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Being able to have multiple battles at the same time is not terribly interesting, because humans can scale this as well. Team up two humans and they'll be able

Being able to have multiple battles at the same time is not terribly interesting, because humans can scale this as well. Team up two humans and they'll be able to do twice the work. Teaming two players to play a Go or a chess game against a computer wouldn't do that much good though. I've recently read Ender's Game and there was an interesting idea in there. In the book it is hive queens controlling the Buggers fleet with exquisite control, yet Ender is able to exploit this as a weakness, as every human is a sentient being capable of thinking and acting independently, so as a commander he was only giving high-level orders to his lieutenants and they did the rest. Which is how humans have fought wars.

Retric 11y ago
Things happened in Enders Game due to authorial fiat nothing more. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L4_zFYnnn2Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L4_zFYnnn2Y Game designers spend a lot of effort in RTS game keeping the AI from crushing people. This showes up not just in the games AI but also unit mechanics. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mHbloVZ15Pc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mHbloVZ15Pc
- Houshalter 11y ago
  Actually RTS AI is really bad and they almost all cheat to keep up with the player.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Having an AI that plays like a human is less fun. 'Cheating' is simply how developers can easily balance things. EX: Often there are units capable of infinite harassment with perfect micro. That's so far from being fun it's never part of actual game AI. Large base, small waves. It's a simple formula that makes people feel great! PS: Of course it goes deeper, units need to have basic AI because people can't micro manage large numbers.
    - Houshalter 11y ago
      I know, but there are even competitions where people write RTS AIs that can do micro like that, and humans still often beat them. Some game developers have great lengths to make good RTS AI that plays fair and like a human, and they are still easy to beat for skilled players.
erelde 11y ago
But that's not the case here, in most Starcraft tournaments it's 1v1. So it would be one 1 AI mounting serveral attacks at the same time against one humain player with the limitations it entails.
realharo 11y ago
If you team up two humans, they need to be very well coordinated to work together effectively, otherwise they'll just get in each other's way. Starcraft 2 has a mode like this called Archon Mode, where two players control the same units. The conflicts that can arise from this can be pretty fun to witness.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  It appears the starcraft developers had the same conversation we are having here.
- duskwuff 11y ago
  A similar mode was present in the original Starcraft, albeit without the cool name. (It was simply called "team melee".)
  - hobarrera 11y ago
    No, it's a completely different thing. In Archon Mode, two physical players share control of a single in-game player. A lot more coordination is required or they'll both be giving counter-orders most of the time.
    - duskwuff 11y ago
      It's been a long time since I played team melee, and I've never played Starcraft 2 multiplayer, but reading back, I'm pretty sure they're the exact same thing: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Archon_Mode http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Archon_Mode https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/314e28/archon_mode_vs_team_melee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/314e28/archon_mo...
vinceguidry 11y ago
> I've recently read Ender's Game and there was an interesting idea in there. In the book it is hive queens controlling the Buggers fleet with exquisite control, yet Ender is able to exploit this as a weakness, as every human is a sentient being capable of thinking and acting independently, so as a commander he was only giving high-level orders to his lieutenants and they did the rest. Which is how humans have fought wars. I've read enough about real-world military strategy on Quora to know that this is nonsense. The amount of national resources that go into command and control networks is immense, these networks play a huge role in making our military unassailable. Something like the Bugger hive queens would be practically impossible to deal with in any real way, deception would be impossible to rely on. Deception is critical in an invasion, defenders have the advantage of knowing the terrain. If you could rely on a sensor network to reliably and instantaneously tell you where all the threats are, then you could simply rely on mobile forces to go wherever they're needed. Unless the attackers have an overwhelming numerical advantage, they won't be able to break through. D-Day would not have been feasible without the ability to deceive the Germans as to which beaches they were going to land the troops, a lot of time and effort went into planning that deception. Humans only stood a chance against the buggers due to their overwhelming weaponry, which will trump tactics and strategy every time. No way with that kind of weaponry would it even be a fair fight, any mildly competent general could have won with that advantage. The defensive response to overwhelming conventional superiority is guerrilla warfare, not trying to stand and fight toe-to-toe with nukes. Felt like a bit of a cop-out to me, authors should be required to spend some time on Quora verifying their basic assumptions, it would make for much better stories. Naturally Card didn't have access to it, and I still enjoyed the book. But it could have been much much better.
- na85 11y ago
  .... Quora being known the world over as an elite military strategy academy, of course.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    I ignored Quora for a long time, but once I took a look at it, it quickly became a valued part of my life. I've been on lots of Internet fora over the years, Quora really nails the problem of signal-noise ratio you typically get with forums, even HN isn't immune. I've learned more about the real world around us from Quora than I have from almost every other source. Only Stratfor rivals it, and that's only in the realm of geopolitics. Of course, you'd learn more at an actual military academy about strategy, but Quora does the work of getting the people that already went to those academies to boil down everything they learned into short, readable essays. In fact, I'm finding that I'm reading fewer long-form journalism articles and blogs because I find Quora so compelling. Those were my previous bar-none best source for information. Nothing beats curated long-form journalism for variety, but there's still a lot of noise and the work of separating it out is onerous enough and Quora is easy enough that I've already subconsciously switched, not bothering to maintain my RSS workflows. If I want some variety, I'll fire up Feedly or Pocket and pull out a few articles, but generally I'm looking to iterate on my high-level model of how the world works, geopolitical analysis from Stratfor and watching smart people answer stupid questions at Quora is the best bang-for-the-buck I've encountered for that. HN is the best place for business-specific information, if it weren't for that I'd have moved on a long time ago, I've been so far unable to find a good vein to mine for business on Quora, though it's half-decent with finance, though HN still beats Quora there too.

Retric 11y ago

Things happened in Enders Game due to authorial fiat nothing more. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L4_zFYnnn2Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L4_zFYnnn2Y Game designers spend a lot of effort in RTS game keeping the AI from crushing people. This showes up not just in the games AI but also unit mechanics. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mHbloVZ15Pc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mHbloVZ15Pc

Houshalter 11y ago
Actually RTS AI is really bad and they almost all cheat to keep up with the player.
- Retric 11y ago
  Having an AI that plays like a human is less fun. 'Cheating' is simply how developers can easily balance things. EX: Often there are units capable of infinite harassment with perfect micro. That's so far from being fun it's never part of actual game AI. Large base, small waves. It's a simple formula that makes people feel great! PS: Of course it goes deeper, units need to have basic AI because people can't micro manage large numbers.
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    I know, but there are even competitions where people write RTS AIs that can do micro like that, and humans still often beat them. Some game developers have great lengths to make good RTS AI that plays fair and like a human, and they are still easy to beat for skilled players.

erelde 11y ago

But that's not the case here, in most Starcraft tournaments it's 1v1. So it would be one 1 AI mounting serveral attacks at the same time against one humain player with the limitations it entails.

realharo 11y ago

If you team up two humans, they need to be very well coordinated to work together effectively, otherwise they'll just get in each other's way. Starcraft 2 has a mode like this called Archon Mode, where two players control the same units. The conflicts that can arise from this can be pretty fun to witness.

cmdrfred 11y ago
It appears the starcraft developers had the same conversation we are having here.
duskwuff 11y ago
A similar mode was present in the original Starcraft, albeit without the cool name. (It was simply called "team melee".)
- hobarrera 11y ago
  No, it's a completely different thing. In Archon Mode, two physical players share control of a single in-game player. A lot more coordination is required or they'll both be giving counter-orders most of the time.
  - duskwuff 11y ago
    It's been a long time since I played team melee, and I've never played Starcraft 2 multiplayer, but reading back, I'm pretty sure they're the exact same thing: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Archon_Mode http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Archon_Mode https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/314e28/archon_mode_vs_team_melee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/314e28/archon_mo...

vinceguidry 11y ago

> I've recently read Ender's Game and there was an interesting idea in there. In the book it is hive queens controlling the Buggers fleet with exquisite control, yet Ender is able to exploit this as a weakness, as every human is a sentient being capable of thinking and acting independently, so as a commander he was only giving high-level orders to his lieutenants and they did the rest. Which is how humans have fought wars. I've read enough about real-world military strategy on Quora to know that this is nonsense. The amount of national resources that go into command and control networks is immense, these networks play a huge role in making our military unassailable. Something like the Bugger hive queens would be practically impossible to deal with in any real way, deception would be impossible to rely on. Deception is critical in an invasion, defenders have the advantage of knowing the terrain. If you could rely on a sensor network to reliably and instantaneously tell you where all the threats are, then you could simply rely on mobile forces to go wherever they're needed. Unless the attackers have an overwhelming numerical advantage, they won't be able to break through. D-Day would not have been feasible without the ability to deceive the Germans as to which beaches they were going to land the troops, a lot of time and effort went into planning that deception. Humans only stood a chance against the buggers due to their overwhelming weaponry, which will trump tactics and strategy every time. No way with that kind of weaponry would it even be a fair fight, any mildly competent general could have won with that advantage. The defensive response to overwhelming conventional superiority is guerrilla warfare, not trying to stand and fight toe-to-toe with nukes. Felt like a bit of a cop-out to me, authors should be required to spend some time on Quora verifying their basic assumptions, it would make for much better stories. Naturally Card didn't have access to it, and I still enjoyed the book. But it could have been much much better.

na85 11y ago
.... Quora being known the world over as an elite military strategy academy, of course.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  I ignored Quora for a long time, but once I took a look at it, it quickly became a valued part of my life. I've been on lots of Internet fora over the years, Quora really nails the problem of signal-noise ratio you typically get with forums, even HN isn't immune. I've learned more about the real world around us from Quora than I have from almost every other source. Only Stratfor rivals it, and that's only in the realm of geopolitics. Of course, you'd learn more at an actual military academy about strategy, but Quora does the work of getting the people that already went to those academies to boil down everything they learned into short, readable essays. In fact, I'm finding that I'm reading fewer long-form journalism articles and blogs because I find Quora so compelling. Those were my previous bar-none best source for information. Nothing beats curated long-form journalism for variety, but there's still a lot of noise and the work of separating it out is onerous enough and Quora is easy enough that I've already subconsciously switched, not bothering to maintain my RSS workflows. If I want some variety, I'll fire up Feedly or Pocket and pull out a few articles, but generally I'm looking to iterate on my high-level model of how the world works, geopolitical analysis from Stratfor and watching smart people answer stupid questions at Quora is the best bang-for-the-buck I've encountered for that. HN is the best place for business-specific information, if it weren't for that I'd have moved on a long time ago, I've been so far unable to find a good vein to mine for business on Quora, though it's half-decent with finance, though HN still beats Quora there too.