AITriggerTypes
In Tiberian Sun through Yuri's Revenge, this section defines a list of all AI Triggers in the game. An AI Trigger (different from a Map Trigger) describes the conditions under which the AI will consider creating this trigger's associated Team(s) to perform a specific task.
Format
This section is provided here mostly for completeness' sake. Editing this section, especially the comparator part, manually is not advised unless you really know what you are doing. Consider using C&C AI Editor or FinalAlert 2's AI Editor instead.
This section uses a convoluted and complex data format:
[AITriggerTypes] ;format example ID=Name,Team1,OwnerHouse,TechLevel,ConditionType,ConditionObject,Comparator,StartingWeight,MinimumWeight,MaximumWeight,IsForSkirmish,unused,Side,IsBaseDefense,Team2,EnabledInE,EnabledInM,EnabledInH ;actual example triggers 0CAD0C7C-G=Allied Anti-Weather,0A6E513C-G,<all>,9,0,GAWEAT,0100000003000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000,70.000000,10.000000,70.000000,1,0,1,0,0CB246CC-G,0,1,1 0D535EDC-G=Nation German Tank 1,0A87293C-G,Germans,2,4,<none>,0000000003000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000,500.000000,10.000000,500.000000,1,0,1,0,<none>,1,1,1 0D2769BC-G=Soviet Iron Curtain Easy,0D27E06C-G,<all>,2,5,<none>,0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000,5000.000000,10.000000,5000.000000,1,0,2,0,<none>,1,0,0 08B9767C-G=Yuri Capture Oil,08B97B3C-G,<all>,1,7,CAOILD,0100000003000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000,70.000000,10.000000,70.000000,1,0,3,0,<none>,0,1,1
| String | Meaning | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID | This AI Trigger's ID. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Name | A plain string used as a name. Must not contain commas, will be truncated to 47 characters for internal representation. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Team1 | The first TeamType that will be created when this AI Trigger meets its condition. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| OwnerHouse | The House/Country that should use this AI Trigger. Defaults to <none>, can be set to an individual house/country's name or to <all>, indicating that all houses/countries of the appropriate Side can use this AI Trigger. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| TechLevel | Minimum TechLevel (as in MultiplayerDialogSettings) required for this AI Trigger. Is recalculated internally to be the minimum TechLevel required to build all the units in this AI Trigger's first and second TeamTypes. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ConditionType | Specifies a number to use as a Condition. This, along with "ComparisonObject" and "Comparator" desribed below, defines a logical comparison like "enemy house has more than 0 rhino tanks". In this example, "more than 0" is the Comparator, "rhino tanks" is the ComparisonObject, and "enemy house has ?????" is the Condition.
1 ↑ To find this house, the game scans all houses from the [Countries] list, starting with the first one on the [Sides]→Civilian= list and going down the list, when it finds the first one with Side=Civilian set. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ComparisonObject | Specifies the object that will be used as the Comparison Object (see the section on ConditionType for more information). IDs of AircraftTypes, BuildingTypes, InfantryTypes and VehicleTypes are accepted here. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Comparator | Defines the comparator for the ConditionType. A normal comparison contains two operands and a comparison operator. The first operand is dependant on the ConditionType (typically amount of objects owned, or credits owned). The second operand is encoded in this argument. The comparison operator is one of (less, less-or-equal, equal, more-or-equal, more, not equal) and is also encoded in this argument. This argument is composed of eight chunks of eight hexadecimal characters each (64 characters in total). Each octet contains a textual representation of a little-endian hexadecimal number. The first octet contains the second argument, the second octet contains the operator (0 stands for "<", 1 - "<=", 2 - "=", 3 - ">=", 4 - ">", 5 - "!="), the next six octets are unused. See below for Condition check segment examples. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| StartingWeight | Specifies a floating point value that will be set as this AI Trigger's Starting Weight when the game starts. (See the section on Trigger Weights for more info.) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| MinimumWeight | Specifies a floating point value that will be interpreted as this AI Trigger's Minimum Weight. (See the section on Trigger Weights for more info.) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| MaximumWeight | Specifies a floating point value that will be interpreted as this AI Trigger's Maximum Weight. (See the section on Trigger Weights for more info.) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| IsForSkirmish | This AI Trigger is enabled in any game modes except Singleplayer Campaign if and only if this is set to an integer other than 0. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| unused | A value that is unused. Must not contain commas, always set to 0 in the game's (no longer used) data saving routines. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Side | Indicates the Side that may use this AI Trigger. 0 stands for "all sides", positive values indicate the owning side - Allied, Soviet, Yuri, etc.
Note that in Tiberian Sun, this refers to the ActsLike setting of a house, incremented by one. For example, if this value is 1, the AI Trigger is applicable to any houses with ActsLike=0. If this value is 2, it is applicable to houses with ActsLike=1. And so on. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| IsBaseDefense | Unused, usually set to 0. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Team2 | The second TeamType that will be created when this AI Trigger meets its condition. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| EnabledInE | If set to a zero value, this AI Trigger will not be considered by AI houses playing in Easy difficulty. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| EnabledInM | If set to a zero value, this AI Trigger will not be considered by AI houses playing in Normal difficulty. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| EnabledInH | If set to a zero value, this AI Trigger will not be considered by AI houses playing in Hard difficulty. |
Condition check segment examples
For simplicity only the segments of ConditionType, ComparisonObject and first octet (amount) and second octet (Comparator) are shown. An octet consists of 8 hex digits (4 bytes). Values are in hexadecimal and represented in little endian format. For a decimal value of 3, its hex value is 0x3, its octet representation becomes 03000000. For a decimal value of 500, its hex value is 0x1F4, its octet representation becomes F4010000.
-1,<none>,0000000000000000 - no condition check, always true. TechType and the two octets are irrelevant and can hold any valid values. 0,GAREFN,0400000003000000 - when AI's enemy owns greater or equal to 4 allied ore refineries. 1,SHK,0300000001000000 - when AI's own troops has less than or equal to 3 shock troopers. 4,<none>,8813000003000000 - when AI's enemy has greater or equal to 5000 credits, hex value 0x1388, octet 88130000.
Weights
AI Triggers are given "weights" to define how important they are. Larger weight makes the AI Trigger more likely to get selected.
Each time an AI controlled team is dissolved (when they complete their script or are destroyed), all AI Triggers using that TeamType as their primary (Team1) get their weight modified:
- if the Team has executed a Script Action 49, 0 in this lifetime,
- [General]→AITriggerSuccessWeightDelta= is added to its weight,
- otherwise,
- [General]→AITriggerFailureWeightDelta= multiplied by [General]→AITriggerTrackRecordCoefficient= (the former is usually negative) is added.
Care is taken not to push the weight outside the limits set by MinimumWeight and MaximumWeight while doing so.
Special Values
Weight 0
If an AI trigger's weight drops to zero, it will not be considered for production. This can be used to remove certain AI triggers from play for the rest of the game if they fail too many times.
Weight 5000
In Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge, A Weight equivalent to 5000.0 stands for "ignore all other AI Triggers and fire this one immediately, if its condition is met". It is originally used for Teams utilising minor SuperWeapons, the Iron Curtain or the ChronoSphere.
Flawed Design
In the unmodified games, AI teams are typically configured to succeed after attacking a specific category of enemy targets (a quarry). Unfortunately, this attack mission, #0 Attack..., is only completed once all enemy objects matching the given quarry are destroyed. This means every such attack team has a slim to none chance of actually succeeding in its mission, causing their respective AI triggers to lose weight over time. The end result of this flawed design is that the production chances of AI triggers are almost entirely governed by their initial and minimum weights.
Global and Local
Unlike other AI components, AITriggerTypes do care where they were defined - the ones defined in ai(md).ini are enabled by default, whereas ones defined in the map need to be enabled via [AITriggerTypesEnable] to function. However, the [Basic]→IgnoreGlobalAITriggers= setting, if enabled, disables all AI Triggers declared in ai(md).ini, overriding the [AITriggerTypesEnable].
Global AITriggerTypes can be redefined in the map.
Additional information
- This section is read from ai(md).ini and the current map file.
- The infamous -G suffix is used to distinguish global AITriggerTypes from local ones (which have no suffix). It has no effect however.
- Unlike TaskForces, there is no effect to prefixing an AITriggerType's ID with a hexadecimal prefix.