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Author Topic: Ship suicide  (Read 1661 times)

lethargie

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Ship suicide
« on: July 09, 2019, 09:08:18 AM »

I have observed a weird behavior in my ship since the last version. It is not something that happen often, and it is hard to reproduce, but when it does happen it is quite obvious.

Some of my ship will sometimes ram themselves extra hard into other slower ship for no reason, not even enemy sighted.

The most spectacular example happened this way:
I was flying the (mod DA) Pandemonium in a straight line at the start of a battle. I ordered an omen to escort a tempest. While waiting for enemies to appear the tempest decided to cross in front of my capital. The omen decided to follow it, rammed the side of my ship so hard it overloaded, then rammed again several time while overloaded until it exploded. Meanwhile I had not changed course or did anything with my ship and the enemies had not appeared.

I have seen it happen between 2 ai ship, generally its a smaller frigate getting damaged ramming a capital or a cruiser out of combat. Has anyone seen it happen? While rare, its quite annoying when it happen.
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rashiakas

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Re: Ship suicide
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2019, 10:42:11 PM »

I agree, since the big update ramming much worse. Could rename the game to scooter sector.
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Schwartz

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Re: Ship suicide
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2019, 06:27:35 PM »

Yeah, happens a lot. It really hurts when it's a ship with weak armor, like a phase frigate, chewing through its own defenses completely with a bump or two. Alex has looked at this before as a phase ship issue, but other ships do it too.
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Alex

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Re: Ship suicide
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2019, 06:39:13 PM »

(Let me make a note to take a look at it, the scenario described in the OP seems like it ought to be reproducible-ish.)
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Inventor Raccoon

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Re: Ship suicide
« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2019, 07:13:49 PM »

I notice this most often with Conquests, with them often ramming ships to get into position.
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Alex

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Re: Ship suicide
« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2019, 08:42:54 AM »

I notice this most often with Conquests, with them often ramming ships to get into position.

That's a different issue - larger ships assume smaller ships will get out of the way, and the Conquest is a bit of an exception here in that it can be faster than some cruisers - that it still expects to scram. But, yeah, made a note as well.
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BringerofBabies

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Re: Ship suicide
« Reply #6 on: July 13, 2019, 04:00:31 PM »

Fixing this might need the pathing system to decide paths for ships as a group for the best possible outcome (which, yes, I realize would be a pain to code). I remember some "fun" times in 0.9a where a retreating cruiser attempted to fly through a capital ally, resulting in a damaged cruiser basically pinned against an enemy station.
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