How would you do a pa bot??

[MrLobster]

Ok there have been years of people creating bots for PA, most are just for constantly watching for incoming. But a few have actually had minimal inteligence (how much i do not know).

Now if PA was to include bots (As Players not account watchers), to help the player base, how would you like them to behave.

List what you would like to do.

[ArchsteR]

To start I'd say they have to have a bell curve of random skill levels, with different tactics/strategy's used by skill level. For example, above average bots would be able to fake fleets (e.g. DE masked as BS) and fake attack. They would have to be able to defend themselves to some degree. Perhaps the skill level would be slightly influenced by their score in relation to the rest of the bot planets. That way the top scoring bot would be one of the highest skilled.

Mabye they would have to be sorted into an alliance or two, depending on alliance side. Or perhaps because they are bots they would just be in one huge alliance, but no show up on the alliance rankings.

Would it be a good idea that a bot planet can only get defence for itself if a player reported the incomings? That would mean players/bots in the same galaxy, but we could also have entirely seperate galaxies. That way they wouldn't have to join an alliance, they would just play with their galaxy.

I've just gotten my tonsils out so all of this could be the drugs talking. That's just what I've thought of off the top of my head. I'll check back tomorrow and contribute/comment more.

[mist]

it depends what you want the bots to do really.

if you're wanting bots to act as targets for those who're at the bottom of the food chain then they need to be able to initiate roids, build a few ships, possibly organise some defence - tho not really neccessarily, i guess it'd be dull if it were too easy, but then again the point of them is to provide easy roids so it can't exactly be hard...

if you're wanting bots that simulate human players then you need to start looking at having them 'understand' the tech tree, and to choose specific rolls such as scanners, cov-oppers etc etc. they need to be able to understand fleet composition and react to the fleet composition of others. you probably need some form of bot alliance system (i think having all the bots in one alliance would be a little much). you'd probably need to simulate activity somehow, probably give each bot an activity and sleep pattern. basically, you'd be looking at a fairly complex project.

the problem tho, is how will people react if a bot pwns them? how will people react if a bot alliance fleetcatches the #1 player?

if you're going to have bots at the bottom end to give roids, why not just give the bottom X% of the game free roids every night, and let them attack each other instead, rather than effectivly playing PAOL?

[Remy]

tbh, it wud take away the fun thats left and make a lot of people leave pa

[ArcChas]

Originally Posted by mist

how will people react if a bot alliance fleetcatches the #1 player?

I wouldn't stop laughing for a week........... (at least).

[Intruder]

<Teddy_bear>!h waves
<PBOT> Waves are a meaning of you get information about other planets blablabla

<mist>!h BC
<PBOT> An overall Military officer who is generally more specifically focused upon the offensive nature of the game, eg. running attacks.

<WhiteSnake>!s Defense
<PBOT> You should join an alliance so you get better chances of not loosing your roids. Read http://pirate.planetarion.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37 to learn wich alliances are recruiting

<Declan>!s reporting incs
<PBOT> you can report incs by coping the incoming line on Galaxy status and then <PBOT> pasting into status bar on IRC. You must check galaxy forums or overview <PBOT>to see the channel where you must report and add before galstatus in order<PBOT> the channel receives info about incomming and the target allies defend
<PBOT> him. example: /msg #defchan 1:1:1 1:2:3 Alpha Xan 1000 Attack 7

[Sad]

bots are always abusable, It has been tried in another game and they had to change it 100 time mid round coz everything they sort the players find some other way to abuse the bots...

[Cannon_Fodder]

Bots in bush******* seem to work, and to answer mist, i rather doubt the bots would be big enough to threaten the #100 let alone the #1. A multihunter or someone could check over the bots to see players arent abusing them..

p.s. if they were implemented, they would be given a normal name like an average person would they not?

[Heartless]

I would make the bots being scriptable instead of them being 100% ai-driven... even though it should not be too hard to make them ai-driven for an easy game as planetarion

[Ramihyn]

Bots work in all kind of games - in fact in nearly all games you can buy. I never understood why people thought PA is the only game where they wouldnt work and for those who "really" would quit when bots would be introduced (and actually work instead of beeing a badly done quick first-time experiment) - those numbers are for sure a small fraction of those non-allied planets whose game is completely uninteresting because of constant incoming and not much way of hitting "somebody" themselves without getting some alliance on their back.

Most games actually have some PC->NPC element - that PA doesnt have it, is an exception.

If there is a recoding done with PAN now, IMHO it is a SERIOUS mistake not implementing an easy way to add "bots" but i sadly expect it to happen among one other serious mistake which keeps getting repeated.

[mist]

i think it'd be a fair challenge to make it difficult to add bots at a later date, tbh. they can interact with the DB pretty much independantly of the rest of the game.

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by mist

i think it'd be a fair challenge to make it difficult to add bots at a later date, tbh. they can interact with the DB pretty much independantly of the rest of the game.

Bad idea - but \o/

[mist]

why's it a bad idea?

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by mist

why's it a bad idea?

Basically because it would exclude any community participation because accessing the holy database would be off topic and hard to restrict/control. That would mean that it is hardly likely to happen "soon" or have much man hours invested which means its more likely to be seen as a bad idea since "it doesnt work".

[mist]

jolt won't, or at least wouldn't, allow any community written code on its servers anyway. if you want to help you have to sign an nda, and then all your codes are belong to them. as such, i don't see it being a problem*

that asside, i don't think making bots seperate to the game is a bad idea anyway. the alternative would be to have them interact with the game's pages, which would mean bots had to be changed every time a page was updated. i suppose you could set up a middleware style layer, which presents the database to any would be bot code in a secure fashion, but that'd still be pretty independant of the game itself, and should be doable using DB views** and access controls, surely?

*well, any more of a problem than jolt's lack of clue anyway.
** assuming that mysql supports views, but i'd be surprised if it doesn't nowadays.

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by mist

that asside, i don't think making bots seperate to the game is a bad idea anyway. the alternative would be to have them interact with the game's pages, which would mean bots had to be changed every time a page was updated. i suppose you could set up a middleware style layer, which presents the database to any would be bot code in a secure fashion, but that'd still be pretty independant of the game itself, and should be doable using DB views** and access controls, surely?

You can interface with PA without having to change code everytime the pages change - did that with my bot during several rounds and it was surprisingly compatible (which means that under the hood the changes wherent really that big). I implemented a socket communication protocol in another clone to efficiently talk with my bot code and still think its a good way to do it. You can easily control the communication and restrict it depending on who connects from where and dont have to deal with exploits or side-effects manipulating the game data which would likely happen if you export any kind of SQL interface towards the database.

[mist]

the socket interface i agree with, but i'm unsure why it can't be added much later, with little referece to the game pages.