Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stormy Fairweather on March 11, 2020, 04:11:00 PM

Title: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on March 11, 2020, 04:11:00 PM
been getting right annoyed by this. have a carrier loaded up with fighters, and shields. idea is simple, launch fighters, keep shields up as much as possible. and the ai will constantly drop shields while under fire, even with 0 flux whatsoever. this has led to several avoidable losses. why does it do this? is there anything i can do to prevent it?
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Nick XR on March 11, 2020, 04:38:36 PM
Sounds like it might be a bug/edge case with the AI.  Can you get a simpler repro case (like 1v1 in simulator with a specific loadout)?
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Thaago on March 11, 2020, 04:50:22 PM
To add to what Nick XR said: if you do get a reproducible case, please put a post in the bug reports area explaining how to do it. Alex can often fix behavior problems as long as he can reliably make them happen in order to diagnose.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on March 11, 2020, 05:53:58 PM
i can reproduce it easily enough, tossed a lone astral in against a victory and a pair of destroyers, and sure enough the astral drops shields while under fire and having plenty of room to build flux. was the hresvelgr (mod ship) i was noticing this behavior with most strongly, but seen it from pretty much every ship from time to time
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Lucky33 on March 11, 2020, 06:25:47 PM
As far as I know AI it will do that simply because it doesnt treat the incoming fire as a serious threat and have armor/hull to tank it. Something like "if I keep the shields up I overload in 5 seconds but if I lower them I will not die in 5 seonds so its better to lower them tank the damage and refill the refreshed flux bar once again". However these calculations sometimes looks too wild.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on March 11, 2020, 07:22:30 PM
my paragon refused to raise shields, at all, facing the cat-lady high value target in varya's sector. guess mere fighters arent a threat. even when there are 400 of them.

imo, shields should be up by default if the soft flux generated is less than you passively vent

EDIT - on a completely unrelated note.... why do ships frequently fly the exact opposite direction you tell them to? been watching a ship, loaded with pd i wanted my other ships to escort, sit on the bottom of the map for ten minutes when i told him to fly to the top. literally either sitting there, or flying FURTHER from the direction told him to go. very frustrating.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Nick XR on March 11, 2020, 08:11:45 PM
Sounds like you're good at spotting problems!

To increase the likelihood of getting these address:
* Make a post, per issue in the bug reports forum
* Have detailed repro steps with ONLY vanilla ships (mods can have bugs and problems could be version dependent)
** Ideally repro steps are super detailed, like you're writing VCR instructions for your mom detailed.
* Validate that the repro steps do in fact work every time
* Screen shots or videos for things like "behavior" are super useful
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on March 11, 2020, 08:18:28 PM
vids are beyond my system. even with a (second rate) nvidea card bought just for this game, i can drop to 40 fps in bigger battles. yer right, though. i am good at spotting problems. always makes me the most popular guy around... >.>

based on the information available, the shield thing can be repeated by tossing in a paragon against a few carriers, and watching the shields not come up while being torn apart by fighters. as to the ship flying the opposite direction from directed... can probably chalk that up to a timid captain i didnt notice.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: MesoTroniK on March 11, 2020, 08:40:05 PM
What video card do you have? Unless it is ancient, it most likely has an on-board h264 encoder chip which means it can record vids at virtually zero performance cost.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on March 11, 2020, 08:43:49 PM
i have a radeon rx 590 that (thanks to opengl and amd's treatment of it) is essentially worthless for this game. and an nvidea gt 710, that honestly only does a little better.

honestly, im too frustrated to screw around with it any more. ive had plenty of people with inferior radeon cards that claim theirs work way better than mine does, and i am tired of this computer, that i spent more money that i have ANYTHING else in my life, barely functioning.

maybe i should just go outside...
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: MesoTroniK on March 11, 2020, 09:01:38 PM
Some of the older AMD cards handle OpenGL better, though exactly which ones and at which dates, and at which driver versions *specifically* for them is very difficult to determine.

AMD drivers get worse for their video cards over time :(
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Thaago on March 11, 2020, 09:14:30 PM
You should be able to take video with 0 performance impact. I have a slightly weaker card (rx580) and an older CPU (Ryzen 1600) and streaming/recording costs me 0 frames (I will sometimes stream and record at the same time and it has no performance impact). I use OBS.

WRT bugs, if you can reproduce them with pure vanilla, great! Be aware that scripted damage like many mods have is not taken into account by the AI though, and I'm not sure if anything can be done about that
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on March 11, 2020, 10:34:28 PM
Some of the older AMD cards handle OpenGL better, though exactly which ones and at which dates, and at which driver versions *specifically* for them is very difficult to determine.

AMD drivers get worse for their video cards over time :(

i tried more than a dozen drivers. none get me any better performance on this game. spent more than a week trying to get this playable before buying the nvidea card, which frankly only made the game playable, rather than smooth as i would expect from a computer i spent twice as much on as i did on my truck.

lesson learned. dont commission a build. build it yourself, or play on a console.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: MesoTroniK on March 12, 2020, 01:57:25 AM
No version of driver will make OpenGL work better on that AMD card, unless you run Linux as your OS. But I meant some driver versions on older AMD cards work better.

And Thaago, his Nvidia card lacks a h264 encoder chip. Too old / low end.

Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Thaago on March 12, 2020, 09:23:30 AM
No version of driver will make OpenGL work better on that AMD card, unless you run Linux as your OS. But I meant some driver versions on older AMD cards work better.

And Thaago, his Nvidia card lacks a h264 encoder chip. Too old / low end.

Pity about the Nvidia card, but even the AMD should be ok enough for a bug report. Unless the rx 590 has worse drivers than the rx 580 (maybe it does) then its still going to be >30 fps in most large combat (I know because thats what I get on a weaker system).
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Alex on March 12, 2020, 09:32:50 AM
I'll just add, from my perspective, a video is miles better than a screenshot or a description, but "here's how to reproduce this in vanilla simulator" is the best by far.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Schwartz on March 13, 2020, 04:05:12 AM
It's not an edge case, this happens a lot. I think AI decides to take hits because 'the armor is fine' and it considers armor expendable. This is something I would like to see changed also. Shields should always take precedence.

Along with this the AI also likes to drop->raise shields intermittently even though there is no reason to.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: Grievous69 on March 13, 2020, 04:10:21 AM
It's not an edge case, this happens a lot. I think AI decides to take hits because 'the armor is fine' and it considers armor expendable. This is something I would like to see changed also. Shields should always take precedence.
Oh hell no, if a ship has lots of armor then it's better to tank some shots so it can use the remaining flux to fight back rather than keeping them up until it gets to 99% flux or just overloads. That would be a worse strategy imo. Now if the AI does this when it has 0 flux as mentioned then I agree, but even with no flux it is better to tank weak kinetics if you have full armor.
Title: Re: ai dropping shields while under fire and 0 flux
Post by: TaLaR on March 13, 2020, 04:55:44 AM
Letting kinetics through is often correct, HE/energy usually not. But this depends on what you actually gain by trading your armor away in particular scenario.

Also, as far as I understand, AI isn't aware of projectiles in flight or beam's current state (initiating vs fully extended), it only knows about incoming missiles and enemy weapon firing arcs. So it can't do selective armor tanking with shield flicker like player.