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Author Topic: station AI firing behaviour  (Read 1681 times)

Thermi

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station AI firing behaviour
« on: October 12, 2019, 07:33:23 PM »

Currently the AI does not use the station's weapon mounts to full effect. A lot of times some mounts do not fire at, for example, a close target although they could.
I suspect this is due to ...
1) The weapon grouping (too large groups and occasional target fixation on currently non-hittable ships)
2) Too large weapon groups

A perfect fix would be the following AI behaviour for stations to do the following:
1) Based on the own weapon loadout and its characteristics (long range beam weapons, slow moving high explosive shells, ...), choose a suitable target (close, current ship status (shields/no shields/armor stripped/...), can be hit by the mounts in the next (turn time of mounts to target + firing delay (+ if applicable firing time for two bursts))
2) Create a weapon group with the right characteristics (long range kinetic beam weapon for target with shields active or that is not overloaded and its shield faces this way) that will be like that for at least (turn time of mounts to target + firing delay (+ if applicable firing time for two bursts)) seconds will be vulnerable against the type of target
3) align the weapons
4) fire a burst
5) check if condition for target selection still is true (target still vulnerable and hittable)
6) Goto 1

Maybe do this once every second or something.

Yes, it's complex, but it might be the only sensible way to solve the problem. Otherwise we either have stupid target selection or weapon groups that do not fire for half of the battle for some reason.

It'll make stations much more deadly, so it's only good for the game if the ship AI behaviour regarding station engagements is fixed (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=14808.msg240647)

These changes require the following:
1) Arbitrary amount of weapon groups (not necessarily usable for the player)
2) Dynamic weapon groups

Criticism?
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LucusLoC

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2019, 11:42:50 PM »

Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .
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Thermi

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2019, 01:12:53 AM »

I have not tested with an Alpha AI core yet.
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Plantissue

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2019, 02:49:27 AM »

Does an officer affect how the targetting works? I am not aware of it doing such except when CR is increased enough to change autofire accuracy. That shouldn't change any sort of observed behaviour in regards to firing weapons.

I highly doubt that station AI have been purposefully programmed to be dumb, but removes that malus with an officer.
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LucusLoC

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2019, 10:08:17 AM »

Does an officer affect how the targetting works? I am not aware of it doing such except when CR is increased enough to change autofire accuracy. That shouldn't change any sort of observed behaviour in regards to firing weapons.

I highly doubt that station AI have been purposefully programmed to be dumb, but removes that malus with an officer.

It does with ships, there are even a few skills that explicitly state it as so: "Ordnance Expertise" impacts projectile speed, which indirectly affects accuracy, and "Gunnery Implants" impacts lead calculation accuracy. Looking at it from the other way, those are definitely "maluses" that the officer AI "cures"

Since we know stations can have officers it makes sense they would be using the exact same calculations. I can see "officer AI" tuning up the speed at which some other things that matter happen too, like how often they re-evaluate their current target, which could drastically change "target fixation" behavior. I know for 100% sure that officers increase the combat survivability and effectivness of ships (so long as you properly pair their "personality" behaviors with the proper ship type) so I cannot imagine why it would be any different for stations.

I would definitely test with an Alpha AI core before coming to any conclusions.
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Plantissue

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2019, 03:02:31 PM »

None of those skills would affect any of what Thermi has observed.

So your understanding that you have given him is entirely unsubstantiated.

There is no reason to pass your own personal theories about the effect of weapons grouping in stations as fact.
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LucusLoC

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2019, 07:21:23 PM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions, and my suspicions about the possibility were qualified as such. This Is also why I suggested *actually testing* to find out if it makes a difference.

What was asked, and I answered, was if skills impact auto-fire accuracy. Since there are skills that explicitly call out stats directly related to auto-fire it seems like the answer is "yes, they do for at least some aspects of ship weapon use", followed by postulation about other stats that *may* be related to other aspects of the observation, like target fixation or effective weapon group usage.

Again, let us run a test to see if that is indeed the case, and maybe we can suss out exactly *how* officer AI enhances ship (and station) performance since it clearly does so in some way.
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Plantissue

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #7 on: October 15, 2019, 08:02:36 AM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions
Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .
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TaLaR

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #8 on: October 15, 2019, 08:09:21 AM »

Having officer doesn't make a station any smarter or better designed in terms of weapon groups, just more powerful. Why would it matter?
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LucusLoC

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #9 on: October 15, 2019, 11:02:59 AM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions
Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .

Are you disputing the fact that adding an officer to a station increases the combat effectiveness of that station?
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #10 on: October 15, 2019, 12:00:45 PM »

The AI core does not change how the AI chooses targets or arranges weapon groups which is what the suggestion is about. It just makes it better at hitting the targets it chooses.
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Plantissue

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2019, 06:13:03 AM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions
Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .

Are you disputing the fact that adding an officer to a station increases the combat effectiveness of that station?
I would give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't read the opening post properly, but then you doubled down even after being specifically told twice that an officer wouldn't affect Thermi's observations, so I guess you are just obstinate for the sake of it.
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LucusLoC

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2019, 08:40:56 AM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions
Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .

Are you disputing the fact that adding an officer to a station increases the combat effectiveness of that station?
I would give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't read the opening post properly, but then you doubled down even after being specifically told twice that an officer wouldn't affect Thermi's observations, so I guess you are just obstinate for the sake of it.
Read my words again, at no point did I claim officer AI 100% impacted the initial observations, just that we knew that officer AI did impact combat performance and that there are other skills that explicitly impact other parameters that are closely related to the observed behavior, and that I could see the impacted behavior also falling into the category of things officer AI would affect. This is why I stated that the observed behavior should be tested with and without an officer AI present so that this speculation can be verified or refuted. At no point did I ever try to pass my claims off as authoritative on the subject, nor did I contradict anyone who presented couterviewpoints (even if no other citations were presented). I merely presented a plausible line of deduction that supported my claim that such an observation should be tested to find out one way or the other.

You are the only one here who seems to be reading more into my statements than that. I really did not want my posts to wind up being paragraphs long dissertations on what I personally do and do not know for a given fact, because most of that information is not relevant to the discussion. Except you seem to be forcing the issue, when there really should be no issue to be found. If you have actual knowledge that show that no, indeed the AI, officer or otherwise, does *not* use station weapons effectively in this regard, and that there is some technical reason for the limitation then fine, I am not going to argue against that. If you *do not* know if that is or is not true then my initial assessment stands, the behavior should be tested with and officer AI to see if it changes anything, because this *might* be a parameter that the officer AI adjusts. I base that speculation on the fact that we know officer AI impacts *other* closely related parameters regarding the combat effectiveness of individual weapon mounts, so it seems plausible and worth the investigation.

Hell, we have explicit confirmation from Alex that officer AI impacts other hard-to-define behavior such a flux-venting timing, so to me that indicated there may be other parameters that were not well documented for the user, like maybe the max number of weapons it will use from a specific weapon group, or how often the AI reassess its target selection. Given the otehr esoteric things the AI can impact this does not seem all that far fetched to me.

And one more thought to consider; if I indeed profess to have specific knowledge on this exact topic, why would I have led with "you should test it with officer AI and see if it changes", instead of just outright stating "officer AI fixes this"? So far we only have one person here who outright states that the AI does not change anything about actual target selection/weapon group usage regardless of officer level, and that was only two posts ago.

And now that I have indeed provided a paragraphs long dissertation on the topic, can we please put this whole kerfuffle behind us, as it server no useful purpose for advancing the topic at hand? intrinsic_parity has stated with apparent confidence what the answer is, so the next point would seem to be evaluating solutions, not arguing over what perspective we were all looking at the issue from, and how we each interpreted those perspectives as we read them.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #13 on: October 16, 2019, 09:05:11 AM »

I'm pretty sure about that based on experience, not actual knowledge of the game code, so I could be wrong. No one has come in here to say otherwise though.
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Thermi

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Re: station AI firing behaviour
« Reply #14 on: November 06, 2019, 08:15:58 AM »

Yes, it's much better with an Alpha Core. About as deadly as expected of the station.
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