Faction AI sits above NPC's and even the player. But it is far from a centralized brain where all the units of a faction are pawns.
The FAI is an AI without a unit, yet with power to provide units with Events, as well as interact with other FAI's directly.
The Uln FAI could suggest to it's units to do something (or not do something), but it can't force them to. The individual units can choose to ignore a command from the FAI or follow it. So if they really want to ram you, you're probably gonna get rammed, though they would be risking becoming an enemy of the faction.
FAI's can change relations independent of attacking units or helping units of a faction. The diplomatic / economic decisions an FAI makes can instantly make one faction allies or enemies of another.
Lets get into what an FAI should be allowed to do directly to other FAI's.
Diplomacy: Currently not really in existance in the game. An FAI will have a definition file of sorts, describing states that are particular to that faction's FAI for declaring or requesting different diplomatic functions. for instance, if relations between two faction AI's drops to a certain level dictated by the definition file, then the FAI can declare war on the other FAI. A state of war alters the motives of the FAI's involved,and that is also directed by the definition file. A war mongering faction will declare war whenever it can (if the other variables are acceptable to it) and likely want to see the war to it's end (victory). A peaceful faction will try to avoid war by offering the opposing faction territory, unless it believes it serves it more to goto war.
Meaning, the FAI looks at the game state, looks at it's overall driving motive in the game given to it by the campaign, then looks at the current situation and decides if it's likely to win based on factors such as number of units, location, how much kills you have and they have.
We dont want to make it too complicated though, so we give the FAI the ability to do 3 things directly relating to diplomacy.
War: A faction declares war on another faction, this is responded to by the opposing faction with either an accept, or offering. If it's an offering, the offering is either accepted or declined. If the offer is accepted, the relations between factions are returned to neutral, any other situation results in a war.
Ally: A faction can request becoming allies with another faction during or before a war takes place. A faction that's involved in a war and has an ally expects it's ally to declare war against it's opposing faction, no offering to not goto war is accepted. If the ally goes to war, relations increase between them. If they dont join in defending/helping during war, the relations can become so negative that the allied faction could also declare war on it's previous ally.
Surrender: A FAI can attempt to surrender before being destroyed at any time during a war. the opposing FAI has to accept. If accepted, the losing faction cedes half it's territory to the winning faction. Thus, most factions dont see surrender as a viable option until it's close to the end.
It sounds very complicated, but it's really just taking some states from a definition file, grepping some game state variables and comparing and adding a bit of randomness to the mix and sending off an event or not.
What the end result is a change in motivation. Where as, normally the campaign sets the motives for the factions, the motives can change depending on game state. A state of war changes how the FAI commands it's units. It changes how it reacts to other factions' actions. An FAI in a state of war starts putting much less emphasis on trade and exploration and begins converting/producing battle ready ships and focuses them on their enemy.
Integral to all of this functionality is how we would create the definition file that describes an FAI's personality, and thus the faction's personality as a whole.
Code: Select all
<factionAI>
<var name="Aera"/> # only organized groups, pirates and privateers have no FAI.
<var organization="tight" # tight, standard, loose
<personalities>
<var warstate="military"/> #hippy, guerilla, military, genocide
<var basestate="exploratory"/> #expansionist, exploratory, conquering, isolationist, merchant
</personalities>
<attitude>
<war>
<var aggressive="high"/> #low, medium, high
<var peaceful="low"/> #low, medium, high.
</war>
<base>
<var aggressive="medium"/>
<var peaceful="medium"/>
</base>
<var vengeful="high"/>
<var cooperation="low"/>
</attitude>
</factionAI>
This will of course be discussed and added/modified etc.
Basically, it's an xml file that defines the tunable states a FactionAI uses to make decisions based on the game state. They do not dictate the actions of the FAI, they merely make them tend towards them. For instance, just because the Aera may be extremely vengeful, they wont declare war on a faction that they have no chance of beating if such a situation were to occur. The game state determines, in the end, what the FAI decides to do.
This is also different from the individual faction personalities that a unit in a faction has.
Each unit would have a similar file that it uses when it's created for a given faction in order to modify it's behavior. Each faction thus would have the following set of behavior files:
FactionAI, merchant, non-combative, combative.
A unit's AI personality is defined in the unit file for a given ship.
Thus, the factionAI is independent of the particular behaviors of the units in it's faction, yet all will be tailored to fit together and all will be used to make each faction unique, from the overall actions, to the different jobs a player can partake as part of the faction.
Well, that about does it for faction->faction relationships... the idea is to work on the definition file to describe a faction's personality, providing the C++ code with the most flexibility in creating fitness tests for various game-states.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
