Chapter 23. Weapon Selection

Key Topics

• Appealing Choices

• Evaluation Process in Practice

• Criteria for Weapon Selection

• Case Study

Selecting the best weapon is a matter of decision making. The preceding chapter covered all the information that is taken into account in the process. This chapter analyzes the role of decision making and how it can be achieved, specifically in the context of weapon selection. Notably, we'll discover how the benefit of a weapon can be determined from properties of the situation and attributes of the weapon.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• A theoretical approach to decision making, covering the evaluation of weapons and the methodology for picking them

• Two opposite solutions to this problem in practice (deduction and experience), and how the human approach to decision making is balanced between these two extremes

• The criteria used to evaluate the weapon-selection behaviors of animats

• A brief case study that describes the expected reactions in different situations

By the end of this chapter, the foundations will be set for solving the problem of weapon selection using AI techniques. In fact, the following pages describe a variety of different implementations.