Development Blog #0009 - More Brain Power

This week I improved the AI.

I spent this week making last week's code run better.  Newman's make more intelligent decisions now.  They'll go back to their base when they've got a fraction of what they need, and store it in case they get killed.  When they raid, they'll bring some resources to repair the base they are raiding so they can make it their own.  Those were the big changes this week.  Server maps have been made available for imaging, so I thought I would generate one, and turn it into a Wool map. 

The server map (Thanks PlayRustHQ)

The Wool Resource File

 

I'm not currently supporting snow / mountains so I just turned them into forest.

 

The video this week is a time-lapse of Wool - by popular demand.

Barrels / Rad Town Analysis

The last couple weeks of Rust have been a barrel looting game.  Here's my take on how that changed Rust; the inclusion of barrels widened the gap between the end game and the start game.  The difference between having a spear and a stone spear is huge, but even bigger for spear to AK47.  Personally, I think its great that weapon tiers are further spread, but I'm not too happy about needing to do a lot of barrel hunting.  I would be happier if we could spend resources on research kits for the weapons we find in barrels and on our enemies.   Furthermore, I think we should be able to directly craft (expensive) blueprints -- that way you could guarantee (slow) progress toward whatever you want rather than rely on luck.

Wool and Blueprints

In Wool, bases act as blueprints. If you've got enough resources to build a T2 base, then you get the blueprints for T2 weapons with the base.  There's no need for blueprints in Wool because the weapon tiers are already largely separated (You can't build a T3 gun with a T1 base -- unlike in Rust).  It's going to make my conclusion weaker if I don't model this just like Rust -- but frankly, I don't have time to keep up with the updates and finish the project.  Again, the point of all this is to show a raiding system that strikes a balance between losing your base and stealing others -- which will still apply to the current build of Rust.

All said,
Hopefully, next week I'll finish the log on / off system -- but don't count on it.  The A.I. has some bugs from all the work I did on it this week.  Hope you all enjoy reading about my project, don't forget to comment / like the reddit post!