I was hoping that someone would make more simple mission maps like Astro. I'm not overly fond of skirmish survival, and a lot of the missions available are very specific and restrictive (Eg. Prison Escape) They're all good maps, but I like a map that just gives me a target, a supply of gold, and a base/complex full of dudes to fight through. A freeform brain hunt, if you will.

Not sure if this is where I should post a map request. And I'm not sure if anyone will take up this request. making the maps should be simple enough, but I don't want to make one for myself. I'd rather have no prior intel on the map, rather than know exactly where everything is.

If you don't want to create the maps yourself purely for "surprise" when playing then put forward some sort of general terrain layout that someone (I am not a map maker) could start off with.

Why not make a mission with dynamic scenarios? For instance, your input can affect the direction of the story in the mission; without necessarily a pre-set script in which it will play by.

I was going to do that for my first mission, so the enemy would respond with cunning and intelligence in an interesting, captivating manner to my input accordingly. For instance, if I have an event where I enter a narrow, dead end cave to extract the gold from there, after a certain time, I would be ambushed by some kind of enemy from behind. When I get into a firefight with this enemy, if the gun were to fly out of his hands, he would try to pick it back up, or if there are no guns which he can use, he will retreat out of the cave and make another attack later on when i'm not expecting it. Then, even though it's still an AI, his cunning adds some form of psychological warefare aswell; even though it's purely simulated.

But that's just a basic example.

About the gun flying out of his hands, since I don't know how to script missions I don't really know whether it's possible, but there must be some way.

As far as my knowledge goes you can't create custom triggers in missions but you can have the arrival of enemies on timers? (with lua help?)

Oh? What about giving the AI instructions or commands? For instance, when the player walks into an area and sets of a trigger, the AI actor/robot would be commanded to follow a certain path node/network in order to arrive at a destined location.

Yeah you could issue goto commands and that'd work pretty well. It'd be a pain to code for every possible place the player goes to though, and just goto commands are going to fall short a lot of the time, necessitating stuff like Abdul's specifically coded dummy that uses its jetpack in a completely set sequence.

I didn't mean so sensitive to each action the player makes, I meant as in the AI could think strategically to certain circumstances, like in my example; where the AI would think 'I can't win right now, I will retreat until I can come up with something else' (or reffer to another specific strategic attack event).

Or another example would be, if you have a base somewhere and the AI decided to deploy a calculated and ferocious assault and dispatches dropships around your base, if you immediately destroy the first few dropships when they come anywhere near your base, it would cancel it's assault or change it's plan, noticing your defence, based on some kind of event which is dedicated to that condition and effect.

I understood you fine. It'll still be hard unless you allow for situations in which the AI is unreactive to the actions of the player, breaking immersion.

Mainly I meant reactions from the player based on the AIs actions. It depends how it's done, if the enemy of a certain AI is designed to simulate some characteristics such as blind over confidence or rage, it might not respond strategically to its prospectively failed attack. Unless it's just determined, which would be different.

But I can't see how the AI going into rage would make for a fun game unless his units went berzerk and more of a challenge to defend against. I don't know if it's possible to code such detailed behaviour.

Well, the Hunter Bot had code to make it pick up guns if it didn't have one, which you could use. And for retreating if he can't win, maybe you could check for if he doesn't have guns, or if he's below 80 or so health, and have him goto a certain point in an enemy base, and have him attack with full health and a fresh gun if the player's health drops below a certain point, if they lose their gun, etc. That'd be intense, to have someone waiting to attack until you screw up.

I HAD A FANTASTIC IDEA JUST NOW! Ever played Bioshock 2? Well, I was thinking make the enemy you have to kill like a Big Sister. It'd have to be incredibly tough, of course. Whenever you kill and enemy, make it have a small chance of showing up. When you do objectives, give it a 50% or so chance. Once it reaches 10 health, it should fully heal, and teleport away to base, with a big flash. That's add an element of almost... survival horror to CC!

I was actually working on just that earlier , along with many more ideas to help make it more interesting.