Thursday, November 19, 2015

AI Decision Tree for Solo Games


I've really become hooked on the  Delta Vector blog site. The author, evilleMonkeigh, deals a lot with rule design, often from the standpoint of solo gaming. Recently, he has been discussing non-player character AIs. I've been playing around with AIs for a while, but it got me tinkering again, especially since I am getting closer to having a game.

I have been focusing on building AI for battles involving battalion level and higher micro armor games. This decision tree is what I've come up with so far:

Click on chart to better read it.

A lot things on the chart are very loosely set up. For example, final actions, those in the light green boxes, have more than one possible action to take. It might be that which one to take would be decided by die roll, or it might be that several actions could be taken based on available unit command pips. Even some of the early decisions may not be automatic. A percent dice might be used for the "Yes," "No," and "No, but..." decisions. 

What is meant by Scurry? I borrowed the word from Ivan Sorensen's various rules, particularly from his Fivecore Company Commander rules. In his rules, it has a more positive meaning (move to a better firing position or gain ground) but right now, I'm using it as a place-holder term to mean, go to ground, redeploy to take cover, or fall back to a safer position. 

This is in the very early stages of development. I don't know how fluid this tree is, but guess is that its probably not in its present iteration. Also, I don't know what then happens after a fire fight. Does it go back to the intital state at the beginning? Does it fall into some sort of loop at or past the "Yes" state until there is no more enemy? Bizarre results might be entertaining, but that is not what I am going for! 

I still have not decided what rules to use. It might be a mash up two or several. That discussion is for another post. The hope is that the AI will be generic enough to be used with any rules.

Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Update


The crack in my stomach (as my son calls it) from my surgery is healing, but I have not had much energy to do much. I started back to work last week, but it was basically, teach my classes and go home and crash. 

I am nearly finished improving on some old hills that I had made a long time ago (sorry, no pictures yet), and I thought I was pretty close to being ready for the first land battle of my campaign, but when I looked at my map, I discovered that I needed some paved roads, and some more dirt roads, and more river segments, and more forests.......ah-h-h-h!

Table top map for game

I THINK I can get it all done by this weekend, providing I have some spare time and I don't get all detail-ly, which I am prone to do. I also need to focus. I finished some trees for my friend Will, who is venturing into Warhammer Age of Sigmar, that I had started before all the medical issues erupted. As I finished them, a thought came into my head about making some houses for him. Nope, they will have to wait! I need to stay focused on getting things done for this game.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Building Bridges, Part 4

Here is the completed larger bridge that I previewed two posts ago. I would have finished sooner, but the heart attack turned out to be an acute gall bladder infection and it had to be removed, stat. The doctor wasn't sure what the cause of it was, but it was probably a combination of it being "sluggish" which propagated an infection. It was a messier operation than expected and they had to remove it old school. My 3-year-old says that I now have a big crack in my belly. I came home yesterday from the hospital and managed to have enough energy by the evening to finish it.

Two trucks loaded with rebels head off to the front
Overall, I'm happy with it. I could add more detail, but I'm more in the mood to move on to get closer to playing a game. I think it will look fine on a gaming table.