Battledome Alpha

So what I have implemented today is a rudimentary battle plan system.

Components
Each battler will have a battleplan, which is a collection of battleplan items.
A battleplan item consists of:
-a list of conditions
-an action
-a priority
Each condition can be a single (currently hardcoded) condition type:

Always (no conditions)
If Opponent's HP is < XX or > XX
If My HP is < XX or > XX
If My master's HP is < XX or > XX (this is for drones referring to their Master)
If Opp's Energy is < YY or > YY
If my Energy is < YY or > YY
If my master's Energy is < YY or > YY
If battle is Long Range mode
if battle is Close Range mode
If enemy drones are present
If ally drones are present
If I Have Weapon Equipped
If I Do Not have weapon equipped
If I Have Weapons
At least X number of turns has passed
No more than X number of turns has passed

Each Action has an (optional) set of minimum requirements. That is, conditions that must exist for that action to be valid. Like, say, the Beam Cannon requiring at least 50 energy points to use.

The Logic
Now, like before I am still using the logic described above to choose a random action. The difference is now I am using the battleplan to determine which actions are valid!

So choosing an action has 2 stages:
-determine a list of valid or prescribed actions for that turn based on the battleplan
-choose a random action from that list proportional to priority

Pseudo-code
for each battleplanitem in BattlePlan
if the battleplanitem's conditions are met, add battleplanitem's action to the actions list

calculate the total priority of all of the actions
choose a random number between 0 and total
for each action in the actions list
runningprioritytotal += action.priority
if random <= runningprioritytotal
choose this action!

if somehow nothing is chosen or the actions list is empty
do the battler's default action


How does that all sound?

The way that I envision this working (once I have a way to customize your battler) is that given your list of available actions, and the fixed list of conditions, you could craft a battleplan consisting of actions, conditions and priority. When you select an action, it's requirements would automatically be added to this battleplanitem's conditions.

ie:
a) If <Does Not Have Weapon Equipped> AND <Have Weapons>: DEPLOYWEAPON, Priority=100
b) If <BattleMode is LongRange>: CLOSERANKS, PRIORITY=50
c) If <BattleMode is LongRange>: FIREBEAMCANNON, PRIORITY=50
d) If <My HP < 50%>: REPAIRNANOBOTS, PRIORITY=35
e) If <Enemy Drones Present>: SONICDETONATOR, PRIORITY=55
f) If <Always>, ATTACK, PRIORITY=40

etc...


Am I missing anything here with this implementation? Any other conditions you think might be worth having? Should I hardcode in a default action of ATTACK just in case someone forgets to setup a battleplan, or somehow the logic in their battleplan results in a situation where none of their set up actions are valid?

author=GreatRedSpirit
I'd add an option that if a move is found to always use it. For example using your example if a, b, and c conditions fail and it hits D then it'll always use REPAIRNANOBOTS without checking e and on. I imagine some players would want that and would abuse the priority system to minimize any RNG (like REPAIRNANOBOTS priority is 10000, SONICDETONATOR is 10).


Also if a robot hits the end of its AI without finding an action it should do a silly action, like shoot sparks, repeat ERROR ERROR, or start spinning. e: Read: Do nothing but spew flavor text, possibly mocking the robot's player.

Well, to clarify, the battleplan is only there to determine which actions are available to be chosen, and not which action that will be taken.

Step 1: use battleplan to get a list of all of the actions that meet conditions
Step 2: choose an action randomly from the list of available actions

for step 2, you have a measure of control because you can ascribe a priority score to an action, and the higher the score, the more likely that action will be chosen.

Yes, I was going to restrict it to a value between 20 and 60 or something akin to that.

...yes.