Questions About the Coming Gold Patch

[Clovis]

Hi Mephisto! I betcha that IP address hint you gave me will work! Will try it with the boys ASAP.

On the other issue, Drone AI references. I think I have discerned something important here. Yes, the standard AI's of the races in 1.60 do not seem to recognize the 'Drone Attack' strategy in their AI_Design_Creation files.

Point 1: There are two types of drones, anti-ship and anti-planet. Therefore two types of targeting priorities are called for depending upon which type of drone is to be built and directed by the AI. However, the 'Drone Attack' references I have seen, such as in the Default_AI_Strategies file, have only one set of priorities. Note that the specs in that file differ remarkably from the previous example held forth in these discussions, your own Toron race.

Suggestion: Why not use "Ram" as the targeting strategy for Anti-Ship, and "Drone Attack" as the targeting stragegy for Anti-Planet? This would avoid any immediate need for hard-coding a response to this problem.

But would it generally make the game AI's funky and in need of major adjustments?

[Mephisto]

There is a small program you can use to find your IP address with W95/98 that you have to run once in a dos box. It is "ipconfig" for W2k but for the life of me I cannot remember how it is called in W95/98. Anyone?

Drones:
Bear with me. What exactly is the drone problem? Do they produce error Messages? If so, can you sent me a savegame to heavyload@gmx.de?

You can give a drone any strategy you want and - as you already found out - I actually did.
IMHO it is not a very wise strategy to slam these very expensive devices into the next planet if I can glass it with my beam weapons and then go to the next planet repeating history.
If you want to use more strategies make sure to alter the right file, for the standard races in the TDM-ModPack this would be the Default_AI_Strategies.txt in the TDM\AI folder.

I agree with you that the standard races could use widespread improvements and that is exactly why I'm part of the TDM-Crew. However, I have now 5 races and that is the maximum I can support. I could increase this number but only by neglecting testing my races.
I personally think that drones are not that great a tool for the AI as it lacks the knowledge how and when to use them. Those my races use drones only in a limited way. None of my races uses both types of drones, only one. If you increase the amount of drone types you only end up confusing the little AI brain even more. For the AI to do a good job you have to make it simple to use. And as I only use one drone type I only need one drone strategy.

[Suicide Junkie]

"winipcfg"
for win9x

[Quikngruvn]

quote:

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Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
There is a small program you can use to find your IP address with W95/98 that you have to run once in a dos box. It is "ipconfig" for W2k but for the life of me I cannot remember how it is called in W95/98. Anyone?

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I believe you're thinking of 'winipcfg', which you don't have to run from a command line (but can). Go to Start--> Run, type in 'winipcfg' there, and a Window will appear with IP address info. At least it does in 98.

Quikngruvn

[dmm]

For the record, "ipconfig" works for NT also. You have to first do Start - Run - cmd to get a command window, or else it runs and disappears before you can see the info.

[Clovis]

Hi! Yes I bet the IP situation is covered. I will be testing it again over the weekend.

However, I'm still concerned about those pesky drones!

I must say that to re-check myself, I just did a pristine new install of 1.60 on another drive of my own machine, ran a few turns of a test game with all 20 standard races involved, and there was nary a peep about the 'Drone Attack' strategy or the AI's failure to recognize same.

So my next question is, on my other install on this machine, which currently has 32 races functioning, why do I get that pesky error message indicating that the 'Drone Attack' strategy is unknown? Another way of putting it is, 'In how many text files does the 'Drone Attack' strategy have to be referenced, and using what parameters?'

In my initial reply to the scholarly Mephisto, I made the point that having two types of drones (anti-ship & anti-planet) hard-coded into the standard out-of-the-box game would seem to require two distinct strategies. He has skillfully dodged my point, but it remains.

Is there any reason that the stock target 'Type Priorities' in the Default_AI_Strategies file are all disabled for every type of strategy, with the four 'targeting priorities' in each record used instead?

Of course I take the point that I can mod any of these factors myself and see how it goes, but I want my drones to work correctly right out of the box! After all, part of the allure of SE IV Gold was the extensively-used phrase "Drones Fully Implemented in Code!" And yes, I know the difference between text files and alphanumeric or binary "code". But still ...

And I bet its not just me -- I'm sure that the two distinctly different types of drone warheads were included for a reason.

To carry this one step further, what about using the trifold Ram, Kamikaze, and Drone Attack strategy entries to configure a third type of drone, say a recon drone or a cheap, expendable attack ship.

Why? Every Guardian's Life is precious! ;-)

P.S.: Please view me and my three young progeny at Wilmerding Family Web Site

[ 03 April 2002: Message edited by: Clovis ]

[MHSJROTCCADET]

what is the IP locator for Windows ME?