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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 0.91a  (Read 87674 times)

OzarMidrashim

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8
« Reply #60 on: July 20, 2017, 03:16:39 AM »

Its Alpha...obvious its not anything other than WIP. As alwys there are two arpoaches to subject, either mod Developers decide to expand base AI to take more variables to account, or decided to build one from ground up with new options for future modders to use...with succes to the point new system could find its way to the core game like few mods already had.

For now i must disable it, as in this state its unplayable. I am happy thou this mod lives, last time i checked, it was unplayable spitting crashes in 0.7.2a.
But pottential could be obscene.

Vengence commandors taking suicide squads or their own ship to ram you in next battle if you just fought one and continue to harras their fleets.
Hunter killer prism/void dimention subs going around main battle to assassin your carriers.
Small frigates only going in to cripple your engines, and providing defensive support for main fleet otherwise (they pop to quickly).
Depending fleet composition whole AI would play diffirently.
Rathe than spread in default line, AI could split to two flanking groups caching player in betwean, or form a wage of cappitals dont giving a damn and copletly pussh into your ranks spreading chaos (how many times AI has clear advantage yout loose simply because they are to conservative with their push?).
More overall betwean-ships cooperation, like task-squads, or so much needed save-move for AI ship that otherwise without  a backup going to be torn apart.

Base AI do a good job, but its almost the same every time around. It just spread in line of ships, when each of them behave like roman legionair attacking and backing up when flux build up. Logic and effective, but boring...and also very predictible for player to counter by playing long range, thus more than half weaponry is less "safe" yelding more losses than slow sniping. There is nothing more entertaining than AI making absurd unpredictible crazy decisions, like in "Jagged Alliance 2", "Flat-out" or "SCAR Squadra Corse Alfa Romeo".
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Mods are like drugs for games - they allow to customise and expand experiance...
...yet be carefull not to mix to much or overload...as conflicts yield terrible results.
There is only one rule always in (load)order...be responsible and know what you're doing.

Owl

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8
« Reply #61 on: July 26, 2017, 07:31:28 PM »

It is funny you mentioned JA2 the only other game that has got me as hooked as this one ;D
One thing that is driving me insane with the vanilla AI is when I send a ship to capture a nav node in combat, it will disobey and drift off to fight rather than secure the position and allow an enemy ship to backdoor the point.
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OzarMidrashim

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8
« Reply #62 on: July 27, 2017, 11:37:06 AM »

It is funny you mentioned JA2 the only other game that has got me as hooked as this one ;D
One thing that is driving me insane with the vanilla AI is when I send a ship to capture a nav node in combat, it will disobey and drift off to fight rather than secure the position and allow an enemy ship to backdoor the point.

JA 2, newest 1.13 from:
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=13A6926EAC52083%21202&cid=013A6926EAC52083
...some custom .ini tweaks and music mod ( i can give you my made from Crysis 2 OST ...fits)
and youre golden xD

As for Starsector ...whole Officer thing need to be upgraded at one point to. For now they are buff placeholders, there is no additional functions or tasks as i recall ...you can edit ships behaviour by Officer attitude, but thats also limited. They don't panic and flee or have rage bursts, dont go to berserk or risk going in for rewarding kill. They always obey, and how thay obey is not diffirent from base AI as i saw.
This is something to work on as its core mechanic, but still end up as polish refine section of development. Then we end up in game with either lobotomized or omnipotential-prodigy AI's. I want to see an AI who gets *** being sniped and loose its patiance and just rage-charge, or AI that makes terrible terrible mistakes, not stupid, but sometimes take risk and kill both ships by ramming etc.
Sometimes i see such behaviours, like AI ship flying betwean me and tyrget into line of fire saving it...or make stupid suicide attack, but its hard to tell how much of it is random, and how much is driven by code.
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Mods are like drugs for games - they allow to customise and expand experiance...
...yet be carefull not to mix to much or overload...as conflicts yield terrible results.
There is only one rule always in (load)order...be responsible and know what you're doing.

xenoargh

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8
« Reply #63 on: July 27, 2017, 02:30:24 PM »

First off, there's no "improving the base AI"... it's not available to "improve".  Alex was kind enough to write a method whereby we could write our own AIs from the ground up, but that's it.  So yes, this was written completely from scratch, which was a lot of work ;)

Second off, the emphasis on the Player's ship was pretty intentional, but it's pretty apparent that:

A.  The weighting on the player over other enemies is a bit too heavy.
B.  The weighting of the AI causing it to stay out of combat in general might be a bit too heavy.
C.  There are lots of little issues remaining to get worked on, like smarter missile use, etc., that make the enemy AI a bit weaker than I'd like.

I haven't felt like any of that was game-breaking, per se; I can see how it might make things easier if you have a lot of ships, but frankly, by the time you have a big fleet and lots of Officers, the game's not hard at all vs. Vanilla's AI, either.

Fixing both of these things is fairly straightforward, but requires a lot of playtesting.  I've been (slowly) working on this here, but I haven't released anything in public to update it for a while, until I'm a little happier with it :)
« Last Edit: July 27, 2017, 02:33:09 PM by xenoargh »
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OzarMidrashim

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8
« Reply #64 on: July 28, 2017, 12:33:36 AM »

So... indeed a lot of work if you can't plug in under base AI the way i though. It was not so obvious from OP. I remember i did mod for Cortex Command expanding base AI fixing all stupid glitches, bypassing hardcoded crap and adding a ton of new interesting behaviours, but writing whole thing is diffirent story altogether. I'm not sure i would ever try this without strong reasons.
Didn't wanted to sound like i don't apriciate and critique too harshly.
I always wach anything concerning AI's in games, there ware so little good ones, every time one gives me fair fight i'm in havens of entertainment ;-) Like this section in most games...opponent...doesnt get enough love and attention from devs. I hope you continue your projects, as i find them impressive, and saving grace or at least usefull in sections not yet touched by most.
If you by any chance have little update of AI with ajustments mentioned, and don't predict new release for some time, i would apriciate a link to test it out. No pressure thou =) ...if not i would like to know is there a factor to modify concerning "The weighting on the player over other enemies..." as i find it to be more than "...a bit too heavy." =P like 80% of enemy fleet fallowing me when i tested it xD
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Mods are like drugs for games - they allow to customise and expand experiance...
...yet be carefull not to mix to much or overload...as conflicts yield terrible results.
There is only one rule always in (load)order...be responsible and know what you're doing.

xenoargh

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8
« Reply #65 on: July 28, 2017, 08:07:45 AM »

Alpha 8.5 has been released.

Features:

More-aggressive AI.

Enemy AI is much less fixated on the Player.

Improvements to a few sub-AI features, including a fix for a rare NPE in some auto-aim systems and some System AIs. 
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yamadaeclipse

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.5
« Reply #66 on: August 01, 2017, 04:02:36 PM »

um...

the ai ships seem to be blocked by the map border in combat, and unable to retreat
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xenoargh

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.5
« Reply #67 on: August 01, 2017, 05:47:07 PM »

Hmm.  I haven't observed that happening here; can you tell me under what circumstances that's happening for you?  Like, is it a certain battle type, Mission, etc?
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Death_Silence_66

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.5
« Reply #68 on: August 03, 2017, 09:33:02 PM »

There seems to be an issue with ship system launched drones. With torn up plenty's Talus, the drones just scatter towards the edges of the battlefield no matter what mode they are it (Free Roam, Recall, Ect.). Additionally, Warthogs hang back and launch flares rather than moving in and using their weapons.
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xenoargh

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.5
« Reply #69 on: August 04, 2017, 08:14:11 AM »

I'll take a look at the drones.  The Warthogs shouldn't be avoiding combat ranges; other fighters like Broadswords are working over here.  I'll check that out.
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xenoargh

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.6
« Reply #70 on: August 13, 2017, 05:54:04 PM »

Version 0.86a has been released.

Mainly a bugfix / tweak build; I resolved the problems with Vanilla Drones with fancy behaviors and tweaked AI aggressiveness to work a little better.
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RazorTS

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.6
« Reply #71 on: August 23, 2017, 03:17:34 PM »

Few issues with the mod
 *sometimes weapons stop firing for no apparent reason;
 *Ships bunch up, ram and block each other, spin around instead of siting at comfortable range firing weapons;

those two points make game unplayable, especially in your face attitude. 

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Sooner535

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.6
« Reply #72 on: August 23, 2017, 03:27:40 PM »

interestingly enough that is how I play >.< especially if I am fighting something with side mounted missiles (as they tend to go past me unless they have very high tracking) close-medium range flak brawlers mess things up
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xenoargh

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.6
« Reply #73 on: August 23, 2017, 10:08:43 PM »

Few issues with the mod
 *sometimes weapons stop firing for no apparent reason;
 *Ships bunch up, ram and block each other, spin around instead of siting at comfortable range firing weapons;

those two points make game unplayable, especially in your face attitude. 
I think I've gotten the ship-range issues fixed in the next build.  The last build was a little too aggro for its own good; worked for some things, not so hot for others.

Weapons stopping firing has to do with Flux levels; that's more-or-less by design.  Probably need to allow PD to fire if it has a max-priority target in that situation and turn it off completely on player-piloted ships.
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xenoargh

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Re: [0.81a] StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 8.6
« Reply #74 on: August 24, 2017, 09:05:22 AM »

Ok, I've gotten most of that fixed well; ships now use an averaged range weighted towards non-PD, with some specific support for Strike weapons with short ranges like the AM Blaster.  That part worked well in testing last night; ships got into a good range.  I also addressed the Flux issues somewhat; ships will still occasionally get Flux-locked, but less often, with an exit condition to let them lower their shields sometimes when they can't lower Flux by retreating (sometimes a bad option is the only option).

I want to finally finish "smarter" missile-launcher AI before I release this; it's probably the biggest single gripe I have with the AI right now.  I'll get that done tonight and release a build :)
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