Help...question on AI

Armistead · 05-29-12, 10:25 AM

Nothing beats a human opponent, no matter how hard you set the AI, play long enough you can learn to out guess it, some think TMO is hard, others of us that have played it long enough can evade most escorts. I will discuss a few issues that bother me in different post and hopes others will join in.

I am not slamming TMO, Duci took his approach to find balance and make us react as realistially as possible. I've learned how to counter the AI of TMO, so I'm just looking for another approach more historical. I've played RFB, I like some aspects, but still much to easy of an AI.

First,

In game most of us know you can dodge charges fairly easy if you have enough depth and enough speed, simply speed up to flank, by the time the charges reach your deep depth they will almost always explode way behind you. With enough depth, I can attack convoys and use flank to evade charges, reload torps, come up and shoot, dive and do it again, taking out entire convoys with escorts having lil effect. I've read numerous sub books and I don't recall this being the tactic of sub skippers, but alas we learn the AI and how to counter it. I doubt in real life subskippers used this tactic, letting the enemy know where they are, saying "nanny nanny boo boo, your charges can't get me, I'll reload and keep blasting."

I have made it much harder by setting most of my escorts to vet and elite, elite ratings do seem to have great effect on how they hunt you, easy to get killed if you put yourself in the wrong situation. Seems elite rated escorts know better when to drop charges and will drop much further ahead of you.

I don't know if a "time value" exist between charge drops, but would like to find away to increase the time or range between charge drops. Simply, say an escort makes a run with 3 drops covering a range of 100 yards, I would like to increase that to 200 yards. Often the rear roll offs fall one after the other, be nice to have 5 seconds between drops........am I making any sense.

I also remember a mod that cut back on the number of charges they dropped, so they wouldn't run out so easily.

I hate the AI in this game, yea, with any game, nothing beats a human opponent

So far my setup using TMO with mods and tweaks.

Sub is more fragile...damage zones
Decreased sub depth, balance between TMO and RFB.
Decreased silent running values to favor the enemy.'
Increased thermals a tad in my favor.
Set most escorts in RSRD to vet and elite.
Increased contact time

Bubblehead1980 · 05-29-12, 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Armistead

Nothing beats a human opponent, no matter how hard you set the AI, play long enough you can learn to out guess it, some think TMO is hard, others of us that have played it long enough can evade most escorts. I will discuss a few issues that bother me in different post and hopes others will join in.

I am not slamming TMO, Duci took his approach to find balance and make us react as realistially as possible. I've learned how to counter the AI of TMO, so I'm just looking for another approach more historical. I've played RFB, I like some aspects, but still much to easy of an AI.

First,

In game most of us know you can dodge charges fairly easy if you have enough depth and enough speed, simply speed up to flank, by the time the charges reach your deep depth they will almost always explode way behind you. With enough depth, I can attack convoys and use flank to evade charges, reload torps, come up and shoot, dive and do it again, taking out entire convoys with escorts having lil effect. I've read numerous sub books and I don't recall this being the tactic of sub skippers, but alas we learn the AI and how to counter it. I doubt in real life subskippers used this tactic, letting the enemy know where they are, saying "nanny nanny boo boo, your charges can't get me, I'll reload and keep blasting."

I have made it much harder by setting most of my escorts to vet and elite, elite ratings do seem to have great effect on how they hunt you, easy to get killed if you put yourself in the wrong situation. Seems elite rated escorts know better when to drop charges and will drop much further ahead of you.

I don't know if a "time value" exist between charge drops, but would like to find away to increase the time or range between charge drops. Simply, say an escort makes a run with 3 drops covering a range of 100 yards, I would like to increase that to 200 yards. Often the rear roll offs fall one after the other, be nice to have 5 seconds between drops........am I making any sense.

I also remember a mod that cut back on the number of charges they dropped, so they wouldn't run out so easily.

I hate the AI in this game, yea, with any game, nothing beats a human opponent

So far my setup using TMO with mods and tweaks.

Sub is more fragile...damage zones
Decreased sub depth, balance between TMO and RFB.
Decreased silent running values to favor the enemy.'
Increased thermals a tad in my favor.
Set most escorts in RSRD to vet and elite.
Increased contact time

Actually that tactic was used, Fluckey talks about going ahead flank to get out from under charges and to give them a "knuckle" to ping on.James Calvert describes his Captain's method in "Silent Running, it's a modified version.I use it, it rarely fails.Mush Morton didn't get depth charged a whole lot, he seemed fond of using high speed bursts to get out from under.Now, you cant always do that but it was used.The only version of SH 4 where you can sit through a depth charge attack in the classical since is RFB, they dont cause catastrophic damage every time they are close, just a lot of damage that builds up, which from what I have read, is more realistic, don't think many subs were lost to the magic charge that was too close, but more from getting worked over too close for too long, hull was weakened, eventually causing a leak.Main induction seemed to get blown open fairly often, sure it was a few times and were not able to contain it.

How do you decreas subs max depth ? Which files? I would like to decrease the S boat for sure, maybe some of others.

twm47099 · 05-29-12, 12:37 PM

From what I've read, it also seemed that the worst DC attacks were when the boats were in relatively shallow water which decreases the time between splash and click-bang and also reduces the number of submarine options.

I also recall the usual tactic was speed up on splash, create a knuckle, run like hell when the charges are going off, changing direction and going slow on a new course when the charges stopped.

Tom

Ducimus · 05-29-12, 01:08 PM

Well,

First we have to acknowledge something. We are not, haven't, nor have we ever been able to adjust the AI. Oh we all call it the AI, but what we're really adjusting is the AI's sensors. Why adjust the sensors? To illicit a response. Once a response is made, what exactly that response is, we have no tangible control over.

Tweaking the senors,
all your doing is making the eye of the evasion needle smaller or larger.

It's a simple analogy. Thread the needle you evade. Miss the eye of the needle while trying to thread it and you don't evade. This metaphore works because how the AI sensors work is very mechanical. You either work it, or you don't. Once you've become a good "seamstress", you can thread much tighter needles with little effort, while someone less experienced will find the same needle you find easy, insurmountable.

Crew skill level in campaign files.
I think this is the only real tangible way of adjusting the real AI. It's my belief that skill level effects three things.
- How "tenacious" the unit will be (how long it will search, and how it will search)
- Sensors minimum threshold value at which it at will respond to something.
- Accuracy with it's weapons

Old school train of thought on this subject is skill levels 0 and 1 's level of retardation defies belief. 2 is marginal, 3 is decent, 4 is death incarnate. One idea might be to make ALL units eilte, and then readjust the sensors to accommodate.

Lost contact time in sim.cfg
This will effect how long the AI will look for you until they give up. If the AI doesn't detect you within whatever time period is specified, it gives up and rejoins its unit.

In SH3, this was a direct 1 to 1 translation. Meaning, that if you set it to 60, the AI would look for you for 60 minutes before giving up. If it regained contact at 59 minutes, then the 60 minute timer is reset.

In SH4, this IS NOT a direct 1 to 1 translation. I don't remember the exact formula as given by Dan, but i do remember AI crew level effected this, and the results were dramatic. Which is why in TMO, i left this number alone. You can increase it if you want, but id use smaller numbers.

Radio reports
When you are detected, all units within range specified by the lost contact time will come to investigate. In SH3 this was easy to figure out. If you had a lost contact time of 15, then if you were detected by a plane and dived. The plane lost contact. Every warship in the area (how large the area i don't know), would start steaming towards the planes reported contact. So if a lost contact time of 15 was specified, and the ship was 20 minutes away, you'd never see him. After 15 minutes expired, he'd turn around and go back where he came from.

On the other hand, if you had a lost contact time of 60 and the warship was 30 minutes away, you'd see him show up where you were, probably for close to 30 minutes, then go back where he came from.

In SH4, due to the formula change, this is hard to figure out.
Also, im not sure if the contacts.cfg comes into play here or not. For the most part, if enemy unit see's you, he tells everybody. If nobody's in range as specified by the lost contact time, you won't see them. You also won't see them if you get out of dodge and move far away from your last reported position.

Adjusting the depth charges
As depth charges go, you can adjust a few things that effect how hard or easy an encounter can be. I don't remember the exact variable names, but you can

- adjust depth accuracy. Lets say you have a depth accuracy of 12 set in the DC files. When the AI decides your at 100 meters, and it sets its depth charge to go off at that depth, depth accuracy says, "Ok, this charge will detonate Plus or minus 12 meters of the specified depth. Which means the DC will randomly detonate anywhere from 88 meters to 112 meters.

- explosion radius
There's two variables involved here. I don't remember exact tnames. The first says basically says, "depth charge does maximum damage out to this radius from the center of the explosion". The second basically says, "Depth charge damage is applied out to this radius from the edge of the first variable, and damage is dimished out to this range, after which no damage is applied.

So for example,
Min Explosion radius could be 4 meters
Max explosion radius could be 40 meters.
So if a depth charge has say, 250 damage (out of the hat number)

Then from 0 to 4 meters, all 250 points of damage is applied.
From 4.1 to 40 meters, the damage is diminished. With 4.1 feeling nearly the full effects of the 250 points of damage, to 39 or 40 meters with very little of that damage being felt. past 40 meters, you wouldn't feel a thing.

All of the above interacts with the others. They form a tapestry of sorts.
Not sure what else to say.

Armistead · 05-29-12, 11:50 PM

Good info Duci and have figured most of that out, but trying to connect it all for the right response....er, not so easy.

I agree crew rating have great effect, having set so many escorts to elite, it's amazing the job they do.

Still wish I could figure out how to increase the range/time of DC drops so they would cover a longer range.

Ducimus · 05-30-12, 01:00 PM

you can adjust the sink rate of DC's.

You can also create a pattern, with some creative tweaking of throwers.

What you can't do, is adjust how many DC's the AI will sow overboard from a single DC rack, on any single depth charge run.

Armistead · 05-30-12, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ducimus

you can adjust the sink rate of DC's.

You can also create a pattern, with some creative tweaking of throwers.

What you can't do, is adjust how many DC's the AI will sow overboard from a single DC rack, on any single depth charge run.

So no way to slow down the reload times of DC's.? Do the throwers have a reload time, seems I recall that, maybe position one to act like a rear roll off. I do recall someone trying to make attacks last longer, not sure what came out of it.

Seems this was done in SH3.

Hinrich Schwab · 05-30-12, 04:56 PM

I do not know if this can be done with SH4's sim.cfg, but I was wondering if it is possible to use multiple values based on campaign date? I know that old SH2 could do this, but I have never heard of it in any of the AI files for SH3 or SH4. Is it possible?

05-29-12, 10:25 AM	#1
Armistead Rear Admiral Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: on the Dan Posts: 10,880 Downloads: 364 Uploads: 0	Help...question on AI Nothing beats a human opponent, no matter how hard you set the AI, play long enough you can learn to out guess it, some think TMO is hard, others of us that have played it long enough can evade most escorts. I will discuss a few issues that bother me in different post and hopes others will join in. I am not slamming TMO, Duci took his approach to find balance and make us react as realistially as possible. I've learned how to counter the AI of TMO, so I'm just looking for another approach more historical. I've played RFB, I like some aspects, but still much to easy of an AI. First, In game most of us know you can dodge charges fairly easy if you have enough depth and enough speed, simply speed up to flank, by the time the charges reach your deep depth they will almost always explode way behind you. With enough depth, I can attack convoys and use flank to evade charges, reload torps, come up and shoot, dive and do it again, taking out entire convoys with escorts having lil effect. I've read numerous sub books and I don't recall this being the tactic of sub skippers, but alas we learn the AI and how to counter it. I doubt in real life subskippers used this tactic, letting the enemy know where they are, saying "nanny nanny boo boo, your charges can't get me, I'll reload and keep blasting." I have made it much harder by setting most of my escorts to vet and elite, elite ratings do seem to have great effect on how they hunt you, easy to get killed if you put yourself in the wrong situation. Seems elite rated escorts know better when to drop charges and will drop much further ahead of you. I don't know if a "time value" exist between charge drops, but would like to find away to increase the time or range between charge drops. Simply, say an escort makes a run with 3 drops covering a range of 100 yards, I would like to increase that to 200 yards. Often the rear roll offs fall one after the other, be nice to have 5 seconds between drops........am I making any sense. I also remember a mod that cut back on the number of charges they dropped, so they wouldn't run out so easily. I hate the AI in this game, yea, with any game, nothing beats a human opponent So far my setup using TMO with mods and tweaks. Sub is more fragile...damage zones Decreased sub depth, balance between TMO and RFB. Decreased silent running values to favor the enemy.' Increased thermals a tad in my favor. Set most escorts in RSRD to vet and elite. Increased contact time Last edited by Armistead; 05-29-12 at 10:35 AM.

05-29-12, 12:37 PM	#3
twm47099 Bosun Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 67 Downloads: 93 Uploads: 0	From what I've read, it also seemed that the worst DC attacks were when the boats were in relatively shallow water which decreases the time between splash and click-bang and also reduces the number of submarine options. I also recall the usual tactic was speed up on splash, create a knuckle, run like hell when the charges are going off, changing direction and going slow on a new course when the charges stopped. Tom

05-29-12, 01:08 PM	#4
Ducimus Rear Admiral Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 12,987 Downloads: 67 Uploads: 2	Well, First we have to acknowledge something. We are not, haven't, nor have we ever been able to adjust the AI. Oh we all call it the AI, but what we're really adjusting is the AI's sensors. Why adjust the sensors? To illicit a response. Once a response is made, what exactly that response is, we have no tangible control over. Tweaking the senors, all your doing is making the eye of the evasion needle smaller or larger. It's a simple analogy. Thread the needle you evade. Miss the eye of the needle while trying to thread it and you don't evade. This metaphore works because how the AI sensors work is very mechanical. You either work it, or you don't. Once you've become a good "seamstress", you can thread much tighter needles with little effort, while someone less experienced will find the same needle you find easy, insurmountable. Crew skill level in campaign files. I think this is the only real tangible way of adjusting the real AI. It's my belief that skill level effects three things. - How "tenacious" the unit will be (how long it will search, and how it will search) - Sensors minimum threshold value at which it at will respond to something. - Accuracy with it's weapons Old school train of thought on this subject is skill levels 0 and 1 's level of retardation defies belief. 2 is marginal, 3 is decent, 4 is death incarnate. One idea might be to make ALL units eilte, and then readjust the sensors to accommodate. Lost contact time in sim.cfg This will effect how long the AI will look for you until they give up. If the AI doesn't detect you within whatever time period is specified, it gives up and rejoins its unit. In SH3, this was a direct 1 to 1 translation. Meaning, that if you set it to 60, the AI would look for you for 60 minutes before giving up. If it regained contact at 59 minutes, then the 60 minute timer is reset. In SH4, this IS NOT a direct 1 to 1 translation. I don't remember the exact formula as given by Dan, but i do remember AI crew level effected this, and the results were dramatic. Which is why in TMO, i left this number alone. You can increase it if you want, but id use smaller numbers. Radio reports When you are detected, all units within range specified by the lost contact time will come to investigate. In SH3 this was easy to figure out. If you had a lost contact time of 15, then if you were detected by a plane and dived. The plane lost contact. Every warship in the area (how large the area i don't know), would start steaming towards the planes reported contact. So if a lost contact time of 15 was specified, and the ship was 20 minutes away, you'd never see him. After 15 minutes expired, he'd turn around and go back where he came from. On the other hand, if you had a lost contact time of 60 and the warship was 30 minutes away, you'd see him show up where you were, probably for close to 30 minutes, then go back where he came from. In SH4, due to the formula change, this is hard to figure out. Also, im not sure if the contacts.cfg comes into play here or not. For the most part, if enemy unit see's you, he tells everybody. If nobody's in range as specified by the lost contact time, you won't see them. You also won't see them if you get out of dodge and move far away from your last reported position. Adjusting the depth charges As depth charges go, you can adjust a few things that effect how hard or easy an encounter can be. I don't remember the exact variable names, but you can - adjust depth accuracy. Lets say you have a depth accuracy of 12 set in the DC files. When the AI decides your at 100 meters, and it sets its depth charge to go off at that depth, depth accuracy says, "Ok, this charge will detonate Plus or minus 12 meters of the specified depth. Which means the DC will randomly detonate anywhere from 88 meters to 112 meters. - explosion radius There's two variables involved here. I don't remember exact tnames. The first says basically says, "depth charge does maximum damage out to this radius from the center of the explosion". The second basically says, "Depth charge damage is applied out to this radius from the edge of the first variable, and damage is dimished out to this range, after which no damage is applied. So for example, Min Explosion radius could be 4 meters Max explosion radius could be 40 meters. So if a depth charge has say, 250 damage (out of the hat number) Then from 0 to 4 meters, all 250 points of damage is applied. From 4.1 to 40 meters, the damage is diminished. With 4.1 feeling nearly the full effects of the 250 points of damage, to 39 or 40 meters with very little of that damage being felt. past 40 meters, you wouldn't feel a thing. All of the above interacts with the others. They form a tapestry of sorts. Not sure what else to say.

05-29-12, 11:50 PM	#5
Armistead Rear Admiral Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: on the Dan Posts: 10,880 Downloads: 364 Uploads: 0	Good info Duci and have figured most of that out, but trying to connect it all for the right response....er, not so easy. I agree crew rating have great effect, having set so many escorts to elite, it's amazing the job they do. Still wish I could figure out how to increase the range/time of DC drops so they would cover a longer range.

05-30-12, 01:00 PM	#6
Ducimus Rear Admiral Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 12,987 Downloads: 67 Uploads: 2	you can adjust the sink rate of DC's. You can also create a pattern, with some creative tweaking of throwers. What you can't do, is adjust how many DC's the AI will sow overboard from a single DC rack, on any single depth charge run.

05-30-12, 04:56 PM	#8
Hinrich Schwab Grey Wolf Join Date: Nov 2010 Posts: 908 Downloads: 89 Uploads: 0	I do not know if this can be done with SH4's sim.cfg, but I was wondering if it is possible to use multiple values based on campaign date? I know that old SH2 could do this, but I have never heard of it in any of the AI files for SH3 or SH4. Is it possible?