#113 Temporary Units

[Elijah Meeks]

I'd like some way for the AI to understand that some
units are only going to be around for a short amount of
time and should therefore only be built or deployed
when in a situation where they'd prove useful. The two
types that I have already used and seen the AI have
trouble dealing with are:

Timer units
These are units with a material-based timer (They die
once the timer runs out and the timer tends to drop a
certain amont every turn). There should be a rather
simple way for an AI to analyze and tell these kind of
units:
A) If they are without a certain material, it will kill
them.
B) They cannot receive any of this material.
C) There is a constant base-consumption rate.

Missile units
Roughly the same, sharing A & B and probably C, except
that they would also:
D) Not lose any of the necessary material if they
occupy certain transports.
E) Do not have sufficient ACP to board such transports
(Thereby making them exit-only).

After figuring out how to identify such units (They
could also be explicitly designated through new
u-props), new plans would need to be developed to
handle their use by the AI.

[Anonymous]

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I am planning on making tactical construction code be part
of the tactical handling code. This should largely address
the issues you describe.

As far as missiles go. I think those are a separate issue.
Somewhere else, perhaps the old Sourceware (Redhat) list, I
described various kinds of missiles: guided, seeker, and simple.
A guided missile is treated like a normal unit in that its
side's player has full control over it. A seeker missile is
given a target by its side's player, and then automatically
tracks the target without the player being able to
intervene. A simple missile is like an arrow or other
projectile; once launched, it moves in a direction and
that's that.