Simply put - BOTS

[Shen]

Suggestion: Bots
(Something every game needs sometimes)

Bot basics:

Lobby:

Much like in warcraft 3, you should be able to use these bots as you will. However, I'd not like to see them in public games. So the only way to use bots to "train" would be to have them be used in Sandbox / Practise mode.
Picking screen:

There should be a "Counterpick" and "Effective pick" table:

Counterpick:

IF player = Scout THEN Counterpick 1-5 OR Effectivepick

Counterpicks:

Accursed, Slither, pestilence, madman, Pyromancer

Effectivepick:

Any stunners, holders mostly IMO.

Ingame:

Now, we need to have the "Shopping phase", "Laning Phase" and the "Roaming phase"

Shopping Phase(SP):

SP1) The bot chooses which starting items it should get, so there should be a starting item table, which tells the bot the best choices.

SP2) The bot returns for the first time back to base, may it be due to low health or having enough gold to form an item it needs. Here we'd like to have it attempt to take together boots for example or if it thinks it won't need boots, that it starts on some item, which will make it possible for the bot to kill the enemy easier.

SP3) The bot returns now and then back to the well and begins to form "Highlevel" items such as savage mace, Sacrificial Stone or Behemoth's heart.

Laning Phase(LP):

LP1) The bot determines health of the enemy units around him (Non hero) and begins to last hit. Of course, it's a bot, so it shouldn't be a lasthit and deny wonder. 44% chance to lasthit on each creep should be enough chance. And 44% chance to deny on each creep too.

LP2) Now, we all know what happens while laning, mid is level 5, thinks it's good enough - GANK. Now we need to have the bot determine danger with zones. Let's say we're hellbourne and at the bottom lane, between the outpost and the wall of trees to the left of the lane. Now, we visibly see that an enemy hero is coming from the middle, through the Legion forest (not river) to us. The bot has got the "danger zones" there and will go back once the enemy hero has visibly entered that zone or if a player pings in ~800 range of that zone on the minimap.

LP3) Ganking, we want the bot to do that too. For that we need to know how it will determine on how to gank. There we have to invent the "Support me" function. This will tell the bot to follow and work down it's rountine combat skill-line against enemy heroes in sight, which are away from the tower, or if they are close to the tower and under 10% HP, will be chased for X seconds.

Roamingphase(RP):

The bot will, if no enemy heroes are in sight, go and begin to farm the forest, if it has got the right hero or the mana with the said hero to farm the forest for X seconds and then to return to the well or help where lanes need to be defended in case the tower might be destroyed or any building, determined by your usual "Tower under attack" ping.

Advanced Bots:

Summary:

Advanced Sequels: In addition to the BASICS, we want the bots to advance too. We do not want stupid bots, we want SMART ones. Bots, which TRULY ARE a challange!
So, I will be going through another 4 programs the bots will have to go through at the same time.

Watchtower-Sequel:
The Watchower-Sequel is what it sounds like, a watchtower is watching out and we'd like the bots to do that too. So we take this in like in the aura system. Let's say, the Aura has an effective sightrange of 1250 rangeradius around the bot. So, let's say said bot happens to somehow see an enemy player within this effective radius, it will ping the player 2 times where he had seen the player (on the minimap) to alert ally bots or ally players. The "Watchtower-Sequel" the bot used at that moment will have a cooldown of 3 seconds OR will refresh itself if a not same hero is seen. Meaning, that if the bot first sees Puppetmaster(enemy) and then sees Pestilence(Enemy) that he will ping both, but will have a cooldown for a specific enemy player.

Effective Teamplay-Sequel:
Every X seconds we would like the bots to scan enemy and ally player health and calculate the chances of death or a score(we will get to this sequel once I figure out how it could work). Now, if an ally hero is being persued by an enemy hero, which is in sight of the persued ally hero longer than 2 seconds (persued means either being followed by enemy or being actually attacked) the bot will attempt to be on it's way towards the enemy. IF however the ememy count exceeds the 1:1 count (aka, if the bot's ally was being persued by 5 heroes and he alone is in the effective range of, what, let's say 3000 range? Then he will however not help the ally and get into defensive stance at least).

Now, if we catch an ally player having a situation where he is allmost killing an enemy hero or is in a fight with an enemy hero for X seconds alone, then the bot will come to help and preferably NOT "steal" the kill.

Defensive-Sequel:
Every X seconds we want the towers to send the "heartbeat" to our bots. This heartbeat will indicate an enemy in 1500 range around the tower (counting creepwaves greater than 2 waves or/and enemy heroes) and the bot will notice this. Now, if the bot realizes danger to a tower that is not going to get him killed (we take in what the bot learned through the Effective Teamplay-Sequel) then he will go there to defend.

Traditional Sequel:
All bots are giving "Heartbeat"'s to the whole AI system every X second, alerting Death and Alive-Status.
Furthermore, we'd like all bots to have a "silly"-level You know what I mean. All Bots will have a Stupiditylevel of 1-5, while 1 will be the most stupid level, level 5 will be the most smart. Level 5 will cause bots to notice everything way faster, work together and survive more. Level 1 will be absurdly stupid, it will have a certain "cooldown" on how long it takes the bot to notice something, let's say 2 or 3 seconds. And then he will be slow in his actions.

Heavy Bots

Summary:

Heavy bots are supposed to use certain countermeasures in order to defeat the enemy bots and enemy players they are against. I would like to mention that I've taken this kind of "Behaviour" from the L4D2 Infected bots. I've been playing it recently and it kind of inspired me.

How?:

How did these L4D2 bots inspire me? I'll tell you! They've got certain lineups and tactics together in specific situations to defeat the survivors and to stress as hard as possible. I'd like to see this happen with these bots, too.

Short Example:

We've got this situation: heavy Bot 1 is a Scout, by Now overfarmed. Runed axe, Savage mace etcetera. We'd like to see the enemy bot "team" counter this by chosing pestilence against scout and going therefor for a tankbuilt which includes bound eye and another bot choosing Succubus in order to disable scout. Sounds simply? No. This requires the KI to understand what the enemy does and desperately assign it's bots to have 1-2 "carries" then a "tank" and some bots who support. Which isnt that easy to accomplish.

Training mode:

The training mode will be a No-stats Multiplayer mode, which can include bots. Now as to explain it further. The training mode also includes the practice mode's Panel in order to assign Gold and level. Once all this is set, the user can click ready and the gold will be reduced to 603 based on player/botcount.

Furthermore the Training mode will be able to decide between:
Starting phase, Early Game, Mid game, Late game. This will assign recommended items and levels to the bots and players in order to compete/train.

The Training mode should include several things such as sucessful juking, saving people and the "WHAT IF" Commandline where the player can set 1-5 bots of the enemy team to do X Y Z after another to create a simulated teamfight and let the "Squire" counter it.

I haven't thinked this all through. But that would be neat (The WHAT IF command would be just a simple command lineup, just for several units/heroes/bots)

Conditions to use bots:

• Must be a practice Game
• It's up to debate if they could be used in NOSTATS games. For example:
  
  • Botcount must be the same on both sides.
  • There must at least be 1 player on each team
  • The playercount on each team must be even
  • Games including bots MUST have an icon in the Games-List
  • Games Including bots can ONLY be enabled by the Host of the Server.
  
  
• Should bots have specific grades? Easy mode, Easy, Light, Medium, Heavy, Hard, Expert, Suicidal?

More to be added when I can make up more, please share your feedback and IDEAS please.

Changelog:

17:11, Sunday the 04.04.2010 -
Topic created.
Basics introduced.
Advanced Bots will be added later on when I can be bothered to do so.
Screenshots will be added later too, so the dummies understand everything just slightly enough.
20:54, Saturday the 10.04.2010 -
Introduced Advanced Sequels.
Asked for a bit of feedback.
Added Special Conditions for use of bots.
20:00 13.04.2010 -
Added Traditional Sequel
Need some ideas from community
16:09 20.04.2010 -
Added the "heavy bots" sequel
Explained with:

• Summary
• How?
• And a short Example

14:12 17.10.2010 -
Added the training mode and further explanation.