New Possible Game Option: AI Replacement

[JJ173]

Okay, so as of recently, I have been thinking about how disconnections mid-game could cause some major issues during games. Thinking about it, I realised that there are games out there that replace the disconnected player with an AI of max difficulty. Games like Gears of War have this kind of system. I discussed it with a few members on our Slack and decided I would attempt to implement a new option which can be enabled through your game lobby. This idea is mainly targetting lower rated games or "All Welcome Games".

I've made some good progress with this idea. When a player disconnects from the game, they are replaced by a Sorian Adaptive AI which takes control of the army and units around. A chat message is sent out by the AI informing team mates that the disconnected player has been replaced by an active AI.

Here are some images to show an example:





The main reason I am posting this is to gather feedback about the idea, and maybe provide the opportunity for you all to suggest some features for it. Please, do let me know what you think!

Happy Hunting!

[TheKoopa]

Even in no share it's literally better to just reclaim their dead shit and use their mass points for your own stuff

Ais are godamn useless

[Evan_]

Have to agree with Koopa on this one. AIs are not a substitute, no matter how advanced.

But beyond that, I think it's unfair to everyone in the game. Often two players lose conn to eachother, and they both disconnect. Adding this would turn a relatively simple and almost even rebuild into a nightmare of reclaiming moving units, teamkilling the AI's stuff, and stealing mass points before it rebuilds. Your attention is drawn away from the game, when before you would just be able to patrol reclaim, rebuild mexes, and throw down some pd.

Then there's the issues and conflicts this would cause. Games with AI are already unranked by default, would this change? How would this affect full share? Or would it be another option in the "share conditions" category? Would it keep orders from after the disconnect? Would this AI be affected by settings in the lobby/map (ai markers, land expansion limits, ect)?

Also, sometimes the game just needs to end. Imagine if the whole team disconnects without ctrlk-ing and leaves a bunch of shielded acus with A PD spamming ai. I'd rather just be able to move on to the next game.

I think you'd be better off using your coding talents somewhere else jj

[nine2]

Hmm interesting idea but i think fullshare is better

[JJ173]

Full share is unaffected, if you have the AI option enabled but the ACU dies before the player disconnects, any remaining units will still be transferred. The option is purely enabled at the discretion of the host, and does not need to be enabled in normal games. The ranking thing is a good question, I'm not sure how it would change it.

[FlyingThunder]

i have to disagree with the other guys here - i love the idea.

remember that, like JJ said, this is targeted at the "all welcome" - aka rather low rank - lobbies.
to most low ranked people, reclaiming the base is *not* more effective, and on maps like setons, a dead front base cant just be reclaimed and the game goes on - a dead front base often means GG as land units can walk straight into the bases.

also, when 2 people lost connection to each other - given they arent extremely different in rating - this would also not change anything because now 2 equally skilled people are replaced by two equally skilled AIs.

i think this would be great - im not sure if this should be a thing in ranked games though, probably not.
but i would really love to see this.

also, JJ, i dont know the adaptive AI well, but wouldnt it be better to e.g. on setons replace a dead air player with sorian Air / front player with sorian Turtle / navy player with sorian Navy?

[Exotic_Retard]

i like this.
most of faf is under 800, and that means ai isnt much worse than them, and ~30% of games on faf are ai already so why not.

since this is under discretion of the host there isnt any downside, and anyone who can play can just pick fullshare or something instead. no harm done.


dont ever see myself using this but i can expect that a good portion of faf might, especially if the ai gets improved in the future like uvesos or softlys versions.

[FtXCommando]

Is there a worry that the AI might be better than the player it is replacing? Kind of gets in the way of accurate rating measurements if you end up having your base played by somebody superior to you and end up winning the game because of it.

[JJ173]

Is there a worry that the AI might be better than the player it is replacing? Kind of gets in the way of accurate rating measurements if you end up having your base played by somebody superior to you and end up winning the game because of it.

If this becomes a problem, I'll add an extra option that allows the host to choose what AI replaces the disconnected player. Right now, the default is set to Sorian Adaptive, but that can be easily edited to use a list of AI that the host can choose from instead. Sound good?