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[dis astranagant]

I've been doing some tests with a big dumb max skills SO Sunder with a Plasma Cannon.  It's easily a match for an unskilled Dominator, but the stock Dominator with 3 pilums will zone it out for ages.  The AI lets the Pilums build up in ridiculous numbers rather than taking them on the shields for negligible damage (<200 per missile, on a ship with over 10k capacity and 1600 dissipation), finally getting confused and taking a dozen to the engines.  If I give it any point defenses it will hang back until every missile is destroyed before doing anything productive.

[Alex]

This is one of those things where 1-1 behavior in a simulator doesn't tell the whole story. In a more realistic fight, taking damage on shields intentionally gets a lot less clear cut. Are allies with PD nearby? Will it increase the chances of getting overwhelmed by enemy fire? It's just a risky move to make, and the AI tries to err on the side of caution because the consequence of a mistake is you losing a shiny new ship.

Backing off and avoiding missiles is the safer play, and a 1-1 like this isn't really a thing that happens in the campaign. I mean, it might for a bit, but chances are your ship - or another enemy - would come into the picture sooner rather than later.

So, yeah, it could definitely handle that 1-1 situation better, but is this worth potentially making a ship-losing mistake in another situation?

[dis astranagant]

But it'll happily take a completely avoidable mk IX salvo or 3 on the chin rather than deal with the missiles in a sane manner.  And I wasn't doing 1-1, that would have been unfair to the Dominator :v  I'd give it a couple Enforcers and some Lashers just to make the Sunder sweat a little.  First iteration gave the Sunder some swarmers and that was just a complete shitshow where it refused to do anything but plink with swarmers til out of ammo.  Second had machine guns, which worked, super slow since it was more worried about clearing missiles than dealing with actual threats.

Gave it a pd frigate escort and buffed the dominator's escort in response.  End result was one 0 cr escort frigate, and one 30 cr Sunder.  Ought to hang the captain for cowardice, the number of times he gave up clear shots on the Dominator's engines to run from half a Pilum salvo with 0 flux was just pathetic, bonus points for popping high energy focus just before running.

[Alex]

(Language, please.)

I think this may be a question of general expectations, then. A fragile ship like the Sunder, armed with a flux-heavy weapon like the Plasma Cannon, is just about the most difficult thing for the AI to fly well. If you've found a configuration that does the job regardless of these handicaps, then good on you

I'm happy to look at any specific AI issues, but it's not very productive to do it verbally, as the misunderstanding re: it being a 1-1 illustrates. The vast majority of AI behaviors are so circumstance specific that just describing what it seems to have done wrong is, unfortunately, not very useful. Video, though it's a lot to ask, is much more helpful. Another option is "A vs B in simulator; behavior occurs approximately X% of the time". Basically, unless I can see it for myself, there are just too many reasons why it might do one thing or another to draw any useful or actionable conclusions.

[dis astranagant]

Video inbound here in 2-3 hours .  It's not the worst I've seen it do but the end of the first fight is pretty comical.

[Schwartz]

Yea, it was doing quite well until that point. It took a couple of Pilums on the shields but didn't actively neutralize them by flying into them - and it shouldn't. Damage avoided is better than damage taken. But the lapse in AI judgement is quite apparent once it turned into a 1v1 duel. I still don't know how wrong the Sunder is by being skittish. The Dominator could overload it quite easily and a dozen or two Pilums add to that overload threat. The AI probably assumes stalling is better than a hurtful victory.

Another thing you see with the AI here is opportunity shots that aren't being taken. Like when the Enforcer was venting right in front of his face and he rather veered off to assess the threat of a burn-driving Dominator instead of finishing an enemy off. Protecting the Lasher maybe?

[Nimaniel]

If a common and dirt-cheap DD can stall out a Dominator BB, that's a huge win for the DD.

The Sunder/Dom matchup should result in a whole lot of nothing, because the DD is faster and should do its best to run the hell away from a 1v1, pilums or not.

[Clockwork Owl]

Dominator is CA, BTW.

And yes, if it were a real battle, an ally of Sunder could neutralize another threat while Dominator is distracted by Sunder, and joined the fight to destroy the cruiser.

[dis astranagant]

If a common and dirt-cheap DD can stall out a Dominator BB, that's a huge win for the DD.

The Sunder/Dom matchup should result in a whole lot of nothing, because the DD is faster and should do its best to run the hell away from a 1v1, pilums or not.

It's WAY faster, so it should be putting shots into the Dominator's front shielded engines, not parking out front getting wrecked by Mk IXs.  The whole Pilum salvo does about half as much damage as the Mk IXs but I've watched the AI run right in front of the latter to avoid the former, which seems backward.

[TaLaR]

Dominator's turn rate is not that low. Sunder can't simply get behind Dominator by circling around it. Of course Dominator can create an opening by using burn drive or getting distracted by other ships. But other than these cases it's engines are safe.

[DeMatt]

I assume the officer you have assigned to that Sunder is a "Steady" one?

To be fair, when you played the Sunder in that video, you took armor damage when you were forced to drop shields in front of an enemy.  The AI never got into such a situation, and thus took none.

It's also worth noting that ships in SS don't follow the monitor concept.  An AI expecting to have light-duty and point-defense weaponry will certainly do poorly with an "all eggs in one basket" design, compared to an AI (or human) specifically tuned for it.  It might be interesting to see how well the fighter AI (assuming it's distinct from the regular ship AI) does with that ship.

Also keep in mind that the AI which drives your ships is also the AI which drives the enemy ships.  How fun would the game be, if while you were tootling around in a conventional Wolf or Lasher, a Plasma Cannon-armed Sunder drove up in your face and blasted you one?

[TJJ]

Don't expect human behaviour from an AI ship.

[dis astranagant]

I assume the officer you have assigned to that Sunder is a "Steady" one?

To be fair, when you played the Sunder in that video, you took armor damage when you were forced to drop shields in front of an enemy.  The AI never got into such a situation, and thus took none.

It's also worth noting that ships in SS don't follow the monitor concept.  An AI expecting to have light-duty and point-defense weaponry will certainly do poorly with an "all eggs in one basket" design, compared to an AI (or human) specifically tuned for it.  It might be interesting to see how well the fighter AI (assuming it's distinct from the regular ship AI) does with that ship.

Also keep in mind that the AI which drives your ships is also the AI which drives the enemy ships.  How fun would the game be, if while you were tootling around in a conventional Wolf or Lasher, a Plasma Cannon-armed Sunder drove up in your face and blasted you one?

Yeah, it's probably steady, being that it's the player character on autopilot.  Strange thing is that it gets more confused when given backup weapons.  There's another video on the way where it's just completely baffled at the idea that I'd give it some anti fighter missiles.  I should probably test out an aggressive officer sometime, steady hangs too far back and has trouble actually landing the Plasma Cannon, even on an overloaded cruiser. 

[Megas]

Pilums are not so trivial when backed by Missile Specialization, or if the whole field is saturated with Pilums by a fleet built for Pilum spam.

[dis astranagant]

I finally a tracked down an aggressive officer and he handled it a lot better.  He got in and actively avoided the Mk IXs and was far more likely to finish off targets rather than just overloading them and wandering off.  A case can be made for making SO ships more aggressive, considering that their shields are generally far more efficient than normal and their short timer. I'm definitely going to have to hunt down more aggressive officers for my SO fleets.