Need Help with AttackBuildingStrength parameter. Help is Greatly appreciated!

[maltebyte02]

Hi all,

I made my own Custom Ordos mission and it all works i just cant figure out the AttackBuildingStrength parameter!

I read else where on this forum that setting it to 100 the AI will send 100% of his units and his ally will check how many % his ally sent so i set 1 AI to 100 and the other 200.

One will attack but not with all units! and his ally then doesnt send anything at all! I just want to be able to set that 2 AI will Really put the pressure on me to try and survive but i only ever get a few tickle units! easy not fun i dont know how to set it any help is greatly appreciated! The mission is attached maybe you guys can take a look and help me out! Would be AWEOMSE!

Many thanks in advance!

_O9V2.MIS

[Feda]

27 minutes ago, maltebyte02 said:

Hi all,

I made my own Custom Ordos mission and it all works i just cant figure out the AttackBuildingStrength parameter!

I read else where on this forum that setting it to 100 the AI will send 100% of his units and his ally will check how many % his ally sent so i set 1 AI to 100 and the other 200.

One will attack but not with all units! and his ally then doesnt send anything at all! I just want to be able to set that 2 AI will Really put the pressure on me to try and survive but i only ever get a few tickle units! easy not fun i dont know how to set it any help is greatly appreciated! The mission is attached maybe you guys can take a look and help me out! Would be AWEOMSE!

Many thanks in advance!

_O9V2.MIS 66.47 kB · 0 downloads

I dont have access to the editors now, so I cant check your file, but I can try to help you off the top of my head. 

When AI determines their attack size, keep in mind they will also take into consideration their GuardGroupSize, which is essentially the amount of units they will leave in base to defend and patrol it. If you want him to send EVERYTHING, try setting GuardGroupSize to 0 (i never tried, might crash, idk, if it crashes try setting it to 1).

[maltebyte02]

Hi Fedaykin,

Thanks for the reply! I will play around some more with the values. Also i am alble to set AttackBuildingStrength to 255 which i tried and it did so little the AI sent like 4 units! so confusing! It cant be so hard to get 2 AI to attack with 90% of their units! lol 10% for base defence is ok.

[Feda]

9 minutes ago, maltebyte02 said:

Hi Fedaykin,

Thanks for the reply! I will play around some more with the values. Also i am alble to set AttackBuildingStrength to 255 which i tried and it did so little the AI sent like 4 units! so confusing! It cant be so hard to get 2 AI to attack with 90% of their units! lol 10% for base defence is ok.

From what I remember, that is a percentage, so you should aim for 80-90 for the AttackBuildingStrength. When I wanted big attacks I used 70 and 80. But you have to make sure you give them enough time to actually produce that many units, TimeBetweenBuildingAttacks and the FirstAttackBuildingDelay have to be big enough to let him produce the units. Try giving them a lot of cash, setting their UnitBuildRate to something low (which means its quick) like 100 or 50, and set their TimeBetweenBuildingAttacks and the FirstAttackBuildingDelay to 18000 and 15000 respectively. You'll have to wait for a while, but they should create a pretty big attack force when they attack. Also make sure their GuardGroupSize is low, like 100.

[maltebyte02]

I have my settings similar to what you sayd! Apart from GuardGroupSize is now set that from 600 to 100 and will try another test! If Atreides attack at 30000 and Fremen at 35000 with full force i will let you know! Thanks for helping!

[Feda]

1 minute ago, maltebyte02 said:

I have my settings similar to what you sayd! Apart from GuardGroupSize is now set that from 600 to 100 and will try another test! If Atreides attack at 30000 and Fremen at 35000 with full force i will let you know! Thanks for helping!

600 was pretty big, yea. But with 30000 time for attack he should have built a ton of units, so maybe your BuildRate was low too. Hope it works for you

Edited February 17, 2021 by Feda

[Fey]

Yeah, the "10%" they send for "defense" is triggered when you attack a base structure. And you can have unbalanced percentages in your "strength" parameters - 100% of currently unassigned units dedicated to attacks, 35% of currently unassigned units dedicated to protect that Harvester if it's under attack, 20% of currently unassigned units to respond to an attack on the base. You see?

The units they reserve for defense in general are based on GuardGroupSize, which I explained in the other thread.

[maltebyte02]

4 minutes ago, Fey said:

Yeah, the "10%" they send for "defense" is triggered when you attack a base structure. And you can have unbalanced percentages in your "strength" parameters - 100% of currently unassigned units dedicated to attacks, 35% of currently unassigned units dedicated to protect that Harvester if it's under attack, 20% of currently unassigned units to respond to an attack on the base. You see?

The units they reserve for defense in general are based on GuardGroupSize, which I explained in the other thread.

I read somewhere else on this forum someone explained that if i have 2 AI that are ally one will check to see how many units the other AI sent to attack. If i set AI 0 to AttackBuildingStrength 100 and set the other AI to AttackBuildingStrength 100 the AI will see ah my ally sent 100% i cannot attack anymore because i am also set to 100% so the Fremen never attack me!! this is what i am expriencing now! The fremen NEVER ATTACK! this is why i tried AttackBuildingStrength 200! Which also does nothing!!

[Feda]

2 minutes ago, maltebyte02 said:

I read somewhere else on this forum someone explained that if i have 2 AI that are ally one will check to see how many units the other AI sent to attack. If i set AI 0 to AttackBuildingStrength 100 and set the other AI to AttackBuildingStrength 100 the AI will see ah my ally sent 100% i cannot attack anymore because i am also set to 100% so the Fremen never attack me!! this is what i am expriencing now! The fremen NEVER ATTACK! this is why i tried AttackBuildingStrength 200! Which also does nothing!!

@Fey do you know anything about that? Sounds very unlikely that it's a thing to me.

[Fey]

3 minutes ago, maltebyte02 said:

I read somewhere else on this forum someone explained that if i have 2 AI that are ally one will check to see how many units the other AI sent to attack. If i set AI 0 to AttackBuildingStrength 100 and set the other AI to AttackBuildingStrength 100 the AI will see ah my ally sent 100% i cannot attack anymore because i am also set to 100% so the Fremen never attack me!! this is what i am expriencing now! The fremen NEVER ATTACK! this is why i tried AttackBuildingStrength 200! Which also does nothing!!

Actually, it sounds like you're experiencing an issue with morale. We don't use that feature around here, because it does weird stuff like this. Fix it by setting this highlighted thing to 100:
https://prnt.sc/zuqxb1

With that sorted, the AI won't look at its ally and go, "oh shit, my ally just sent a bunch of units in an attack and lost them all, I don't have the morale to attack the enemy now." It'll go, "lol my ally suffered some losses but I don't care. now I send 100% of my unassigned units, here we go, yay."

Edited February 17, 2021 by Fey

[maltebyte02]

3 minutes ago, Fey said:

Actually, it sounds like you're experiencing an issue with morale. We don't use that feature around here, because it does weird stuff like this. Fix it by setting this highlighted thing to 100:
https://prnt.sc/zuqxb1

With that sorted, the AI won't look at its ally and go, "oh shit, my ally just sent a bunch of units in an attack and lost them all, I don't have the morale to attack the enemy now." It'll go, "lol my ally suffered some losses but I don't care. now I send 100% of my unassigned units, here we go, yay."

Wow i hope this works!!! Thanks @Fey i will let you both know if it worked!

ps. How do you like my map editing skills lool!

[Fey]

2 minutes ago, maltebyte02 said:

Wow i hope this works!!! Thanks @Fey i will let you both know if it worked!

ps. How do you like my map editing skills lool!

Good luck. I look forward to hearing the results.

It looks like you did some good stuff with the AI so far. But, I didn't get a map file, so I can't really see what edits you made to the map itself. There should be three files: The .map, the .mis, and the .ini. The .ini might not exist, that's fine, but the other two are important.

Anyway, are you planning to make your very own campaign? Or, just messing around at the moment?

Edited February 17, 2021 by Fey

[maltebyte02]

5 minutes ago, Fey said:

Good luck. I look forward to hearing the results.

It looks like you did some good stuff with the AI so far. But, I didn't get a map file, so I can't really see what edits you made to the map itself. There should be three files: The .map, the .mis, and the .ini. The .ini might not exist, that's fine, but the other two are important.

Anyway, are you planning to make your very own campaign? Or, just messing around at the moment?

Learning atm! I have been doing this for a long time im just such a solo person lol. But now i really needed help and its fun to be part of a great community also grew up with this game its one of my favs!!!! I will play this game all my life with 90 haha. I want to start making my own campaign eventually yes! Here are the .mis .map files for now im testing this to see if the enemy will attack HUGE lol. Strange they are both called .MIS This is the correct dir:

E:\Gruntmods Studios\Dune 2000\data\maps

E:\Gruntmods Studios\Dune 2000\data\Missions

?

_O9V2.MIS _O9V2.MIS

[Fey]

Welcome. I hope you don't feel shy to ask anything. There's a lot to learn, and there are no silly questions!

For huge attacks, besides the other junk I referenced like the GuardGroupSize, also buff:
 - Unit Build Rate
 - their economy
 - Unit Build Priorities
 - Time Between Building Attacks

With a buildrate of 1, some priorities that keep the AI producing units, and enough time to build up those units, your AI can do some scary attacks.

What I mean by "priorities that keep the AI producing units" is, because UnitBuildPriorities are based on ratios, you may actually have the AI stop building altogether if they're not balanced properly. For instance, if you tell the AI to build a single Light Infantry for every five Combat Tanks, the AI may stop producing Light Infantry entirely while it pumps out another Combat Tank because that single Light Infantry will be ready rather quickly, but there won't be enough Combat Tanks around to justify building another Light Infantry. Kinda dumb, huh? Anyway, number of infantry > number of light vehicles > number of heavy vehicles should keep it producing stuff. The specifics shouldn't matter too much unless you go totally overboard with, like, 100 infantry for every 10 light vehicles for every half a Combat Tank. That would stop things too. lol

Here are a few screenshots of some basic high-production AIs throwing units at a base or three:

Spoiler

Many units, many fun. Yay.

Oh, uhh... and it appears you linked two .mis files. Could you check again and link the .map file?

Edited February 17, 2021 by Fey

[maltebyte02]

6 minutes ago, Fey said:

Welcome. I hope you don't feel shy to ask anything. There's a lot to learn, and there are no silly questions!

For huge attacks, besides the other junk I referenced like the GuardGroupSize, also buff:
 - Unit Build Rate
 - their economy
 - Unit Build Priorities
 - Time Between Building Attacks

With a buildrate of 1, some priorities that keep the AI producing units, and enough time to build up those units, your AI can do some scary attacks.

What I mean by "priorities that keep the AI producing units" is, because UnitBuildPriorities are based on ratios, you may actually have the AI stop building altogether if they're not balanced properly. For instance, if you tell the AI to build a single Light Infantry for every five Combat Tanks, the AI may stop producing Light Infantry entirely while it pumps out another Combat Tank because that single Light Infantry will be ready rather quickly, but there won't be enough Combat Tanks around to justify building another Light Infantry. Kinda dumb, huh? Anyway, number of infantry > number of light vehicles > number of heavy vehicles should keep it producing stuff. The specifics shouldn't matter too much unless you go totally overboard with, like, 100 infantry for every 10 light vehicles for every half a Combat Tank. That would stop things too. lol

Here are a few screenshots of some basic high-production AIs throwing units at a base or three:

  Reveal hidden contents

Many units, many fun. Yay.

Oh, uhh... and it appears you linked two .mis files. Could you check again and link the .map file?

Ah good to know! Atm im playing non infantry just light and heavy units, call me strange but i like that sometimes! Also do you happen to know the Unit limit of this game? I remember ages ago on my old pc i reached the unit cap and a msg came up "unable to build" or something.

Is this not the correct dir for the maps??

E:\Gruntmods Studios\Dune 2000\data\maps cause in there i have no _09V2.MAP.

In the editor D2kEditor.exe i can see O9V2.map but in windows explorer i do not see this file at the same location! even with show hidden elements.??? hmmm

[maltebyte02]

17 minutes ago, Fey said:

Welcome. I hope you don't feel shy to ask anything. There's a lot to learn, and there are no silly questions!

For huge attacks, besides the other junk I referenced like the GuardGroupSize, also buff:
 - Unit Build Rate
 - their economy
 - Unit Build Priorities
 - Time Between Building Attacks

With a buildrate of 1, some priorities that keep the AI producing units, and enough time to build up those units, your AI can do some scary attacks.

What I mean by "priorities that keep the AI producing units" is, because UnitBuildPriorities are based on ratios, you may actually have the AI stop building altogether if they're not balanced properly. For instance, if you tell the AI to build a single Light Infantry for every five Combat Tanks, the AI may stop producing Light Infantry entirely while it pumps out another Combat Tank because that single Light Infantry will be ready rather quickly, but there won't be enough Combat Tanks around to justify building another Light Infantry. Kinda dumb, huh? Anyway, number of infantry > number of light vehicles > number of heavy vehicles should keep it producing stuff. The specifics shouldn't matter too much unless you go totally overboard with, like, 100 infantry for every 10 light vehicles for every half a Combat Tank. That would stop things too. lol

Here are a few screenshots of some basic high-production AIs throwing units at a base or three:

  Reveal hidden contents

Many units, many fun. Yay.

Oh, uhh... and it appears you linked two .mis files. Could you check again and link the .map file?

Here i found theO9V2.MAP map.

[Fey]

11 minutes ago, maltebyte02 said:

Is this not the correct dir for the maps??

Missions, not maps. Maps is, uhh... for C&Cnet and stuff, IIRC. Ah, I see you found it.

Unit limit? There's a limit in the editor of 1,000 units / structures / certain other objects like sandworm spawners, As for in-game, I dunno. Never hit that limit before.

No worries, that works too. Make sure the number of light vehicles in general is greater than the number of heavy vehicles in general, and the AI should keep producing things constantly. Or as close to constantly as possible.

Edit: Woah. This style reminds me of some oldschool campaign maps with wide-open spaces and stuff. Very interesting to see this style again.

Thick Spice doesn't have the graphical assets to be put up at the edges of Spice fields. If you surround it in thin Spice, it'll look as intended.

The preplaced concrete is actually unbuildable terrain, which might make it difficult for the AI to replace its structures. There are custom tilesets that fix this issue and even allow you to place real, working concrete on the map, but Westwood's original tilesets didn't really utilize this behavior. I notice some of the top factions' Refineries are on some of this concrete.

Also, that's a lot of turrets. lol

Edited February 17, 2021 by Fey

[maltebyte02]

29 minutes ago, Fey said:

Missions, not maps. Maps is, uhh... for C&Cnet and stuff, IIRC. Ah, I see you found it.

Unit limit? There's a limit in the editor of 1,000 units / structures / certain other objects like sandworm spawners, As for in-game, I dunno. Never hit that limit before.

No worries, that works too. Make sure the number of light vehicles in general is greater than the number of heavy vehicles in general, and the AI should keep producing things constantly. Or as close to constantly as possible.

Edit: Woah. This style reminds me of some oldschool campaign maps with wide-open spaces and stuff. Very interesting to see this style again.

Thick Spice doesn't have the graphical assets to be put up at the edges of Spice fields. If you surround it in thin Spice, it'll look as intended.

The preplaced concrete is actually unbuildable terrain, which might make it difficult for the AI to replace its structures. There are custom tilesets that fix this issue and even allow you to place real, working concrete on the map, but Westwood's original tilesets didn't really utilize this behavior. I notice some of the top factions' Refineries are on some of this concrete.

Also, that's a lot of turrets. lol

Thanks for the feedback @Fedaykin ! Yes the tiles annoy me alot i cannot build on them! and thank you for pointing out some structures where placed on top still!

Awesome to hear that you like the map style!

[Fey]

Happy to help out. It's always exciting to see a passionate new mapper around! I cannot wait to see what else you come up with. By the way, did the AI parameters wind up working? Is the AI sending stronger attacks now?

The new editor has some great tileset-changing things. I believe the tileset attributes editor's hotkey is ctrl + A.

Not to overwhelm you with new features or anything when you're just starting out, but if you're interested in something a little complicated, I'll put some junk below this spoiler:

Spoiler

If you'd prefer a new tileset to work with, my Heighliner tileset makes use of working concrete tiles, among other neat things. Here are some screenshots:

Spoiler

It can be rather conducive to this sort of style too, where the enemy base is placed in a very square place and things are arranged in an artificial manner, but detailing with this tileset definitely takes a lot more effort. It's relatively new, and not all the geometry makes total sense, so even as the original designer it took a bit of practice to figure out how to map with this thing. Those screenshots up there came after doing a bunch of other maps already, so I had a feeling for how the pathing worked and stuff.

I have the full, working version of the tileset I could send over if you're interested.

 

[maltebyte02]

5 minutes ago, Fey said:

Happy to help out. It's always exciting to see a passionate new mapper around! I cannot wait to see what else you come up with. By the way, did the AI parameters wind up working? Is the AI sending stronger attacks now?

The new editor has some great tileset-changing things. I believe the tileset attributes editor's hotkey is ctrl + A.

Not to overwhelm you with new features or anything when you're just starting out, but if you're interested in something a little complicated, I'll put some junk below this spoiler:

  Reveal hidden contents

If you'd prefer a new tileset to work with, my Heighliner tileset makes use of working concrete tiles, among other neat things. Here are some screenshots:

  Reveal hidden contents

It can be rather conducive to this sort of style too, where the enemy base is placed in a very square place and things are arranged in an artificial manner, but detailing with this tileset definitely takes a lot more effort. It's relatively new, and not all the geometry makes total sense, so even as the original designer it took a bit of practice to figure out how to map with this thing. Those screenshots up there came after doing a bunch of other maps already, so I had a feeling for how the pathing worked and stuff.

I have the full, working version of the tileset I could send over if you're interested.

 

I was just gonna Let you know it WORKS YES!!! Thank you my freind!! you helped me into a quick death!! haha!

Its not too overwhelming like i said i have been doing this offline for many years but certain things i would have never guessed the things you helped me with today!

I have some more time now cause you know CovID19 bla bla lol

Uh that looks exciting the new tilesets how do i access this?

[Feda]

Feel free to join our discord server for real-time chatting, we talk a lot of modding stuff there

Link is in my signature

[maltebyte02]

3 minutes ago, Feda said:

Feel free to join our discord server for real-time chatting, we talk a lot of modding stuff there

Link is in my signature

I Have setup discord but i will see i might join sometime @Fedaykin im as i told you more the solo guy haha. But im greatful for your help today!!!! Super AWESOME!

[Feda]

Just now, maltebyte02 said:

I Have setup discord but i will see i might join sometime @Fedaykin im as i told you more the solo guy haha. But im greatful for your help today!!!! Super AWESOME!

Well you are not obligated to talk there, you can just lurk around and see what we talk about, some stuff you might find very useful

[Fey]

12 minutes ago, maltebyte02 said:

exciting

Happy to help. Yep, brutal AI be brutal. lol

Here ya go:
BLOXHILN.R16
BLOXHILN.R8
TILEFEY1.bin

The .r16 and .r8 go in data. No subfolders after that, just data. The .bin goes in data > bin. The new editor should be configured to use this already, and you can find the new editor here:

And if not, here's a pertinent ini:
BLOXHILN.ini

This would go under your D2kEditor folder, under "tilesets." Please do let me know if you encounter any difficulties starting a new map with the tileset!

[maltebyte02]

1 minute ago, Fey said:

Happy to help. Yep, brutal AI be brutal. lol

Here ya go:
BLOXHILN.R16
BLOXHILN.R8
TILEFEY1.bin

The .r16 and .r8 go in data. No subfolders after that, just data. The .bin goes in data > bin. The new editor should be configured to use this already, and you can find the new editor here:

And if not, here's a pertinent ini:
BLOXHILN.ini

This would go under your D2kEditor folder, under "tilesets." Please do let me know if you encounter any difficulties starting a new map with the tileset!

I will take a look. Also thanks for the Great Support today!