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Some questions about SCSII


Guest jchboy

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Having a medium-probability but high priority "switch target to whoever damaged me last" ought to help easing their ganging up and singlemindedness. Is that there? :blush:

 

No, because I'm not clear it's a good idea. If you're being attacked by two enemies, it makes no sense at all to spread your attacks around just because both of them are hitting you. Concentrate on taking one of them down instead.

 

Two-against-one, sure. Take out the easiest target. But the scenario I'm thinking of is rather the two-against-two:

 

AI A is attacking bloodthirsty swashbuckler PC B. PC B is retaliating.

AI C helps out by attacking PC B as well. All's well so far.

PC D comes to B's aid, giving C a good whack. C hasn't been attacked by anyone else so far.

 

Wouldn't it in this scenario make sense for C to transfer his attention to D?

Depends what you mean.

 

If you mean "would it make sense, within the AD&D rule system as implemented in IE games?" then the answer is: no, absolutely not.

 

Consider: you're fighting fire giants. Your two party fighters are ganging up on an Elite Fire Giant. Another one wanders along and attacks one of the fighters. Tactically, it's crazy to break off one of them to attack the second giant.

 

If you mean "would it make sense, in real life?" then I don't know for sure since I don't really know anything about real life combat, but almost certainly yes. This shows up three things in which the (A)D&D combat system isn't realistic:

 

(i) Attack and defence are completely separated

(ii) There are no penalties for fighting multiple opponents.

(iii) Injuries don't reduce your attack ability.

 

 

Does he, at present?

 

No.

 

For two reasons. Firstly, while it might be wise in real life, it's crazy in IE physics. SCS doesn't exploit loopholes in the game system, but it also doesn't go beyond that and do deliberately suboptimal things for the sake of realism. If there really are players out there who are so principled about this that in your situation, they'd split their attacks, then SCS is taking advantage of them. But I doubt there are many. Conversely if SCS were to try to do this then it would give most players - not just the ones who want to deliberately abuse the rules - an unfair advantage. I for one don't want that when I play.

 

But in any case - and this brings us to the second reason - it can't be implemented. So far as I know there's no way to do what you want in the two-vs-two situation without doing something stupid in the two-vs-one situation. And it's a basic principle of SCS to avoid doing stupid - and therefore immersion-breaking - things at all costs.

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But in any case - and this brings us to the second reason - it can't be implemented. So far as I know there's no way to do what you want in the two-vs-two situation without doing something stupid in the two-vs-one situation. And it's a basic principle of SCS to avoid doing stupid - and therefore immersion-breaking - things at all costs.

 

I think it could be implemented, just not wholly deterministically. Which fits my view of reactions in combat.

 

Ah well. We disagree.

 

"avoid doing stupid - and therefore immersion-breaking - things at all costs" is probably where we disagree philosophically. I don't want the AI to optimally destroy my weakest character once it gets the slightest opening. I want the AI to act smart and have some suboptimal choices in its repertoire nevertheless. I want to be able to distract the AI by sending in the cavalry to rescue mr. swashbuckler-in-over-his-head.

 

If that's not this mod, then that's not this mod. Fair enough :blush:

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But in any case - and this brings us to the second reason - it can't be implemented. So far as I know there's no way to do what you want in the two-vs-two situation without doing something stupid in the two-vs-one situation. And it's a basic principle of SCS to avoid doing stupid - and therefore immersion-breaking - things at all costs.

 

I think it could be implemented, just not wholly deterministically. Which fits my view of reactions in combat.

 

If you want to suggest some code, go for it. But I think you'll find it extremely difficult to work out when the 2-vs-2 situation is happening rather than the 2-vs-1 situation.

 

 

"avoid doing stupid - and therefore immersion-breaking - things at all costs" is probably where we disagree philosophically. I don't want the AI to optimally destroy my weakest character once it gets the slightest opening. I want the AI to act smart and have some suboptimal choices in its repertoire nevertheless.

 

Basically SCS "simulates" suboptimal choices by being written in a computing language (quite an impoverished one at that) rather than being implemented by an intelligent being. As I often seem to end up saying, even the AI state of the art (let alone anything implementable in IE scripting) is numbingly stupid compared to humans.

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You know, just 15 minutes ago I've replied that TB and RT/RTwP combat systems and the actual difficulty (brought in by the stats and AI) have nothing in common. But the more I read this topic, the more I begin to think that an intelligent AI is truly a challenge to write for RT, hence giving TB an edge over the other.

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