Proposed massive AI mod

It seems to me at this point that there is massive demand for an AI mod, and only and AI mod. Reading all of these messages, an idea occured to me.

I've considered making my own space empires game many times, and one of the features I've always wanted to build in is to have the AI learn from the player. Nothing complicated of course, but just have the AI store the player's ship designs, observe how the player uses them (what stategies the player uses, what the player does with the ship... moves cargo, lays mines, launches fighters, rams), then use the players own designs against the player. You could even have a central website where people submit a file containing the info their AI has learned, and all of this info from various players could be compiled into an uber AI that will use the most effective ship designs used by thousands of players around the world.

Now, with that said, we are not going to mod the AI in SEV to do these things, so don't get too excited. However, we could approximate this, and this is where we get to my idea:

I am proposing a massive redesign of the AI ship design engine. Currently, the AI ship design is configured so that you can adjust a few simple parameters, and supposedly alter the AIs behavior. Unfortunately, this results in guess work... toying with parameters... checking to see if it worked, and ultimately this system is too simple... too flexible for a game as complicated as SEV. I know it makes modding harder, but let's get more explicit. There is one particular function that adds all of the ship components based on the input parameter "Ship Type". I am proposing to write a Perl script which will take as input a very simply formated file that contains ship designs in the following format:

Design type|Rock Colony Ship
Design attack strategy|Run away
Design defence strategy|Ram

Component|Number of components to add|Location to add components to
Engine|5|Outer
Bridge|1|Inner
Armour|1|Armour
RockColony|1|Inner
Cargo|2|Outer

Filler component|Supply
Filler location|Outer

The perl script will use this file to rewrite only the component design function of the AI script according to the player's own custom design file (you decide the designs the AI uses) while keeping the rest of the file the same (for your additional modding pleasure). The ship design function will be designed to treat the file designs as a prioritized list. The AI will move down the list adding the specified components (if they exist) until space runs out, and then the AI will add the specified filler components.

How is this different then the current system? Well, in the current system there is a vague set of percentages you assign to tell the AI the percentage of hull space to devote to missiles, beams, pd etc. The problem is, with all the variation in hull sizes... this is a very inexact science. You tell the ship to assign 50% space to missiles, and you get a ship with a ton of armour and no missiles. What I am proposing is to allow the player to explicitely state exactly the components the AI should put on its ships, exactly the stategy the ship should use, in a very simple format that anyone could mod (not just programmers). Best of all, poeple can share and combine their AI design files to produce better files. This idea can be expanded of course to other aspects of the AI as well (research,facility construction,distribution of colony types, distribution of ship types and unit types to build), but for now, ship design is the aspect I know the most about.

Now, of course this idea needs fleshing out. I know there are issues that will need to be dealt with. You'll probably need to have something in the file that says: use DUC until meson blasters or anti-proton cannons exist, then switch to those. I understand this functionality exists in the current AI, but simply put, it does not work! This is simpler, maybe less flexible, but it works.

Aaron has given us a temendously flexible scripting system for the AI, and thus far the tweaks have been pretty minor. I don't think we've been exploiting the massive flexiblity of the scripting system (and the fact that we can make scripts to mod the scripting system). This AI mod would be a step in that direction.