Sunday, May 11, 2014
Closing in. Closing in on the highest of the high AI
Metaprojects as Revenue Allocation
(NOTE: Previously I have used the term 'metatask' to describe actions that are taken to affect how other projects run. I'm going to start using 'metaproject' instead, as it's more consistent. Projects and metaprojects. Duh )
One very simple insight from yesterday has allowed me to completely change how I think about metaprojects as I move forward with implementing them today. That insight is: you don't decide which metaproject. You decide how much of each. You don't choose between expansion, R&D, security, etc...you choose an allocation of your capital among them all. Just like power distribution. But where does that capital come from? We already know the answer to that one: project revenue. You take project revenue, divide it into percentages, and let that revenue flow into metaprojects that increase the long-term profitability of your existing operations.
As an example, if an AI player creates a mining operation, it will automatically create sub-projects for each category of metaproject (right now: expansion, monopolization, research, security...list subject to change). It'll also decide on a distribution among those sub-projects, so that when revenue is generated by the parent project, it will automatically flow (according to the chosen distribution) into the metaprojects. This simple insight transforms what seems like a complex problem into what seems like a simple one: choosing the distribution of revenue. But we don't have to have a perfect solution for that! We can guess at it, we can derive it from the AI player's personality, etc. Since we now do a little bit of each, optimality is less important.
It really excites me to think that, with personality as an influence in choosing this distribution, we will very clearly see factions develop unique styles, not even necessarily through their choice of operations, but rather, through the way that they evolve and sustain those operations! Can you really tell the personality of someone by whether they pick mining or production? I mean...maybe a bit...but not really. Now, when you see one person guarding their production station with what seems like a full-fledged battle fleet, while another simply slaps them up all over space with nary a fighter left behind to defend...now you can see a personality! Aggressive expansion vs. high-security paranoia, for example, are both just particular metaproject revenue allocations!
Naturally, the allocation will also be reactive. For example, as mentioned before, large amounts of asset loss call for more spending on security. I'll use a heuristic to compute an importance factor for each metaproject, which will bias the final allocation toward 'urgent' metaprojects.
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So we've solved metaproject decision making...next up is to actually write the metaprojects. This will no doubt be harder than the other tasks so far (except for 'Play Limit Theory' ), since metaprojects essentially take in money and produce abstract resources ('expansion,' 'security,' etc.). There's a lot more decision-making involved, but I feel much better now that the problem is already reduced to "take X credits and convert it into as much security as possible for project Y."
Don't you just love that feeling of hard problems shrinking until they vanish?
Post
Mon May 12, 2014 3:24 am
#1
Week of May 11, 2014
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford