[suggestion] enemy commander AI

[theraot]

tl;dr: Use AI to scale the enemies during the mission.

Simply stated: Use AI to learn player behavior and adapt to how they play while they play. Learn and adapt to the players behavior within each mission separately, providing better difficulty scaling.

Not so simply stated: A (better) AI module dedicated to enemy spawns can provide adaptive scaling by changing the proportions of different kinds of enemies in order to keep a difficulty curve tailored to the warframes and weapons the players bring and how well they are using them. This is thematically appropriate, as it emulates a commander that sends different troops depending of the situation and is able to learn about the tactics of the enemy.

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The AI should try to match an ideal death rate of enemies, and if the death rate of enemies is too high, follow these rules:

- If people are using more AoE, then send enemies of higher level
- if people are using more single target, then send more enemies
- if people use gear X, increase the proportion of enemies that are good against gear X
- if a particular type of enemies is getting more death, reduce their proportion, replace them with something else

The ideal rate would be a function of the spawn rate and the time in the mission. Similarly there would be a minium spawn rate that is a function of the time in the mission.

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This should alleviate balancing problems:

- A dreaded Mirage + Simulor (or a Ember to some extend) would be doing a lot of AoE and will soon be faced with enemies strong enough to stand it.
- A solo player that find spawn rate too low, would be faced with more enemies if they die too fast
 

This could make farming more interesting:

To get more enemies to kill, you want to start by killing without AoE to increase the spawn rate, then move to AoE to kill them fast.

Addendum: If DE opts to make rare resources more common in strong enemies... those farming for them would start with AoE to make the strong enemies spawn sooner and then move to a strong single target weapon to kill them.

[(PSN)CactusButtons]

3 minutes ago, theraot said:

tl;dr: Use AI to scale the enemies during the mission.

Simply stated: Use AI to learn player behavior and adapt to how they play while they play. Learn and adapt to the players behavior within each mission separately, providing better difficulty scaling.

Not so simply stated: A (better) AI module dedicated to enemy spawns can provide adaptive scaling by changing the proportions of different kinds of enemies in order to keep a difficulty curve tailored to the warframes and weapons the players bring and how well they are using them. This is thematically appropriate, as it emulates a commander that sends different troops depending of the situation and is able to learn about the tactics of the enemy.

---

The AI should try to match an ideal death rate of enemies, and if the death rate of enemies is too high, follow these rules:

- If people are using more AoE, then send enemies of higher level
- if people are using more single target, then send more enemies
- if people use gear X, increase the proportion of enemies that are good against gear X
- if a particular type of enemies is getting more death, reduce their proportion, replace them with something else

The ideal rate would be a function of the spawn rate and the time in the mission. Similarly there would be a minium spawn rate that is a function of the time in the mission.

---

This should alleviate balancing problems:

- A dreaded Mirage + Simulor (or a Ember to some extend) would be doing a lot of AoE and will soon be faced with enemies strong enough to stand it.
- A solo player that find spawn rate too low, would be faced with more enemies if they die too fast
 

This could make farming more interesting:

To get more enemies to kill, you want to start by killing without AoE to increase the spawn rate, then move to AoE to kill them fast.

Addendum: If DE opts to make rare resources more common in strong enemies... those farming for them would start with AoE to make the strong enemies spawn sooner and then move to a strong single target weapon to kill them.

 

 

I can see that you know nothing about algorithm. Also rare reasorces already have higher drop rates on higher lvl missions. Find any resource on low lvl planets n farm it for a 10-20 min survival, find the same resource on higher lvl planets n do the same10-20 min survival n it will be substantially more resources. This isn't a walk in the park game.

Edited January 12, 2017 by (PS4)CactusButtons

[theraot]

19 minutes ago, (PS4)CactusButtons said:

I can see that you know nothing about algorithm.

I know enough, I'm a system engineer with a specialization in information security

I find it hard to suggest real AI (such as a genetic algorithm, for instance) as it would not be long lived and AI in many video games are mainly expert system based on scripts.

I don't know their tools, but I know they should be able to check for the actual death rate [1] vs the expected death rate [2]. And then if the death rate is greater than the expected, you can can run a state machine with diffent conditions. Now, about the spawns, I would expect they happen on a timer too, and some code has to decide what enemies to spawn... I suspect this is currently done with a RNG with some weights depending of the sector, I'm suggesting to change that part to something smarter.

[1]: A simple implementation uses two variables: A) the last rate, B) the count on the current period. On the even of a death you increment B. On a timer you move the value of B to A and reset B.

[2]: Some function of the time in the mission, I don't know what function is ideal, but I suspect linear growth is good enough.

Note: I say timer loosly, they may be checking for intervals in the game loop.

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Good day, sir.

Edit:

19 minutes ago, (PS4)CactusButtons said:

Find any resource on low lvl planets n farm it for a 10-20 min survival, find the same resource on higher lvl planets n do the same10-20 min survival n it will be substantially more resources. This isn't a walk in the park game.

I understand that the rates change from sector to sector, yet those are the base levels for the enemies. I don't know if the chances change by the level of the individual enemy, and I assume they don't. Perhaps you want to acuse of not knowing enough of how warframe works?

Edited January 12, 2017 by theraot

[(PSN)CactusButtons]

8 minutes ago, theraot said:

I know enough, I'm a system engineer with a specialization in information security

I find it hard to suggest real AI (such as a genetic algorithm, for instance) as it would not be long lived and AI in many video games are mainly expert system based on scripts.

I don't know their tools, but I know they should be able to check for the actual death rate [1] vs the expected death rate [2]. And then if the death rate is greater than the expected, you can can run a state machine with diffent conditions. Now, about the spawns, I would expect they happen on a timer too, and some code has to decide what enemies to spawn... I suspect this is currently done with a RNG with some weights depending of the sector, I'm suggesting to change that part to something smarter.

[1]: A simple implementation uses two variables: A) the last rate, B) the count on the current period. On the even of a death you increment B. On a timer you move the value of B to A and reset B.

[2]: Some function of the time in the mission, I don't know what function is ideal, but I suspect linear growth is good enough.

Note: I say timer loosly, they may be checking for intervals in the game loop.

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Good day, sir.

Edit:

I understand that the rates change from sector to sector, yet those are the base levels for the enemies. I don't know the chances change by the level of the individual enemy, and I assume they don't. Perhaps you want to acuse of not knowing enough of how warframe works?

Read the edit part. Andspawnrate isalways based on length of time in mission. They're not going to make it just as easy in the 23rd rnd as they do in the 11th. This increase spawn rate to increase difficulty. It's endless missions not endless walk in the park.

[theraot]

12 minutes ago, (PS4)CactusButtons said:

Read the edit part. Andspawnrate isalways based on length of time in mission. They're not going to make it just as easy in the 23rd rnd as they do in the 11th. This increase spawn rate to increase difficulty. It's endless missions not endless walk in the park.

I know that.

Just in case, I'll say that what I wrote is a suggestion....

I haven't suggested to keep the difficulty stable, my suggestion is in changing the proportions of enemies depending of game play. Sure, I have said that there would be a minimum spawn rate based on the time in the mission... and I understand that currently the spawn rate depends on the time on the mission. I should have put emphasis on "minimum", in my suggestion I want the game to be able to go beyond what would normally spawn given the time in the mission if the players are too good for that. In essence, I'm suggesting the difficulty to be able to ramp up faster.

Are you trying to tell me that that is a bad idea? If you are trying to say that that suggestion is bad, you are not explaining yourself.

Edited January 12, 2017 by theraot

[(PSN)CactusButtons]

20 minutes ago, theraot said:

I know that.

Just in case, I'll say that what I wrote is a suggestion....

I haven't suggested to keep the difficulty stable, my suggestion is in changing the proportions of enemies depending of game play. Sure, I have said that there would be a minimum spawn rate based on the time in the mission... and I understand that currently the spawn rate depends on the time on the mission. I should have put emphasis on "minimum", in my suggestion I want the game to be able to go beyond what would normally spawn given the time in the mission if the players are too good for that. In essence, I'm suggesting the difficulty to be able to ramp up faster.

Are you trying to tell me that that is a bad idea? If you are trying to say that that suggestion is bad, you are not explaining yourself.

No idea is bad. But your saying it like if you go unprepared to a mission make it easier for you instead of having it the normal challenge (failing if well unepuiped) of the mission. If missions scaled based off what u bring n what u do then it would become manipulative. Making it more broke than the o.g enemy scale. N always will there be players to walk through the most difficult scenarios

Edited January 12, 2017 by (PS4)CactusButtons

[theraot]

25 minutes ago, (PS4)CactusButtons said:

But your saying it like if you go unprepared to a mission make it easier for you instead of having it the normal challenge (failing if well unepuiped) of the mission. 

I see.

At least for making it easier, there would always be a baseline from which it won't get any easier...

Yet, I can see how bringing better equipment would make none or little difference, then why bother to get better gear. Currently I don't have a solution for that.

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Let me tell you from where I come from to my suggestion: There is people who ask for nerf, there is people who complain when the nerf comes. Thus I infer that there isn't an ideal balance, instead some people want the game to be easier and other to be harder. If DE stop looking for a sweet spot on that, the simple solution is a difficulty selection (so that you can say if you want to play a sector in "hard mode", for example) yet, doing that fragments the pairing system, because in that case you would have to be paired with people that picked the same difficulty. So, I came up with the suggested idea looking for an alternative solution.

Well, maybe the difficulty selection is better than what I suggest.

I have seen it in other MMOs, ussually people blaze through the easier versions until they reach some ideal difficulty and stay there. It would help to separate those who just want to complete the sector from those farming, so at least that's that.

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Edit: I know that people that ask for nerfs are almost always people who don't use the gear they want to get nerfed. I guess that if you get in a team where somebody is using some of those items, you probably don't want them to kill every enemy. So that falls in wanting the game to be harder.

Edited January 12, 2017 by theraot

[(PSN)CactusButtons]

15 minutes ago, theraot said:

I see.

At least for making it easier, there would always be a baseline from which it won't get any easier...

Yet, I can see how bringing better equipment would make none or little difference, then why bother to get better gear. Currently I don't have a solution for that.

---

Let me tell you from where I come from to my suggestion: There is people who ask for nerf, there is people who complain when the nerf comes. Thus I infer that there isn't an ideal balance, instead some people want the game to be easier and other to be harder. If DE stop looking for a sweet spot on that, the simple solution is a difficulty selection (so that you can say if you want to play a sector in "hard mode", for example) yet, doing that fragments the pairing system, because in that case you would have to be paired with people that picked the same difficulty. So, I came up with the suggested idea looking for an alternative solution.

Well, maybe the difficulty selection is better than what I suggest.

I have seen it in other MMOs, ussually people blaze through the easier versions until they reach some ideal difficulty and stay there. It would help to separate those who just want to complete the sector from those farming, so at least that's that.

---

Edit: I know that people that ask for nerfs are almost always people who don't use the gear they want to get nerfed. I guess that if you get in a team where somebody is using some of those items, you probably don't want them to kill every enemy. So that falls in wanting the game to be harder.

If it were like u mentioned many and many of ppl would would scale it to easy before they let the big guns out. I myself when doing endless missions use my weakest weapon at first to help lvl it then switch to better weapon when the enemies get tougher. In your case making every mission easy. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only Tenno who does this, finding an exploit in your system along the way. 

[theraot]

12 minutes ago, (PS4)CactusButtons said:

If it were like u mentioned many and many of ppl would would scale it to easy before they let the big guns out. I myself when doing endless missions use my weakest weapon at first to help lvl it then switch to better weapon when the enemies get tougher. In your case making every mission easy. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only Tenno who does this, finding an exploit in your system along the way. 

I did think about this behaviour, and I don't consider it wrong.

Idk if that is "easy", I mean if people are changing their style during the missions, at least they are thinking and not mindlessly killing.

Regardless, people will exploit any system. And there will be players who will find an optimal way to play whatever you throw at them. That's how it is.

What I have come to dislike of my idea, is that it diminishes any incentive to get better gear. I don't know if there is a solution for that, I mean: choose between having overpowered things and  removing the incentive to get better things... sure, there must be some middle ground, yet a system as the one I suggest would make it harder to tweak manually.

Edit: that means there is room for improvement in the scaling, right? right.

Edited January 12, 2017 by theraot