Addable Functions: Natural Selection Options

[spellman23]

There are some serious eccentricities that we've been encountering.

1) Bots rely solely on line of sight. This is ridiculous since then other players can simply dip in and out of their view and the bots won't be able to react. Or even more interesting is they are absorbed killing a structure and don't do anything about something shooting it from behind. What's more amusing is scoring a hit, then going behind the bot makes them think it's all clear and they just keep walking. There needs to be a kind of memory system to at least look around for more targets, and perhaps investigate why something suddenly left their view (around a corner...) and do something about targets even if they can't see them directly. Perhaps even adding a sound sensitivity would help enormously with this.

2) They don't really pay attention to their surroundings. Manually telling them to weld, get ammo from the armory, build stuff, and even pick up weapons is a nuisance. They should be able to react to objects in their environment, not just commands and enemies. Sure NS is one of the more dynamic environments, but for it to be a serious NS bot, it needs to at least fundamentally react (oh look, I see an unbuilt structure, maybe I should build it if there's no enemies).

3) Needs a Commander AI.

[spellman23]

1) my mistake. I was referring not to sound as more to memory. Their lack of remembering an alien had just sniped them from a vent is very exploitable. Trying to chase down the alien or waiting for them to try and snipe again is a simple fix, but this applies in general. For example, they seem to rely on sound too much since when silenced, you could bite them, get behind them, and then they just keep walking. Giving them 180 rotation is not the answer, btw.

2) the building only when safe is not the problem. It's doing things like looking around, seeing a dropped weapon, and picking it up. Or they might have a welder, so maybe they'll check periodically if people or buildings they pass need welding. I'm guessing the problem is excess entity count, since these all have to be seen and compiled, but perhaps it's not. Something to look into, or perhaps we were just too impatient for them to do said things and others.

3) Maybe not a comm AI, I've seen work trying to haggle that thing out. Since we can't get that, I'm curious if the bots use the map and think strategically. i.e., that building is under attack on my map, perhaps I should go save it or let's go cap nodes for the comm. Not to mention their tactics for, say, taking down an offensive chamber are horrible. But that's perhaps too situational...