Mapping technical question: unit production & multiple factories

[Darkstar387]

Hey guys, I seek your expertise once again. Do any of you have any insight into how / where the AI builds their teamtypes or units in missions where more than one factory is available? Suppose there are two bases, each equipped with the means to produce infantry and vehicles. IF the AI is instructed to build a teamtype, how does it decide which factory to use?

I've designed a couple of missions where this scenario exists and it appears that the AI initially builds from whichever structure is listed first in the .INI file, but soon begins producing units from all structures at random. Have any of you experimented with this before?

[Jacko]

Hey guys, I seek your expertise once again. Do any of you have any insight into how / where the AI builds their teamtypes or units in missions where more than one factory is available? Suppose there are two bases, each equipped with the means to produce infantry and vehicles. IF the AI is instructed to build a teamtype, how does it decide which factory to use?

I've designed a couple of missions where this scenario exists and it appears that the AI builds from whichever structure is listed first in the .INI file. Have of you experimented with this before?

 

I'm not certain about C&C1 but I know in RA it will try to produce required units from both.

[nariac]

In my experience the AI will build from the first listed in the .ini, until it needs to build a teamtype that has multiple different units inside. For example if you have the AI build a teamtype of 4 mammoth tanks, they will be built one after the other from the first weapons factory leaving the second one completely idle, but if it's a teamtype with 2 mammoths and 2 medium tanks, the AI will build the medium tanks alongside the mammoths from the second factory.

 

I don't know which it decides to build from which factory, so I'll assume that the first listed unit type in the teamtype will be built from the first listed factory in the .ini file.

[Darkstar387]

Does the mysterious U1 number factor into the equation? Eyes looking at you Mister Matt... 

[MattAttack]

wooo, trying to dig back through my foggy memory to remember what I gleaned on this one...  I know the short answer is that I don't think there is a way to specify what gets built where.  U1 doesn't seem to affect it and I believe Nariac is basically right in that the structure listed first in the .ini will be the "primary" structure building the vehicles.  Infantry, of course, seem to be produced out of all the HoN/Rax regardless of where they are listed in the .ini.  IIRC, there are variables though.  How the teams are "triggered" seem to be a factor, be it directly through a trigger or with the "force creation" function or even automatically creating the team by setting the "number of teams" to more than 0 without an autocreate trigger.  There may even be a difference between how the airstrip functions vs. the WF.  Either way, if the team consists of mixed vehicles I think you're pretty much out of luck.  I'm pretty sure you tested my mission with the 4 WFs (one in each corner) and I remember having to come up with a complicated waypoint scheme to compensate if the primary WF was destroyed.  Mind you, that was originally a GDI mission with airstrips in each corner, but the planes would eventually stop entering the map once in a while.  But I seem to recall one airstrip building the tanks, while a different one would build the bikes, etc.  But, I was just working on a map with multiple airstrips (next to each other, thankfully) and it was working differently.  I swear mapping for this game is 90% art and 10% science which is sort of weird for a computer program.  Unfortunately my life these days consists of a teething one year old and a hurricane of a three year old, otherwise I could actually find time to test this more thoroughly.  Good luck and be sure to share any insights you may uncover!

[Messiah]

I'm sure the AI randomly builds from all available factories when a team is produced.

 

You may try this to specify the factory where something is produced in:

1. Change structure's owner to "Multi1".

2. Add a power plant, refinery and harvester (or enough money) to that house.

3. Ally Multi1 and the house of the player's opponent.

4. Change all TeamTypes which should be produced there to "Multi1"

5. Add ColorScheme=Nod or ColorScheme=GDI in the [Multi1] section of the map ini.

 

In RA that works fine, in TD I'm not sure if more than one house is able to produce and create teamtypes.

[nariac]

I'm sure the AI randomly builds from all available factories when a team is produced.

 

You may try this to specify the factory where something is produced in:

1. Change structure's owner to "Multi1".

2. Add a power plant, refinery and harvester (or enough money) to that house.

3. Ally Multi1 and the house of the player's opponent.

4. Change all TeamTypes which should be produced there to "Multi1"

5. Add ColorScheme=Nod or ColorScheme=GDI in the [Multi1] section of the map ini.

 

In RA that works fine, in TD I'm not sure if more than one house in able to produce and create teamtypes.

 

This is a good way of doing it, and it's the technique I used in Return to Sender. There's two Nod bases at the bottom corners of the map, and each one has a HoN and an Airstrip, but I didn't want the teams to be produced split across the two bases because they'd get stuck in the middle trying to form up and they weren't supposed to go near the middle because there's an objective there they might accidentally destroy, so I made the right hand base a Multi house, allied it with Nod, coloured it Nod, and had it create all the teamtypes that were supposed to attack up the right flank.

[Darkstar387]

I'm sure the AI randomly builds from all available factories when a team is produced.

 

You may try this to specify the factory where something is produced in:

1. Change structure's owner to "Multi1".

2. Add a power plant, refinery and harvester (or enough money) to that house.

3. Ally Multi1 and the house of the player's opponent.

4. Change all TeamTypes which should be produced there to "Multi1"

5. Add ColorScheme=Nod or ColorScheme=GDI in the [Multi1] section of the map ini.

 

In RA that works fine, in TD I'm not sure if more than one house is able to produce and create teamtypes.

That's what I do now, I used this technique in my mission "Heartbreak Ridge" . Different bases produced different teams so I could better mandage how they followed certain waypoints. I was wondering if you guy's new a better way of doing it though.

[MattAttack]

Yeah, I figured everyone here was familiar with that work-around since it was in a lot of the recent SP missions.  As I'm sure you've all heard me say though, I'm pretty obsessed with making my campaign just like Westwood made their missions, and I'm crazy about an accurate kill-count, so I refuse to use this method.  I don't expect anyone else to be as nuts about it as me, but that's my 2 cents.

[Darkstar387]

It's been a while since I've played the original  campaign. I know the only missions where the AI builds out of 2 factories are towards the end, missions 11 and 12 I think (and the extra Nod one). Were they able to accomplish this themselves?

[MattAttack]

Sadly, no.  I remember investigating this in GDI 15ec* specifically, and IIRC they were basically just using "attack base" for the team's sole command.  Therefore, the teams wouldn't meander around the map trying to meet up, they just go for the player base.  There are a lot of pre-placed units to alleviate confusion in the beginning, too.  If you haven't seen it yet, Nyer has a great resource for looking at the original .ini's here: http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/cncstuff/mappics/

 

 

*this one:

 

[Darkstar387]

Hmm... ok then. I have a second question regarding auto-created teams. In the campaign, Westwood had missions that included large numbers of different auto-create teams. Some missions would feature up to 11, 12 teams to be built. However, I noticed the AI only really ever builds the first 4 or 5 teams. It doesn't cycle through and randomly select teams like previously thought. I noticed this on my missions as well, the AI favors 3 or 4 teams and doesn't use the full list. Does anybody have any insight into how the AI picks teams during auto create?

[MattAttack]

Yeah, I noticed that too.  I wish I had time to test, but my theory is that there is possibly a limited amount of time to produce the units and any team not started during that window just doesn't get built.  To test this, I'd recommend either A)having enough units pre-placed on the map for like 10 teams to be autocreated and/or B)try re-arranging the teamtypes in the .ini to see if maybe it prioritizes that way and different teams get built.  And is it just me or does autocreate seem to repeat at regular time intervals or does it really seem random?

[nariac]

Yeah, I noticed that too.  I wish I had time to test, but my theory is that there is possibly a limited amount of time to produce the units and any team not started during that window just doesn't get built.  To test this, I'd recommend either A)having enough units pre-placed on the map for like 10 teams to be autocreated and/or B)try re-arranging the teamtypes in the .ini to see if maybe it prioritizes that way and different teams get built.  And is it just me or does autocreate seem to repeat at regular time intervals or does it really seem random?

 

In some of my maps I had to use autocreate more often than I'd have liked, since I prefer using triggers to send in teams at certain time points, but some maps have so many triggers just for the map stuff that I don't have room to trigger a wide variety of attacks.

 

When I have used it, it's seemed to me that after a set number of time units, the AI will try to build every autocreate team listed and send them at you all at once, and this will regularly happen every set number of time units. What I wished it would do is randomly build teams and randomly send them at you, to mix it up a little.

[Darkstar387]

The Autocreate function definately works on a schedule, it's not random. Don't qoute me on this, but I remembers seeing the number 150 time units floating around the forum, don't remember where I saw it.