McPwny

yeah it is tedious to make campaign maps in general, but anyways its possible to test then port a working skirmish map AI into an AI.ini file, or as i mentioned, into a text file that anyone could insert into any map. if you do try it, just be sure to test on a skirmish map because the game handles skirmish and campaign AI very differently. its all self contained in the maps and you dont need anything extra. your ai.ini will be ignored by the maps but maby its a good idea to rename your rules.ini file while playing them so your global settings dont interfere with the AI

i usually make AI for maps so i tend to make them specialized as per map theme instead of general purpose like the global ai in ai.ini, but if you want a playable example of my modified AI then the last vanilla campaign map i made "nuclear winter" featured multiple AI that make heavy use of base defense teams, pool teams, and recruitment hierarchies. in an older skirmish map i made which you can play with computers, i made random buildings spawn everywhere and scripted the AI to capture them and use them to build units and attack the enemy. both maps disable global AI and are 100% built from scratch. ill link them below incase you want to look and see

not only the AI editor, but the script editor/team editor, and the AI trigger disabling/enabling features, and ability to turn off that stupid vanilla global AI. plus you can ini edit yourself some debug tools and also reload the map without rebooting the game. ive built dozens of AI's for skirmish and campaign maps from the ground up for both RA2 and TS like this.

its funny bbglas should mention fa2 here because thats actually the fastest way to build an AI; pick an 8 player map, give yourself an invincible superunit and a vehicle that deploys into an invincible spysat/map range psychic sensor, then turn off the global ai triggers under basic and build your own AI from the ground up using fa2's interface. launch the map at max speed and you can see exactly how the AI will behave in a matter of minutes with no effort. as an added perk to doing it this way, with a little renaming you can take your whole AI and port it to a text file and insert it into other maps with the insert ini feature.

are you still building this AI? and also, how do you test your changes?

it will and it wont. it will work until it tries to target something out of range, and then it will get confused. making AI only version of the carrier/dred passiveaquire is a workaround for that thats been done a million times over but also has problems like what happens when you mind control that hacked unit? naval AI is inherently trash in ra2. as for the aegis, changing a player unit to accommodate the AI crosses the line between improved AI and and gameplay mod...

as long as your taskforce lists the carrier/dred first, then it will use that units targeting and attack properly, assuming the target is in range. but, for example, your team "Allied Naval Bombard- 1" lists 2 carriers and 1 aegis; since carriers are listed first their targeting will be used, but it also means the aegis will never be able to target aircraft (except when its the last unit alive in the team) rendering it useless in the team.

well i dont mean to sit here and bust your balls but the global controls in rules.ini are like fine control dials, one does not just torque on them until something changes and call it improvement. i have looked at the AI and will say that the teams and triggers look pretty good, but the scripts are not so good and the teams dont account for AI targeting which is important. i should mention also that engineer capture logic is hacky in such a way that it renders all of your engineer tech capture teams redundant and also i need to mention that adding all of those aircraft target teams will be prone cause a bug where the aircraft sit on the pad and jump up and down

i looked though the log and it shows some pretty wild changes. theres a lot of things in rules that have been changed that have no business being changed... some game breaking, many redundant. i also looked briefly through the AI portion and found that its basically the vanilla AI but with some additions. some of the additions themselves are also game breaking and redundant, but with some neat features like functioning pool teams in there too.

if you missed the point of that it would be a disaster if everyone who spends an hour to slap together a map can get it official, then idk what to tell you. and frankly, being little more than a flat featureless map with buku money, ill go so far as to say i dont think it even adds anything to 'competitive gameplay' either looks like burg and them have since been more careful picking maps, so the point of arguing this now is moot.

update features are looking good dude nice one

i actually played oceania less than the others because its so big. the way i see it is that of course the V3 is going to suck on these maps; they are naval maps and the V3 is a land unit. i dont like playing with the balance modded versions because even though ra2 balance is not that great in general, i still can know exactly how units will interact with eachother in vanilla and with stat tweaks it always puts anyone not adjusted to them at an unfair disadvantage.

personally, ive always preferred to play the unmodded versions. black sea has always been my favorite. anyways, im glad to see that his maps have made official and hopefully we can see some more content from cccp in the future.

for some reason, the ai sells anything that doesnt have the tag "needsengineer=yes" when it captures it with an engineer. you can make the AI actually use the building by writing AI triggers for it telling it to, but by default the AI has no extra triggers telling it to do that. you can actually write AI triggers into a map and also .ini edit the map to give all buildings "needsengineer=yes" and then on top of that use some AI triggers explicitly telling the AI to capture enemy buildings effectively giving you what you want, but doing so would take a few hours at least assuming that you already know AI and map INI editing. i once made a heavily scripted map that had an AI that does exactly that. if you want to play it, or just poke at it in FA2, you can find it here:

the mission was a lot of fun. i ended up capturing a yuri conyard and making several battle fortresses filled with 1 virus, 3 yuri, and 1 chrono legionairre and a bunch of prism tanks and psychic dominating them to make the mind control immune and using them to steam roll the enemy, capturing many of the special enemy tanks along the way making it an unstoppable armored blob in spite of the relentless AI assault. early in the game i attempted a chronosphere rush on the enemy psychic dominator only to blow up a mind controlled flak trak filled with engineers which immediately captured the enemy HQ giving me a 'secondary objective achieved' message. i dont know what it did, but the enemy promptly blew up the captured building. i found that using a spy on an enemy slave miner gives infinate money also. after nearly destroying every enemy unit, i accidentally destroyed the airport to the west which gave me a 'mission failed'

well i could just be bias since i have heard them way too many times. they didnt actually remove them but rather vanilla yr removed them. re-including them by editing the .ini that controls music would take about 5 minutes, though.

the grouping action when an mcv is deployed in multiplay is actually hardcoded. its not possible to change the faction colors in a multiplay map file for whatever reason. you cant give something more than 100% health.

true. the OG vanilla ra2 soundtrack had more songs and better songs. memorable and iconic songs. yr music just sounds like elevator music tbh

i imagine it would be relatively easy to create an alternate version of aimd.ini with a better AI and then pack it with the client to be activated when an option is ticked, but they dont do that. since cncnet is focused on multiplay, i suppose. you can still write and pack custom AI into map files and play them like that, but few people understand how to and its also a lot of work

i disagree. cccp's maps all play well just the way they are in my experience. he also patches them based on feedback, mind you. not to say ravages' edits arent good, because they are. though it would have been better if he made his own maps or at least edited non-official maps as submissions with the creators permission.

i dont really want to take sides in this but my thinking is that its better for ravages name to be on there instead of edited maps not citing the editor, though i never cared for map edits being in the official map roster to tell the truth. i would rather have CCCP's maps in that official map roster because, lets be honest, his maps put ravages, yours, and mine to absolute shame. they are good.

for example, newurban has 2 bugged iso tiles, snow has 1 bugged iso tile, and several buildings dont render in all theaters

huh. i guess that means that the westwood devs made the mistake of listing the veterancy buffs twice but not having them actually stack. i guess the proper thing to do would be to remove it from the veteran list or increase the elite weps damage. that said, i somehow doubt it will happen since there are a handful of other easy fix bugs in the game that have gone unpatched forever and ever

are there versions of FA2 that dont read YR assets out there that you can use to avoid this kind of problem? the flak trooper thing... it has "FIREPOWER,ROF" in both its VeteranAbilities= and EliteAbilities=, so i dont think that its elite wep is actually weaker even though it looks like the elite wep will do 4 less damage. the burst will also make it slightly more effective against grouped enemies AKA rocketeer spam so i think its fine.

right on. its nice to see people working on co-op maps with interesting themes