[WIP] IRAI (Intelligent Random AI)

[TheDarkWraith]

well, as I thought, there's no way to implement a gradual sensor effectiveness decrease

So I'll implement a stepped decrease over 4 time periods (4 tiers of fatigue). The time periods will be random based on ShipWatchRotation / 4. Each time period (tier) will decrease the sensor effectiveness some random amount. This also makes the watch rotation a random period of time which is good (now when the current watch finishes the 4th tier of fatigue they're too tired to continue their watch duties so a new watch team will step in) Coding and testing now....

[TheDarkWraith]

4 tiers of fatigue works like a charm along with watch crew rotations

Now this is awesome....simply awesome. The dynamics of it are just amazing.

I'm making 4 levels of fatigue reduction:
- cruise
- alert
- damaged
- damaged alert

In cruise fatigue will set in very slow rate. In alert fatigue will set in medium rate. In damaged fatigue will set in fast rate. In damaged alert fatigue will set in very fast rate. This way if you damage a ship it will fatigue faster and thus after time it will be easier for you to either sneak up on it or get away from it (until the next watch crew comes on).

NOTE: everytime the ship AI changes state (alert, cruise, damaged, etc.) a new watch crew will take watch (thus no fatigue at start)

Also to note is that each sensor fatigues on it's own. All the ship's sensors don't fatigue the same amount each tier interval - they fatigue their own random amount. Couple that with each ship fatigues totally different from each other ship and it's truely dynamic

[SashaKA001]

Originally Posted by [501]Otto

Great news Will make it much more real.
BTW, don´t know if this has something to do with this mod, but is it possible to limit the number of depth charges that each destructor has to a fixed number? I mean, sometimes those DD´s hunt you for hours and they seem to have millions of depth charges, they never end... Maybe it is just me feeling the combat stress , but I just feel amazed of the quantity of ammunition that those dammed escorts can throw to you

No, they have a limit. Within 4 hours they fell and I was bombarded by depth charges, my depth of 127 meters from the start was 8 or 10 destroyers, then 5, then there were 3, and then they were gone, so they have a limit of depth charges.
And I was not injured.

[TheDarkWraith]

v0.0.28 is working good. Will probably need some tweaking of the new values added for the watch crews and fatigue. We'll see how you all like it when I release it (here shortly).

Now I need to explain some things about the new additions for the ship AI:

there is a base watch crew time (in minutes) for each ship:
ShipWatchRotation = 180;

every ship starts with crew with no fatigue. It then determines the time before the first fatigue level by:

intervalTimeCP = (ShipWatchRotation + Ship:Random( -( ShipWatchRotation * 0.25 ), ShipWatchRotation * 0.25 ) ) / 4.0;

this says take the 180 and add a random value somewhere between -25% and +25% of 180 to it and then divide the result by 4. This gives the time before the 1st fatigue level

every ship then determines it's own fatigue levels (4 of them). Each fatigue level determines it's time by:
intervalTimeCP = (ShipWatchRotation + Ship:Random( -( ShipWatchRotation * 0.25 ), ShipWatchRotation * 0.25 ) ) / 4.0;

this says take the 180 and add a random value somewhere between -25% and +25% of 180 to it and then divide the result by 4. This gives the fatigue level time. This repeats 3 more times

after the 4th fatigue level the watch crew is relieved by a 'fresh' watch crew with no fatigue.

Now as each fatigue level is attained, each sensor of the ship will degrade in performance some random amount (simulating fatigue). Each sensor degrades it's own random amount.

All of this makes for a truly random ship AI. You can be stalking a ship thinking you're at safe distance only to find that it changes watch crew and now you're detected! The vice versa is also true: you might be hunted by an escort and over time as fatigue sets in it may 'lose' contact with you allowing you to escape.

Everytime the ship changes state (cruise, alert, damaged, etc.) the watch crew is relieved by a fresh crew with no fatigue.

I'll have v0.0.28 available for download here very shortly

[TheDarkWraith]

v0.0.28 released. See post #1 for details

NOTE: because of the new features of fatigue and crew watch rotations for the ship AI it is recommended to leave all the difficulty levels at 1.0

[heisig1958]

Hallo TDW,
super Job, Danke.
Ralf

[tonschk]

WOW , this is incredible , Thank you a LOT TheDarkWraith

[THE_MASK]

Glad you thought of it .

[flymar]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

Everytime the ship changes state (cruise, alert, damaged, etc.) the watch crew is relieved by a fresh crew with no fatigue.

What is the rate of the status change? I'm curious if the ship cen get cruise-->alert-->damage-->alert-->cruise path like in 5 minutes. I don't know if resetting fatigues in such situation is right.

[Sepp von Ch.]

Incredible! Great! Thank you very much TDW!!! Even the new merchant ships in SH5, mines, nets, better traffic in ports and it is a new game!

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by sober

Glad you thought of it .

Well your idea of making random values for the sensor effectiveness spurred it. I was playing around with that trying to make it work and stumbled upon, by accident, a way to persist a value across time. The rest is history

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by flymar

What is the rate of the status change? I'm curious if the ship cen get cruise-->alert-->damage-->alert-->cruise path like in 5 minutes. I don't know if resetting fatigues in such situation is right.

can't happen in 5 minutes.
Let's say the enemy is cruising along following waypoints. At this point it's in cruise state (barring no damage to it). Let's say the enemy detects a contact. At this point they switch to Alert state and hunt the contact. From IRAI's \data\Cfg\Sim.cfg:

Lost contact time=20

This means that when the enemy loses contact with the contact it will continue 'looking' for it for 20 minutes before giving up. It also means that any other enemies within 20 minutes distance to the contact will also respond to the 'hunt'.

Now let's say that during the hunt the enemy sustains enough damage to switch to damaged alert state. The time between alert state and damaged alert state is random because it depends on the enemy taking damage above a certain level. Once in damaged alert state it cannot go back to alert state ever again (the game doesn't allow the enemy to repair itself like we can with our sub).

I'm curious: now due to fatigue are you able to 'slip away' from the enemy once detected after long periods of time?

[7thSeal]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

I was playing around with that trying to make it work and stumbled upon, by accident, a way to persist a value across time. The rest is history

Well that's one heck of a discovery that will add even more random AI reactions. Haven't tried this version yet but dling now and certainly looking forward to giving it a go, good stuff coming along with this game every time I drop by the forum reading the updates. I need to grab the updated Environment mod by W_clear as well.

[flymar]

I have a strange feeling that the DD are too much nerfed. I've noticed that below 46 meters their hydrophones are almost gone. Just look at my speed below. Next task force, I was at periscope with aread flank and no hydrophone yellow circles. Need to recheck it.

[TheDarkWraith]

it's one of several things:

- either the AI crew is very low quality (poor, competent, or novice) and/or
- they currently have high fatigue. Give it some time (game hours) and see if their ability to detect you doesn't increase and/or
- your in their low sensor effectivess ring (they have maximum ability to detect you in front of them in arc. To the sides and back their ability decreases) and/or
- the surface area your presenting to the sensor is small and/or
- could be many, many other things. IRAI is way too dynamic!

I tried some of the single missions and dove to depths of 100m+ and everything appears to be working correctly.