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Spitfire_69
Spitfire_69
Join Date 04/2006
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Whats with the Lemming scouts?

May 12, 2006 1:28:22 PM from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I made 20 scouts and sent them on their merry scouting missions ( auto explore ), and what did they do? Followed each other all over the map is what. One big clump of scout meat, 20 scouts strong. Whats up, are they scared to go exploring on their own.
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Spitfire_69
smjjames
Join Date 05/2006
+3
Reply #1 May 12, 2006 1:40:23 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
yea, the scouts are doing that even in the demo, its wierd and annoying. although I'm just making two scouts and on the small map only available to me, one scout is enough anyway as the survey ship later gets set to auto explore.

and it has to be a bug related to the pathing. at least the survey ship you get at the start doesn't clump up with the scouts when you set it on auto explore.
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Spitfire_69
Martimus
Join Date 04/2003
+4
Reply #2 May 12, 2006 1:45:59 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Yeah. Thats annoying. If you send them manually to different areas of the galaxy, they will autoexplore in different areas for a little while, but before long they all end up going toward the same places.
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Spitfire_69
Big Jim Slade
Join Date 05/2006
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Reply #3 May 12, 2006 1:46:13 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I think scouts follow a basic ai to go to the nearest unexplored area. So 20 scouts in a group will all chose to go to the same place. If you scatter them about and then tell them to auto scout, they'll behave differently.
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Spitfire_69
GreySpire
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #4 May 12, 2006 2:49:46 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Nope. Even scattered they all eventually end up following each other. Annoying as hell.
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Spitfire_69
Darkfyre
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #5 May 12, 2006 3:40:10 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
As said before, it's just a 'bug' in they way scouts determine their path. It seems that every scout looks for the best place to go scouting, and then goes there. What it DOESN'T do, is check if that place is already being targeted by another scout. So they plot an entire route, but perhaps by the time they get there another scout has already been there. Then they choose a new location, but obviously that other scout is also going there, since they use the same scouting algorithm. That way it appears they are following each other. They're not really FOLLOWING each other, though. Just travelling along the same path.

I imagine this may not be fixed, because if you have a lot of scouts and other ships, it may take too long every turn to not only calculate the optimal path, but do it for EVERY ship, taking into account the movements of EVERY OTHER ship as well for each calculation. I have no understanding of how the coding works, but I could imagine this would take up more time to calculate than is desired.
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Spitfire_69
Morberis
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #6 May 12, 2006 5:25:52 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
They could just change how they determine it. Instead make them explore the nearest unexplored area instead of flying halfway across the galaxy to explore a small unexplored sector.
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Spitfire_69
Spitfire_69
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #7 May 12, 2006 5:30:34 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Haven’t the devs ever heard of random pathing? Guess the game was made for 1 scout only, so 1 scout it is........poof!......19 scouts destroyed, returned 150 billion credits, just enough for a bag of chips.
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Spitfire_69
LintMan
Join Date 01/2006
+2
Reply #8 May 12, 2006 5:34:37 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I imagine this may not be fixed, because if you have a lot of scouts and other ships, it may take too long every turn to not only calculate the optimal path, but do it for EVERY ship, taking into account the movements of EVERY OTHER ship as well for each calculation. I have no understanding of how the coding works, but I could imagine this would take up more time to calculate than is desired.


Besides calculation time, the effort to program this sort of optimal search to handle varying ship speeds, sensor sizes, numbers of ships, etc would be quite considerable and likely not the effort.

I think a simpler solution would be for them to:
1) add a randomization factor to the exploration routines so they don't all pick the same spots to explore all the time
2) (more coding effort and calculation time cost) make exploring ships adjust their exploration heading every time they're about to move (ie: once every turn), so if their target area is already explored, they'd pick another target area.

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Spitfire_69
zyphyr
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #9 May 12, 2006 6:06:57 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
This is one small area where the CivIV AI does a much better job. And that particular algorithm could easily be adapted to GalCiv.

1)Is there an Anomally nearby (and the ship is Survey equiped)? If so, go grab it.
2)Otherwise head to the closest unexplored spot.

Recheck each turn.
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Spitfire_69
Supreme Shogun
Join Date 11/2005
+5
Reply #10 May 12, 2006 11:29:25 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Even if we're not dealing with anomalys, having the other 19 follow the first is just awful.
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