ANALYSIS
Know Yourself, Know Your Enemy
Embedded Files
WRITING HELPER METHODS
Making Tools For Yourself
Your team will want to engage in all sorts of complex behavior. For example...
Changing a unit's design based on the weapons or defenses your enemy fleet uses
Seeking out a specific type of unit to attack
Focusing your attacks on the lowest health enemy nearby
Using Your Superclass
In general you'll want to put these helper methods in either the MyTeamPlayer or MyTeamUnit class
If it's something that deals with unit production or overall strategy ---> Player class
If it's something that deals with position or a single unit --> Unit class
MyTeamUnit - GET NEAREST ENEMY GATHERER
Finding Enemy Gatherers
You can't just ask if a Unit is a Gatherer - your enemies might have totally different classes than you have! Instead, we'll need to infer what a unit is based on their attributes.
In addition, we want to find the nearest gatherer. This means we'll need to loop through the list of enemy units and do some comparisons.
public Unit getNearestEnemyGatherer()
{
// Initialize variables
ArrayList<Unit> enemies = getEnemies();
Unit nearestGatherer = null;
float nearestDistance = Float.MAX_VALUE;
// Loop through all your enemies
for(Unit e : enemies)
{
// Check if it is a worker *and* compare your distance to the record
if(e.hasWeapon(Collector.class) && getDistance(e) <= nearestDistance)
{
nearestGatherer = e;
nearestDistance = getDistance(e);
}
}
return nearestGatherer;
}
Similar Methods
You'll often want to write methods that must find the lowest, highest, nearest, or farthest Unit meeting some criteria. They'll follow a similar pattern to this one!
Finding the nearest enemy gatherer to raid them is a start to a raiding strategy, but you'll likely need to consider things like...
How protected the gatherer is
How close it is to the base ship
How I can safely get to that position
When I need to run away from danger
MyTeamPlayer - AVERAGE ENEMY MAX SPEED
Finding Average Speed
By finding the enemy maximum speed we can make guesses about their strategy, or at least the enemy's dodge chance. This could affect things like how we position units or encourage us to equip high accuracy weapons.
public int getAverageEnemyMaxSpeed()
{
// Initialize variables
ArrayList<Unit> enemies = getEnemies();
float totalSpeed = 0;
float numEnemies = enemies.size();
// Loop through all your enemies
for(Unit e : enemies)
{
// If the unit is a base ship, skip this step.
if(e instanceof BaseShip)
{
continue;
}
// This converts the unit's speed to the 0-100ish scale
float curSpeed = e.getMaxSpeed() / Values.SPEED;
// Add it to the total speed
totalSpeed += curSpeed;
}
int averageSpeed = (int) (totalSpeed / numEnemies);
return averageSpeed;
}
Accessing Player Methods From Unit Class
Since this method is defined in MyTeamPlayer, you can call it in Player easily. Don't forget that you can call from your Unit classes! Simply reference the player
public void design()
{
if(getPlayer().getAverageEnemyMaxSpeed() > 50)
{
// do stuff
}
}
Fast units might use strategies like running past your fleet to attack gatherers or your base.
Slow units tend to be stronger and might require heavier weapons to be defeated.
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