GAIA

What is GAIA? About GAIA in MCC:
GAIA stands for Greater Artificial Intelligence. Ever since I typed my first 2 lines of MCC code it has been going through my mind. What if the AI did…? Why isn’t this….? …..These and a zillion other questions have haunted me for too long. GAIA is my answer to most of these questions. So, now you know my personal motivation, let’s move on to the system itself. This document tries to focus on the intent of GAIA and the design decisions that have been made. I won't try to explain how all of the code works, but after reading this document you should have a clear understanding of what GAIA stands for, what choices she makes and how she operates.

GAIA can best be seen as a higher level lead organization that is tasked to make all groups work towards (a) common goal(s). GAIA does not improve and tries not to influence the behavior at group level. So what is it that GAIA wants? The main goal of GAIA is to defend territory.

To do that she makes sure that: • All assets are used intelligently. Know your units, what can they do, what are their weaknesses. • Responses to threat are in proportion. Do not send more troops then needed, but also make sure it is enough to deal with the opposing threat. • Understand the priorities. The closer a threat is to the center of the territory (zone), the higher the priority.

In future versions of GAIA goals will be expanded and might even grow to fully commanding offensive battles.

About version 1
The plans with GAIA far exceed what has been put on paper and what has been realized in code. For all that stuff to happen, I had to have a good foundation.

GAIA v1 is only that, the foundation of something that has yet to be build but is making my head spin :)

Requirements
GAIA is in the first place created and designed as ‘the new engine’ of MCC (Mission Control Centre).

For more info see the BIS forums. MCC makes use of UPS, UPSMON, BIS Patrol etc. Although all of them deliver great functionality, they were not created with the intention to be used by MCC.

It is exactly the other way around. As we (Shay Gman and I) had, and have, great goals in mind for MCC, the idea was born to build our own AI ‘engine’.

This is where I took off and for that am back on my original project MCC. So with what did I take off?

GAIA should outperform UPSMON as the currently used ‘engines’. Not for the sake of beating them but for the fact that we want to expand the AI numbers and their behavior. If you want that, you need good performance. GAIA should be setup in such a way that it initially can be a simple ‘replacement’ for the existing ‘engines’. This is the reason why GAIA initially supports the commands ‘DEFEND’, ‘ATTACK’ and ‘FORTIFY’, just like UPSMON and UPS do. (see details later).

GAIA should be created such that it is capable of operating all units created by BIS and the community, in a smart way. No more vehicles without guns in the attack!! (Except for Shay and Spirit)

GAIA should be setup in such a way that expansion of AI behavior can be handled easily.

Now lets find out how to use GAIA.