Bot in a tank. OMG they're terrible drivers

So if you've already seen seen my thread about free roaming bots....
https://forums.empiresmod.com/index...ike-coral-slowly-free-roaming-building.21153/

... then you might like this weeks work on convincing them to drive a tank. Code that pops them in needs more work. "get in the damn tank bot-duffus!". And I currently need guard rails to keep them from just smashing their armor in to a wall.

We'll have to see how far I can get with this idea. Looks like it will take a lot of work to make any kind of a useful driver. But honestly I don't think I'd ever want them to be.

Latest vid....

 

I once had a noob who needed 20 minutes to understand how to get in the CV, after telling him many times in detail. Bot>Noob.

But no, I wouldn't want bots to drive tanks in the battlefield, no matter how good they are. I'd prefer if they worked as infantry cannon fodder. Perhaps you could make them in the barracks.

 

@Ranger

Though not shown in the vids, bots do randomly pick and spawn from barracks. Is that what you're referring too?
And I agree, I'm not big on the idea of waves of tank bots.
Maybe use them to try and retrieve orphaned vehicles if near by?

@Lazybum
Yes... he realized the futility of his limited abilities and decided to end the misery with a kill spawn.
Avoiding getting stuck on the walls was just dumb luck of med physics.
There really isn't any "driving code" yet. It tries infantry moves as if walking, which ain't gonna work of course.
Once in the tank, it goes in to "I'm stuck" mode and tries maneuver as if it's trapped in or by a map feature.
After so many unsuccessful attempts to free itself, it kill spawns back to a barracks.... and to pay any traffic tickets.

 

No I mean make them like in real RTS games. Infantry unit are made in the barracks usually.

 

I think the bot took driving lessons from me
Joking aside, great work! Misfire!

 

I am seeing myself driving with 300 ping, 12 years ago.

 

Bots driving tanks could be useful..
Research finishes and instead of having team kill spawn to a VF. The commander could send some bots to deliver tanks to front line.

 

So basically a Red Ball Express for tanks.
Somehow it sounds more dramatic in my head than it would be in reality.

Like I'm imagining NF infantry and light tanks staying pinned down by BE medium tanks, then in a deus ex machina, bots start to bring in NF med's and APC's of more soldiers into a huge tank battle.

Sounds like too much coding for that to happen.

 

And for little gain. I would prefer if the coding was focused on infantry bots and squad play.

 

Sounds like kind of a cool scenario. But yeah, probably beyond the amount of work I could ever do. An effective tank driver would require serious AI.
My narrow view of bots was always to help noobs learn on a practice server and maybe help with some basics in low-pop games to keep the game moving.
I think Uber-bots would turn empires in to some other game.... which is not my intention.

To Ranger's point.....
While I'm working with vehicles, it's actually helping my coding of infantry, AI methods and understanding of steam engine. I'm infantry focused.
ATM if I were to pick the one and only vehicle task I might allow for a bot, it would be to drive a spawn APC to a destination and that's about it. Bot driven party bus.

 

Well, do what you can at best.
I do agree that it should serve as a practice simulation to new guys or if the servers get knocked out for any reason.

 

Misfire, I really think you're biting off an undo able task. Why not train them to be commander and to talk to the troops, give targets, drive and build refineries or forward barracks, boom tank. I think you see the silliness in what I am saying. If they would simply guard the squad leader, and always give up the squad lead to a human, then that would make them awesome. Putting a waypoint on a person, then teaching them to walk around obstacles is a big enough task and adds a lot of value. Enable a squad leader to instruct them to Guard this location, or attack this target, then they are even more useful and could be used in a game. I could see 3v3 games where two humans have 4 bots each doing full battle, emulating a 11v11 match, 1 human + 4 bots on one squad, 4+1 on another, then a commander. The human could point bots to "build this", and walk to the next location. If the human could instruct a single bot to do something then that would be very cool. It would be like a walking turret that could be positioned and moved as needed. Now you make empires into a strategic chess match, and keep the spirit of the game in tact.

 

Not sure where you get the idea I have any of those bot features in mind. As I mentioned above, I got in to the vehicle code to better understand path finding and steam engine. Making killer tank bots ain't in the plan or my time budget. Pushing an APC is about my intended limit and pretty much already covered by infantry code. No aiming, firing, reloading cannons necessary for that.

They already do, though it's not the prettiest thing some times.

A handy feature I agree.
It would require more code since squad lead doesn't have an over head selectable view like commander
But giving bot a destination based on squad leader's line of sight doesn't seem too hard though.

 

Are you rolling your own A*?

 

If only I knew what A* meant

 

Er, A star as in the canonical path finding algorithm.

Edit: Okay that isn't accurate, it's a family of path finding algorithms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm

 

Ah. So yeah, sort of my own so far. And I wouldn't call it much of an algorithm. More of a maze navigator.
Since empires can place obstacles anywhere anytime and the landscape features can act like fly paper for even a human player, I'm keeping it simple for now.
"Ow. I hit my nose on something, change direction or Retreat!", coupled with a basic compass direction.

Maybe I'll make another vid just following one around a bit for an example. Sped up of course, bot shadow is a boring job.

 

So you're basically turning tanks to very large and very deadly Roomba's.

 

lol. More or less, yes.
I started out with vector tracing but found it unreliable for navigating out of buildings. A steam thing I guess.
"Roomba mode" so far gets infantry out of barracks, VFs and works them out of landscape features. Though it can be annoying to watch sometimes.