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General Discussion / AI kiting tactics
« on: November 22, 2015, 10:09:45 PM »
I just noticed the update, started a new game, and the first two battles I ended up in were over an hour long with no outcome (in a starting wolf.) Maybe it just affects smaller ships, but the frigate vs frigate AI seems broken at the moment.
The AI frigates seem not to want to actually fight me, despite their initiating combat (even with a 3v1 advantage they just run away from me). They hover outside both their weapon range and mine until CR runs down to nothing on both sides and it becomes totally impossible to get through shields (weapons break before it does enough damage to remove shields, eventually weapons disappear from the list.)
In the last one it was a single out of ammo enforcer which just ran around the edges of the screen for over an hour until we were both at zero CR and I gave up and quit (I managed to kill two ships by backing them into a corner, but did not have time to get a third before CR stopped weapons and engines from working well enough to pull that off).
Later on it may be possible to just keep something fast around in reserve as a workaround for when this happens, but starting out a bugged out frigate which is faster than you means a reload.
If this is an intentional tactic on the part of the AI, perhaps the AI should be restricted to no more than say one minute of kiting before it must make a decision to cease that activity and engage or flee the battle (or require it to have at least one ship engaging the player at all times after a certain point in order to keep the battle moving.)
The AI frigates seem not to want to actually fight me, despite their initiating combat (even with a 3v1 advantage they just run away from me). They hover outside both their weapon range and mine until CR runs down to nothing on both sides and it becomes totally impossible to get through shields (weapons break before it does enough damage to remove shields, eventually weapons disappear from the list.)
In the last one it was a single out of ammo enforcer which just ran around the edges of the screen for over an hour until we were both at zero CR and I gave up and quit (I managed to kill two ships by backing them into a corner, but did not have time to get a third before CR stopped weapons and engines from working well enough to pull that off).
Later on it may be possible to just keep something fast around in reserve as a workaround for when this happens, but starting out a bugged out frigate which is faster than you means a reload.
If this is an intentional tactic on the part of the AI, perhaps the AI should be restricted to no more than say one minute of kiting before it must make a decision to cease that activity and engage or flee the battle (or require it to have at least one ship engaging the player at all times after a certain point in order to keep the battle moving.)