Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Megas]

The Lack of Aggression is one of the biggest problems of the AI. To make the AI actually effective, i decided to choose only aggressive or reckless officers for small groups. In 1 Vs. 1 Fights of Paragon Vs. Radiant only these types get their ships not destroyed and they do actually win some of these duels without any help. Any other retreats too often, lowers shield too often (due distance, actually a mistake all AI has!), stays too often too far away and don't push enough pressure into the enemy (what means that the enemy can put much more pressure back).

That, or the other side runs away too (or hovers just short of max shot range) and both sides die from CR decay.  That kind of hurts in endgame fights when both sides only think about what is on the screen now instead of the hundreds of enemy ships waiting to be deployed.  0.9 is little better than 0.8, but still a long way from 0.7.2 or earlier.

[goduranus]

So, how did the fight against remnant doomstack go?

They refused to join battle with all 9 fleets at once.

It was weird, if I sent in the fleet as it was, 24 Drovers equipped only with fighters, then only one more fleet would join battle, in addition to the fleet I intercepted. However, if I refitted each Drover with a light machinegun or a missile, then 4 more fleets would join battle.

Seems that AI might be deciding on how many fleets to join battle, depending on how much of a threat it thought my fleet was, and it perceived my gunless Drovers as civilian ships, hence sending in only one more fleet in support.

While giving Drovers guns would have baited in more enemies, it also made the Drovers’ AI behave differently and try to facehug enemy warships, so I didn’t so that. I ended up winning the fight against  those 9 fleets two at time, and lost one Drover to a well timed phase skim by a plasma cannon battleship.

I’m gonna go back to a colony and grab a few Falcons to boost my fleet’s threat rating, and see if I can round up a couple more redacted fleets the next time I play.

[Thaago]

Oooh thats right! This fleet has no guns!

It seems from the fact that only 1 stack would join that the enemy AI is underestimating your ships' combat potential - could that be why the enemy is trickling in ships so badly? It thinks all of yours are unarmed civilians/not combat capable, so only sends a mop-up force?

[Alex]

It seems from the fact that only 1 stack would join that the enemy AI is underestimating your ships' combat potential - could that be why the enemy is trickling in ships so badly? It thinks all of yours are unarmed civilians/not combat capable, so only sends a mop-up force?

Yeah, that's almost certainly the case - should be fixed for .1 (thanks to goduranus' earlier report), but I'll take another look.

[goduranus]

Testing carrier spam against other factions, here's 13 Spark Drovers completely destroying a Sindrian Expedition force including 9 Conquest Battlecruisers and 5 Dominator Cruisers in one sitting, all except the civilian ships and one frigate, with final battle results being 133 Sindrian ships destroyed.

Dominators managed to push the Drovers hard with their armor and burn drive. But since the Drovers really push the the front line forward before meeting the Dominators, they had plenty of room to retreat while pelting the Dominators as they are being pursued. In the end, the Dominators' armor ran out before they can push the Drovers off the map.

(YouTube says upload and processing ETA is 1 hour from the time of this post)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXC05RMmMps

[SapphireSage]

Yeah, that's almost certainly the case - should be fixed for .1 (thanks to goduranus' earlier report), but I'll take another look.

Assuming that the enemy actually was sending in its forces piecemeal to be picked apart, does this also solve the issue of a player-less spark drover fleet being so powerful for its ease of use or are the drovers still able to overpower so many enemy ships without needing escorts?

[goduranus]

Didn't know that mechanic existed. Does that mean if I put a single gun on the Atlas and Prometheus, but leave those in reserve during battle, more enemies will deploy?

[Megas]

Drover was head-and-shoulders above every other destroyer during 0.8.  It took a hit in 0.9 with the subtle changes to fighter mechanics, and an indirect hit due to fights being (much) bigger and lasting longer (while peak performance is still the same).  (Admittedly, other destroyer warships got hit too with weaker Light Needler and Heavy Mauler.)  Still, since endgame fights have shifted from major factions to pirates and pathers, Drovers being able to wreck fights with overwhelming beam spam through fighters is pretty good, and more fuel efficient than dragging multiple capitals and tugs across the sector.  (I do not know if I my old computer can handle Drover spam with that many fighters at large map sizes well.)

[goduranus]

I played with Drovers some more, this time in early-mid game before getting Sparks. Turns out that Drover spam needs another component to be powerful, which is the speed and ecm bonus that makes enemy cruisers and capitals mostly unable to catch up. Without those, the enemy cruisers can catch up to the Drovers and destroy them before the fighters can wear down their armor.
Here's my result from 11 Drovers each equipped with 1 Talon and 1 Broadsword vs a Persean fleet with 3 Conquests and 2 Dominators, ending in the near total destruction of the enemy fleet but loss of 2 Drovers.

[Thaago]

Interesting! In the previous test cases, did you have the max navigation and ECM (from both skills being maxes and then the other skill for +5/+5)?

Since the Drovers want to keep distance, I can see that being a big factor.

Didn't know that mechanic existed. Does that mean if I put a single gun on the Atlas and Prometheus, but leave those in reserve during battle, more enemies will deploy?

I think that what the AI does is look at the ships you've deployed only and pick some force to attack you based on your "strength". How it calculates that strength can be gamed - chain deploying flagships does this because the AI does not weight combat skills + player skills high enough, and the player has to deal with lesser ship numbers that trickle in.

Maybe thats part of whats happening - since you don't have weapons, they think your ships are much weaker and don't deploy much (or in the case of the Remnants, don't even bother joining). Hmmm.... I wonder what a 'before/after' of enemy ship deployment would look like if in one case you went no weapons, but in the other put guns and missiles on.

[goduranus]

I had +20% speed and +10% ECM for that battle. Can't tell whether there's a difference between what the AI deploys, might have to use Devmod to have a look.

[goduranus]

I noticed why some cruisers and capitals can survive quite a long time being concentrated upon by a fighter swarm. It's not that cruiser armor is really that good vs fighters, but that they were getting the +150% armor bonus from the bugged Impact mitigation lv1. So I think next patch fighter spamming would be even more powerful.

[Rap1d]

All the videos you uploaded make an excellent showcase! I constantly keep swapping between the Lux fighters and Sparks and Can't decide which one is better. I am using Lux fighters for now because I have some missiles on my main ship and the flares synergize nicely with that.

[goduranus]

The Lux did't work too well for me, problem was that fighters don't swarm the ship being targeted by missile. Also that Lux spawned by reserve deployment don't loiter as long in the fight because they are slower, and use up more of their time travelling to and from the target. If only they focused on the same target, result would be much better.

[Rap1d]

What about herons instead of drovers, and having all of them carry 3 flash bombers instead? That would surely be a sight to behold, however flash bombers are a lot harder to come by compared to sparks and lux. The damage output of flash bombers is really insane tho.