AI Question

[bssybeep]

Since I'm only interested in playing SAS solo against the AI, I had some AI questions.

1.Let's say I'm playing as England, the computer is Germany. How does the AI select it's grand strategic goals?
*commerce war? If yes, use subs or pocket battleships?
*build a typical battleship navy or use carriers?
2.In other words, as England playing against the AI Germany, can I expect to play a hide and seek type of game (Hunt for the Bismarck) by assigning cruisers and battlegroups to locate raiders in one game but get a completely different experience in another game?
3.Is the strategic and operational AI configurable?
4.Can you give a brief description of how the AI is implemented? (strategic and operational modules, scripts, dynamic, etc.)

thxs in advance

[tony_glazebrook]

Since I'm only interested in playing SAS solo against the AI, I had some AI questions.

1.Let's say I'm playing as England, the computer is Germany. How does the AI select it's grand strategic goals?
*commerce war? If yes, use subs or pocket battleships?
*build a typical battleship navy or use carriers?
2.In other words, as England playing against the AI Germany, can I expect to play a hide and seek type of game (Hunt for the Bismarck) by assigning cruisers and battlegroups to locate raiders in one game but get a completely different experience in another game?
3.Is the strategic and operational AI configurable?
4.Can you give a brief description of how the AI is implemented? (strategic and operational modules, scripts, dynamic, etc.)

thxs in advance

bssybeep

I can't go into too much detail as the AI is very complex but also because some of it must remain under the hood to protect our IP. But I'll try to answer your questions as well as I can given that.

The first thing to understand is that SAS is essentially an economic war. Winning is essentially about growing your economy faster than the enemy, although you can short circuit this if you manage to capture his home port - then it is all over red rover.

To grow your economy faster means:
- building the most cost effective ships, aircraft and troops (if these are in the campaign)
- deploying them most effectively - concentrating them where the enemy is weaker with the purpose of reducing his ability to wage war - sinking his ships, preventing them from operating (as in blockades), damaging or capturing his infrastructure etc.

SAS does not have artificial capture the flag type victory conditions - the AI calculates every turn what the best moves are based on threats and opportunities as they become known through your enemy intel. Threats are rated by their strength; opportunities by the economic value in attacking them. To take an example - when the computer opponent (or your 2IC) calculates where to send offensive patrols, it looks each turn at:
- the value of every possible enemy convoy route (based on the value of the trade between each point divided by the distance)
- from this it selects the most valuable interdiction points (ie the ones that maximise the chance of interdicting the most/most valuable enemy convoys)
- sorts them by their value
- tries to find the ships to attack these points, based on the distances from where your ships are, and the profiles you have set for the type of mission (eg minimum or optimum numbers or ratios of ships
- keeps going progressively through these attack points until it can form a fleet

Each mission type has its own way of working out the objectives - eg bombardments look for the enemy base that has the best ratio of target value / defensive value.

And so on.

The missions themselves are selected based on the current strategy (very cautious, cautious, aggressive, very aggressive)

The mix of ships and of aircraft also reflects the strategy.

Then, when it comes time to play out the turn, the AI calculates deviations from the operational plans when juicy targets or nasty threats present themselves on the fly.

The key thing you can change easily is the strategy - change this and the whole approach can change.

But even the slightest change anywhere will lead to a new game with entirely different results, which are unpredictable. This is because many things in the game have an appropriate element of randomness built in. The randomness uses pseudo random numbers with a known seed. If the same campaign is played in exactly the same way with absolutely no changes anywhere, the results should be identical. This is how it is possible to do PBEM - 2 players on different computers getting the same reults from an enormously complicated series of calculations. But change even the smallest thing - just one thing - and the generation of random numbers as they affect combat or many other things will change. The changes will snowball, so that the campaign becomes entirley unpredictable. If you are into Gaiian theory, it is sort of like the butterfly's wings beating creating a ripple effect. To take an example - deciding to invest even one more RP in an area of technology could lead to a breakthrough earlier, say in radar, which could lead to earlier detections of enemy fleets, which could lead to new attack possibilities or to the diversion of your fleets away from danger. Multiplied over many turns, you end up with an entirely different set of results.

Your interest in surface raiders will hopefully be able to be satisfied by the Atlantic scenario. I designed this to replicate the kind of U Boat war that took place, but I also gave the Germans a beefed up surface ship capability - with elements of the Z Plan being under construction at the start of the war.

Ships planes, and troops are merely the weapon delivery systems. They are what give SAS WW2 the flavour and the interest, but they are only of use to the extent they manage to win you the economic war in the most cost effective way.

[bssybeep]

Hey Tony,

thxs for the detailed response. Definitely gives me a better feel for how the game plays.

Happy holidays.

[PDF]

As we're waiting for the game to ship and wondering how the AI works, it'll be a nice time for an AAR from the beta guys ! :D

[Scott Chisholm]

As we're waiting for the game to ship and wondering how the AI works, it'll be a nice time for an AAR from the beta guys ! :D

PDF,

What are you looking for? A feel for how the game plays. I actually haven't had a chance to play the resease version, but (unless Chris vetoes me) I'd be happy to answer some gameplay questions from the Betas.

I will say this: SAS is perhaps the "most different" turn-based strategy game I've ever played. It is not Fighting Steel, nor is it Carrier Strike. It's not even Thunder at Sea. It is a high-level operational strategy game. You choose the strategy you want to pursue (very aggressive to very cautious) and pretty much let the 2IC execute that strategy. That's how I'd recommend playing your first few games: let the 2IC run the show while you familiarize yourself with all of the information being thrown at you. Study the turn replays, especially the popup boxes.

As you get more comfortable with the game, start putting together your own missions - don't be afraid to veto the 2IC and create your own missions. They are a bit tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's smooth sailing.

The surface battle replays are a great assessment tool - Tony's made them easier to get to from the Briefing Screen, so you don't have to watch the whole turn replay just to get to them. Study them to learn your relative strengths and weaknesses with respect to your opponent. Surface battles can become very long, running duels. During one of the playtests, I had a convoy come under continuous surface/submarine/air attack for something like 26 hours. The game allows for units to join into a battle; that becomes interesting when 3 hours into a duel with IJN cruisers your USN cruisers suddenly find themselves sandwiched between the cruisers and three IJN BBs that just joined in the fight....

Remember, this is an operational-level game: you cannot influence a battle once it begins. However, you do have some pre-battle control via the tactical response mechanism. Picture yourself as ADM Nimitz sitting in Pearl Harbor during Midway. You set the gears in motion, but have no influence on the actual outcome of the battle once it starts.

In the end, the game is one based on the status of your economy. Every January after the first January of the game you receive an assessment of your economy relative to that of your opponent. Growth is good; decline is bad. The way you grow your economy is to run convoys - LOTS of convoys. You have to decide how to protect those convoys: go out and destroy your opponent's ability to fight, or make him break his teeth on your convoy defenses. Or, some combination of the two. Once you decide on a strategy, you then need to build your ships and aircraft to execute it. And, it's not easy to change building strategies mid-war, especially when battleships take 3 years to build.

The operational/tactical time scales can be somewhat confusing, at least they are to me. Since the game is turn-based, there is no "time compression" per se. However, tweaking the operational scale adjusts the number of turns in the game, while tweaking the tactical scale adjusts how much of each turn you actually "see". Tony did a masterful job explaining it all to me, but I dispair at trying to explain it here. Suffice it to say that setting both the operational and tactical turns to "one month" (my personal preference) is effectively 1:1 time compression. Deviating from that "speeds up" or "slows down" the game.

The turn calculations take time - be ready for that. Bigger time slices take more time, as one would expect. I run a Athelon 64 X2 Dual Core 6600+ with 2GB of RAM, and some of the calculations (at 1:1 "compression") for the larger games take upwards of 3 minutes. Again, Tony did amazing and unnatural things (it's uncertain if farm animals were involved) in reducing that time. So, if you're playing a big map with lots of missions and units, be prepared - it takes time to calculate all of the hourly movements over the course of a month.

Anyway, I hope that helps.

[tony_glazebrook]

As we're waiting for the game to ship and wondering how the AI works, it'll be a nice time for an AAR from the beta guys ! :D

PDF - further to Scott's response:
- The thing to understand about SAS is that even with the operational turn set to its shortest (ie one week), there is still potentially a lot of action that gets calculated, and not just surface battles. Air strikes, sub battles, bombardments, amphibious assaults, minings etc - these are all actions that a text AAR would need to report on. The file size would likely end up way too big to be useful. Even if there were only one surface battle for the turn and nothing else, the battle could likely last several hours and involve 20, 30, 40 or more ships. Every shell and torpedo hit is calculated in the game. Every change of damage, speed, orders for every ship every minute is calculated. SAS is a strategic/operational game, but we are proud of the level of tactical realism we have built in also. A text report of even one battle is likely to be a very painful read.

Therefore, instead of a text AAR, I have put a lot of effort into the UI to give you the information in a different way. All events (which you can filter out selectively if you want) are reported on through special dialogs that appear when the event happens; they summarise the event and show on the map where the event took place. For battles, you see detailed summaries of after action reports and for surface battles you get the full replayable view where you can see every hit, every change of orders for all ships for the entire battle, played at whatever speed you like.

The combination of these gives you the clearest possible overview of what happened, when it happened and where. And the zoomable map allows you to see all events across the entire theatre or, if you want, to quickly zoom and scroll to any area you are most interested in more detail. The ability to replay the turn (and surface battles) means you can never miss anything. No need to frantically study scrolling AAR text boxes as things happen, as many games give you.

- Regarding the strategic and operational turn lengths - this is explained in the in-game help (and now also in the pdf manual).

- re SAS being 'different', the mechanics are similar to any turn-based WEGO game out there but with several additional features that give you more control and feel for what is happening:
a. the op turn length is variable and can be 1 week to one month. This means that the op planning decisions you make are genuine planning decisions - looking ahead that length of time; not just a day or 2 at a time
b. the execution phase calculates events hour by hour - which is perhaps unprecedented. This means you see in fine detail what is happening AND, if you want to, you can also make tactical response as things go, so you get a genuine tactical dimension also (although, until we hook up with the WC:NAW battle engine, you still can't actually fight surface battles).

I hope this helps.

Cheers

[Warship NWS]

Tactical command,

SAS-WW2 does allow for tactical commands such as airstrikes, doctrinal orders, etc. Once the orders are given the battle resolution is completed during the game turns. More tactical considerations are being discussed at this time for future upgrades.

Where WC:NAW would come into play is when a surface action initiates the player would then take command of his surface action ships on a ship to ship level. Once the battle is resolved SAS-WW2 would start up where the surface action left off.

One of the difficulties for how to advertise SAS-WW2 is trying to put such a comprehensive campaign simulator into words that everyone can try to grasp. There is nothing to compare SAS-WW2 directly to on the market at this present time so some of you may have some trouble visualizing just how flexible, comprehensive, powerful, and re-playable the engine really is. This is one of the reasons why we posted so many PDF packs in an attempt to try and offer as much information as possible... even with that one can only scratch the surface of the potential for SAS-WW2.

Just always remember.. v1.0 was a stopping point, nothing more.. this is just the beginning. The engine itself has almost unlimited potential and we plan on upgrading the engine many times over for several years.

SAS-WW2 is not just another game.. it could very well be a naval campaign career for the player in itself. ;)

If you wanted to wage the ultimate naval war.. you will definitely get that chance.

Thanks

[Scott Chisholm]

Remember, this is an operational-level game: you cannot influence a battle once it begins. However, you do have some pre-battle control via the tactical response mechanism. Picture yourself as ADM Nimitz sitting in Pearl Harbor during Midway. You set the gears in motion, but have no influence on the actual outcome of the battle once it starts.

Let me elaborate/clarify what I meant in this paragraph....

The player has three different tactical response settings: one for your surface/sub fleets, one for land-based air, and one for carrier air. If you leave these settings disabled, you become a spectator at the tactical level.

If you enable fleet tactical response, you have the ability to divert your surface and sub fleets from whatever they are doing and do something else. For instance, you can direct a convoy to avoid an enemy fleet, or direct units to intercept/shadow enemy units, etc. Once they actually engage the enemy, you don't have any control over the actual battle, not in the way you do with WCDB.

The land-based/CV air tactical response enables you to control the composition and target of air strikes. However, once they launch, they're on their own.

As Tony stated, there are no WCDB-like AARs with SAS. Can you imagine how big such a file would be for a 24-hour running gun duel with a convoy of 50+ ships (not counting the enemy units)? Yowzers!

However, the surface battle replay lets you relive the battle shell-by-shell, and torpedo-by-torpedo, so in effect, the surface battle replays are your AAR. The shell splashes (I believe) are even color coded to reflect the severity of hits. And, each hit is time-stamped.

There are similar reports (but not replays) for sub and air strikes. Every bomb and torpedo is listed. You will spend a lot of time reviewing the battle reports contained in the turn briefing reports.

I hope that clears up any confusion I may have created.

[Warship NWS]

To add to Scott's response.. you have doctrinal and rules of engagement commands in SAS that can greatly effect how a task force of ships will fight and operate during their deployments and engagements.

I guess the best way to explain the "tactical" level of SAS-WW2 is the giving of orders to task forces as compared to individual ships (as is done with Warship Combat). Historically, once an operational naval admiral gave orders to the task force commanders it was up to the commanders on scene to carry out those orders to the best of their ability and forces put under their command within the considerations of their rules of engagement and naval doctrines.

In the end you are not on the bridge of the ships but you are telling the commanders that are there how to operate their forces. These orders can also be given during each game turn which is of course scalable during play from hours to months in time slices giving the player considerable tactical control over operational task forces.

I will note again however.. extended tactical control options are already being discussed for future upgrades.

I hope these explanations add to everyones understanding of how SAS tactical commands function within the engine. Definitely let us know if there are any questions.

Thanks.

[Warship NWS]

AARs.. case and example,

Those of you who have played WCDB know that a big battle can create a very lengthly AAR.. which will soon be considerably larger when I start work on the "advanced combat mechanics" upgrades to the engine - AKA WC:NAW v2.0+. (WC:NAW v1.0 will be the TacMap engine upgrade due out in Q1 2009). The FSP AAR is not even as detailed as the one I designed for WCDB as it does not record ship status reports - only ordnance impacts - and it is still very lengthly.

Now.. figuring that SAS is a strategic/operational level of campaign simulator imagine the AAR for multiple naval engagements.. or even a large carrier battle. The AAR would cause most players eyes to glaze over and the mind to go numb. Instead, SAS has a built in way to check out everything that happened in the game turn that was just resolved with a graphical interface.

Now one thought I have been going over with Tony recently is a possible generalized AAR.. in other words, a condensed version of events. A possible example would be something like one would see in a historical chronology with possible filters for specific optional event recording. We will see how popular this idea would be for a future engine upgrade and go from there.

Thanks.

[tonedog]

hi,

an aar of a campaign would be good enough for me:)

[bssybeep]

I will note again however.. extended tactical control options are already being discussed for future upgrades.


+1 for extended tactical options

[HBuhring]

Now one thought I have been going over with Tony recently is a possible generalized AAR.. in other words, a condensed version of events. A possible example would be something like one would see in a historical chronology with possible filters for specific optional event recording. We will see how popular this idea would be for a future engine upgrade and go from there.

This would be great.
I don't think a detailed AAR could be of much use, given you have a turn replay -- and I imagine it could be possible to save a game at each turn in order for a detail buff like me to replay *all* turns in time.
What I'd love is to be able to reconstruct the whole campaign in terms general enough to review the big operational picture. Not so many details, but an outline of the operations and of the strategic choices.
The stuff that goes in an historic summary, just to be clear.

Cheers

HB