Player-Scriptable Micro Managers

[gerbilOFdoom]

One of the reasons I enjoy RTS/FPS hybrids is that I despise micromanagement of every unit, so I let my RTS-junkie friend micro manage while I go out and set up a strategy for my squad. I don't have the time to get extremely good at telling each one of my hundreds of units to do something at the same time, so the solution I have thought of is a "player assistant" that can, optionally, do some of the micro managing for the player. I'm a bit too tired to write out a full essay on the idea so I'm going to outline... sorta. When you read this, think "make things more strategy oriented instead of micro-managing when your chickens cluck while your swordsmen are getting torn to shreds" option.

I. Overview

-Players have access to a lightweight scripting language to create their own micromanagement AI

-Scope limited to small actions that are often repeated in a game

-Should be implemented as a server-wide "option", enabled/disabled

-This idea is probably more mod material than game feature material, but a low-priority addition to the game could be a framework to make this happen, namely visual placement of "building markers" for building locations in section II.

II. Building

-Players place "construction sets" that define a plan for their base, in parts. Construction sets are defined by the player

--Example: "Resource Harvesting" construction set plans out number of resource drop points, what conditions to build each point under, and how many units to assign to the task/create for the task. General locations for each building are selected when the construction set is implemented

-Certain buildings cannot be constructed by the assistant, such as defensive buildings?

III. Economy

-Work unit allocation

--5 units on farming, 5 on mining

IV. Military

-Unit Creation, build certain sets of units (10 swordsmen, 5 cavalry archers, etc.)

-Automatically create unit platoons based on predefined composition instructions. Goal: 1 click, select entire platoon of units (another form of group hotkeying)

-Target prioritization, set units to seek out certain types of enemies within a small range around them (a swordsman shouldn't run through an entire 200 unit battle to get to a single archer, but should prefer to take on archers within a small area of 4-5 enemies around himself)

-Situational Formations, set areas in a battle that platoons should consider themselves "on defense" and "on offense" and set their formation based on predefined constants (Defensive = Turtle, no conditional options)

[feneur]

While I doubt we set up some specific high-level scripting it should definitely be possible. Just have the player share the same "player" (i.e. control the same units/buildings) as an AI that only has economic capabilities. The only issue that I can think of (though as I'm not a programmer there might be more that I just don't think of ) is what to do with the Citizen Soldiers. The easiest way would just be to not use them in the attack =) Perhaps have the AI defend the city as well as gathering resources. Either way I definitely think something like this should be doable without much trouble. Some kind of AI co-op mode is likely to be included anyway, so it's probably more an issue of implementing an AI that does things just the way you want it (And there would need to be some work done to allow what you mention in point II, but apart from the GUI part it should mostly be AI work that as well )