Procedural coop mission generator

[Laticlave]

Hi,
I've been giving this some thought already and I wonder if this is fesible in supreme commander given the tools we have to create content for the game.
The basic idea is to create an algorithm that procedurally generates co-op campaign. The users would be able to also tailor the experience for a more casual or challenging experience.The idea is that a campaign is composed of a set of increasingly difficult objectives, the primary goal determining the outcome of the mission with optional or mandatory intermediary steps that progressively allow to attain the primary objective.
We could have a generic set of missions (escort x unit to coordinates, destroy shield generators, disable artillery positions or anti-air batteries, hold a base and survive for n minutes) and basically have them created as presets in naval/air/land versions and T1/T2/T3/T4 stages so that the algorithm can pick them accordingly.

Spoiler: show

Then, an algorithm would implement these structures onto the map at runtime.
Feel free to share your thoughts below.

[nine2]

this is actually a really cool idea, i don't know how i missed this one

[Katharsas]

Completely unfeasable.
Quick cost estimation pulled out of my ass: Upwards of 1500 hours of developer time / 75000 Euro. Nobody gonna invest so much time to create what will end up being a mediocre coop mission generator (like the ones from Starcraft 2)

If some devs wants to play with content generation, go improve Neroxis map generator. Feasable and immediately improves FAF.

[speed2]

Dont worry, FAF development costs only time, not money

[nine2]

And yet, Laticlave has coding skills to do it himself. He just needs to hear other people think its a good idea to get motivated

[Katharsas]

I don't want to be rude or anything but from the description alone I see so many hard to solve issues pop up in my head that i have to assume that Laticlave is a novice coder, and if that is the case, for the love of good start with something simpler, like improving the existing generator.

- How are you gonna make sure that the height map is generated in such a way that AI opponents units can actually reach the player via land or navy without sitting on an unreachable plateau or behind a small pass that fucks with unit pathing or in a lake that is nowhere near the player?
- How are you gonna determine where to place the objectives and how are you gonna make sure that an early objective is easier to reach than a later or main objective?
- How do you know where to place AI buildings defenses and how many? They may get placed behind hills and shoot hills all day if you don't have a solution for this.
- How do you know how fast the player is likely to expand and therefore how strong the player is likely going to be at what time so you can generate your AI to have an appropriate unit composition at that time?
- Do you just want to throw random tasks at the player? I would expect a "campaign" to have a narrative that makes sense, you cannot generate that, so "campaign" is probably not the right word to describe this.

It basically boils down to:
- How the f*** do you make sure that this is balanced according to the selected difficulty, so that it is actually fun to play? Because this is map dependent, and you want to randomly generate the map?! And the AI buildings?! And the AIs actions ?! You will end up with real balancing problems. Its already hard to balance non-generated campaign missions.

You know you could probably find enough hard challenges here to write multiple PHD thesis on this thing.

[nine2]

Ok so you dont need to generate a heightmap, you just have a hardcoded map.
Then you have 80 premade missions and just randomly string them together.
Missions are text files so you just need to concat them.
It won't be the most amazing thing in the world, and it may not be the most fun thing ever, but it is also totally doable.

For some players, it will be fun.

[Katharsas]

I mean, im all for more coop content. I love playing chill coop session, PvP is stressfull.
I just think this is not a good time investment. Maybe we could have some form of randomized survival maps. This would already be hard, even without any kind of missions. But much more realistic goal.