[Declined] Computer Players

[Troglodyte]

Ok this is WAY out there, but I’m bored so what the hell.

Randomly create planets that are scattered across the universe that are computer players. Build up an Artificial Intelligence engine that to start off with can research; build fleets the whole tootie, and eventually do co-ordinated attacks, defence etc.

I think this could take PA to a whole new era, where the human plebs could face an invasion of PA Cyborgs. (Maybe I’ve watched a bit too many Star Track episodes :P)

Ps. I would make the AI engine open source where the development community can create the engine and keep adding enhancements. the PA team would have to create an API though or even a series of web-services.


Could be an Interesting idea for the future?

[TheRat]

Ive always been a fan of the idea, and several other games use it (hattrick is an example). But The community has turned it down time after time.

[Troglodyte]

sorry for the repeat thread then:-(

(i tried to find a similar thred but have come up empty)

[arbondigo]

I believe you started a thread with a similar idea before Troglodyte. And if it wasn't you, you definitely posted in it and basically got rejected.

[Troglodyte]

Not that i can recall, the one i got rejected was Nuking your planet (No idea why that got rejected *sarc),

oh, i did mention once that maybe building an open source BOT, but that had more to do with automating tasks :P

[JC]

It was looked at by PA team when i was around but got pushed to one side because of the huge amount of work it would require and the lack of people that could undertake such a task.

To make it of any real use you would have to have thousands of bots each with differing intelligence and so the ability to range from top 100 to bottom 100 planets. You'ld have to think abour having bot alliances too, otherwise every single bot planet would simply become a farm.

[Troglodyte]

Firstly, make it open source ..make the community develop it.. if it takes a couple of years ...who cares.

Secondly, the Computer Players will all belong to the same alliance (i'm making this up as i go along)
i dont know if they should be in the same gals or not, i guess thats up for debate.
Evenually most people would not even know that they are Compter Players.

[Troglodyte]

I dont know about the PA architecture though, if there is a good abstraction layer then it would be pretty easy. I mean right now it's pretty simple to write a BOT, but to do it the legal way would be a much better option .....

[TheRat]

Im actually having to agree with Troglodyte.. It could add another aspect of gameplay to planetarion. Fight the mechanics, while doing individual wars. As for the coding, Id be willing do help out, for free. Sounds like a challange, and thats what I love.

Dont just push this aside as an idea that would never work, it could be the only way of adding a ton of planets to the gameplay, something we know we would all love.

[Troglodyte]

I would help out too... wrote a bot in round 4, was the best fun i ever had *grin*

[JC]

Originally Posted by Troglodyte

Firstly, make it open source ..make the community develop it.. if it takes a couple of years ...who cares.

The chances are someone would try to abuse it somehow if it was made open source. I'm no IT expert, but i'm sure someone would find something to do if they had the code at hand.

Secondly, the Computer Players will all belong to the same alliance (i'm making this up as i go along)
i dont know if they should be in the same gals or not, i guess thats up for debate.
Evenually most people would not even know that they are Compter Players.

Having thousands* of bots in the same alliance seems rather stupid to me. It would be better to have the smaller, weaker bots in a small/medium sized alliance or 2 and the better bots in a few stronger alliances. These alliances could possible then join wars with human alliances so that they are completely integrated into the game.

Maybe i'm over complicating things here but i think you are looking at this far too simply for it to work. My house mate last year graduated with a Comp sci BSc and thought about doing something along these for his final year project. It wasnt going to be integrated with human players, but it would have had hundreds (not thousands) of bots integrating with each other, each having differing abilities/intelligence etc. He decided it was far too much work (he had a whole year for this) and probably beyond his capabilities if he wanted to complete it properly. He is damn good at coding. Like i said before i have very little knowledge of anything relating to coding, but i would assume if my mate looks at his simpler possible project as too demanding then the coders in PA team (not sure who can code in PA team these days, nor how capable they are) would struggle taking on such a task as this when it takes them long enough to sort out a new round.




*If you want to do this properly it would be stupid to only have hundreds of bots. The whole point of this is to make a large universe again with an equally large roid sink.

[TheRat]

Yes, you are overcomplicating things. And no, pacrew could not handle it on their own. And yes, this community is filled with capable coders, and no, opensource is not a security risk - rather the opposite.

[mist]

the bots reached the end of specification, and some early design work was done.

the community didn't seem particularly thrilled by the idea of them, and jolt didn't want them. jolt won't accept open source code contributions. if you want to code for them (for free) you've got to sign an nda, the terms of which are rediculous to say the least.

-mist

[Blixxard]

There are bots ready to use (it seems)

I am unsure to the complexity of them. As mist said I don't think the community will be thrilled about having them.

[Conall]

Hmmm Bots playing PA - here come the Borg

[Troglodyte]

Its perfectly safe...

To ensure integrity and make the PA team need to write an API or Web services. (PA and only the PA team owns the API code, there should be no other way to access the system)

[Open Source AI Engine + DB ] ---> [API] ------> [PA]


The API will expose methods like:
InitiateRoids ( string strPlanetCoOrds, int IntMetal, int intCrystal…..
InitateContrsuction(….
InitiateResearch(….
OrderShips(….
Etc etc..
Ps(I personnaly would encapsulate the api in web services, this way the development community could start on the project by using the WSDL file’s way before the api is finished)


The AI engine would sit within the PA environment, no external calls allowed. Therefore it would be safe. The Beta community will analyze the version of the engine, once they are happy they can move the engine into live, and so the process is repeated and repeated until the ‘Borg’ are serious contenders.


The only real questions are...

is there capacity for the PA team to create an abstraction layer (API / WEbservices) ?

and

Would the community want to play with the Borg as opposition ? {poll anyone]

[I am Idler]

Originally Posted by TheRat

Ive always been a fan of the idea, and several other games use it (hattrick is an example). But The community has turned it down time after time.

its being removed because planetarion evolves around what humans do, and when.

and not on random factors like AI launches and recalls that will make little sense in a larger picture.
I like to play against people, not machines

[Appocomaster]

but the machines have roids!
stagnation occurs when all the big active players have the most roids, and most of the other targets are unattractive as they dont have enough roids as they can't get enough themselves ... and so on down to the bottom players having few roids.
if the bottom rung especially had more roids... everyone would

[I am Idler]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

but the machines have roids!
stagnation occurs when all the big active players have the most roids, and most of the other targets are unattractive as they dont have enough roids as they can't get enough themselves ... and so on down to the bottom players having few roids.
if the bottom rung especially had more roids... everyone would

Im sure the big planets wont come and steal the roids

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by I am Idler

Im sure the big planets wont come and steal the roids

They will. so they have more roids too. thats the point. but it's like, bots giving a neverending supply of reasonably costing roids for smallish players.
(this would mean less coding than having some huge borg-bot army sweeping the universe to battle against humankind )

[JC]

It would be shit just having a load of small bot planets acting as farms for smaller players who then get bashed by larger players. PA team might as well just hand out 100 roids every week to players under 1 million if thats all you are planning bots for.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by JC

It would be shit just having a load of small bot planets acting as farms for smaller players who then get bashed by larger players. PA team might as well just hand out 100 roids every week to players under 1 million if thats all you are planning bots for.

True

[Troglodyte]

no-one said that the bots are going to be easy targets...
but the beuty is... you could make them progressivly harder for better players..

i.e Big player attacks, more defence is organised by the borg
Smaller PLanets attack ...less defence is organised.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Troglodyte

no-one said that the bots are going to be easy targets...
but the beuty is... you could make them progressivly harder for better players..

i.e Big player attacks, more defence is organised by the borg
Smaller PLanets attack ...less defence is organised.

sounds better than my idea

[wakey]

The problem with this idea comes from the AI engine. You need an AI engine that doesnt basiclly put a "THIS IS A BOT" tag on their planets. PA's main asset is the community and the fact we are playing against other people but if you introduce obvious bots your going to find people hitting these more and more often as they are more predicatable. Now the problem is many companies bigger than Jolt have invested alot of money in producing AI engines for their games and yet they still havent cracked it. Half Life 2 for example has a pretty good AI engine BUT the AI still makes many tell tale mistakes that make them weak . And atleast with half life 2 the AI only has to deal with 1 set of variables, an AI for PA would have to deal with thousands of sets of variables Do we really want to have a universe made up of mainly predicatable bots so that tehres very little player on player action, if so why are we even bothering playing this game we may as well stick to single player games.

The other problem is balance, you cant make them too easy else they are just farms but its too simple to make them too tough in an enviorment like this. I mean if we took a snapshot of the universe midround and we had took two players who were almost idenitical they would have differnt levels of whats acceptable. If one was a small 1up for example and the other was a large F-Crew the small 1up's idea of what would be acceptable would no doubt be higher than the f-crewer as the 1up member would have more resources to work with so a differnt view. Now if set it at a level thats ok for 1up your going to no doubt smash the F-Crew members planet potentially scaring them off (after all having another player destroy you is one thing having the game bash you is something totally differnt) BUT set it too low and your leaving it as still a challenge for those in smaller alliances and making it something that doesnt really deserve much worrying about for the larger alliance. Rather than make the game better for the small your making it worse.

[noah02]

pah.
I really like this idea but i doubt it will ever happen and the only other problem is defence.
Because a bot will always get defence in theory.
But then again how will they attack and will they no of defence auto matically and re call re send every hour 24 hours a day?

[Troglodyte]

I was thinking what Wakey was saying and he has a lot of valid points.

However, this would be a long term project and you would start out small, say with one inconspicuous BOT planet i.e. to limit farming, and see how the BOT fares.

I would not start out with a AI engine like half-life AI engine but more along the lines of a couple of templates with a series of predefined decision tree’s, where the Dev community can keep on adding scenario’s making it act more and more like it's human counterparts.


I don’t see how it could hurt PA if they started the process, who knows where it might end up .

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Troglodyte

I was thinking what Wakey was saying and he has a lot of valid points.

However, this would be a long term project and you would start out small, say with one inconspicuous BOT planet i.e. to limit farming, and see how the BOT fares.

I would not start out with a AI engine like half-life AI engine but more along the lines of a couple of templates with a series of predefined decision tree’s, where the Dev community can keep on adding scenario’s making it act more and more like it's human counterparts.


I don’t see how it could hurt PA if they started the process, who knows where it might end up .

Originally Posted by mist

the bots reached the end of specification, and some early design work was done.

the community didn't seem particularly thrilled by the idea of them, and jolt didn't want them. jolt won't accept open source code contributions. if you want to code for them (for free) you've got to sign an nda, the terms of which are rediculous to say the least.

-mist

as mist has said, Jolt are pretty strict about what they'll allow in the game. The NDA does sort of have a bad reptutation, too.

[Troglodyte]

well that sort-of kills the thread ..**haha

[Kal]

the NDA is actually fairly standard, the issue is standrd is quite restrictive and many don;t want ti unless they get paid - paying people means increasing game costs etc so is not good.

Bots are very hard to get right in this sort of game so unfortuntly I have to decline this despite the fact there would be some benefits to bots

(the bots allready coded are simply dumb planets for shuffle testing)