So can longer-ranged weapons with enough damage potential.Does not always work if there are not enough attackers (or fighters) to distract them. They simply hang out further away.
This game has been a frustrating experience of cat&mouse with an opponent that simply doesn't want to play.This is how many fights since 0.8 feel like (and why I overuse fighters to mitigate the frustration when I can, or build for maximum peak performance and run down the clock when I cannot).
Is it eventually planned to change the behavior of the AI to not simply drive backwards away from any and every engagement that isn't so hopelessly one-sided in their favour that they couldn't even lose it on purpose, or is it intentional for a game about space fighting to be programmed to avoid all space fighting?
If you pilot slower + more powerful ship, why should AI suicide into you? Catching them is a problem for you to solve.The problem is if the easiest or optimal solution is to wait until the other side ticks down to 0 CR first, it is a problem, because fights can drag on up to about an hour, and the player can take breaks while waiting. It was a reason why enemy AI is no longer allowed to have Timid officers after one release.
If you pilot slower + more powerful ship, why should AI suicide into you? Catching them is a problem for you to solve.The problem is if the easiest or optimal solution is to wait until the other side ticks down to 0 CR first, it is a problem, because fights can drag on up to about an hour, and the player can take breaks while waiting. It was a reason why enemy AI is no longer allowed to have Timid officers after one release.
Back when enemy had Timid officers, my capital sat on objectives and waited until they ran out of CR first. If I deployed more ships, then the enemy would deploy more ships (possibly with super-charged skills) and either I waste more resources for being impatient at best or my wingmen would make a mistake and die. While waiting, I left the computer and did other work, come back, and my ship is still safe, while the enemy was dancing and hovering as it did ten minutes ago. Clearly a case of optimizing the fun out of the game, but acting stupid (by deploying more ships I do not need if I only wait another thirty minutes) just because I lost patience is not fun either.
I still believe that AI behavior should be disconnected from officers. "Aggressive" or "defensive" should be a ship (or fleet) profile. Though I'd like to change this on the go during battles, I know that Alex doesn't want too much micromanagement so I'd settle for being able to adjust that in the refit screen.
This would have advantages for the enemy AI design too. Pirates/Pathers in general should be much more aggressive/reckless but since they get very few officers you don't actually get to experience that.
From the 0.9 patch notes:
Aggression - determines personality of officers; does not affect the player's own fleet
- Also applies to combat personality/behavior of ships without officers, both for the player and for other factions
- This aspect *does* affect the player's own fleet
So we'll be able to set our whole faction's agressiveness.
But to me, the most frustrating thing about this is not being able to properly test a build in simulations since the enemy just won't fight you. I mean what's the point of it then, when the only thing that I can shoot at are asteroids.
What's your problem with sim? Current AI gladly suicides anything into a Paragon 1v1 in sim, what else do you need?
AI only starts backing off as it loses flux-wise. This leads to stalemate only if your ship lacks both speed and firepower to inflict decisive damage during their retreat. In which case it's at least bad matchup (like soft flux vs good shields) or just ineffective variant.
Optimal in game time? This metric doesn't matter outside of Nexelerin, world is static in vanilla.No, optimal in safety (no stupid wingmen, enemy AI deploys less ships that can overwhelm my solo ship) and in supplies consumed (less ships deployed, ideally one). Game time does not pass, so that is a non-factor. If real time is not a factor, then waiting to win is boring but optimal, and boring gets shoved aside for optimal, even if I dislike it because... boring.
If outlasting via CR is your only option, you've kind of failed to properly catch them in the first place.Incorrect, because if they hit 0 CR first, then they will lose engines eventually, then my ship can catch up and kill them. This is how my battleship could kill those annoying small ships it had no chance of catching back in one of the 0.7.x versions with Timid officers (and high-powered skills and relevant objectives).
In fact, AI could turn that around on you, assuming it has large enough fleet. It just needs to keep enough ships to make you tick at the very edge of CR tick radius.It is still a way to kill ships if my fleet has no way to catch cowards otherwise. AI sort of does this already by accident with their "Do-nothing" behavior, thus it is a good idea for your fleet to have the endurance advantage (even if you have other means to force fights like fighter spam). Fleet Logistics 3 is almost mandatory (#3 perk behind Electronic Warfare 1 and Loadout Design 3) because the AI can have it and you need it to keep up.
CR system seems a bit too easy to abuse in general. Player as less mobile side is saved only by the fact that AI doesn't try to do so to full extent. Maybe it should. Then you wouldn't have a stimulus to play a waiting game against superior (in fleet size) opponent.That means the AI needs to charge in like they used to before 0.8, which was more fun.
I always just deploy enough ships to beat the entire enemy fleet (supplies are overrated anyway).If I want to save supplies, I tend to overdeploy to finish fights quickly and to minimize damage taken. I lose more supplies by repairing more damaged ships and replacing lost ships because I was too stingy with deployment. I do not always do this because enemy will have a numbers advantage if I reserve enough vacancies for captured ships.
What's your problem with sim? Current AI gladly suicides anything into a Paragon 1v1 in sim, what else do you need?
AI only starts backing off as it loses flux-wise. This leads to stalemate only if your ship lacks both speed and firepower to inflict decisive damage during their retreat. In which case it's at least bad matchup (like soft flux vs good shields) or just ineffective variant.
Anything that has maneuvering jets. Doesn't matter if it's an Eagle, Falcon or Conquest, they'll just use their beams and missiles and never attack me with all guns unless I'm overloaded.
CR system seems a bit too easy to abuse in general. Player as less mobile side is saved only by the fact that AI doesn't try to do so to full extent. Maybe it should. Then you wouldn't have a stimulus to play a waiting game against superior (in fleet size) opponent.That means the AI needs to charge in like they used to before 0.8, which was more fun.
The point is if the easiest strategy to win is to wait them out, then that might become a widespread strategy, and Starsector will gain a reputation of boring combat. That was why Timid officers are forbidden to enemy AI, and why phase cloak gained time shift.
I mean if AI was better at waiting game (and it has potential to, when it's fleet is sufficiently larger), waiting wouldn't be an option for the player. While waiting out a smaller fleet is kind of pointless - supplies are not that limited and minor risk for wingmen is acceptable.I would not always say "not an option", but less effective. It is already a non-option if the enemy fleet is big enough and yours small enough, like simulator vs. one battleship, but that does not really happen in the campaign except maybe in extremely congested enemy systems (like red system with lots of Ordos fleets).
You know, I realize I never have any battle devolve into CR waiting past the early game. Could you describe when/where it happens for you? Generally, if I'm fighting larger or equal fleet we have a fun intense battle and then straggler and fast frigates run away. In some rare occasion if both me and the enemy lost a lot of ship I have some fast frigate/destroyer/fighter to remove most remaining frigates.
You know, I realize I never have any battle devolve into CR waiting past the early game. Could you describe when/where it happens for you? Generally, if I'm fighting larger or equal fleet we have a fun intense battle and then straggler and fast frigates run away. In some rare occasion if both me and the enemy lost a lot of ship I have some fast frigate/destroyer/fighter to remove most remaining frigates.By midgame, at least half of my fleet carries a bunch of fighters to counter that nonsense.
Remnants:Their speed is not great but not terrible (mostly due to lack of mobility systems aside from Lumen). Their excellent shields means if your ship are bad flux traders (like most high-tech), then they can wait until they have flux advantage, then they charge in to flux-lock you. If you need to withdraw, so do they and you are back to square one (or worse, since they probably have peak performance advantage). If you get the advantage, but they have cover from allies, then they prolong as you say. SO Lasher is only a good counter for their frigates if it is pristine. With bad damage mods, Lasher (D) may not have the stats to win flux war despite firepower advantage, especially if player piloting is not flawless. Eventually, I get ships with fighters, and they disappear soon enough.
To even try waiting side needs to have either speed or range + firepower advantage. Remnants fail at both, so it's just matter of picking them one by one, should they try to turtle. But yes, hiding behind allies can prolong this quite significantly (as it should, this is the best an outmaneuvered group of ships can do).
Catching them is a problem for you to solve.Agreed, as is either fleet generally playing hard-to-get. The only things I'd wish are for 1: NPC fleets to become more aggressive (or in terms of retreating, decisive) as their fleet-wide CR diminishes (including reserved combat ships, but not retreated ships), and 2: for the player to be given more/better tools for dictating his own fleet's disposition in combat.
To be frank, having an aggressive, defensive or balanced toggle for ship behaviour on the refit screen is a great idea.IMO something like that should be both there and accessible from the tactical map
I think the AI problems reveal themselves the most when they have faster ships. Obviously some stalling from fast frigates and phase ships makes sense, but it gets very silly once larger ships start doing it.
Here's some experiments I did:(how do I make this image not huge?)Spoiler(https://i.imgur.com/4M4i3zi.png)[close]
First I pitted three long range equipped Eagles, vs the Sim Aurora. Obviously not a fair fight. The Aurora enters their range, realizes it is outmatched, and starts to pull back. At this point the AI seems to get locked into a loop of indecisiveness - it never pulls back enough to vent and try again (it's definitely fast enough to, with the boost), nor does it try to outmaneuver them and take one out. It just sits there at the limits of their range, presumably thinking, "duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" until it eventually is worn down and destroyed, having not fired a single shot.
This was a pretty optimal case for my fleet - my ships were fast enough and long ranged enough that they didn't have much trouble keeping pressure on it while it did this. If your fleet is slow and poor at keeping constant pressure on it though, this kind of thing can last indefinitely, and you can't just throw faster frigates at the problem, because it will chew those up no problem.
Also, for some inexplicable reason, the middle Eagle backed out of range right as the Aurora was about to go down. This is another issue I notice a lot - instead of pressing an advantage or keeping the pressure up, they will periodically back off for no reason, allowing the enemy ships time to recover and greatly lengthening the fight. Perhaps it is related.
So I tried the test again, with two Eagles vs the Sim Aurora. This time it did a bit better, attempting to focus one of them before having to retreat back to vent. It still eventually losing without damaging either of them at all, because again it got stuck indecisively sat around at the edge of their range pondering what to do. Again, the Eagle that wasn't being focused randomly backed off out of range for no reason.
I ran it one more time with just one Eagle. The Aurora did better here, because once it was able to flux lock the Eagle, it stopped taking as much fire itself (an important consideration). It did still spend a concerning amount of time hovering at the extents of the Eagle's range instead of just backing off to vent, and it could have ended the fight a lot sooner if it had kept the pressure up on the Eagle.
So basically, in certain situations the AI breaks down completely. It's indecisive, not aggressive enough when it needs to be, and overly cautious even when it has the advantage. It's a pain to chase these enemies around the map, and then when you finally corner them, your buddies refuse to engage.
The only things I'd wish are for 1: NPC fleets to become more aggressive (or in terms of retreating, decisive) as their fleet-wide CR diminishes (including reserved combat ships, but not retreated ships),
This is a thing in 0.9, btw, or more specifically: ships that are running low on CR/peak time get progressively more aggressive.
Programming the AI to do high risk/reward maneuvers doesn't seem like a good idea. That's just setting it up for failure. It'll never get a good success rate - even a good player will make mistakes making those types of decisions - and the AI won't get the benefit of the doubt the player gives themselves when they screw up. For bonus points, the consequence of screwing up here is the ship getting vaporized, so: about as severe as it gets.
It'd also make the mistakes consistently in a given failure-scenario, i.e. it'd be guaranteed to suicide the SO Lasher or whatever on a particular type of opponent it can't beat. More conservative play is generally going to be better because it'll produce less situations where it consistently makes ship-losing mistakes. Of course that will still happen but there'll be less of it and the outcomes will usually be less severe.
Likewise, trying to make the AI do something too clever (i.e. the asteroid trick) is not a good idea, for similar reasons.
The problem is that if the AI is consistently making mistakes it’s too easy to fight
Certainly SO ships should be a lot more aggressive than they currently are. But that can probably be fixed by modifying how powerful the ships think they are rather than the AI in general.
Well the problem isn’t that the AI would lose ships. The expectation is that the AI is going to lose so worrything that the AIs ships blow up isn’t a great option.
We are also talking about friendly ships under AI control. I'm not ok with my fleet dying because the AI makes silly mistakes. If I lose ships, it should be because I made a tactical or strategic error, not because of randomness associated with the AI.
If you have an overwhelming advantage how do you lose? When the AI has an overwhelming advantage it will tend to push it
If you have an overwhelming advantage how do you lose? When the AI has an overwhelming advantage it will tend to push it
Because I have six destroyers and twelve frigates trying to jump an overextending cruiser. But rather than push that advantage, I get mobbed by the entire enemy fleet before noticing my fleet decided to quickly 180 and fly to the furthest corner. Because *** gameplay, I guess.
If you have an overwhelming advantage how do you lose? When the AI has an overwhelming advantage it will tend to push it
Because I have six destroyers and twelve frigates trying to jump an overextending cruiser. But rather than push that advantage, I get mobbed by the entire enemy fleet before noticing my fleet decided to quickly 180 and fly to the furthest corner. Because *** gameplay, I guess.
I also see dumb stuff happen occasionally on a smaller scale. Often it's something like a phase frigate backing off just when it shouldn't, or a ship not firing when an enemy's shields are down or flux is high. I've seen single ships, but never a whole fleet playing timid.
Does anyone actually want the AI to properly use phase ships/hyperion? That sounds awful, getting one shot with no counter-play. The whole concept is not fun to play against, I'm totally ok with the AI being bad at using them. The alternative is much worse.
So, yeah, I'd like AI Hyperions to be competent. It costs like a cruiser, it should be at least a comparable threat.Hyperion costs as much as Falcon. I have no problem giving AI Falcons, at least they use them well enough. I do not give AI Hyperions because it is too busy avoiding combat like Arilou.
Paragon could just refuse to drop shield. Hyperion can't really build up hard flux on it, wait it out or anything else. A 360 shield that powerful stops it completely.
Even simple non-360 omni shield could stop it. You just need to keep shield down and reaction-raise it as Hyperion jumps (it sounds more difficult than actually is).
With just forward shield - sure, alone you can't do anything. But multiple ships could form up back-to-back, which would at the very least complicate Hyperion's job (and actually stop it, if they are close enough - can't jump into other ship's collision radius).
To win you don't really need to kill it. Just preventing it from killing you is already a win by CR.
So, yeah, I'd like AI Hyperions to be competent. It costs like a cruiser, it should be at least a comparable threat.
All these suggestions basically boil down to 'don't do anything, hide in your fleet and wait for it to run out of CR', or have your own hyperion. How is that fun or interesting gameplay? And how can you justify one frigate forcing you to play like that? Enemy cruisers don't force you to totally change the way you approach the game. I vastly prefer the ship being functionally player only. You can get the value of a cruiser from it if you want, you just have to fly it yourself.
My experience with high mobility ships is that they are easy to scare away (with fighters or beams), but if you aren't paying attention or are isolated, they will punish you. I think that is ok general balance for player vs AI, but in AI vs AI, the defending ship doesn't make the mistakes that allow for punishment (they are always paying attention), so the mobility ship doesn't get any value. I don't think that really changes until the AI becomes too frustrating to deal with as the player.
Really? I've kinda found it to be the opposite - the AI has a hard time correctly evaluating the threat levels of ships that break the conventional rules of combat and often lets ships get caught out by predictable interactions because it doesn't know how to think that way. Phase ships are some of the biggest offenders (the AI doesn't understand that it can go from 'out of effective range' to 'behind me' faster than it can turn around), but you can even see it with stuff like combat-bonused player ships that have much higher burst damage than is typical.
I don't think the AI makes the shield micro mistakes that a player would make. It will always block high burst damage like missiles and AM blasters so phase ships can't sneak damage in the same way they might against a player who can't pay attention to everything at once. Ships with fixed forward shields might by more susceptible, but that is just the nature of the ship.
I was referring to weapon fire from other AI ships not the player. Like I said multiple times, the player can abuse mobility mechanics, but the AI will not, so AI phase ships won't land shots in those situations. I believe the AI is better at shield micro than the player simply because the player has to simultaneously manage movement, weapons and shields. If the AI were good enough at piloting phase ships to bypass AI shields, it would be even more effective against the player.
The whole point I've been trying to get across is that in order to make the AI effective at piloting phase ships/hyperion, you would have to make it abuse all the things you mentioned, but that would be incredibly frustrating for the player to deal with. That is why I don't want phase ships to be more effective. There is probably some middle ground for improvement over current AI, but phase ships should not ever abuse the things the player can.
The player is limited by human reaction times and precision while the AI is not. Even if the player is able to react fast enough to counter the AI (which not everyone will be able to), the amount of effort/skill required to beat that sort of ship (AI playing optimally) is totally disproportional to the size and value of the actual ship. The player would have to devote their full attention and resources to defeating one frigate worth 8 op. A frigate should not require more skill/effort to defeat than a capital ship. Also, the optimal strategy would be to deploy 20 phase frigates of your own. If the AI could actually use them, they would be much more cost effective than any other ship in the game.
The player is limited by human reaction times and precision while the AI is not. Even if the player is able to react fast enough to counter the AI (which not everyone will be able to), the amount of effort/skill required to beat that sort of ship (AI playing optimally) is totally disproportional to the size and value of the actual ship. The player would have to devote their full attention and resources to defeating one frigate worth 8 op. A frigate should not require more skill/effort to defeat than a capital ship. Also, the optimal strategy would be to deploy 20 phase frigates of your own. If the AI could actually use them, they would be much more cost effective than any other ship in the game.
AI could potentially be faster than player, sure. But the way it's currently implemented, it seems actually slower. Probably both for performance reasons and to avoid situation you describe.