501st_commander wrote:Maybe have a unit class that can only get in the flyers on land. Then have a path to bring them up to space. The land units are on the ground doing thier job and not in space. The only thing about that is, the land units will spawn in space and cant get down..
If you can get that to work then great, but as you pointed out, even then there's a major, major failing point there.
Let's just be honest here. It's not feasible. No matter which way you slice it the AI are just too dumb to figure things out.
Or, going along with that idea a bit, make vehicles on both land and space, just don't have them land at all. Still, Is it worth all the time to not have it the way you wanted?
501st_commander wrote:Maybe have a unit class that can only get in the flyers on land. Then have a path to bring them up to space. The land units are on the ground doing thier job and not in space. The only thing about that is, the land units will spawn in space and cant get down..
If you can get that to work then great, but as you pointed out, even then there's a major, major failing point there.
Let's just be honest here. It's not feasible. No matter which way you slice it the AI are just too dumb to figure things out.
In the "how to make a teleporter thread", someone said that the teleoprtation effect can be used to make unit classes spawn in specific places. Thus, you might be able to keep the infantry and pilots seperate.
Teancum wrote:It still comes down to dumb AI even then.
It is still possible to control which units spawn where, though.
And it is still not possible to make the AI think in three dimensions. Sure, you can have some AI spawn on the ground and some in space, but they'll all try to follow the same planning.
One thing you can do is transport the AI to which ever section of the map the player is in (this doesn't work well in MP if the players are in different areas). This way, you won't have to increase the AI count to fill the map. Instead, you can track were each unit was before it was transported or you could just re-ambush areas when the player gets near them. The battle will seem to follow the player and make the map seem more epic/fuller.
You solve the pathing issue by not overlapping the space and ground area. Assuming there is some type of fog transition between space and ground, when the player enters the fog, transport him to the fog above the ground area (or the fog under the space ship if going the other way) and re-ambush the AI in that area.
You could also interweave the space and ground areas in such a way that the planning doesn't overlap and you could add borders to prevent the AI from attempting to switch paths. However, this could become quite complex.
Another way to do pathing is to have the space and ground pathing be the same. This may require that the ship's and ground's feature line up in certain ways, but the player might not notice when within the ship or when outside.
Just for the sake of needing to say it -- notice that there are no AI on the ground, only above the clouds.
Well, I realize that AI can't think in 3D. But really, a hanger + associated rooms isn't that much space when you think about it. You could probably place mounds of impassable terrain at those locations on the ground, then plan around them. Yes? I mean, there are still some obvious problems to overcome (for example, I doubt any effort of this sort would end up looking good), but that sounds like it would work to me.
