Hey guys,

I'm currently trying to work out and plan the AI im going to use in my space combat game (3D) but im kinda stuck on a couple of things and was wondering if I could have some help with ideas. Been looking at games like X3 for inspiration.

Currently for the movement of the AI I am using steering behaviours (either directly or I will use them to compute the velocity I need and then turn the ship to face that direction). I will be using a state machine though I might try and use a behaviour tree instead later for its advantages.

The logic for my fighter AI currently is as follows

• in the state machine I will have 3 main states. search for target, attack/chase and flee
• find an enemy ship and set that as a target (will have to make sure not all ships target one enemy but should be easy enough) and move to its location
• once it gets close enough match its speed
• fire if the angle between its forward vector and the enemy's ship is low enough
• start to feel if the my health is to low
• scan for the closest bullet and see if it is heading in the ships direction, if it is use the evade steering behaviour to try and avoid it (this is passive behaviour that will happen in every state)
• another passive behaviour will be obstacle avoidance (avoiding ships and asteroids)

So for this I realised I will have some problems

1. The first being that if two ships target each other, they are going to be seeking each other which will end badly
2. When i make a ship flee (if i still want to after thinking it all), how would i make it harder to hit. I could give it a random force to push it side to side but using evade or flee from its enemy alone wont work as fare as i know (flee will just move away from it and since the other ship is just heading straight towards the fleeing ship, evade will do the same as flee).

in future I would like to look into fuzzy logic and utility systems with behaviour trees to create a much more intelligent AI but for now I'm just trying to get something that works to an ok extend (game still needs to be fun for the player).

Any ideas or help with understanding concepts/the solution to my problems would be very appreciated. Also open to new ideas of how to do the movement :)

@ApochPiQ That answer a lot of my questions about how it is done in games Thanks :)

Just some questions about the combat director. what would be the best way to go about it, I'm guessing I will still need some intelligence when it comes to making sure the ai does not just crash into objects. Am I just telling the AI ship what to do in curtain situations or is there more to it?

@ApochPiQ so for my game where i will have 10 fighters vs 10 fighters, when one needs to go into evading, they will all take an evasive stance (due to the manager) but they will evade what is local to them. from this I would just use steering behaviours to achieve what I need in terms of the movement (correct me if im wrong).

If that is correct that I believe I understand the concept but just need to help with a couple more things

1.

and a handful of basic modules for maneuvers

Will these be pre planned in code and then I just give this as a desired seek (if say it was based on moving up and around) and im guessing all fighters will do this as it will be acted by the manager

2. What would be the best way of working out what behaviour to do (some like dodging will be easy but others like when to do a manoeuvres i'm guessing could be based on a selector with some logic),(would i have a state machine or behaviour tree setup for the manager to makes decisions)?

3. With firing at enemy ships, would I have that as an add on logic for the director with the simple code of "if angle between me and ship is between 10 or -10 fire" or would i just say fire to all ships as its only behaviour at the time (if you have a shot ofcs)

4. My final questions kinda links to 2 (and im guessing the answers will be based on the workings out of the logic for my ships) but say both teams have the behaviour to chase and the fire down the enemy, would I not run into the same problem. From this would I have triggers (just like in a state machine when states transition) to say if your going to collide, everyone dodge, then do something different. In other words will the 2 managers have to communicate what they are doing or will it just be based on internal logic of the manager and its ships.

Again thanks for the help

@ApochPiQ. To add one more point I would guess its best to have different logic for the manager depending on the ship type. (like in the example between fighters and the corvette)

@ApochPiQ arr so there is one manager for both teams which decides what to do based on what each ship is saying.

So for the dog fight as you said, each ship from one team could bid on attacking a target and if they win then the whole formation would attack the ship for a time, which the ships being attack would either just wonder and take the fire or maybe do a dodge maneuver so in terms of behaviours this would be "fire on targets that try and dodge" or "fire on targets that dont try to dodge" (feel free to comment if this is still wrong).

So really your manager is almost telling a story or conducting the battle (as you have mentioned before). From this the manager tells the ships what they can/should do, then the individual ai of the ship takes care of the doing.

OK I think i have a good understanding.

For picking the scenarios im guessing i will need to have some logic or picking them depending on the conditions in the battle (and any favor i have for one action). Would this be what a utility systems would be good for picking