When will the adaptive AI be adaptive?

[nja]

So from what I understand, the current Cassandra simply combines semi-random events with a gradual ramp-up of difficulty.  The AI is planned to be more adaptive, though, right?

I'm not an amazing gamer, so I get frustrated when lots of bad things start happening at once and it's hard to recover.  I was excited about the AI in this game because I was under the impression it's supposed to eventually intelligently ramp up difficulty.

So far, I haven't experienced that.  What I have experienced is over and over raiders attacking just as an eclipse and solar flare occur while an electricity overload blows up my reactor and a blight kills my crops.  And then the game decides that since I have one colonist left who is about to have a mental break, it would be a great time to launch another raid with twice the number of people.  It doesn't seem to be learning from how bad I am; instead, it just keeps piling on the annoying crap until everyone dies.

It is just a pre-alpha right now, though, and I understand that.  I just wanted to provide a counter-viewpoint to all of the amazing veteran players on here saying that Kassandra is super-easy and everything like free crate drops should be taken away because it's all too easy.

[W1Z25]

ai is going to be adjusted alot to fine tune it.. atm its ok but has issues

[nomadseifer]

There is definitely some learning curve.  If you follow some of the 'starter' guides in this forum, you should manage well enough.  There are many established methods to deal with raiders.   

Also, just start on Phoebe friendly until you get the hang of managing all the colony-aspects without having to worry too much about raiders. 

[Dragula]

You could try one the raiderfunnels or waffle defenses. Not sure if the waffle still works but the raiders don't behave much different than in the earlier videos.
I'm now funneling the raiders down a 1-wide corridor with sandbags on the floor. To greet them around a short corner with 5 turrets and my 9 men crew. Holds 10-15 raiders without a single loss.

[Tynan]

They are heavily adaptive, actually. Cassandra is mostly just adaptive, the ramp-up aspect is quite small.

However, she's still not a genius. E.g. you'll get strong raider attacks if you have lots of turrets even if they're not powered and you have one colonist alive, because she's cueing off the turret count. Some of that randomness is okay, but not too much. I want to make her cleverer.

[nja]

There is definitely some learning curve.  If you follow some of the 'starter' guides in this forum, you should manage well enough.  There are many established methods to deal with raiders.   

Also, just start on Phoebe friendly until you get the hang of managing all the colony-aspects without having to worry too much about raiders.

Yep, I did start on Phoebe and practice a bunch of the techniques people have posted.  What's frustrating me is not the techniques, but rather that Cassandra seems to think it's appropriate to kick me while I'm down---that is, to keep piling on the bad events, even when it's clear that I'm close to being beaten.

[Dragula]

So if I would sell my turrets and would just use my crew of 9 with m16's, m24's and r4's she would send less or weaker raiders?
That would be a walk in the park then..

[Pendryn]

They are heavily adaptive, actually. Cassandra is mostly just adaptive, the ramp-up aspect is quite small.

However, she's still not a genius. E.g. you'll get strong raider attacks if you have lots of turrets even if they're not powered and you have one colonist alive, because she's cueing off the turret count. Some of that randomness is okay, but not too much. I want to make her cleverer.

Perhaps if she took into account the amount of power the colony has, or, even better, the total amount of power that could be allotted to the turrets. Sort of an "All power to forward shields" sort of situation. So she'd count the amount of power each turret takes to operate and then looks at how much power you are producing/ have stored in cells and says to herself, "Well. If they shut off all of their doors, lights, and food supplies, they can get that 4th turret online too. TWELVE PALS ENJOY."

[Sky_walker]

They are heavily adaptive, actually. Cassandra is mostly just adaptive, the ramp-up aspect is quite small.

However, she's still not a genius. E.g. you'll get strong raider attacks if you have lots of turrets even if they're not powered and you have one colonist alive, because she's cueing off the turret count. Some of that randomness is okay, but not too much. I want to make her cleverer.

So.. no turrets == easy mode?

Perhaps if she took into account the amount of power the colony has, or, even better, the total amount of power that could be allotted to the turrets. Sort of an "All power to forward shields" sort of situation. So she'd count the amount of power each turret takes to operate and then looks at how much power you are producing/ have stored in cells and says to herself, "Well. If they shut off all of their doors, lights, and food supplies, they can get that 4th turret online too. TWELVE PALS ENJOY."

It doesn't make much sense. Current system is more realistic - raiders look at your base from orbit - see lots of guns - send lots of raiders. Lesson for player: Never deploy turrets unless you can actually power them.
Besides - it still doesn't make sense, cause raids sometimes happen during the night or eclipse - and if your colony is purely solar-powered than this calculation is failed, because you can be with no power during raid deployment, but full on when raid attacks you. Or the other way around. So whatever it'd try to balance - it won't. It's better to just force player into powering turrets 100% of time - if he looses he will be the only one to blame for that.

ps. Please, please, don't use colors. It makes eyes hurt, and your post isn't any more special or important if you use color all over the place.

[chaotix14]

They are heavily adaptive, actually. Cassandra is mostly just adaptive, the ramp-up aspect is quite small.

However, she's still not a genius. E.g. you'll get strong raider attacks if you have lots of turrets even if they're not powered and you have one colonist alive, because she's cueing off the turret count. Some of that randomness is okay, but not too much. I want to make her cleverer.

Perhaps you could make her take in account wether the solar flare event is active or not, and then make her ignore turrets in her count if the event is active. Shouldn't be more than one or two lines of extra code, depending on how exactly it's coded of course.

Perhaps if she took into account the amount of power the colony has, or, even better, the total amount of power that could be allotted to the turrets. Sort of an "All power to forward shields" sort of situation. So she'd count the amount of power each turret takes to operate and then looks at how much power you are producing/ have stored in cells and says to herself, "Well. If they shut off all of their doors, lights, and food supplies, they can get that 4th turret online too. TWELVE PALS ENJOY."

It doesn't make much sense. Current system is more realistic - raiders look at your base from orbit - see lots of guns - send lots of raiders. Lesson for player: Never deploy turrets unless you can actually power them.
Besides - it still doesn't make sense, cause raids sometimes happen during the night or eclipse - and if your colony is purely solar-powered than this calculation is failed, because you can be with no power during raid deployment, but full on when raid attacks you. Or the other way around. So whatever it'd try to balance - it won't. It's better to just force player into powering turrets 100% of time - if he looses he will be the only one to blame for that.

Not entirely he mentions the total power that could be alloted to turrets, solar generators have a energy output of exactly 0 during the night or an eclipse and thus can allot 0 power to turrets.
And as far as the raiders looking down and seeing your defences, well it's a game not everything has to make sense, balance in my opinion is more important.

[nja]

So a good example of a frustrating chain of events can be found in this post.  Basically, a boomrat killed two colonists, causing a fire that destroyed all turrets, but not before Cassandra spawned a ton of raiders.  As soon as the raiders were beginning their raid, Cassandra started a thunderstorm and blighted my crops.  I view the "AI Storyteller" as a friend telling a story; I'd like to think that a friend (Cassandra, not Kassandra) wouldn't look at my situation and say "hmm, you're screwed already, better just pile on even more bad events".  But maybe that's just my friends.  And yes, I've tried Phoebe Friendly.  It was fun for a bit, but I would honestly prefer a middle-ground --- a Cassandra who doesn't ramp up quite so quickly, or who recognizes bad situations and doesn't immediately clamor to make them worse.

[Tynan]

Bear in mind that perfect balance isn't not a design goal for RimWorld. The main goal is to create interesting, dramatic events, which may sometimes include combinations of very destructive or near-unbeatable events. Cassie will never be hyper-effective at balancing against exactly what you can handle, because that's not the goal and it would make all the stories predictable and flaccid. Imba adds a bit of spice.

I'd go so far to say that if you're playing RimWorld to win, you're playing it with the wrong mindset. nja's story is tragic, but in a certain light it's also hilarious. This is the "losing is fun" mindset from Dwarf Fortress.

My first response to these kinds of situations actually isn't to try to make Cassie smarter, it'll be to create events that are less terminal. Raiders that leave before killing everyone, or who can be paid off if you can't handle them. In the terminology I use in my game design book, I'd like to create more elastic failure conditions so the colony can take more hits before the game ends, thus dragging out the drama.

[nomadseifer]

I really think there should be a more standard ramp-up storyteller that keeps ramping until player death, with little or no adaptivity.  Right now, without turrets, every battle on Tough Cassandra is still pretty easy and straightforward and I eventually just run out of anything to do. 

Also, a mine-detector would be a nice addition to the enemy.

[nja]

The main goal is to create interesting, dramatic events, which may sometimes include combinations of very destructive or near-unbeatable events.

That's a good point, and I do really appreciate that goal.  That being said, at the moment it seems less "sometimes" combinations of unbeatable events and more "almost-always" combinations of unbeatable events.  Perhaps I'm just "lucky" with the spice!

I'd go so far to say that if you're playing RimWorld to win, you're playing it with the wrong mindset. nja's story is tragic, but in a certain light it's also hilarious. This is the "losing is fun" mindset from Dwarf Fortress.

Heh, I hadn't thought of looking at it in that way.  I imagine I'll move more in that direction once the dialog and art style is updated.  Looking forward to it!  Emergent narratives bordering on the amusing are a good thing.

My first response to these kinds of situations actually isn't to try to make Cassie smarter, it'll be to create events that are less terminal. Raiders that leave before killing everyone, or who can be paid off if you can't handle them. In the terminology I use in my game design book, I'd like to create more elastic failure conditions so the colony can take more hits before the game ends, thus dragging out the drama.

That sounds like a very reasonable thing to do, and I appreciate your work on it.  Please don't take my comments as any sort of hatred of the game --- it's a pre-alpha and it is amazing for what it is!  That being said, more "elastic failure conditions" will likely lessen the frustration and allow for more enjoyment, to the benefit of all!

[chaotix14]

The main goal is to create interesting, dramatic events, which may sometimes include combinations of very destructive or near-unbeatable events.

That's a good point, and I do really appreciate that goal.  That being said, at the moment it seems less "sometimes" combinations of unbeatable events and more "almost-always" combinations of unbeatable events.  Perhaps I'm just "lucky" with the spice!

I'd go so far to say that if you're playing RimWorld to win, you're playing it with the wrong mindset. nja's story is tragic, but in a certain light it's also hilarious. This is the "losing is fun" mindset from Dwarf Fortress.

Heh, I hadn't thought of looking at it in that way.  I imagine I'll move more in that direction once the dialog and art style is updated.  Looking forward to it!  Emergent narratives bordering on the amusing are a good thing.

My first response to these kinds of situations actually isn't to try to make Cassie smarter, it'll be to create events that are less terminal. Raiders that leave before killing everyone, or who can be paid off if you can't handle them. In the terminology I use in my game design book, I'd like to create more elastic failure conditions so the colony can take more hits before the game ends, thus dragging out the drama.

That sounds like a very reasonable thing to do, and I appreciate your work on it.  Please don't take my comments as any sort of hatred of the game --- it's a pre-alpha and it is amazing for what it is!  That being said, more "elastic failure conditions" will likely lessen the frustration and allow for more enjoyment, to the benefit of all!

You definatly aren't the only lucky one. Last try on cassandra classic ended with me getting attacked by 6 raiders, one of which had grenades, when I had 1 turret which was taken out moments before the attack with a solar flare, 2 living colonists(neither fully healed after the last raid) and 1 prisoner(which I hadn't had time for to recruit, because I was too busy with deal with a crop blight). Retried it a couple of times using older autosaves, same result everytime.

Less terminal events seem like a nice idea, as long as it doesn't also make the events harder.(like instead of the first raider wave being a single guy with a pistol, now it's 2 with pistols) It would give you more opportunity to struggle.