Adaptive AI

[Drako Slyith]

Today I got thinking about how I could do an AI mod. I got some interesting ideas, but I an not nearly good enough at modding to implement many of them, so I will post them here so maybe someone else can do it.

Weapon enhancement: the ship loots one, so it has the items in its cargo hold. It then gets a readout of the levels of each item. If it then finds an enemy and fires three shots. It takes an average of the amount of damage it does. If there are any weapons in its cargo hold that has a higher level, it installs it and fires three more shots with it. If it does less damage than the last weapon, it reequips its last weapon. The same could work for shields and armor; for shields it measures how much damage its shield takes, equips a higher level one, then measures how much its new shield takes, and equips the better shield. For armor, it removes its shield, then runs the same test as with the shields. In this way, it will continuously upgrade its weaponry and devices. For the miscellaneous devices, such as laser colliminators, it equips them if they are relevant to their gear, or if they are not relevant to anything, such as patch spiders, which are installed regardless. When a device becomes non relevant, where the ship uninstalls the relevant weapon, or the device becomes too high level to be relevant, the device is uninstalled.

Conduct: This would be the hardest part to program.
the ship keeps count of its accuracy by counting the number of shots it fired and how many hits it got. It also keeps track of how many shots it is hit with. It varies distance, going in and out, until it reaches its set minimum accuracy, around 75%, and still takes the minimum damage. It sets this as its default for that ship class. In this way, it learns how to best destroy that ship. It also uses the same test above for weapons and shields as it fights, and sets that equip as its default against that ship class. If it uninstalls their weapons for that ship class, its data is blank (to avoid causing an error as it tries to fire a weapon that it does not have). It will then learn the best weapons to use against a certain enemy. I "learns" how to fight best. It will also run a damage test for several battle techniques; circling, pursuing, charging in and retreating, and as many as can be thought of. It will set the most effective, the one where the damage taken is subtracted from the damage done equals the highest value. It sets that as its combat move. After a set time, it retests, and it also retests it upgrades its weapons or shields. And they are not the same weapon.

Interaction: This could also be rather tricky. When two of these ships come within a certain range, they find out who is strongest. The winner is the first to take down the other's shield. They then stop fighting, and the winner is escorted by the looser. When a ship is being escorted by another, the escorts form a circle around the fight. The looser and its escorts escort the winner. When a leader has over six escorts, a ship with no escorts will join with no fight. When two leaders meat and each has over 6 escorts, the fight becomes to the death. What's interesting about this is that if both destroy the other, so there is no leader, anarchy breaks out, civil war ensues. When two ships each with 15 or more escorts, then there is a 33 or so percent chance that they begin a war. For wars, they blast past and form battle groups and use strategy, attempting to surround their enemy, or forming a wedge and going for the leader, or setting up a perimeter and killing any incoming ships. They will of course change tactics if one does not work. And if one strategy works well, they set that as a preference. When one gets very low on ships (5-8 or so) they join the other fleet.


For all these, the key element is they try all the options available and pick the best one.

Basically, this is a lot of ideas for a program that learns. The more it fights, the better it gets at fighting, and the more loot it finds, the better it gets. The reason I'm posting all this is that I have neither the time nor skill to achieve this in the smallest ways. I spent several hours trying, and got nowhere at all. If anyone could mod something like this, that would be absolutely incredible.
I guess all I can say is, good luck.