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

Author Topic: Exploitative AI behavior when fighting [REDACTED]  (Read 968 times)

exzacht

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Exploitative AI behavior when fighting [REDACTED]
« on: April 04, 2018, 03:09:50 PM »

Is there etiquette I'm supposed to follow when talking about Secret Endgame SurprisesTM? This bug is directly tied to one of those, so I'm going to put the details behind a spoiler warning out of an abundance of caution. Read on if you dare.

Spoiler
Last night, I was exploring my sector when I had the good fortune to discover my first Remnant Battlestation. When I encounter something new and strange, my first instinct to see how readily I can blast it into tiny pieces, so I naturally gave the order to engage. Unfortunately for me, the Battlestation spawned(?) an Ordo right as my fleet was about to engage it. I ended up engaging the Ordo instead, and the station provided support. In the ensuing fight, the Remnant AI deployed its station with some assorted small craft, and I fought with my Paragon, Astral, and an Eagle. I quickly realized I wasn't going to be able to break through the station's shields, let alone defeat it, so I gave the order to retreat.

Here's where things got wacky. Even though I successfully retreated, the Remnant fleet was fast enough to force another engagement, one in which the station still provided support. So I fought again, ran from the station again, and was forced to fight again. This happened one more time before I realized my game was in a bad state: I couldn't take the station in a straight fight due to deployment point limits, I couldn't outlast the station because it had infinite CR, I couldn't defeat the fleet that the station was supporting because the AI (rightly) prefers to deploy the station over its ships, and I couldn't run because the Ordo was faster than my fleet.

I suppose I could've sacrificed my capital ships (and probably cruisers) to get away, but I decided instead to reload my most recent save.

tl;dr
PROBLEM: Supporting stations can engage fleeing fleets.
PROPOSED SOLUTION: If a fleet flees an engagement in which a supporting station is present and is forced into another engagement, the station should not be allowed to participate in the subsequent engagement (because even the slowest ship is faster than an immobile station).
[close]

That said, some of my favorite moments in gaming are when I encounter something that I didn't even know to expect, and [REDACTED] definitely counts as one of those. I'm also a little tickled that the AI is smart enough to use exploits against me for a change (even though I know that's not really how the AI works).

Alex, I bought Starsector back in 2012, and I'm glad I decided to revisit it. The game has come a long way since then, and I'm really excited to found my own colonies in the next release. Keep up the good work!
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Alex

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Re: Exploitative AI behavior when fighting [REDACTED]
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2018, 03:39:04 PM »

Thanks for the report (and welcome to the forum)! Yeah, it's... not supposed to do that, be able to pursue that is. I've got a todo item to fix it :)

Alex, I bought Starsector back in 2012, and I'm glad I decided to revisit it. The game has come a long way since then, and I'm really excited to found my own colonies in the next release. Keep up the good work!

Thank you!
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