Editor: AI Tasks

[Erik2]

Suggestions for improving the AI scripting.

Air Patrol:
Add a Distance setting to allow the AI to patrol a certain radius in any direction (or limited to the obvious 6 directions) around the Base.
This would be especially useful for float-planes aboard ships since it is not very meaningful to add specific Patrol Points when the base could be anywhere on the map.
All Japanese heavy cruisers and larger ships had float planes assigned. Most major navies had seeplane tenders.
But I can also see it used for land-bases as a catch-all patrol order.
Question: anybody know how the AI uses recon planes that do not have specific Patrol Points?

[phonecall]

I think recon aircrafts move in random directions at each turn. So far I didn't notice, a larger patrolling radius (from its base) than twice its mp.

[Erik2]

The randomness is probably due to them missing specic patrol points.
I don't know if adding target definitions will force the recon unit to ignore any units not on this list. Maybe you can have them spot for carriers, for instance.
We leave it to Horst to test this kind of stuff

[Horst]

How could I waste my time on boring AI routines if I got over thousand unit pictures here now to create plenty unit variants?

[Erik2]

Horst, do you use the official 3D as substitutes or are you planning to add some new ones?
I understand the need to use 2D pictures, the only ones available in the editor.
Do you have a system for finding the 'correct' unit values, something based on real values?
I'm curious since I'd like to add variants and change existing values as well.

[Horst]

I googled for a tool to extract the original unit pictures as png from the game's resources.assets archive. There is basically anything graphic stored there what isn't already accessible in the installation folders, like unit and event pictures, 3d-model textures, etc... even the hex-grid for the game is stored there.
I've also already played with a Tiger II model in the game, but it has some ugly blue texture what isn't worth it show-off here. I don't want to feel unwelcome by devs either by leaking such stuff. 3d-model and their textures are highly treasured properties that shouldn't get into hands of some greedy, commercial strangers - I totally understand this. No idea how devs feel about sharing the 2d non-texture unit-pictures here either. If something is encrypted then I guess it's not meant for public.