Scope Conditions & Enemy Action Conditions -- Battlers Considering Would-Be Target Conditions

[rubydragon44]

Yeah, github is more neat.

Enemies don't consider scope conditions. That means enemies will blindly attack whoever even if they can't.

And so I thought I would go to Enemy Action Conditions http://www.himeworks.com/2014/02/23/enemy-action-conditions/ and just paste (a.state?(187) && !b.state?(189)) or (a.state?(189) && !b.state?(187)) or (a.state?(188)) or (!a.state?(187) && !a.state?(188) && !a.state?(189))

for if (user is Left and target is not Right) or (user is Right and target is not Left) or (user is Middle) or (user is neither Left, Middle, nor Right) for Triple Battle Adjacent Targetting.

but then it says the following variables are available a - the enemy p - game party t - game troop s - game switches v - game variables

which means that I could assume that there are no conditions for a "hypothetical target".

So that means I don't know a workaround for Scope Conditions in terms of enemy AI.

[HimeWorks]

Neither scripts would be useful, since the problem is that enemies don't actually "target" anyone if they use a single target skill, they just let the engine pick a random target.

There isn't really a clean way to simply randomly pick a valid target either, since the way the default scripts is written forces you to basically overwrite stuff as far as I can see.

Maybe someone else might have an idea how to make it so that "random" targeting only picks a valid target.

[rubydragon44]

Are you speaking on behalf of this comment here- "But enemies don’t consider this effect, is what I mean. I’m okay with the fact that it’s about affecting someone and not about targeting or not targeting. I know that you can still target anyone using this script. But only the player knows not to use a move against someone who’s conditions they don’t meet. Even when I set them to autobattle, normally enemies use moves that are going to be the most useful, yet they don’t see a false in a scope condition to be a consideration of how useful a move is." ? (since the conversation was in two different places lol)

[HimeWorks]

Default AI doesn't consider whether the move is effective or not. It just cares whether it has priority or not.

Because action decision does not take into consideration who the target is, this is what happens.

[rubydragon44]

So with the autobattler tag, enemies don't use their most powerful thunder move against actors that are weak to thunder?

[HimeWorks]

I think that's how it works.

I've never experimented with it myself but I'm sure if you had a slime that could use lightning and fire, and your actor had 2000% lightning element rate, but fire just happened to have higher priority, it would be picked.

Which is why a lot of people complain about stupid AI's, cause they really don't care much about the targets. It's like when they heal, they only heal the last member of the troop. What's the point of that?

If you look at the action conditions, you see nothing related to the the targets (eg: the party), except maybe the party level, but that's only cause the party can be globally accessed..

There are scripts available for making smarter AI's, though personally I think it would be enough to just consider targets when determining which action to use.

Which is the purpose of this: #124 , allowing you to build your AI using the event editor.

[Roguedeus]

This discussion is a perfect example of how much of an advantage the player actually has in a battle, and why the traditional combat system is essentially a lottery.

[rubydragon44]

So then couldn't it be where the hypothetical damage that the enemy considers before deciding which move to use as an autobattler is multiplied by zero (so that they then choose another target or use another move) if no scope conditions are met?

And wait... crap... my main character resists water and I had a "Rate" that had Water and Stone, but with Water having a priority of 6 and Stone with 5, and Water was used more often... and with the same priority the moves were used equally.

And I agree. I was sad when I found out that no enemy ai used targets in consideration. That's why I like my enemies tough.

I mean even like Pokemon has it so that enemies will consider weaknesses. Hahah.

So what to do now? Even if I were to scrap the Triple Adjacent Battle idea, now I have the enemy AI when fighting smarter opponents to consider.

[rubydragon44]

I don't play strategic role playing games expecting the enemies to be stupid and attack blindly. I want to utilize skills and work around that. I mean, you're often already stronger, have more skills, and have access to items and switching party members... and enemies can't be smart, too? It can be annoying but that's strategy. That's why I was talking about cover. Because you cover that target and then they heal. But without AI they could be trying to use Fire on the Water guy while the healer is about to die and is weak to Water. You don't play chess hoping the player is a 3 year old with less pieces than you. Yeah if you're fighting Batman-IQ-ed bats through random step encounters in a cave then that'd be annoying. But for a horde of mage soliders, yeah, they're not going to try to use Low Kick on the flying actor after years of training.

[HimeWorks]

I deleted my post when I tried to cancel out of editing mode and the X instead thinking it was the same as cancel :(

[rubydragon44]

Post? And heheh.

[rubydragon44]

Victor's has something of the sort so I know that it's possible to set Target-based AI http://victorscripts.wordpress.com/rpg-maker-vx-ace/battle-scripts/automatic-battlers/. but the there can only be one target condition and it's limited to the following: "random", "user", "state on x", "state off x", "highest stat", "lowest stat", "highest buff", and "lowest buff". There are no string targets. You could have it so that Water targets those with the state Water Weak but that means that there'd be no way to condition like "target those without Water Resist" as well. You would have to add two different Water skill priorities, each with those respective conditions. But also it wouldn't account for armor or states that reduce or boost water damage.

There is also http://yanflychannel.wordpress.com/rmvxa/battle-scripts/lunatic-targets/ but it applies a string to skills and items, not enemy noteboxes.

And I don't know how to string "target whos resulting damage would be highest" or "target who's resistance to element x is lowest" or "target who's item x rate is highest"

So I'm kind of stumped on what to do.

I want a game to be challenging and about logic and not just guess-and-avoid.

[HimeWorks]

You sure they don't support formulas for enemies? That seems like the obvious way to give people flexibility.

I'm not really sure about note-tagging skills/items when it comes to AI. It's really something that should be added to enemies.

The existing AI system needs to be modified to support target checking of course. I'm not sure how they implemented that.

[rubydragon44]

I'm sure. No string for Victor, and there would be SOOO many conditions if you notetagged items and skills using Target Manager. You can look if you're interested. And that would make sense. I love how you make everything strings.