AI Hotspot

[Lossidian]

So forgive me, SR2020 and SR1936 are the only two games I've fully gotten into. But in SR2020, you had complete control over your military (E.G. Placing hotspots). Why was this removed from player control and given to the AI? Personally (And I'm sorry to be blunt about this) I find the SR AI to be entirely incompetent and incapable of managing something as small as a classroom, nevermind every aspect of a country. I lock out and override half my ministers decisions because most of them are down right ridiculous, but the AI is at least competent enough to follow the orders I placed for them in SR2020 and managed to send the larger part of the army, shockingly, to where the larger number of hotspots were.

Now this wouldn't entirely be an issue if it weren't for one thing. The AI is incapable of strategy, and does stupid things like go directly for the capital, you know, where the largest enemy force is going to be, and where you're probably going to have barely any supply for your troops. In SR2020, my most successful attacks followed project economy's standards, where we would make large bulges, take and defend the enemy's resources until they started to weaken into debt, and we hardly lost any troops making us a massive powerhouse late game, even though we started producing troops almost half a year after game-start(Yes I knew how, but I was trying to make the game harder).

[George Geczy]

Actually, I hear that managing classrooms can be particularly hard... That said, the SR AI does actually have a number of different strategies it uses, though some are much more obvious than others. For every "the AI always goes after just the capital" thread, there seems to be another "why doesn't the AI go after the capital" thread by someone. Depending upon circumstances it can do both or neither, or something entirely different.

For the minister AI for the human player, the choices it makes are often simpler and driven by the minister priorities as well as the battlezone/theater settings, so it is a more difficult system to manage than the old hotspot system. I imagine your question is something to the effect of "what happened to the being able to set hotspots like we did in 2020?" I'm actually not entirely certain of all the reasons that the hotspot controls were pulled from the user interface, this is something that is still supported by the core engine, and so is mod-able. I think the main reasons were that people had trouble using and understanding the hotspot controls. It is not entirely out of the question to bring them back in some form in the future, but we do still have the issue of making them easier to use.

-- George.

[Ozi]

I am in Charge of a classroom and believe me, Controlling Units and AI (yes, Controlling the AI... my own Ministers AI) is harder than that. You really should face it: the AI is dumb... like hell

But to get back to the Topic: because People dont understand a Feature you delete it? Strange. From my experience i have but 2 Options ingame:
a) control my Military (not speaking about Ministers) all on my own which is, with a force of lets say only 500 or 600 almost impossible. It leads to wars beeing fought with "Task Forces" rather than whole armies
b) give control of the Military to AI Defense Minister. He will do silly things (i lost 400 Units against Romania that way, playing Germany, so 70% of my army) but most important: you cant give any real priority (as the Theater and battle Zone priorities never seem to be taken into account). So no way to say the AI: hey, go for the oil on caucasus, not the snow in siberia... although i like snow...


So taken into account that the AI is incapable i would like to have 2 Options:
a) an Option where i can command the AI to use the mobile Forces defensivly ONLY (the defensive priority isnt what i was looking for, i dont want the ai to build garrison or forts)
b) an Option to tell the AI where to head my army to...

[georgios]

this is something that is still supported by the core engine, and so is mod-able..

You mean editing the AIparams file?

I think the main reasons were that people had trouble using and understanding the hotspot controls. It is not entirely out of the question to bring them back in some form in the future, but we do still have the issue of making them easier to use.

Yes, it is not an effective function..