[AlliedG]

potentially very interesting and besides I know in MO they ditch the slaver miner (which is unbalanced like hell)

[NineBreakerFan]

you could give the thing that deploys into a refinery the slave miner tags so then it would auto deploy instantly after the ai deploys the node.

[Courageous]

That's a great idea, NBK. I've experimented with that one myself. I'd probably go straight for that, without base node, 'cept I want to keep up the illusion of no cheating.

There are three "findable" areas that are roughly in the the inner area of the map: 1) the ore, 2) the gather point, 3) the regroup point. My AI places base nodes (different ones, with different structure IDS) at all three locations, in an attempt to distract and "crowd out" the player. I particularly want the AI to "camp" the approach routes to its own base. Makes things annoying and inconvenient.

p.s.: a small caveat about applying the find-the-ore trick with different locomotors: neither the chrono nor chopper locomotors work with it. They'll go, but then they don't deploy.

C

[NineBreakerFan]

I'd probably go straight for that, without base node, 'cept I want to keep up the illusion of no cheating.

What do you mean without the base node? the base node would need to deploy to even get the vehicle. And also to make the ai not look like its cheating you can create a player-only node that behaves like the one in cannisrules, but looks like the one the ai builds.

[Courageous]

What I meant was, instead of having the vehicle-to-node-to-vehicle-to-refinery, I might have skipped the node, and gone straight to vehicle-to-refinery. Problem with that is that a refinery then just pops up next to the ore; this is something the player can't usually do, so it looks like cheating.

C

[NineBreakerFan]

so thats why you give the players a regular node and the ai a special node that auto-deploys and creates another node that auto deploys.

[Courageous]

Yes, I agree.

[AAG]

In aimd.ini there are such tags

[0C9C878C-G]
Name=Allied Refinery Guard
0=58,1
1=5,10
2=58,196609
3=5,10
4=58,196609
5=5,10
6=6,1

and similar

Maybe using them as an example we can create Guarding function for 'invisible refinery unit'?

Or maybe changing by
BaseSizeAdd=3
AIBaseSpacing=1
to larger values, and then giving Factory=BuildingType and ConstructionYard=yes tags to AINODE1 we may give an ai chance to build 'normal' refinary near new base

[Courageous]

I use BaseSizeAdd=170 in my mod. It stops applying after a point, for reasons I'm can't put my finger on. And it's not just the base defense limits, either. I have

MaximumBaseDefenseValue=3500
SovietBaseDefenseCounts=120,120,120

I've really hammered this aspect really hard, because I wanted to get the AI to build an /enormous/ base, and then tune in reverse until I felt it was the right size. It's not that easy getting to an enormous base, IMO. It's almost as if it loses interest in building after it gets to be TL=10.

But I didn't quite understand what you're trying to achieve. Why do you want the invisible refinery unit to "guard," exactly?

Anyway, while I haven't tried it, if you made the AINODE behave like a conyard, why wouldn't the normal "second conyard bug" not apply?

Observation: if you set IsBaseDefense=yes on non defense buildings, the AI likes to build /real/ base defenses next to them. Or at least I believe I've seen that behavior. Bit wierd, that. I'll have to experiment more with it.

C

[ADDENDUM]

Here's a snappy of what happens when you give AINODE1 a free invisible slave miner clone that produces a soviet refinery. The thing I was worried about ... that it wouldn't work without a script ... turned out to not be a problem. Slave miner copies seem to have a life of their own:

[DCoder]

I guess he simply doesn't "know" about the second conyard bug.