Re: Supply and AI

[Elijah Meeks <elijahmeeks at yahoo dot com>]

> I see. Well, that explains why the xconq AI is
> perplexed, too. It expects
> to be able to move its units after creation.
> Eventually, it might be able
> to figure out that it needs armies to "ferry" free
> units, but the transport
> code is not too bright, so don't count on it.
> 
> You are really trying to do something for which
> xconq is not designed: move
> groups of units as one unit. A better way to
> implement the army concept
> might be to use multipart units, something which is
> supported in xconq.

When I began writing CIL in xconq, I used multi-part
units, but it didn't work out.  I might try them out
now that I understand xconq a little more.  However,
the AI does a pretty good job of using the Armies and
Fleets (Kudos to whoever did the AI) and the only
problems I see are the aforementioned transport
problem, the combat resolution (due to protection) and
that the AI likes to build enormous quantities of
empty Armies and Fleets because they're cheap (Which
is my fault, because from a game sense this is a smart
strategy). 

The first issue will be resolved by replacing
Transports with Transport Fleets (More detail below)
unless there's a fix in the code.  There's not much I
can do about the second, as I see it, and any help on
that matter would be appreciated.  For the last issue,
I placed limits on Armies and Fleets, but the type
limits appear to be absolute, so that you can only
have 6 Armies over the course of your entire game,
whereas I wanted 6 armies in play at one time.

Overall, I'm happy with how the AI handles the
mechanics, and you can see when the game starts up, it
does all right with the armies and fleets in play.  I
just need to price out Armies and Fleets to where the
AI buys them sparingly, or limit it properly.

> >Transports have very little functionality as is,
> >though, because it doesn't seem you can load
> >sub-occupants.  I'll probably need to cut them
> loose
> >from the whole Fleet/Army system, anyway.
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by that, but you can
> certainly load occs that
> have their own occs if things are set up correctly.

That does work, what doesn't is trying to load
occupants onto units that are already occupants.  In
the parlance of CIL, I can load three Marine Divisions
onto a Transport and load that Transport onto a Fleet,
but I cannot load three Marine Divisions onto a
Transport that is itself already loaded onto a fleet. 
It's not too big a deal, really, and just another
indication, as you've pointed out, that I'm trying to
do things with xconq that it wasn't designed to do,
and the workaround isn't a big deal, I'll just
introduce a Transport Fleet unit that carries infantry
directly, instead of having Transports as part of a
Fleet.

Elijah

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