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Well, I've had an idea . I was thinking about making a variant that has different Tiers for units and buildings involved so it gives the players and the AI more build time and more units to experiment with. There will more than likely be three tiers for vehicles and buildings. I just wanted to post to get some feedback on the idea.

You basicly already have that:
-Tier 1: recy-stuff
-Tier 2: basic factory stuff
-Tier 3: ½ advanced factory stuff (Atanks, Rtanks, tanks)
-Tier 4: advanced (factory) stuff (Atilla/Titan/Bomber/Archer)

MPI is generally just too easy and most experienced players can often fairly easilly control 3-4 pools so they just turtle some untill they got the tech they want and nuke the AI with it. In strat you hardly ever see all tiers come into play without the game dragging on a bit.
Also dont forget that competitive games tend to not be that long cause people quickly go on the offensive. Take Supreme Commander for instance, in the campaign/skirmish you may turtle to Tech3 level stuff, but in PvP you often dont get past Tech2 stuff before someone loses the game.

An other thing to consider in racial balance. ISDF is the 'general purpose race' and it has pretty much all the units you need (long range, defence, assault, general purpose). Scions on the other hand are less general purpose but have more of a bite, but still pretty much have all they need 'without making them general purpose in general' (like the ISDF). Now if you take the Hadeans you'll find they are somewhat a mix of both, kinda general purpose, but with a bite.

Yeah, I'll be testing to make sure everything is balanced. I will try to make a few MPI games use tiers too. I mean, I can get the AIP's to use the tier system as well as the players.

You can perhaps not make them use tiers as well and tactical as an experienced player can, but with some scrapcheat you can surelly make them use it (somewhat) properly. Just dont forget that its a gamemode where a lot of people come to just have fun, so make it dependend on what the player does. (If the player never builds a factory, than dont start pumping out walkers & bombers, etc.)

Yeah, I'm going through a process of trying to switch AIP's depending on what the player does. E.G. If the player builds a bomber bay, then the AI will switch to a plan to prepare defences or something. The only problem I can see happening however, is how the AIP Plans are switched through C++. If I can change that, I will get a perfect set up going.

I've started to develop the though that Recycler Variants work best when they change only minor things or make one major mutation/change. Stuff like SRV, TJRV, etc make the tech tree too large, resulting in many units without a well destined purpose. MPI games need a better AI opponent to justify a larger tech tree. ST maps need a refocus from FPS to grand strategy (maximum size maps might help) to justify a larger tech tree.

If you think about it, tech is already gated. I feel that if you want to enrich diversity and strategy it might be best to simply go the direction of exclusive tech paths. In that case, while your depth into the tech tree is the same as in a normal game, your choices result in possibly a different set of tech than the other team. In most RTS games, this is self regulated in that if you don't pick 1 direction in your tech path, you will get killed off, but in games vs computers you can dive into every part of the tree in those cases, normally ending with an army that just lumbers across the map killing everything.

I feel that what we really need are more various objectives in maps. When it comes to MPI, events that can occur differently depending on your actions. An attack force if you don't stop an enemy from getting out of jamming range, a convoy that can mean more resources or tech but a bigger fight, stuff like that. For ST, I feel like exclusive tech paths with synergies between them and FFA maps with 2 bases vs 2 bases would breed the best results (then the commanders must pick complementing paths to get the best results).

ai_unit, add this to the aip where you want it to stop switching:

DLLCanSwitch = false


and add a plans like this to trigger a switch:

[Plan10]
planPriority = 1000
CheckProvides = true
planType = "SwitchAIP"
planCondition = "HisExists"
planConditionClass = "ibtcenaiunit"
planCompare = ">="
planConditionCount = 1
planConditionClassProvided = true
NextAIP = "AIunitVariant_ii1.aip"
maxTries = 0
ContinueEvenIfFail = false

so make it dependend on what the player does.

But not too much...Players soon figure out what causes an aip Switch if its too simple, and then they can effectively control what the AI does with their own actions. Conditions and switchaip are very useful and can be used to create sequences of aips that will not always follow the same path. Multiple conditions that depend on what the player does and on how well the AI or player are doing it can be much harder to manipulate.
There is a lot of 1.3 aip info scattered across the change logs, spend some time searching them out.

Red Devil wrote:ai_unit, add this to the aip where you want it to stop switching:

DLLCanSwitch = false


and add a plans like this to trigger a switch:

[Plan10]
planPriority = 1000
CheckProvides = true
planType = "SwitchAIP"
planCondition = "HisExists"
planConditionClass = "ibtcenaiunit"
planCompare = ">="
planConditionCount = 1
planConditionClassProvided = true
NextAIP = "AIunitVariant_ii1.aip"
maxTries = 0
ContinueEvenIfFail = false

I really need to learn what most of this is about, I assume you write your AIP's in Notepad ++? Cause I usually use the AIP Editor. Is there any specific place I can find out what most of this stuff means e.g. "planCompare = ">="".

The AIP editor may have been a useful tool back in the day, but hasn't been updated since 1.2-level AIPs. There's been a decade of improvements to the 1.3 patch series that have not made it to fan-made tools.

-- GSH

Battlezone2/extras/changelog contains all the changelogs, notes of all the I.3 changes, search though them for terms like aip etc.

planCompare = ">=" //just specifies that the plan activates on
planConditionCount = 1 //1 or more than 1 of
planConditionClass = "ibtcenaiunit" // this unit
planCondition = "HisExists" //of the players team
planConditionClassProvided = true// actually exists.

So this condition prevents a plan from activating until the player builds 1 ibtcenaiunit, it will still activate if the player has built 7 ibtcenaiunit's

GSH wrote:The AIP editor may have been a useful tool back in the day, but hasn't been updated since 1.2-level AIPs. There's been a decade of improvements to the 1.3 patch series that have not made it to fan-made tools.

-- GSH

I still use it quite well, I mean my expansion pack's AI runs pretty well, but it would be nice to learn some new stuff as I do enjoy working with AI a lot.

MrTwosheds wrote:Battlezone2/extras/changelog contains all the changelogs, notes of all the I.3 changes, search though them for terms like aip etc.

planCompare = ">=" //just specifies that the plan activates on
planConditionCount = 1 //1 or more than 1 of
planConditionClass = "ibtcenaiunit" // this unit
planCondition = "HisExists" //of the players team
planConditionClassProvided = true// actually exists.

So this condition prevents a plan from activating until the player builds 1 ibtcenaiunit, it will still activate if the player has built 7 ibtcenaiunit's

Alright I'll have to look into it some more cause it takes a while for me to learn stuff.