AIP BERSERK LVL6: COMPLETED!

[FallenAngel]

Everyone here knows, that this AIP is pretty much thee hardist AIP set ever made... And now has been won!
First ever winners are, {bac}FallenAngel, *GEL*Cyber, Starrider, MrTwoSheds and TheChosenOne.
It has been an honor serving you in this great battle and challenge Cyber!

Good Game!

[Cyber]

Yeah it was funny. Pretty bad I made no screenshot or something.

[TheJamsh]

Well done guys, how long did it take ?

I always intended them to be hard and encourage teamwork. I think they are impossible alone

Also out of interest, what were the game settings?

[MrTwosheds]

Not sure, it wasn't hours, It became clear that we had to do something decisive, or it would simply crush us with overwhelming numbers of ships, so we pummel rushed it rec in tanks and followed through with the bomber to kill it. A fairly normal strat style attack really, surviving up to that point was the hard part.

[Axeminister]

bravo

[Iron_Maiden]

Congratulations.

[Sly]

good goood

[TheJamsh]

Even with cheats in IA I haven't beaten them, I can't control enough of the field fast enough to stop them getting right into my base. It makes it somewhat bloody difficult to test when you can't make it past the first 10 minutes of an AIP set...

I find the hardest setting is facing the Scion. Even though the ISDF has bomber, Scion get Brawlers and Titans up damn quickly, and by the time you've taken one wave down the next is already moving in on you... Once Scion get that tech up, they are virtually unstoppable.

What map was this btw?

[Cyber]

It was Quarry.


I used laser turrets against the most-annoying pilots, assault tanks with pulse+mortar, rocket tanks with shad+hornet and a row of 3 GT (+10trucks). My thugs were doing great work, FA was killling many incoming troops and MrTwhosheds bombed them to dead. It was difficult to keep the middle pool. I am sure we would be able to attack normal with some army, but that would take time of at least 2-3 hours.

So we got the full action of the berserk

[Warfreak]

A stratter-style beat an MPI difficulty that was never meant to be beaten... The world is bound to end xD. I guess it also proves that players really need to be well versed instead of looking at the AI as simply a pattern and more as a beast of ultimate resource cache and manpower (Yes, I'm saying people need to play strat more, maybe 4v4 *cough*send logs*cough*).

[Nielk1]

Now we need an AIP that DOESN'T CHEAT... But still kicks ass.

[MrTwosheds]

Yes.
I believe it should be possible now, with the various new commands and Lua (which I know nothing about) to weave a set of aip's that responds to what the player(s) are building, how many pools/scrap each side has etc and fight in a more dynamic way. Rather than just pump out ever increasing amounts of units fed by scrap cheats, cheapy units, free bombers and the damn OTT uber emplacements (which I hate) I have not touched the LOS aips for ages, as I keep rebuilding my models, but I was trying to head in that direction. I have got them upgrading weapons through out the game by building differently configured ships, defending pools with gts if they can afford to etc.
I have a vague plan to have 2 or 3 aips for each phase of the game so that the ai can switch between them dynamically based on what's actually going on, rather than the traditional attack with everything approach. But this will have to wait until my next psychotic episode when I'm in the right frame of mind to actually do it.
Still haven't seen any bz2 Lua tutorials.

[Nielk1]

Get the AIPs ScriptUtils access and we can make the recs spawn some craft with names on them that kick your ass too .

[Cyber]

and we did it again!

[Red Spot]

@ 2Sheds,

It isnt worth it, imo.
I tried something like that, have the AI swap ships/weapons/strat and even basedesigns on the go depending on what the human-team is doing and in which number, possibly depending on distance to AI or how much scrap they/humans get.
The end result is that the AI is the AI and a human that has spotted how the AI responds will just use that against them and crush them with the same intensity as before. You simply cant give the AI the subtle decision making abilities as a seasoned player is able to do. So the only way (atm) to make an AI more intense is by cheating in some form of an other.

When I tested(on the go) the things I tried I at first was still taken slightly by surprise on how it came to life, as I ofcourse had my expectations knowing the code, but it became plain predictable after 2 runs.
It didnt make me feel that it was worth my time (except perhaps for how I slightly better learned to use C++).

For me this also raised a question. When I tried to make a more agressive AI I often found myself trading scrap-cheats for other forms of cheats. Is or isnt that worse or not? (Like checking only the playership to see if they have vir and if they do no longer send shad-Mscouts at them, expecting that the player would be the most damaging combatant and the AI doesnt even use it. Why trade for a weaker weapon cause of a counter that isnt actualy used? check for = cheat)
That again raised an other question. I feel that checking the playership is a cheat, but isnt the player using vir in itself a cheat to start with? Even in strats non-human ships dont use it, so a human player using it does create an uneven situation that has nothing to do with how difficult the actual AI actually is, still we do use vir.

I found out in the end I am quite content with a cheating AI