Chicken Storm assisted?

[Aulex]

Anyone want to help me figure out how the chicken bot storm was able to travel so far from the chicken's death and also how the ai was able to assist it. It occurs at around minute 35-40 where grey is constructing a chicken and yellow kills it with a strat, then the storm spawns and then grey takes a sniper bot, othuum and flak piece to assist the storm. I looked through the storm's files and found this list
RULEUCC_Attack = false,
RULEUCC_CallTransport = false,
RULEUCC_Capture = false,
RULEUCC_Guard = false,
RULEUCC_Move = true,
RULEUCC_Nuke = false,
RULEUCC_Patrol = true,
RULEUCC_Pause = false,
RULEUCC_Reclaim = false,
RULEUCC_Repair = false,
RULEUCC_RetaliateToggle = false,
RULEUCC_Sacrifice = false,
RULEUCC_Stop = true,
RULEUCC_Transport = false,
and you can see the guard command is false so i'm very confused unless i understood part of that code wrong. Also isn't the chicken bot storm only supposed to spawn if it's half built or greater? You can see later in the replay that it was built with greater progress then destroyed being finished but the storm didn't spawn.

[Lionhardt]

Uhm... for me the only chicken being built is killed at min 57 by a GC...?

[ZLO_RD]

Uhm... for me the only chicken being built is killed at min 57 by a GC...?

at min 38 or 39 chicken was made outside of base, and got killed by cyb strats, and ion storm appeared and was assisted by some units and then traveled pretty long distance

[Lionhardt]

Ok, going to rewatch that.


Edit: Did. Hm... that's weird.

[Icy]

afaik the AI has always been able to control the storm. Maybe because the storm is actually the fourth Seraphim experimental unit and not just a death effect? It's not listed in the unit db, but you can spawn them separately from the bot with the cheat menu. The lightning storm even has a name. (xsl0402 Othuy: Unidentified Residual Energy Signature)

[RK4000]

Anyone want to help me figure out how the chicken bot storm was able to travel so far from the chicken's death and also how the ai was able to assist it. It occurs at around minute 35-40 where grey is constructing a chicken and yellow kills it with a strat, then the storm spawns and then grey takes a sniper bot, othuum and flak piece to assist the storm. I looked through the storm's files and found this list
RULEUCC_Attack = false,
RULEUCC_CallTransport = false,
RULEUCC_Capture = false,
RULEUCC_Guard = false,
RULEUCC_Move = true,
RULEUCC_Nuke = false,
RULEUCC_Patrol = true,
RULEUCC_Pause = false,
RULEUCC_Reclaim = false,
RULEUCC_Repair = false,
RULEUCC_RetaliateToggle = false,
RULEUCC_Sacrifice = false,
RULEUCC_Stop = true,
RULEUCC_Transport = false,
and you can see the guard command is false so i'm very confused unless i understood part of that code wrong. Also isn't the chicken bot storm only supposed to spawn if it's half built or greater? You can see later in the replay that it was built with greater progress then destroyed being finished but the storm didn't spawn.

That list only means which commands can be given to the storm. For example, the AI can tell it to stop, move and patrol. This list basically tells the UI which commands it lets you use for a certain unit. In the storm's case, this doesn't really matter as the player can't select it anyway., but anything that CAN select it (in whatever other way neccesary to do so), can then also issue those orders to the unit. The AI can probably still select it as its selection, afaik, does not abide by the UNSELECTABLE category, which the ion storm has.

In theory, I would guess (I can't check this as I have no PC capable of running FA at the moment) that setting everything there to false would disable any form of commands being issuable to the storm, even for AI, but again, this is just a theory. If someone were to test this, that'd be great.

*Looks at Aulex*

EDIT: I would guess the storm was originally meant to be controllable, but they probably (for balance reasons) decided against that. That's probably why it still has a name and all those other things, and the commands that you can issue to it could have been left over from that, or, were not all removed (slight mistakes like this often happen), and since the player can't select it anyway with the simple addition of the UNSELECTABLE category effectively prevents the player from selecting it in any way (normally) possible, they probably didn't look into it much anyway.

[Anaryl]

Unlikely.

In the blueprint what you are seeing there is that the storm itself cannot assist things. The storm behaviour you are seeing is likely emerging as a result of the way the AI gives orders to units on the map. If it's a behaviour tree then as any AI units enter a certain area on or a certain precondition is met, the unit brain responds accordingly. This is likely why their TMLs have perfect accuracy as well - the AI is talking directly to the unitBrain.

[RK4000]

In the blueprint what you are seeing there is that the storm itself cannot assist things.

That's what I said. The commands listed there are commands that can be issued for the storm to do. As you said, the AI controls units differently than players, but it still needs to take into account which orders can be issued to the unit in the first place. If the unit can't be issued a certain order (it is set to false in that list), neither player nor AI can issue it.

[stalewee]

This has always been the case as long as I've played against AI. Makes sera AI enemies much harder than any other faction on a big map.

But the thing that really bugs me is how they always seem to land their bomber wrecks directly on your shield generators.

[IceDreamer]

I suppose we can try setting all the command caps to false...