The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I find many people playing melee have lost sight of the point of the game, that is, to have fun.

There are certain matchups in UQM which are somewhat of a stalemate.  That is, that if both players are playing a defensive strategy, there is no way to win.  I find that many plays either don't recognize this, or just want to win so much that they fail to give in to a fair fight.  The bottom line is, the faster ship must be aggressive, or else its boring as hell.  I will explain by example:

Arilou Skiff vs Almost any other ship - There is absolutly no point of me chasing your ship when you can teleport.  Recognise this and just attack me.   If im an ur-quan, im not gonna move cuz Ill never catch you.  Just hurry up and engage.

Androsynth vs Chmrr - So many players do the whole circular flee, dropping bubbles along the way.  For some reason, so many Androsynth players have the notion that their opponent must chase them.   In a Chmrr vs Androsynth fight, it is impossible for the androsynth to hit the chmrr with slow bubbles if the chmrr plays defensive, just like how it is impossible for the chmrr to hit the androsynth if he plays defensive.  So take the initiative with the faster ship and try to make some perpendicular runs across me, rather than running away forever and turning it into a half hour battle.

Mmrnmhrm vs Chmrr - You cant hit me, I cant hit you.  Just change into the xwing now and battle, dont waste my time.

Orz vs Many - Dont sit there with your rear facing cannon hoping that im gonna chase you down, cause im not retarted.   Try getting somewhat agressive and maybe turn your gun sideways for some passby shots.  Do something other than just run away.

I guess what Im getting at is that some people dont recognize that certain ships are slower than others, and there is no point in chasing with a slow ship.  Recognise you are the faster ship and be aggressive.  Win or lose im sure you will have more fun.  I love playing with my friend as he plays like I do, but sometimes when playing online its almost a burden to play.

Also, one final note:  If your opponent is a vux and he gets like 10 limplets on you, turn your back to him.  Dont waste both your time by doing the whole rotation thing and waiting for him to hit you with annother 50 limplets.  You know you're dead already so just speed up the process.  Do the right thing and give up your back.  On the other side, if you are a vux and you get behind your opponent, end it.  dont limplet him more, just end it for god sakes.   

Patience, young grasshopper. Do not be so hasty.

Just because you're slower doesn't mean you can't get close to the enemy. There's always gravity whips.

Yes Grav Whips do work, but there are certain scenarios where they dont, such as vs airilou or androsynth. 

Another way around... maybe, make the "emergency withdrawals" possible, like in the main game? The melee would become more, um, tactical, I think.

The slower ship can be the agressor, you just need to rely more on using the environment to your advantage.

Patience can win you many battles.  Sometimes.

Someone actually tried this? Haha, the Mmrnmhrm in Y-Wing mode has 0% chance of landing a hit with all 3 Chmmr satellites intact.  :P

I'd like some opinions on Spathi vs Utwig.  over only had an aggression (or lack of) problem once in PVP and it was these ships - i was the Spathi and a rude twit who shall rename nameless was the Utwig.

I knew that i wouldnt last 5 seconds within his range - powerful weapons and top turn speed. So i did the usual spathi thing of tring to sneak in a nad drop butts on him from almost too longer range. This was painfully slow, however i was wearing him down. but it would have taken an hour to resolve the melee. Anyway he was boxing in waiting for me to fly within range. I refused and kept circling just in and out of range trying to hit him with the useless weapons at my disposal.

Technically if we go by the above mentioned rules - which seem to be best generally, i wasnt playing fair as i was the faster ship. however, the fight was progressing and was loath to just annihilate my spathi. Well, my opponent got tired of this, paused and demanded i attack. he unpaused and did the same thing and he paused again and launched a tirade about me ruining star control and such.
 
I'm mostly pissed about his reaction but he may well have been right about the melee protocol. Usually i get annoyed with stalemates and passive play too but i made a judgement that this was different.  Anyway, what do you all think!

While I agree on a gamership level that stalling and stalemate tactics often don't help one to win, from a captaincy point of view, there are two important points against automatic aggression:

1.  Stalemate is not a win, that's why we call it a stalemate.  Gamership aside, if you can't win then as a captain you should at least be conserving your ship.  The limpet instances I disagree with for instance.  Fight to the end;  I hate it when people just give in like that.

2.  Some ships are designed for 'saber dancing' or stand-off tactics, despite being fast.  While I agree that the X-Form vs. Chmmr is generally impossible for the X-Form to win, the general use of this craft is to be annoying at long range, as high-speed strafing runs with the lasers is always dangerous.  Spathi, Suppox and even the Thraddash are good examples of ships that, despite being very quick, essentially stay at range and fight skirmisher style.  It's irritating, slow, and cautious fighting, and it's not wrong.  Should an androsynth be required to go blazer if the situation calls for bubble deployment?

The arilou, the last example is (and has always been) a really irritating opponent.  Some things just never change.  ;D

Before I close I should admit my own biases in favour of long, drawn out battles.  When my friends played we tended to do so either in duels (1 v 1 same ship) which were chaotic, or regular melee ( 1 v 1 - 3 v 3 starbuck balanced, but almost always  1 v 1 favorites, regardless of balance).  We had few ships and long battles, playing conservatively, patiently.  That's how I enjoy them, I guess.  Try your best and fight to the bitter end.  To me, it was very unsporting to simply give up, even when the odds were against you.  Perhaps *because* the odds were against you.

I kinda hate short battles, its the slighty longer ones that are more interesting.

And in an Spathi vs Utwig situation, the Spathi being the aggressor, kinda sounds stupid to me. The Spathi may be faster, but the Utwig can turn fast, so theres no way to strike from the rear. And with the Spathi in general, 'head on' is not what the ship was designed for.

Theres no reason why two ships can't "dance" for a long time, someone will make a mistake, get hit by stray shots, or smash into the planet. Theres never a reason to just give up.

Unless you're 2 Arilou that just don't wanna attack :P Then its kinda silly.

I find the same problem when playing against the computer. Often times a small, fast ship will continually run away from a slow, powerful ship. In these cases, it can get very frustrating, waiting for the computer to decide to attack.

Another quick thought... how about introducing an adjustable time limit in the Melee? And if the ships fail to destroy each other in given time, both are randomly changed for other ships from the players' fleets.

Not a bad though except, if you are shofixti fighting a chenjesu you could keep your distance and when the time limit occurs you make a 23 credit profit if both ships disappear. UNLESS - they both go back into the fleet.

Squisher, I know we had a problem with an Arilou fight like this before but I think you were being a bit hypocritical. Let me explain. It was Arilou (me) against something or other and I was chain teleporting, hoping to land close to you for some easy hits. It was very time consuming and pissed you off pretty bad, but you used this exact Arilou tactic against me. Hell, I learned that tactic off you. You originally killed an Orz of mine by chain teleporting until you landed right alongside my Nemesis, then finished me off in one focused attack.


The range of the Orz cannon when shot in the opposite direction that you are moving is very long. I'm not firing like that because I expect you to chase me, I'm doing it so I can get you from maximum distance without placing my expensive and fragile Nemesis in harm's way. It's difficult to pelt an opponent with the damn thing, so many of these Orz vs Whatever fights drag on for a very long time. If you think I'm bad about dawdling with the matches, try playing against Stara -- he's the most annoyingly defensive player I've played against out of all of us and he had no qualms with flying directly away from me indefinitely until I made myself vulnerable.

While limpeted, I've noticed that Kohr-Ah can still kill off a careless VUX pilot so it seems fair to me that a Kohr-Ah will fight for every inch against a winning VUX by dropping blades and flamewalls.

Oh yeah, and the Androsynth bubble bath? I hate that stupid tactic but it seems like it's fair game against ships that can easily destroy your blazer form. I'm talking about the Slylandro and Arilou. I've found that you can kill a Thraddash quickly with blazer form, you just need to bubble in a loop so that your opponent gets close trying to shoot you with its blaster. Bubble again so that you only have 1 or 2 energy points, then blaze at the Thraddash. A 1 or 2 energy blazer form ends so quickly that the Torch doesn't get a chance to hit you with its afterburners unless you lunge right into its backside. This is probably a hard description to follow but it seemed pretty reliable the last time I used it.

Yes, that was exactly what I meant when I said "exchanged" - both ships are teleported back to the fleet, and two new ones get in their place. Of course, the last melee match should still go on forever because there's no ships to call for replacement :)

That would raise situations like this:

I have Orz out, and Shofixti left in my fleet. My opponent has only Chmmr left. If I lose this battle, then my best hope is to blow us both up. However, if I was able to do that, it would mean that I had done enough damage as Orz that if I had been using Shofixti first, I would have won. In all situations, it makes sense to use the Shofixti first, so I keep out of the way for a while in order to switch out.

Worse, it might become a meta-staring-contest if the Chmmr tried to avoid my Shofixti and switch me back to Orz.

There's an underlying problem with any gameplay effect after a time limit: The gameplay effect probably benefits one side or the other, so that side will try to waste time in order to get the effect. It's even worse than wasting time by fighting in a cowardly fashion, because here the purpose is to waste time.

Then there should be an option for players to call a stalemate, if both players called it, only then do both ships go back into the fleet. So if 1 player doesnt want to change, there wont be a change. And players who want a long fight can have it.

I'm pretty sure I saw a topic suggesting a similar feature years ago before we had online melee. It seems much more apt now.

Like "Offer draw" in chess? That can be really interesting.
Or another version of time limit, also similar to a chess rule - if no hits (including weapon on weapon, excluding weapon on asteroid/planet) were landed after x amount of time, an automatic stalemate is declared (in chess, there's a "40 moves" rule - if 40 moves are made in a game without moving a pawn or "eating" an enemy figure, a draw is declared).

I really hope no one would play for a draw because they didn't want to lose their supremely powerful Zoq-Fot.  :P

Also, regarding PvP melee: amongst my local group of friends, we consider it a courtesy to select "Random" for the first fight. Is that something everyone else does too? Since the selection appears to be hidden, I cannot tell for sure.

Alot of stuff to go through, so here goes:

Okay some people are misinterpreting my original thread.  If ship 'A' is slowly damaging ship 'B' through attrition, it is a slow battle, but, clearly, one ship is bringing the pain.  This is not a stalemate.  In this example, both ships are aggressive, but the spathi is being aggressive at a distance with an attack that is dealing damage over time.  I have no problems with these battles, and I infact like them.

More to go through:
Okay, like you said, the chain teleporting put me into an advantageous position and allowed me to kill your orz - battle time maybe 2 minutes.  In our battle when you were airilou, I was a mrshmrrrr transformer.  In this situation, it is impossible for me to hit you in Y-form.  So I stand in x form and wait for you to engage.  But you dont.  you flee and run about, without trying to get into range.   I wouldnt have even minded if you kept on mass teleporting, as it would only be a matter of time till you kill yourself, but you didnt.  You continually just stayed on the opposite side of the map, then when i fly over you would teleport and sit on the other side of the map.  You were making no attempt to try to engage.


Test this, and you will realize it is false.  The cannon has a set range, however, when you are moving in the same direction as your bullet, it appears to have a shorter range, as its distance from you is shorter, when in fact its absolute distance is the same whether fired forward or backwards.

Certain ships can fire backwards, being able to temporarily hold off a vux or kill it.  Ships that can attack rearward are: Androsynth,Arilou,Chmrr,Earthling,Kohr-Ah,Orz,Syreen,Ur-Quan,Vux.
However, there is absolutly nothing you can do to prevent further limpeting.  If you have 10 limpets on you, it is trivial for the vux to get annother 50 on you.  So from your point of view, it really doesnt matter which way you are facing, as you are solely relying on your rear/omni firing weapon to take out the vux from now on.  So I dont see how giving your back is a problem.  And while we are talking about aggression, condider the Orz.  If I am Vux and I limpet you to death, I will most likely still die when trying to finish you off with the laser, as you will howitzer my ass.  If winning was of absolute importance over gameplay, I would just stay all the way across the map from you, waiting (a very long time) for an asteroid to collide with you and eventually send you into the planet.  That would be the most boring game ever.  Doing so would be a gauranteed win for Vux, but it isnt sportsman like; the vux should engage and try for the kill.

Squisher, I know we had a problem with an Arilou fight like this before but I think you were being a bit hypocritical. Let me explain. It was Arilou (me) against something or other and I was chain teleporting, hoping to land close to you for some easy hits. It was very time consuming and pissed you off pretty bad, but you used this exact Arilou tactic against me. Hell, I learned that tactic off you. You originally killed an Orz of mine by chain teleporting until you landed right alongside my Nemesis, then finished me off in one focused attack.
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Okay, like you said, the chain teleporting put me into an advantageous position and allowed me to kill your orz - battle time maybe 2 minutes.  In our battle when you were airilou, I was a mrshmrrrr transformer.  In this situation, it is impossible for me to hit you in Y-form.  So I stand in x form and wait for you to engage.  But you dont.  you flee and run about, without trying to get into range.   I wouldnt have even minded if you kept on mass teleporting, as it would only be a matter of time till you kill yourself, but you didnt.  You continually just stayed on the opposite side of the map, then when i fly over you would teleport and sit on the other side of the map.  You were making no attempt to try to engage.


I dont mind bubble strats, as long as the androsynth is making passes across a ship.  Even circular bubble walls can be penetrated - its not a standoff.  I hate an andro just keeps flying AWAY from the opponent dropping bubbles, That is, I hate when the match is some ship continually chasing the andro and avoiding the bubbles.  Specific match example would be illrath vs andro.  If both play defensive and the andro doesnt go blazer attack, the match can last forever, as its impossible for either to hit the opponent.

Maybe its a tactic.....an angry pilot is a bad pilot, and will make mistakes.

Unfortunately protocols, with all the best intentions, leave too much room for creative interpretation. also, clearly people wont agree on them.

The best answers are mechanical - implementing a time limit or a stalemate system - I like the 'no hits' rule suggested by Spektrowski

That rule has the same problem I suggested above (Chmmr vs. Orz out and Shofixti in reserve)

Mechanical solutions seem like they always encourage one player, and not the other, to stalemate, as opposed to the current situation, where both players are basically forced to agree not to delay forever. And, ideally, no one should be trying to cause a boring stalemate.

Is that possible for Chmmr to avoid any possible weapons collisions, including Orz howitzer shells/Shofixti pea shooter bullets shot down by Zapsats? The Avatar may be a strong ship, but quickness certainly isn't its main feature :)
The idea is tracking down any weapon/ship or weapon/weapon hits (there are many possibilities, from Zapsats or Earthling point defence shooting down projectiles to, say, Umgah burning an Orz marine in their plasma cone or Kohr-Ah implementing their corona to fend off Ur-Quan fighters). It may be a hell to program, though...

I think the exploit happens in the other direction in that case.  If the Orz player stalemates this match (by not firing), he wins as both ships are just gone.  If you use the 'return to fleet' rule, it can still go on forever, or the Orz player can call up a more advantagous situation by using the shofixiti bomb and then being able to switch back to the Orz.

I'm not a fan of random battle myself, playing mostly 1v1 in my childhood.  However, the point of randomness is that you are, for the duration, 'stuck' with your ship;  Stalemating back to fleet rules tend to eliminate this problem, as you can just waffle until you have an advantagous ship (which the other person will seek to waffle out of).  Stalemating causing both ships to be removed from play favours large fleets of cheap (and probably fast) ships.

In short, what I think Cedric is saying is that these rules are exploitable.  I agree.

My memory is a little hazy, but I'm pretty sure you're just making things up now. I BS'd you on purpose only once during that match and it was with the Androsynth for the purpose of seeing how you adapted. I think I may have even gotten bored and blazed with it eventually. With the Arilou, my chain teleport technique is rather slow because I wait for my energy to fill up before teleporting again. This is so if I land next to my opponent I can do as much damage as possible. I remember doing this exact thing against you in melee.


Functionally speaking, the rear mounted cannon is much safer. Even against a stationary opponent you're slightly better off using the rear cannon because you can lob shells the instant you get within range and throttle away instead of having to spin around within the other player's weapon range. Of course, ships like the Earthling, Druuge and Kohr-Ah are better fought with a front-mounted cannon but against all of those you really should be using marines instead if you want to win.

Chmmr have a very simple way to avoid any stalemating - their tractor beam, isn't it counted as a weapon? :)

So, as it only takes 0.5 seconds to regenerate the energy from a 4 energy teleport, you are trying to tell me that you were teleporting 2 times per second?   Because if that is what you are trying to tell me, then THAT is BS.

Stalemating isn't an issue if both players behave normally. In standard games it shouldn't be practiced. In tournaments, a referee may be needed.
The fact is, there is no situation when whoever attacks, loses. So, generally, the faster ship should act aggressively. They could program that after x amount of time, if the faster ship hasn't reacted aggressively, the PC takes control of its engines and directs it towards the enemy with low skill.
Ah, there COULD be a situation when whoever attacks, loses: Arilou by-the-planet ambushes. Let's say there's such a ship that would win against the Arilou unless ambushed by him by-the-planet. Still, the fastest ship should attack. Or perhaps, the one with the most chances should attack.

Actually, there are quite a few such situations, or at least ones where either player would be quite better off being attacked than attacking. For examples, Ilwrath vs. Mmrnmhrm, Supox vs. Zoq-Fot, and Androsynth vs. Androsynth.

Supox vs. ZFP battles are quite epic in their own right :)

I've got no problem with the androsynth bubbling away. The ship is made for that (If someone is frustrated by the androsynth's lenghty bubbling... you must ban spathi from your games)...and so far i haven't met anyone to manage an ungodly amount of kills with an androsynth vs me. It doesn't have that much health.

I play for the fun of it, if a fight turns out to be boring, i'll suicide (example: spathi vs avatar...).

The VUX is a particular ship, because the "coup de grace" is always a risky affair. It's an art of itself actually (especially if, as the camera zooms in, the planet starts to pull or an asteroid collides). The laser is awesome, but many ships can affect you still from behind...from the umgah to the ur-quan

Play for fun and, anyway, if someone infuriates you...just don't play him/her again.

Never during ANY multiplayer match have I sat on the edge of the screen with a faster ship indefinitely. You are either lying or have a very distorted memory. Given that you frequently play UQM high, I would assume the latter.

I don't think that it's at all unfair or wrong for a faster ship to counter pillboxing tactics by simply refusing to go into range of the opponent's gun.  If your opponent won't use tactics that play into your tactics, then you may just have to change your tactics, rather than trying to make your opponent change his. 

The whole point of playing against another player, is that a human opponent will adjust his tactics to counter yours, much more readily than an AI opponent.  I don't think that there should be a referee or a system that requires you to change ships if you don't attack or hit your opponent in a certain amount of time.

That is the exact thinking that causes this.  It is the duty of the faster ship to engage.  Pillboxing is a tactic of a ship with long range and slow speed.  It is pointless to chase a faster ship when the distance between you is dictated 100% by the fast ship (this is for a noticable speed differance, not a slight one).   By your logic, a fast ship can just prance around indefinatly until the slow ship changes his tactic to a rediculous one.  That is not strategy, that is boring.  Look at the game from a fun factor point of view rather than one to win at all costs.  Press the action and engage.

As for Shiver, you wrote, "My memory is a little hazy" so dont bring my memory into it.  I never said you waited across the screen "indefinatly"  but a 10 minute fight is far longer than it should be for arilou vs transformer.   Think about your comments before you contradict yourself again.

Forcing a slower ship to do something stupid, like chase, is poor gamesmanship, yes.  However, forcing a light, fast ship to charge a large, heavy ship's guns is equally poor gamesmanship. 

Light ships don't charge heavier ships;  They bait, they snipe, but *requiring* someone to hit you when there's a fair to good chance you can hit them back way, WAY harder is like asking someone to politely fall on your sword and stop moving around and dodging like that, since it's taking too long to chop them into liver bits.

You could say that you don't want to chase, and that is fair.  However, how fair is it to then force the other player to chase you?  'The faster ship must be aggressive' is little different than saying 'The faster ship must chase and fire on the slower ship at all times.'  According to some on this thread you apparently have to hit too;  No time for tricky leyland passes now, if you don't hit him in the next ten seconds the computer will take over and thrust you right into his jaws.  Wonderful.  ::)

Assuming the faster ship pilot is a slimy eel that's isn't worth a rusty dime's worth of trust and hard coding it such that a fast ship pilot's watched so that he MUST hit X times in X timeframe isn't, in my opinion, a terribly endearing thing to do.

To close, I more or less agree with the other nays on this thread;  Some ships aren't designed to fight nose to nose, and if someone pillboxes, it shouldn't be expected that the other pilot drop his or her pants and bend over.

damn straight!

Despite the repeated slander, I have to say I agree with Squisher's assessment of what's fair and what isn't.


Wrong. The most extreme example of pillboxing I can think of is Utwig vs Pkunk. If I am a stationary Utwig, what do you do? Send an instant message that says "I can't get close to you without dying, I'm not attacking"? Don't be moronic. As anyone experienced with online melee will tell you, some ships counter others. That same Utwig which shreded your precious fastship is guaranteed to lose to a VUX.

Utwig?  With its turning rate I don't see why it can't just blunder about;  It might not catch up but it's not terribly likely that someone's going to catch it on the flanks by suprise, unless it's spending a lot of time weaving around.

The classic starcastle situation, to me, is a Dreadnought vs. a Skiff.  The skiff can close, and it is juuuuuust nimble enough to evade that dreadnought's ever-slightly-too-slow gun and get onto a flank for a battery full of autolaser nastyness, but it's very iffy business, and that arilou pilot can spend quite a bit of time bobbing in, realizeing (s)he doesn't have a good angle, bob out, and bob in again, over and over.  As you yourself have learned, chain teleporting can work, but it's even less reliable that bobing and weaving, in my opinion, not to mention mildly dangerous;  I've teleported right in front of someone's gun barrel as well as right beside/behind, to my quick and excruciating demise.  That's happened to me more often that teleportation inside of planets, frankly.

Utwig v Pkunk is a battle that isn't as clear cut as you might think;  Ships that clearly beat another do so by literally beating the snot out of the opponent, no matter what (s)he does.  Androsynth vs. Earthling, for instance.  When you think about it, there are very few instances where one ship will clearly counter another, and there are always wily and desperate things for a captain with the short end of the stick to try.  In either ship in this situation, the planet seems to offer the only solution, however slight.

The faster ship has a duty to try to deal damage, because the faster ship is the one that chooses whether any damage is done or not.

Of course, this goes only for situations where one ship can avoid the other (and it doesn't have to be by speed, either.)

No, it's very clear cut. Any halfway concious Utwig pilot can beat a Pkunk unless it revives a dozen times.

Thats only if the Pkunk blindly charges in against the Utwig. There is absolutely no reason a Pkunk can't beat an Utwig. It just takes patience. That doesn't mean the Utwig can sit around whining that the Pkunk isn't engaging. Find a planet, use its gravity to accelerate.
 Or analyze the Pkunks movements and strike when the Pkunk thinks you're just lying in wait. Ooh but then the Pkunk might devise a new strategy! Oh my, the wonderful possibilities of space combat.

Kor-Ah is one of the slowest ships in the game, so is the Chenjesu.  They can dictate when they do damage just fine.  I think half of the question should be how much reach your guns have, not just how fast your ship is.

Well I had assumed that this was implied.  But yes, no slow ship will complain when his enemy chooses to stay in the range of his guns but out of the range of his opponents guns.   This is the ideal situation for any ship, if applicable.  It forces a fast ship to engage, because contrary to the song, time is not on his side.

In addition, I am glad that most people have come to the consensus that there should be some underlying code of ethics or gamemanship involved in matches.  I for one would be happy to lose every single match as long as those matches are exciting.

Right, so who's going to draft a Code of Ethics

Rules of Fight Club

1) Never talk about fight club!!!!

2) Just avoiding is not an adequate tactic, unless combined with some type of offensive measures.

Pkunk can only beat Utwig when they revive a billion times. If the awesome computer Pkunk is killing your Utwig, it's because the computer has great reflexes. You should still beat it if you pilbox right. The computer Slylandro on the other hand, that thing takes some work.

You seem very focused on a ships merits, Shiver, and not so much on a pilots abilities. 9/10 an Utwig will gun down a Pkunk, but that doesn't mean that a very killed pilot can weave his way all around an Utwig, wearing him away.

I'm confused. Do you actually play in UQM-Arena? Because that's the only online melee community that I know of. Surely there must be another one with players that are just as talented because I can't even imagine how people could pester me so much without having the experience to back it up.

I play now and then, and I'm no amazing by far, heck I'm barely decent. If I was in Pkunk and you in an Utwig I'm 100% sure I would lose, but doesn't mean there are some pilots with enough skill and patient to take an Utwig down.

Try tiberian, he is the most skilled pkunk i know of.

Yup! I haven't had a Utwig vs Pkunk fight against him, but I did with Mhrn-Mhrhm. I beat his 2-3 incarnations with most of my crew dead.

He can be skilled but sometimes he gets awfully clumsy. In theory, there's no way for Mmrnmhrm to beat Pkunk, but I often beat him at that match unless he gets 4+ reincarnations. He always says he played poorly in those matches afterwards, so I don't really know how good he is when he's playing well.

Given a little effort, I could probably write a Pkunk vs. Mmrnmhrm bot that a human would have no chance against unless it used the planet.

Elvish, is it possible to write custom AI?

I’m not sure I’d want to face an unbeatable AI, but I would like to play a smarter one. The current AI's problem is that its only strategy seems to be ‘mindlessly chase your opponent and shoot’. While it shoots quite well, the chasing part is laughable and no human player worth his salt would do such a thing in most cases.

So if alternate strategies could be implemented (even basic things like ‘go for a grav whip’), that might make offline play a bit more interesting. Even better would be ship-specific strategies for the AI, which I’m sure many of us here in the forum could contribute to.

Lastly, the AI ship selection needs to change. Right now, it seems to pick a random ship every time, even when it has obvious counters in its fleet.

Don’t know if its possible, but sure would be nice…

Sure. A good starting point is src/sc2code/cyborg.c.

My friend has made a general purpose AI which decomposes any problem into subproblems, and then further decomposes those until the whole problem is solved.

He has applied it to games like snake and Its simply amazing to watch the strategies evolve as the number of generations grow.

It is currently written in Java, but I will take a look and see if it can be converted to C.

It behaves differently with Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrm, and maybe some others that I've missed.

It also has some very consistent stupidities; for instance, if you charge straight towards it in most matchups, it turns around instead of taking you on. (This isn't the most precise description, you really have to be familiar with the AI.)

Also, it takes almost no consideration of what the enemy ship is like. There are a few flags that designate differences between ships, but it'd be more effecient to write AI for particular matchups that it would be to make the AI generally intelligent. It currently doesn't understand particular special abilities of enemies at all, except for a few notable exceptions (point defense comes to mind. But it thinks Utwig have point defense.)

I'll consider trying to improve (or probably, more like, rewrite) the AI... the code is pretty bad right now though, so it might be more difficult than I'd like to deal with.

Do you have a link? (Just for my own interest, not for UQM)

Its local on his box, I think I have a copy on mine too.  Ill try to dig it up this weekend.