Thanks for all the support, people. I am trying to raise the bar on my pic taking skill set. Maybe one day I can achieve what I have come to term...
The Jetfreak Effect.
Y'all know what I am talking of. You come to the forum. You see that Jet has posted a new pic. You click on the post. And...you sit there in slack jawed amazement as you forget to breathe while drooling over his latest epically epic screen shot.
Anyways, I was lurking over at FleetOps earlier this week and trawling the boards to see what new and interesting ideas people had come up with when I ran across a thread started by my
brand new BFF - Okra!
Yeah I know I left the "T" off. But
my version of his username fits his/her/its? personality just ever so much better. So, he was trying once again to equate a code posting in a thread to a full blown TC mod and this time it was a way to make the AI, I believe the phrase he used was, 'less spammy'. I was confused at first because he/she/it and 'spam' are almost as tight as he/she/it and 'troll' are from what I've seen over there. He was very proud of changing these two variables in the RTS file and was trying very hard to get others to try it out for him and then tell him how wonderful he/she/it is for coming up with such an amazingly brilliant idea.
Have to admit I may owe Ol' Okra for something here. Much as it may pain people to read this(Auuuggghhh! My eyes!!) I went looking at a few things and then did some serious thinking. That's where the smoke smell is coming from. Trawled the FleetOps boards some more and found where Doca and Optec and Co. do have intentions of redoing the AI but this is waay down on the priorities list. Completely understandable and laudable. The primary
raison d'etre for FleetOps is online multiplayer. The stock AI is fine to practice against and work up new ideas. But why not have something which can really do some serious harm to your psyche for the 'puter to use? Something which will make you ALT-F4 to the desktop and hurl your laptop across the room in mindless gibbering fear? An AI which will cause you to spend large sums of money with therapists to restore your sense of self worth? Abso-freaking-lutely, Man!
First off, people should understand the AI uses two files to create the hapless targets you devastate with impunity during a comp stomp. The first is the buildList file which determines what the AI can build how many and it what order. The second is the AIP file. This tells the AI how to use what it is building and where to use it. The AIPs in ImpSPCam v2.0
should be a straight swap into FO for the Stock ones already there. The usage of specials and a few other things ought to be addressed, sure. But if you want an AI which is more aggressive and will do some surprising things during a comp stomp they should fit the bill nicely. I haven't tried this yet for myself but it ought to work or at the very least not CTD your game.
But wait, there's more! I am thinking of working up avatar specific buildLists for FO. Since one of the parameters of the AIPs is to tell the AI how long to use a specific AIP and buildList and then switch to another random one, it needs buildLists specific to the avatar so the game does not crash. Lastly, since FO is much more complex the AIPs themselves need to be more ruthless by at least an order of magnitude. Easy enough to do. Only hard part is making them almost invincible instead of completely invincible. Trying to set something at only 95% of Godlike Omniscience is a little challenging but not impossible.
See?