI that games use to make it mimic real actions and while this is all well and good its ultimatly just a set of algorithms which dont offer the NPC's any really inteligence and this makes them reconsiable and predicable which mekes them flawed. They will stand out like a sore thumb and once you have gained some knowledge of there behaviour will be a simple process to defeat as they have no way of adapting to the actions of the player. What exactly are these then going to acheive? Pretty much nothing.

And their planets offer even more problems for the game, the have a chance of becoming easy farms for the big players due to the predicablity of them,, only way really to acheive this is either keep theor rroids so low that theres no point attacking or ban attacking of them but then what exactly is the point of planet as it adds nothing to the game.

The day where everyone has access to AI modules that can have your 'program' acting on its own I will be in favour of adding bots but until then it seems pointless even trying to as they will just cause more problems than they solve

[Chika]

Originally Posted by wakey

Adding NPC's to the game is imho getting into very dangourous territory. You have two ways of doing things either a) having the NPC's as farms or b) having them as skilled players who will keep the big players under control.

Now option a certainly sounds good at first as it gives the small players sources of easy roids but when you look at it greater it has worryinf consequences to the game play. You see what is great about PA is the humanb interaction and compitition, real people are just superior competotors than most machines can ever be and are much less predictable. The introduction of NPC's however is going to make the game at the lower end alot more about playing against the computer as these NPC's will no doubt be as they are to the big players, easy targets. We risk having a game where wave after wave after wave will head to the NPC's while those around them are ignored because they are less predicable and thus results arent as certain. These easy roids are then going to make all the small players look like great tragets to the bigger players who are going to find their bashing runs more and more profitable. Ultimatly the roids of teh NPC's will just end up in the hands of the big players. It just doesnt seem to acheive anything.

Now option b also has aspects which sound good at first but again I have to wonder about the benifts in practice. For starters when we are talking about introducing AI into the game we arent thinking about the type of real AI that we see in the likes of Big Blue as such systems arent available for projects of this scale, we are really talking about the Pseduo AI that games use to make it mimic real actions and while this is all well and good its ultimatly just a set of algorithms which dont offer the NPC's any really inteligence and this makes them reconsiable and predicable which mekes them flawed. They will stand out like a sore thumb and once you have gained some knowledge of there behaviour will be a simple process to defeat as they have no way of adapting to the actions of the player. What exactly are these then going to acheive? Pretty much nothing.

And their planets offer even more problems for the game, the have a chance of becoming easy farms for the big players due to the predicablity of them,, only way really to acheive this is either keep theor rroids so low that theres no point attacking or ban attacking of them but then what exactly is the point of planet as it adds nothing to the game.

The day where everyone has access to AI modules that can have your 'program' acting on its own I will be in favour of adding bots but until then it seems pointless even trying to as they will just cause more problems than they solve

True indeed. Thats the first notion that comes to mind. Farms. I personally, would find a bot planet or planets that i could easily roid. Why not? this would then lean to someone earlier statement (i didn't feel like quoting and I forgot the name of the person who said it) that people would "play the bot and not the game". Which would totally take away from the community aspect of the game. i see nothing but problems in this idea.

[Qdeathstar]

I think that option B was what i was looking at.

IF you used a random-number-generator to

Choose: Ships
Choose: Targets
Choose: Attack Times

Say, S, T, and A

Then you could just make a program to

Attack T at A with S ships

You can set limits with Random number generators, so it would be less predictable.

And defence is usually always predictable, so you dont have to worry about that so much.

[Qdeathstar]

What Wakey is saying is that we dont have a good enough programmer to make it work :-/

[mist]

i think what wakey's saying is that bots are always going to be predictable, even if they use random numbers those numbers are going to be within specific bounds.

coding bots isn't that hard, getting them to play the game to work well, and to act like human players is a lot more tricky. however, not impossible.

-mist

[Andy_r]

My idea was that they would never attack at all, just sit there and initiate roids, and build ships/do constructions and researches.

Players joining after tick start would be given one of these planets, so they would be starting from a reasonable level, not stuck with no tech or factories when everyone else has battleships.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

What Wakey is saying is that we dont have a good enough programmer to make it work :-/

While thats true in a way its not an attack on the coders here, its just simply the case that theres very few people in this world with the ability to really pull it off. The closest this world really has to a computer system that acts like a human, learns from its actions ect are those chess playing computers that are regularry put up agaisnt the chess masters and these are systems with immense processing power, loads of money behind them and someof the best programmers and scientific and mathamaticals mind around. The type of stuff avaiable in the commercial market just doesnt come close to the level need for NPC's to interact in a MM enviorment. While we might be able to have fun playing single player games and their AI routines can be the best commercially avaiable it doesnt take long to figure out their tactics and once youve done that the game opens up. Throw such NPC's into a multiplayer game and your risking sticking a sign on them saying "Roid Farm open for business". The bots will stand out and the players will break there tactics in very little time and then you have problems.

As for Andy_r's idea, while I can see it being great for new players its going to be a bit demoralising for the small players isnt it. I just have to think back to how annoyed I was with the fact for most of the round those players in the free universe and the alliances in the free universe were outranking me and my alliance when they were playing a game where they had no compitition. Your ideas going to bring about the same problem in the fact that players joining later are going to get these boosts that those who played from the start dont get and they will initially gain a ranking much higher than and theres a very good chance that this ranking will be higher for the whole round. It just doesnt seem fair and really doesnt give the smaller players much of a reason to contibue playing as your pushing them further down the rankings

HOWEVER i do think your idea MIGHT work if a certain change went ahead that was discussed elsewhere..... That change being one to a true score/honour ranking system where your ranking depends not on how many ships you might have sitting around but on your acheivements in the game (as explained on the thread on suggestions polls ships are potential score, it doesnt make sense really that you get points for having the ships and not using them, points should be given for how and how well you use them). In this case they wouldnt start with a high ranking as they havent acheived anything BUT wouldnt be disadvanatged by having no tech or ships when they start the game

[Qdeathstar]

Yeah mist,

It can be predicted that some ammount of ships will attack a planet at sometime.

THe boundries were to pick higher score planets... so it would be unpredictable... because there would be nothing to predict...

how can you predict three values? Target, Ships, Time.

[mist]

how can you calculate 100+ values associated with ship stats... oh, wait, people did

with enough data, it's possible to work out the trends behind pretty much anything, once those are known it's possible to extrapolate what will happen next, resulting in an attempt to play the system

however, isn't that what people are doing anyway? rather than playing the system they're attempting to play the other players. players are also pretty predictable and, with a few exceptions, can be relied on to do pretty much the same thing every time you poke them. hence, why are bots which act the same such a bad thing?

-mist

[Qdeathstar]

If these planets exist in another demension, where you cannot attack them, then they cannot be scanned. Its impossible to know what kind of ships they have, or what they are doing with newsscan, ect.


Therefore, at any time, because of a random number generator, any number of ships could exist on the bot-planet acrross races. It could have terran, xan, and carth, all in one fleet. IT would be impossible to know what ships are in it, because the ships would be assigned a number, and then all ship-types are given numbers, (ie 1-21), then set a limit on a number generator to run for 10 times, at a limit of 1-21. Then it picks 10 ships out of the list to add to an attack. Then re-number those ships 1 through 10, and have a random number generator run 10 times, with a limit 100-10000. WHen that runs 10 times, you'll have the number of ships. Next, picking a target. YOu need to get the cords of the top 25 planets, (which can be done with a program), then run the random number generator, with its limit at 1-25, where its choice is the target. To find the time, make a list of 10 minute intervals (72time slots),, assign them a number 1-72, and run the number generator with its limits at 1-72, where the number chose correlates with the time of launch. Thats all you have to do. The only information you could get from this would be the min and max number of ships bots send. And what 10 min intererval they are sent on. (0-10-20, 1-11-21, 2-12-22, ect) but other than that its impossible to know what the number of ships will be, when the fleet will launched, what types of ships are in the attack, or who will be atttacked, exept for it will be somone in the top 25...

[wakey]

Theres a problem with your random numbers idea

Lets say i'm the number 1 planet. The bots decide to attack me but the random number multiplier for the ships comes out low and for the eta high giving me incoming of just a few k of small flak ships on a high eta which is easierly defended.

Now If i'm planet ranked 150 and the bots decide to attack me it could easierly end up with a high ship multiplier and a low eta multiplier facing me with 20k big ships incoming at me a very low eta which i dont have a chance of defending.

This imho goes beyond being unpredictable and into the realms of being foolhardy, someone doing something unpredictable has normally required some thought on the situation and the unpredicatble tactic has been something they have thought might tip the balance, in this case theres none of that its a case of a couple of numbers have been picked out deciding the size and eta of the fleet with attacking tactics totally ignored. These figures will 99% of the time be totally unsuitable for the mission the bots have gone on and either result in a planet being hit hard (some may say they deserve it but hey i dont think being bashed by bots will be well received) or the attack being little more than a small nuscience (and quite possible something which would boost the planets score under certain scoring techiniques)

To make this work you have to then add lots of conditions to adapt to the target (things like "if $shipssent >= $planetsships then { $shipssent=$planetships*0.75}) so you dont end up with such poorly balanced attacks and the more things like this you add the easier it gets to predict them and hence makes them worthless.

These bots really need to be coded with some inteligence so they can go out to challenge the players and have a possability to complete their goal of doing a small amount of damage to the big players which your system just isnt going to allow.

As for hiding the ships numbers/makeup, isnt that a bit pointless. Your just gonna make everyone run the ships from the bot planets so they become little more than a system that turns up from time to time to steal some roids, if thats what you want we may as well have roids coded with some kind of timer so they run out of resources (bigger you are quicker they run out)

Anyway back to trying to get my head around mists suggestion he pm'd me