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[intrinsic_parity]

I've noticed a lot of weird AI behavior, specifically with carriers being on the front line which never happened in previous releases. Also I've seen lots issues with small ships sitting/flying in front of larger slower ships.

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Here my drovers decided to sit between my onslaught and a battle station... They don't have long range weapons but they also don't appear to be trying to actually use any weapons, just sitting.

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Here my heron and mora are infront of my conquest (and you can see the remains of my recently deceased drover that was doing the same)

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Here I have a map overview showing my carriers positioned in front of my conventional warships.

[resyled]

I am really glad I made a discussion here, I LOVE this game so much, and .9 is amazing.

I'm just noticing some weird stuff here and there. I think that the issue I posted in the OP may be somewhat related to ordering ships to fly in 'formation' and cover your own ship. I think then once you get a little too close to the station (easy place to kite/avoid it) the formation order gets a little messed up and they try to reposition themselves but the station is in the way. So, they end up flying right into the guns and the reason they stay is because they're still trying to 'reposition' into the defense formation. This is just an observation and I'm not sure if that's the reason.

I've still taken out a few mid-line pirate stations by using larger ships that can withstand some fire, and small EMP based ships to keep the weapons offline. It seems like a good tactic so far... but I've only attacked mid-lines.

Also, I think that ships will engage more logically if you tell them to directly attack the station. This can be a problem though when there's also a fleet that is covering the station itself. I have noticed that AI (usually pirates) will do crazy stuff like fly very close to the station and try to spam it to death, and only a few are attacking to the sides out of range/arc of the guns. They almost always get totally smoked lol.

[Alex]

Alright, I think I've got this mostly sorted.

The main problem appears to be that when there are a lot of carriers and not enough warships, up to 3 carriers will escort a nearby warship. This doesn't leave enough open positions for all these carriers to stay behind the warship, and means one of the carriers will end up getting forward of it. Reducing the maximum number of auto-escorting carriers resolves this, i.e. in the case of "multiple Shepherds + combat ship", the Shepherds no longer get ahead of it and generally stay alive quite well.

Another related issue was that escorting ships - not just carriers - could get "pushed out" of their escort slot by other nearby ships, causing them to go to a potentially tactically poor location, instead of continuing to try to get to the location they preferred.

(Note that manually ordering more than two ships to escort another will still lead to potentially poor placement, so you generally don't want to do that.)

Also possible that there are other factors in play in some of the cases, but hopefully this covers most of it.

[SCC]

The issue is partially because AI likes to deathball. I wish there was a "scatter" order, or "form a battle line", where ships would try to move to sides and make space for ships in front of them, while those behind would try to go around (except for carriers, of course).

[Manic]

It doesn't only happen with carriers. Almost every ship in my fleet (and the enemy fleet for that matter) push forward extremely hard. They are even ignoring escort and guard commands. Allies and enemies just rush each other in the middle of the map bumping into each other creating a huge ball of ships.

Also i noticed that my allied ships frequently bump into my ship trying to avoid (insert threat) as opposed to 0.8.1 and of course they are always "in the way".

My fleet consists of 2 carriers, 1 frigate and 1 cruiser.

[Alex]

It doesn't only happen with carriers. Almost every ship in my fleet ...

My fleet consists of 2 carriers, 1 frigate and 1 cruiser.

That seems a bit confusing. If you mostly have carriers in your fleet, then the stuff I talked about is more likely to manifest due to the carrier-related issues. That said, if you have a savefile and a fight where these issues happen reliably, I'd *love* to take a look! Whether to confirm it's fixed, or see if there are other issues at work.

[Manic]

It doesn't only happen with carriers. Almost every ship in my fleet ...

My fleet consists of 2 carriers, 1 frigate and 1 cruiser.

That seems a bit confusing. If you mostly have carriers in your fleet, then the stuff I talked about is more likely to manifest due to the carrier-related issues. That said, if you have a savefile and a fight where these issues happen reliably, I'd *love* to take a look! Whether to confirm it's fixed, or see if there are other issues at work.

Hey Alex. Save sent.

As you can see the frigate ignores escort and keeps pushing in the enemy blob. I don't know if mods can break the AI but this also happened with base game ships.

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[Alex]

Thank you! Downloaded all the mods and took a look.

It appears that the main problem is that the Vesper - which seems to be the offender here - has a Pulsed Skipjets system. This system forces the ship to accelerate forward the entire time. However, it's set to use the same AI as the vanilla Maneuvering Jets system, which assumes the system is useful for backing out of trouble, which this one is not. This combination is a 100% recipe for a suiciding ship that will probably crash into things without meaning to, let alone get in range of things it shouldn't and ignore orders. Basically, every time the AI decides it'd be a good time to maybe back off, the system shoves it forward instead.

I'd appreciate it if you could let the mod author know of this issue. The Vesper's system either needs to use the Burn Drive AI, or a custom one. Any other ships using the system would also be affected.

[Histidine]

Do the escort jostling issues also affect Defend orders? That would explain some behaviour I've observed.

[Alex]

Do the escort jostling issues also affect Defend orders? That would explain some behaviour I've observed.

If carriers are involved, yes - otherwise, I don't *think* so.

[Manic]

Thank you! Downloaded all the mods and took a look.

It appears that the main problem is that the Vesper - which seems to be the offender here - has a Pulsed Skipjets system. This system forces the ship to accelerate forward the entire time. However, it's set to use the same AI as the vanilla Maneuvering Jets system, which assumes the system is useful for backing out of trouble, which this one is not. This combination is a 100% recipe for a suiciding ship that will probably crash into things without meaning to, let alone get in range of things it shouldn't and ignore orders. Basically, every time the AI decides it'd be a good time to maybe back off, the system shoves it forward instead.

I'd appreciate it if you could let the mod author know of this issue. The Vesper's system either needs to use the Burn Drive AI, or a custom one. Any other ships using the system would also be affected.

Aight cheers Alex

[Volfgarix]

On ships being suicidal.
I decided to take a closer look at "For the Greater Ludd" mission.
You get a Hammerhead, three Condors and two hounds against Dominator, two Brawlers and Tempest.
I noticed that standard Hounds die practically every time if left unchecked - you can notice that they have a short range Assault Chainguns - 450 units of range against Arbalests' 700 that Brawlers have or 1000 of Tempest's Graviton Beam (it's kinetic damage, though, not that dangerous on it''s own).
I decided to refit the Hounds for more long-ranged role - tried Arbalests, HVDs(1000 units of range) and Heavy Maulers(1000, too). I put in Makeshift Shield Generator to give them some margin of error.
Nope, they still decided it's a good idea to close in and take damage. It was bad enough if they got in Brawler's face, but I often have seen them going right in front of Dominator, results are rather easy to predict.
Now I wonder, normally AI is set at Steady, which apparently takes Enemy's flux into calculations, and probably tries to get closer to force enemy to either take damage or overload and it seems to pretty overconfident in it's abilities.

It seems that ships behave a bit better when there is more of them against one target. In "A Fistful of Credits" you can give the Hound a Heavy Mauler and leave it alone, it can strike at enemy Mule fairly decently if Lasher is helping with flanking it. Give it the Elimination orders ends up with it getting right in the Mule's face, resulting in taking damage (but works for Lasher due to shields and weaponry and Accelerated Ammo Feeder, it still comes in closer than needed).


About station fights - yeah, it looks like ships cannot follow the part they're put dent in it's flux and generally act a bit weird (I have seen Odysseys Plasma Burning right into it a few times)


I cannot compare it with 0.8 because I wasn't observing AI behavior at this time.

[Alex]

Well, the Hounds in "For the Greater Ludd" have an aggressive personality, so it's probably not the best testbed.

[Volfgarix]

Well, the Hounds in "For the Greater Ludd" have an aggressive personality, so it's probably not the best testbed.

Interesting. I actually suspected that it might had something to do with the Luddic Path thing for suicidal assaults, but assumed that under player's control all ships behave normally.
In such case I will need to download custom battles mod if there is something like this.

Ps. Btw. thanks for deleting the double post, I clicked the wrong button apparently.

PS2. Decided to test out a Hound that I have in my clunker fleet on my newest save. I pitted it against Brawler in Simulator. It seem to do okay with Heavy Mauler and Heavy Autocannon (forgot to mention I tried Autocannon in the mission as well), especially with Heavy Mauler - after initial "charge" (Hound doesn't stops soon enough and might take few hits) it stays quite well out of Brawler's range, sometimes landing a hit due to Brawler trying to flick the shield. It explains why my Hounds are doing a fairly decent job surviving the battles.