More AI Discussion; Campaign Considerations

All right, the last AI plan didn't work as well as I'd hoped - after teaching the AI to be comfortable with any ship they were given, and that they would always have the same ships as everybody else, they got used to that and had a little difficulty re-adapting. So I tried something different: The same rules as before (everybody different ships, ships being tailored to suit the AI), but no extra points for surviving ships. It works absolutely flawlessly, and the AI is nigh-invincible if you set the AIQ (Artificial Intelligence Quotient) high enough.

Which brings me to the question: Do I make a campaign?

I have some rough ideas of what I could do with a campaign. Nothing special, really, but I did leave a few things in the code that would allow for some fun:

• There can be more than 4 players. Any player in the 5 slot or farther would be unable to fire their ships, making inanimate objects such as asteroids possible.
• If I created a map designer, it would be possible to put two ships on top of each other, allowing for spherical ships in the center of large rings - you have to destroy the outer ship to get to the inner one.
• Ships can have more than the "maximum" of 50 hitpoints/shields if you increase it manually via the *.ali file.
• Ships can (in theory) have more than the "maximum" of 50 weapons - but that would require a bit of tweaking to the ship designer.
• The AI, after I put it in, will be capable of adapting to the player's style of play... This could be problematic for newer players, but, I'll make it so that the AI can be reset to "normal", so that it forgets all the new stuff it has learned.
• It is possible (though I haven't put it in yet) for the map size to be larger than the user's screen, by changing the maxheight, maxwidth, and maxangular values... This would involve scrolling, but would allow for much larger maps, and thus complex pre-designed missions.
• However, the AI gets exponentially slower when there are more ships on the map... I tried to get around this one as best as I could. The AI is brilliant, but can take up to about 30 seconds (on a regularly sized map) to place a ship. Fortunately, it chooses its ships in less than 10 seconds.
• I could possibly work teams in there, so that a ship can be on a team as well as a player's side. This would allow for alliances during the campaign...
• I could create a tag that makes non-player ships (player 5 and above) collide only with the weapons of certain ships... That would be hard to find a place to fit in, but it might look cool.
• By presetting the "destroyed" value of a non-player ship to True, I could make it so that it was basically a background element, allowing for something along the lines of an alien planet. This, coupled with high-HP rocks and debris could make for an interesting battlefield.
• By coupling the "planet surface" idea with preset high-HP AI player ships, I could create "buildings" and "walls", to make an alien base. Which could be very, very cool, if I pulled it off correctly.

What I'd really like to do, though, is create a dynamic campaign... So that your choices during battle reflect what happens later on. It would also be cool if there was some sort of "star map", so you could conquer territories, as you might in a Risk-style game. But perhaps that's a bit too much... Besides, campaigns tend to be more involving and interesting than the Risk-style games. In my opinion, anyway.

What I might be able to do is create both - both a linear and a dynamic campaign. However, at some point I have to ask myself: How far am I willing to take this? This was originally just a small project to entertain my brothers and a little nostalgia - I've already gone above and beyond what I originally intended by creating advanced AI. How much farther am I willing to go?