Introduction & Some Questions

[Runtowin]

Hello, I'm surprised that Dune 2000 community is still thriving after all these years. I used to play Dune 2000 a lot when I was young. Really love the desert setting, and that godly music. I have played many campaigns made by fan in this forum, and I really like them. Even better when I'm able to cheese. For example, Butlerian jihad 9, I rush MCV and deploy it in my ally's base, making the rest of the mission a walk in the park.

Those campaigns inspire me to make a campaign that let you take the role of Mercenary. I know that there are already many, but I'd like to emphasize on "multiple-approaches" in my campaign. They shouldn't be able to compete with other great houses.

Questions:

- How do you make an AI completely defensive?

- What does number in AttackBuildingStrength mean? If I set it 70, does it mean 70 units will attack or 70% will attack?

- What does HPWeight, SpeedWweight, FirePowerWeight, CashStash do?

- What does BaseDefenseRadius do? Default 64 is rather big; making it smaller or bigger, doesn't seem to change anything.

- Is AttackBuildingRate in Event the same as TimeBetweenBuildingAttack?

Lastly, am I allowed to post my mission here before completing the whole campaign?

[Fey]

Ayy m8 wassap

I don't have an answer for some of your questions but you can make an AI more defensive by reducing morale for attack to 0. You could also set the first attack parameter to very high, causing them to never attack before the mission's over.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure AttackBuildingStrength is a percentage. Defend is for base defense, like any building under attack, and Protect is for protected units. Harvesters are usually the only protected units.

The only attack timers you really need to worry about are FirstAttackBuildingRate and TimeBetweenBuildingAttacks. They're measured in tics.

Yeah man, make yourself a work-in-progress thread and post some stuff! I always post my missions before releasing a full campaign because they need to be tested and tuned to make the campaign the best it can be. If you post your missions, folks can test 'em out and help you hone your craft.

[Cm_blast]

On 15/3/2018 at 3:31 PM, Runtowin said:

Hello, I'm surprised that Dune 2000 community is still thriving after all these years. I used to play Dune 2000 a lot when I was young. Really love the desert setting, and that godly music. I have played many campaigns made by fan in this forum, and I really like them. Even better when I'm able to cheese. For example, Butlerian jihad 9, I rush MCV and deploy it in my ally's base, making the rest of the mission a walk in the park.

Welcome. Glad to know someone who enjoy that campaign ^^.

Overall Fey already explained, but I'll try to add some info too.

On 15/3/2018 at 3:31 PM, Runtowin said:

- How do you make an AI completely defensive?

Like Fey said, you have two options (or you can use both).
In the AI tab there is a line "FirstAttackBuildingDelay". This define how many time the enemy waits until the first time he attacks. If you set that number to 100.000, the Ai will attack for the first time at 1 hour (playing in real time, if you play the game at max speed then that's 30 minutes). I don't know if there is a limit.

Also, there is another line "Morale AttackBuilding". Once I did a test using a "1" on that value and the AI never ever attacked me in a loooooong time.
However, keep in mind that the AI sometimes may do weird stuff and send one attack just because your unit attacked one of his units and he goes mad or whatever.

A combination of those two options may help you, but I can't guarantee anything. I tried a "never attack" group before but sometimes they do (after being attacked by the player).

On 15/3/2018 at 3:31 PM, Runtowin said:

- What does number in AttackBuildingStrength mean? If I set it 70, does it mean 70 units will attack or 70% will attack?

It's hard to measure. Now, the AttackBuildingStrenght don't have too much effect if there is only 1 AI in the game. For example, an AI with a normal building pace, will send everything available to the player. Doesn't matter what number you place (may depend on the size of the base, I don't know for sure, but any number greater than 20 it's enough to see an AI sending all the units available to attack).

If you make one AI to build fast, recieving deliveries, reinforcements and etc... then you may see the Ai only attacking with part of the units.

Now, it matters more when there are more Ais in game.
Let's say you have two Ais with a 30 of ABS.
The first AI send an attack with enough units (20-30 units). Now the second AI it's about to attack too, but first he control the Strengh of the units send by this ally.
"My ally attack it's 45 of Strengh; I only have a 30, I am not going to attack now, will wait for my next turn".

Same example, but now Both have 70 of ABS.
"My ally attack it's 45 of Strengh; I have 70; I'll send a few of my units to fill the "70"".

A 100 of ABS the Ai just send everything available at the entrance of his buildings in whatever case.

More or less that's how works the AttackBuildingStrengh; but again, sometimes attacking 1 AI he send everything available withouth caring about the other Ais or whatever, or If 1 AI can't attack multiple times because another AI it's always attacking, at some point that passive AI can go mad and send a huge attack based on 50 units although you only have an ABS of 30 or so.

On 15/3/2018 at 3:31 PM, Runtowin said:

- What does HPWeight, SpeedWweight, FirePowerWeight, CashStash do?

Never tried any of those features. Maybe they are unnused, but I can't tell for sure.
The only thing I know that CashStash group affect when the AI builds or not. For example, the default value it's 1800; while testing I usually see how the AI don't build any unit if he don't have more than 1800 credits (Harversters and carryalls are an exception). It's like he is reserving that value in case you take his last refinery or last harverster, giving him the money needed to be able to win more.

Of course, being attacked he still use credits like mad, but that's the meaning, it's the AI reserve.

On 15/3/2018 at 3:31 PM, Runtowin said:

- What does BaseDefenseRadius do? Default 64 is rather big; making it smaller or bigger, doesn't seem to change anything.

I tried in the past but I never saw a change in the AI behaviour. I ever though that maybe it's a base 2 value. 64= 2^8; I tried placing an 8 there but nothing changes.

The default range it's about 8 tiles more or less from his base.

On 15/3/2018 at 3:31 PM, Runtowin said:

- Is AttackBuildingRate in Event the same as TimeBetweenBuildingAttack?

Yes. It's related.

If an AI have a "TimeBetweenBuildingAttacks" of 7.500 (so 5 minutes in real time play), and you use an event to "Set Attack Building Rate" with 15.000, the AI will start to attack the player every 10 minutes instead 5.

If I am not mistaked, If you have this AI with 7.500 Ticks between attacks; yhe game have passed 3.000 ticks and you use that event to change it to 45.000 ticks (for example), the AI it's still going to attack once more when the time it's 7.5000 ticks. 

After this one last attack then the AI won't attack again until 30 minutes of gameplay.

On 15/3/2018 at 3:31 PM, Runtowin said:

Lastly, am I allowed to post my mission here before completing the whole campaign?

Of course you can. At bottom you can add any file you want. Since you are a new member maybe that doesn't appear yet. I don't remember how many days a newcomer need to wait before being able to upload files.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Cm_blast

[Runtowin]

Thanks for all the answers! I greatly appreciate it. I'll post my WIP campaign soon.

On 3/17/2018 at 9:08 PM, Cm_blast said:

It's hard to measure. Now, the AttackBuildingStrenght don't have too much effect if there is only 1 AI in the game. For example, an AI with a normal building pace, will send everything available to the player. Doesn't matter what number you place (may depend on the size of the base, I don't know for sure, but any number greater than 20 it's enough to see an AI sending all the units available to attack).

If you make one AI to build fast, recieving deliveries, reinforcements and etc... then you may see the Ai only attacking with part of the units.

Now, it matters more when there are more Ais in game.
Let's say you have two Ais with a 30 of ABS.
The first AI send an attack with enough units (20-30 units). Now the second AI it's about to attack too, but first he control the Strengh of the units send by this ally.
"My ally attack it's 45 of Strengh; I only have a 30, I am not going to attack now, will wait for my next turn".

Same example, but now Both have 70 of ABS.
"My ally attack it's 45 of Strengh; I have 70; I'll send a few of my units to fill the "70"".

A 100 of ABS the Ai just send everything available at the entrance of his buildings in whatever case.

More or less that's how works the AttackBuildingStrengh; but again, sometimes attacking 1 AI he send everything available withouth caring about the other Ais or whatever, or If 1 AI can't attack multiple times because another AI it's always attacking, at some point that passive AI can go mad and send a huge attack based on 50 units although you only have an ABS of 30 or so.

Then how does MinBaseStrength interact with AttackBuildingStrength? Which has more priority?

[Fey]

Yay, new campaign! See you there, Runtowin.

[Cm_blast]

10 hours ago, Runtowin said:

Then how does MinBaseStrength interact with AttackBuildingStrength? Which has more priority?

I don't think MinBaseStrength have any use. I tried placing numbers there and in MaxBaseStrengh but I didn't see anything new. A few maps from the original campaign use "500000" as the Maxstrengh, but I don't know.

One Day I'll debug a bit more the original campaign by using the default "500000" and then change it to "0" to see if there is really any difference. So far in my own test I didn't found anything that change.