Beren is absolutely right

If the main problem is the picks of AIs better then some humans, an option "disable auto-pilot for the first 10 turns" could work too, as you could use at stall games but couldnt use to pick and the first turns.

I would argue that Autopilot should be possible to enable only when the player using it has a huge advantage (say, 50% more income and armies than all opponents combined). The idea is autopilot would then just clean up all remaining opponents (in FFA) or a stalling opponent in MD, and couldn't be used to win the game on its own if used by a lower-skilled player. The player who was invoking autopilot would gain an intel advantage from knowing that they are much stronger than their opponent(s), but this is irrelevant in almost all situations since they already have such a huge advantage, they will win no matter what.

I also think Autopilot should be limited to only Prod 2.0, since I'm worried that custom AIs like Wunderwaffe or Cowzow might at some point be able to beat the majority of players, in which case it would become P2W. Prod 2.0 is a good autopilot because it's smart enough not to throw winning positions (like Prod 1 does), yet it's also not really good enough to outsmart any halfway-decent player.

I have a simple suggestion that could combine the best of both options: 1) A setting, as already suggested, of whether or not auto-pilot is allowed. 2) A sub-setting that specifies how many turns must be played before the auto-pilot is allowed to be used.

E.g. You could have Auto-pilot: Available, Starting on turn: 10, and that means that the human player must play 10 turns (or 9 actual turns, plus the picking phase) before they are able to use the auto-pilot. Before that limit, they must play all the turns themselves.

E.g. Auto-pilot: Available, Starting on turn: 0, means that the players can use auto-pilot from the very beginning of the game, including picking phase.

E.g. Auto-pilot: Available, Starting on turn: 1, means that the players can use auto-pilot *only after* the picking phase (if manual picks).

Finally, E.g. Auto-pilot: Not available, Starting on turn: (disabled setting), means that the players cannot use auto-pilot at all.

(You could also specify with a check-list which AIs are allowed. That way you could limit it to Prod 2.0 or even Prod 1.0.)

With these options, you could easily configure the ladder templates so that auto-pilot is only allowed after, say, 15 turns. Then it can't be used to compete on the ladder, only for clean up/counter-stalling.

And standard auto-games should allow the auto-pilot from the very beginning (turn 0), to allow newbies to learn about picking and expansion from it.

Alternatively, there could be a second class of auto-games which are practice only, where AP is allowed immediately, and standard auto-games only allow it after, say, turn 10 or so.

Edited 4/14/2016 01:53:57

And standard auto-games should allow the auto-pilot from the very beginning (turn 0), to allow newbies to learn about picking and expansion from it.

Auto-pilot is member-only, so newbies won't be able to use it anyway.

Unless they buy membership, in which case they can.

Free trial, too.

Not everyone has a credit card to get a paypal account or still has a free-trial option.

Auto-pilot should really be modified by fizzer in order for it to be "more fair". Plus, with Norman still working on Wunderwaffe, I can really see it improving even more, and in a very short term reach a 1400-1500ish rating.

Ooh, I just thought of another potential solution to this!

Okay:

• For each official bot, a dedicated player account is created, similar to the 'AIServer Bot' Account, but with a different name for each, indicating which type and version the bot is.
• The purpose of these accounts is *only* to play in the 1v1 ladder (against humans and other official bots only) to assess the '1v1 template skill' of each official bot.
• After qualifying for a rating, whatever the current rating is for that bot becomes its 'official current rating'.
• This is a simple, slightly crude, but much-better-than-nothing method to assess the relative skill values of each bot.
• A setting is added to templates (ideally within the enabled/disabled, not-before-turn-X, versions-of-bots-allowed-checklist framework) to limit the skill level of allowed bots.
• Settings could be similar to how the game pre-requisite settings work: Unrestricted bot skill level (default for custom games); 'No bots allowed that are higher than rating R' (e.g. R = 1000 (perhaps for auto-games), R = 1200, R = 1500); perhaps even 'No bots allowed *below* rating R' because Why not? Could be interesting.

This would even accommodate AIs being improved over time, as either a) a new, separate account could be created for each major version of a bot, with a separate rating, and the option to choose it separately from other versions of the same bot, or b) if we just keep one account per bot-type then the 'official current rating' of the bot will automatically adjust as it plays more ladder games.

Finally, and here's the kicker, when playing in the 1v1 ladder, you're not allowed to use a bot that's ranked higher than you are. (In fact, perhaps there's a 'discount', like 20%, so you can't use a bot that has a rating higher than 80% of your own rating. This would prevent people from using bots to 'hold' their ratings in the ladder without actually playing any further games themselves; once their rating drops to below 125% of the bot's rating, they no longer qualify to use that bot, and are forced to use a weaker one.)

Edited 4/14/2016 16:58:53

@TeamGuns: you don't need a CC to get PayPal. You can just have an "unverified" account that's still able to make payments but not really withdraw money.

@wct: I like that suggestion. It's also going to be a marker for the average strength of ladder players over time.

Edited 4/14/2016 16:53:16

I like it Wct