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 Alien alignment behaviors 
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
Ok, let's get down to specifics here.

With this option active, should a blue alien be able to attack a blue player with alignment < his alignment, or should the alien only be able to attack an alien with alignment < 0?

Should an alien avoid attacking fighters for a blue player, with the same rule as above?

Any other restrictions?

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Sat Aug 20, 2011 1:53 am
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
How about blue aliens will attack anyone with less alignment than the alien. As for the flip side probably have red aliens attack anyone with greater alignment than themselves?

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Sat Aug 20, 2011 11:18 am
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
John Pritchett wrote:
Ok, let's get down to specifics here.

With this option active, should a blue alien be able to attack a blue player with alignment < his alignment, or should the alien only be able to attack an alien with alignment < 0?

Should an alien avoid attacking fighters for a blue player, with the same rule as above?

Any other restrictions?


If alien cannot attack a fighter (red/red, blue/blue) then a player could trap the aliens, or possibly "herd" the aliens into mothing an opponent's base.

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Sat Aug 20, 2011 12:20 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
There could be some logic like, the alien won't attack unless it has no other path. That would deal with trapping. If the alien can't move (or out to a few moves perhaps) without hitting figs, it'll go ahead and attack. As for herding, I don't know if that would be such a bad thing. Sounds like an interesting and creative tactic to me. I don't think it would be a trivial thing to do.

I'm not saying I'm for or against limits on fig attacks. Just an observation.

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Sat Aug 20, 2011 12:34 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
Someone told me that it is possible to herd an alien into your own base and it will stock your planets for you.

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Sat Aug 20, 2011 2:50 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
MicroBlaster wrote:
Someone told me that it is possible to herd an alien into your own base and it will stock your planets for you.


While it is possible to herd aliens into opponents cannons, they will not stock your planets for you. They will drain fuel taking cannons hits and activating planet interdictors. I've used the herding tactic before to weaken bases before invading - it takes a lot of time and resources to set up though.


Sat Aug 20, 2011 3:06 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
Ok, based on the feedback here, I've added the new setting "Limited Aggression" to the alien editors, which is only active if "Aggressive" is set to yes. I'm not sure if I like how this works, but the initial behavior is this (taken from the alien editor help file):

Limited Aggression

For aliens who are aggressive, this setting will cause aliens to only attack players who are of less extreme alignment. So, for example, a good alien with alignment of 1000 will only attack players of alignment < 1000, while an evil alien with alignment of -1000 will only attack a player of alignment > -1000.

Will this satisfy the goals of this setting? My personal feeling is that the best behavior would be to have good aliens only attack players of < 0 alignment, and evil players attack players of any alignment.

Also note that there currently is no restriction on things like attacking fighters, invading planets, etc. If that's needed, I'll get it added in upcoming releases. I need to get this one out there.

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Mon Aug 22, 2011 7:53 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
It occurs to me that another useful setting might be to extend off of the "Ignore Aliens" setting, with a sub-setting of "Ignore based on alignment", so that a good alien of a given race will ignore all good aliens, and an evil alien of a race will ignore all evil aliens. But note that this would be based on the alignment of each alien, because races don't have a particular alignment attribute. You don't say "Race X is evil", you can only specify that all aliens in Race X have alignment < 0. But if you have a race, like Alien Traders, where aliens can be either good or evil, then this setting would make the good aliens ignore good players and evil aliens ignore evil players.

Would this be of any value?

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Mon Aug 22, 2011 7:59 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
Oh, also note that this suggested setting would only effect the behavior of aliens toward other aliens, and not toward players. The "Limited Aggression" setting is specifically for aliens attacking players, and does not effect aliens attacking other aliens. In fact, aliens do not currently attack other aliens. They can attack their figs, invade their planets, and other aggressive acts, but no ship-to-ship combat.

So "Limited Aggression" would allow aliens to attack players with only less extreme alignments, and "Ignore By Alignment" would allow aliens to attack figs, invade, etc, only aliens of opposite alignment, ignoring those of same alignment.

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Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:03 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
That sounds great! Good Job JP! Looks like you've covered all the bases, now we just need to turn them loose in a game and see what happens. :)

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Tue Aug 23, 2011 8:29 pm
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Unread post Re: Alien alignment behaviors
I've been testing them today and they appear to be behaving. As a bonus, I've also noticed some issues with fleeing during an attack not putting you into the correct sector, and also some strange behaviors caused by being attacked twice very quickly. I have cleaned that up and I'm getting bounced around pretty good without any issues.

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Wed Aug 24, 2011 12:29 am
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