Dune 2 scoring and ai "cheating"

[X3M]

I noticed that the emperor can still build units in the last mission. Without having a refinery or silo's. But I wonder how long the emperor can do this. Does he have infinite money? If so, I can abuse this for an even higher score.

I got a saved game, where only his factory remains. It got destroyed once, so the Fremen (and my one and only orni) are ignoring it. All other things are dead. And it seems that none of the houses receives reinforcements around my base, at this point.

My current score there is 2899, with almost 6 hours of playing that mission.

PS. Does killing your own fremen count as score too? In case the Siege Tank output is slower than the time * negative score?

[Cm_blast]

3 hours ago, X3M said:

I noticed that the emperor can still build units in the last mission. Without having a refinery or silo's. But I wonder how long the emperor can do this. Does he have infinite money? If so, I can abuse this for an even higher score.

I got a saved game, where only his factory remains. It got destroyed once, so the Fremen (and my one and only orni) are ignoring it. All other things are dead. And it seems that none of the houses receives reinforcements around my base, at this point.

My current score there is 2899, with almost 6 hours of playing that mission.

PS. Does killing your own fremen count as score too? In case the Siege Tank output is slower than the time * negative score?

I read once in a full detailed manual that the AI doesn't have unlimited money, but when you kill or destroy a building he recieves the cost of that unit/building. So if the Emperor have 1000 credits, he can build a siege tank and a combat tank, runs out of money, attack with those units, you destroy them, and recieves 600+300.

I can't tell you this for sure, but makes sense. Happens to me long time ago something similar. The Emperor had the Palace and the Wor alive, and he builds a heavy trooper, send it, died, build another, repeat. My game lasts for 8 hours and he still was doing that.

I don't know about the score. Once in my life (and I played this game like crazy) I manage to get the "Emperor" title as Atreides. I Only lost 2 units (2 scouting trikes).

[X3M]

Ah, in that case, he is doomed. Since from time to time. He will be repairing his HF as well. He has no power.

Now, the only question remains. Is killing Fremen counted towards my score? Since I have 16 Palaces on that map. I can spam Fremen and kill them

[Nyerguds]

I know in C&C, AI harvester unloading simply deposits like 20x more money into the refinery than player harvester unloading does.

[X3M]

In C&C the loadout fills all storage of the ai. No doubt that in dune2 something similar might happen.

That reminds me. Why is the armor concrete not used there?

[Nyerguds]

On 3/13/2017 at 7:13 PM, X3M said:

In C&C the loadout fills all storage of the ai. No doubt that in dune2 something similar might happen.

Well, that's just the effect. The actual logic is just that it gives the AI a specific higher amount of money per unload tick compared to the player. Specifically, they get 708 credits per tick instead of 25, for 28 ticks for a full harvester, giving them roughly 20000 credits per harvester instead of 700

Edited March 16, 2017 by Nyerguds

[MrFlibble]

I have never really investigated how credits worked for the AI, but IIRC in Dune 2, even the player won't immediately lose their credits if a silo is destroyed (but I may be wrong on that?). However I have always had the impression that the AI doesn't have any specific cheats compared to the player, except the ability to rebuild lost structures wherever they are standing and regardless of anything that may block them.

There's also the issue of credits going into a negative vlaue for the player (there's a maximum of something like 2¹⁶/2, after which you get negative credits that work like infinite credits IIRC). Perhaps the AI has reached this stage and has infinite credits? I think there are savegame editors that allow to check this.

[Nyerguds]

4 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

I have never really investigated how credits worked for the AI, but IIRC in Dune 2, even the player won't immediately lose their credits if a silo is destroyed (but I may be wrong on that?).

No idea on that, but I do know that Dune II has an odd bug that if you deploy an MCV if you got no buildings (I experimented with making missions start with an MCV instead of a construction yard) it immediately drains your money to zero 

[X3M]

Wow, is that C&C system even intended to be that way?

With the old Dune2 version, I too experienced having negative credits, once I reached beyond 2^( 16-1)

I think that he first in 2^16th configuration is 0 credits. But I don't know if it is depending on either bits, bytes, or hex.

Nyerguds, is it possible to place an CY just outside of the map? Yet still counts as the primary CY for the triggers?

[Nyerguds]

On 3/18/2017 at 8:57 PM, X3M said:

Wow, is that C&C system even intended to be that way?

Yes. Basically, the only thing limiting the AI's money is silo capacity.

On 3/18/2017 at 8:57 PM, X3M said:

Nyerguds, is it possible to place an CY just outside of the map? Yet still counts as the primary CY for the triggers?

Uh, as far as I know from C&C, structure entries with coordinates outside the played map are simply never spawned in the game. I doubt this would be different in Dune II. If it would, it'd probably mess up the lose triggers.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Nyerguds

[MrFlibble]

I think there are fixed time cycles between checks if the player has enough spice storage capacity, and if not, excess credits are removed, similar to how you "lose" credits due to power supply (as discovered by the OpenDUNE team), or buildings get damaged from low power and "hostile conditions" after fixed time periods. It's sorta hard to check how this works for the AI, but I vaguely remember refinery/silo stats showing excess spice compared to the max capacity.

On 18.03.2017 at 10:57 PM, X3M said:

Nyerguds, is it possible to place an CY just outside of the map? Yet still counts as the primary CY for the triggers?

In Dune II, the terrain area outside the actual map is always (unless you count smaller maps from scenarios 1 and 2) a border that is one tile thick — enough to spawn units that come outside the map (Carryalls and Frigates). I've never tried putting a CY outside the map, theoretically it might work if you do this at the bottom border (I guess at the top, the lower two tiles of the CY will "stick out" into the map).