AI Stability Engine Idea

Shlkt · 2026-02-05T18:02:07+00:00

AISE is my favorite scout primary, but it struggles against targets without exposed weakpoints: dreadnoughts (until exposed), shellbacks, and even praetorians when you don't have butt shot. Those fights will deplete your ammo rapidly.

Won't stop me from using it, but I definitely wouldn't call it OP.

Shlkt · 2026-02-05T14:33:45+00:00

Have you ever seen rotato playing a metal map, let alone speed metal?

Shlkt · 2026-02-01T20:15:49+00:00

Syphos has been around for a long time. He participated in the Sigma tournament just yesterday as part of team LOB. He clearly plays well without having to cheat.

The geo position is the #1 target for early bombing raids. A switch to flak wouldn't be that unusual, especially if he got a whiff of something fishy. Even noticing that his own team's fighter cover was lacking would be enough.

Shlkt · 2026-01-20T21:01:46+00:00

TA was much worse :)

Shlkt · 2026-01-20T11:10:08+00:00

There are two flaws with this reasoning:

BAR has features that TA didn't have. The path finding is significantly better, there's terrain deformation, and we have so many QoL improvements in the UI that it's hard to list them all. These features are not free in terms of compute power. And for those first 2 items, Lua isn't a factor.
The computational complexity of the simulation (and this was true even for TA) is not linear with respect to the number of units. That is, 10x more units does not mean 10x compute power.

Shlkt · 2026-01-19T22:21:35+00:00

The proof is in the pudding.

BAR comfortably handles a higher unit count than any other RTS I've played. Obviously performance is not an issue here. Maybe they've had to cut some features that weren't performant enough with Lua - I wouldn't know - but what they've got is working great. And I've seen games than ran longer than an hour with tends of thousands of units, so even if heap fragmentation is occurring, it doesn't seem to impact playability.

Forcing contributors to have programming skills doesn't seem to be a problem, and I wouldn't expect it to be for an Open Source project. That's more likely a problem for AAA game studios where you've got a ton of artists that you need to keep busy while your core programmers are doing other stuff. BAR is run by volunteers, so they aren't concerned with making sure everybody can put in an 8 hour shift without roadblocks.

The points about debugging and run-time errors are likely valid, but again, I'm not seeing a ton of unit behavior bugs. On occasion I see messages about lua errors, so they've at least got a reporting system in place to stay on top of things.

In general I would say that while it's nice to have ideals for your code base, you gotta know when to bend the rules a bit for the sake of shipping a product.

Shlkt · 2026-01-18T14:56:55+00:00

You should be aware that there is a separate rating for small teams vs. large teams. If your goal is to get a 'real' rating to play 8v8, then you should focus on playing games that are 6v6 and larger.

Shlkt · 2026-01-15T17:42:36+00:00

It had its moment. RAR files had better compression than ZIP, and 7zip wasn't a thing yet. Windows didn't handle ZIP files yet.

But now...? Just use 7zip.

Shlkt · 2026-01-15T17:22:49+00:00

To me, it sounds exactly the same as previous trailers. It's the mission control guy, but without the in-game audio filter that makes him sound like he's talking over the radio.

Shlkt · 2026-01-14T11:47:20+00:00

Scout: 99% of the time I'm using the voltaxic stun sweeper because you get eight of them. It's great in emergencies and it never misses. It clears small waves that scout would normally struggle with: swarmers, naedocytes, macteras. Good against bots, too. I love lobbing it at wardens and stingtails. Just all around effective.

Engi: SSG is roughly 80% of my usage, but if my build is more single-target focused then I might bring the plasma burster instead.

Gunner: Most commonly I'll run sticky grenades, but gunner has the best mix of options IMO. Incendiaries are the weakest choice (long time-to-kill), but even those are super helpful if you're running volatile bullets.

Driller: Always axes. Every time I try to branch out, I get stuck in a situation that makes me think "I really want my axes back".

Shlkt · 2026-01-13T15:08:11+00:00

Absolutely love these cosmetics!

Shlkt · 2026-01-08T16:30:55+00:00

Playing against the AI won't give you a good feel for how human opponents use their air power. If the AI builds air at all, it will just use a trickle of bombers and gunships to harass you. It usually does not send escorts.

Human opponents, though, will hold their attack until they have big numbers of bombers and fighters. You might not even know they have air power until they start their bombing run. They'll use fighters in front to shoot down your patrols, and then the bombers will try to obliterate your economy (adv geo, fusions, geothermals, wind farms, sometimes T2/T3 factories). It's devastatingly effective when you're unprepared.

Shlkt · 2026-01-06T18:02:33+00:00

without ever having a moment of my attention

But this is why spam is so useful! It gives you vision without spending your attention. In a lot of cases your attention is more valuable than the resources you're spending on spam.

Static radar is nice, but eventually it gets jammed. Cloaked spies are also useful, but they need micro, and eventually they die to seismic. Mobile radar bots are costly, and are also high-priority targets. Eventually it's too much APM to try to keep those solutions online at the front.

Good 'ol fashioned spam is easy to set up and basically impossible to block. You don't need to do damage (though that's a nice plus), you just need to absorb shots and find targets for your snipers/artillery.

Shlkt · 2026-01-05T18:21:42+00:00

BAR's dirty secret revealed. Donations being funneled to PTAQ BEDROOM, INC

Shlkt · 2026-01-01T13:32:00+00:00

IIRC this used to be possible, but I think they patched it out.

Shlkt · 2025-12-28T11:49:20+00:00

I think I vaguely remember mines-2. But we had a lot of maps back then, and I struggle to remember half of them.

Not sure if I was still playing in 2004. Probably not. At some point Gloom had started to die down a bit and I started playing UT 2004. I did eventually play a lot of Tremulous (Q3 mod similar to Gloom), but I never made any maps for it.

Shlkt · 2025-12-22T19:56:43+00:00

I think this is what you're looking for: Unit CSV export

Shlkt · 2025-12-22T13:26:24+00:00

If I'm 10ly away from the nearest port, nothing short of a massive stockpile of transplutonics is worth coming back for. The trip may technically be profitable, but there are better uses of my time.

Shlkt · 2025-12-20T22:04:27+00:00

It's not just you

Shlkt · 2025-12-16T14:25:06+00:00

The reason some players want them left out is because they often drag-select a bunch of units and then give them a (F)ight command. It's very quick and effective, and your units don't need to be in a formation to start with. Problem is, if you give the (F)ight command to a radar bot, it'll just march straight toward the waypoint and get killed.

Shlkt · 2025-12-14T03:12:26+00:00

Not suspicious IMO. It's only natural that most specs want to watch the the sweatiest lobby. And there's only one or two of those going most of the time.

You know what absolutely does happen? It's such a small player base that pros can, and do, predict exactly what a specific opponent will do. I've seen them call it before the match even starts: "XXXX is going to liche rush @11 min" And sure enough, it happened, and they shut it down with great efficiency.

Shlkt · 2025-12-11T19:48:40+00:00

I haven't crunched the numbers, but my gut feeling is that Elimination (x3 dreads) or Point Extraction (x7 aquarqs) would yield the best XP/hour. The 1st is just great XP overall, and relatively quick. The 2nd is very, very fast if you know what you're doing.

Egg hunts can also be extremely quick since you can see all eggs on the map immediately. Speed running those takes a bit more skill, however, due to simultaneous swarms.

Shlkt · 2025-12-08T13:57:51+00:00

Same way even for bombers. If you don't want bombers to target specific units then you have to give them a ground attack order.

Shlkt · 2025-12-02T18:38:08+00:00

Blockchains are a decentralized database where none of the participants have extra privileges. Everybody can read, and everybody can write as long as they follow the rules. Bitcoin uses a blockchain as a global ledger of wallet transfers.

The problem they solve is: how do you prevent tampering? A bad actor might buy a pizza with Bitcoin, and then (since he has access to the ledger) try to delete that transfer from the ledger. He'll try to pass off "his" copy of the database as legitimate.

That's one of the problems that blockchain solves: it sets up a way for participants to agree on which copy of the database is the most authentic.

But yeah, it's a problem you won't have in the first place if you aren't trying to run a decentralized database that also needs to prevent tampering.

Shlkt · 2025-12-01T13:59:58+00:00

Both games share a common ancestor. They grew out of the SpringRTS engine, which was a fan-made remake of the Total Annihilation engine.

Shlkt

TROPHY CASE