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[jgeezz]

I can hear the groans all ready. The AI needs to be fixed, when you give an order for a ship to attack a mob it should. I give orders and the AI even with a captain assigned it just sits and does nothing.

[Null Ganymede]

Maybe it's scared. Have you tried reckless captains, a friendly capital ship within support range, or bringing enough cheap frigates that the enemy doesn't outnumber you?

[Daynen]

I'd be happy to have the AI be a teeny bit more aware of my weapons arc instead of constantly, ACTIVELY parking it's friendly ass in front of me and blocking my shots.  I'm not kidding; I will actively try to move away from my friendlies who are NOT on escort orders just so they cannot block me and they will DROP WHAT THEY ARE DOING AND FOLLOW ME TO INTERFERE WITH MY ENGAGEMENT.  I love Starsector but the fleet AI is far and away the most frustrating part.

[Flying Birdy]

I actually have not found the AI to be lacking aggressiveness, as long as its given the tools to do so. Most of the time, the perception of the AI being too none aggressive is actually due to it piloting a slow ship; it can't catch the thing its targeting (or its not too much faster to close the gap effectively).

Try fielding a fleet of nothing but tempests and issuing an order. See how quickly the tempests swarm a target.

[intrinsic_parity]

Same thing goes for retreating. A lot of times it seems like ships aren't following your order to run but in reality they aren't fast enough to escape.

[Linnis]

OP has a point. In some cases, if you tell a smaller ship to attack a larger ship the AI will decide it needs to flank or wait for the right time. But sometimes you just want it to go in guns blazing and there is no option for that.

[Null Ganymede]

Eliminate and the Full Assault (or whatever the button in top right is called) are pretty close.

Still, there's some ships that just can't do it. Weapons too short-ranged, not enough kinetic damage to win flux wars, or it's a battle carrier and can't do anything but sling missiles from the back line.

[Thaago]

Eliminate does the trick 99% of the time, especially when combined when full assault. Most of the time I need to carefully watch ships I give eliminate orders to because they will suicidality charge through an entire fleet of enemy ships to reach their target. (Which is sometimes what I want, sometimes not.) Another possibility is that the ship you gave the order to is very high on flux, which causes them to try and back off in order to live. Or, is the ship you told to attack is actually fast enough to reach the target?

 More details about the situation that is broken would help. If you want an actual AI change, a reproducible scenario with no mods at all enabled (simulator scenario is best, but a custom mission or even save game file again with 0 mods is better than nothing) is the only way thats going to happen.

[sector_terror]

It's funny, I get the opposite issue. The AI is almost suicidal in how much it wants to attack. In fairness I also tend to border into suicidal overconfidence when I get in an aggressive mindset, so it evens out. Honestly I think people are also missing a serious issue here, in that AI not only has to adapt to all possible enemies without being too aggressive or to passive, respond to modified or outright new ships, and do so in an optimized manner that doesnt tear your CPU apart. On top of that, as is in the .9.5 patch notes, some of this is to keep the AI from stalling you too badly. No one enjoys hunting down that last phase frigate that will not or can not retreat because it wants to stay alive. It makes the whole question of the enemy and ally AI alike being too aggressive/not aggressive enough a question so challenging I don't think I'd ever be happy. As an aspiring artist(writer) I can understand that feeling of it never being perfect really hitting this exact topic.

But hey, AI managment isnt my strong suit so maybe I'm an idiot, or maybe im suffering imposter syndrome. Exostential dread and self-doubt are fun.

[jgeezz]

I am in no way a developer but it does seem that some builds causes the AI to be more aggressive than other builds. No matter what you do there is always 1 ship that always goes suicide.  It almost seems like some weapons on ships make them go in close. Like if you have a tac lazer the AI will stay at a distance but if you mix them they will not go in close even if you have weapons that are all close except 1 tac lazer.

[DeimosEvotec]

I would recommend giving this wiki article a read: https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/AI_Behaviour

[Alex]

(Hey, very cool wiki page, and lists a lot of factors that are indeed considered! "The players current flagship" shouldn't be on the list, though. I'm sure the enemy AI doesn't know what ship the player is in. Allied AI, I'm 99% sure. ... actually, just checked, and the only case is basically so minor as to be negligible, involving collision avoidance when both ships are frigates and a couple of other conditions are met. But generally when I see "the AI reacts to the ship the player is in" it's in the context of "it's reacting more strongly to the player by attacking or avoiding them" which absolutely isn't the case. ... anyway!)

[jgeezz]

Thank you for that it is great reading and helps with creating a loadout. There should be an override command or something.

[Wyvern]

"The players current flagship" shouldn't be on the list, though. I'm sure the enemy AI doesn't know what ship the player is in. Allied AI, I'm 99% sure. ... actually, just checked, and the only case is basically so minor as to be negligible, involving collision avoidance when both ships are frigates and a couple of other conditions are met. But generally when I see "the AI reacts to the ship the player is in" it's in the context of "it's reacting more strongly to the player by attacking or avoiding them" which absolutely isn't the case. ... anyway!)

Huh, really? It really feels like the carrier AI prefers to set fighters to support the flagship, even if those fighters would be better used on targets closer to the carrier.

(As a side note: Given the choice between a pristine carrier and a carrier with the reduced fighter roaming range d-mod, I'll almost always take the latter. The only exception is for 'pure' carriers like the Astral & Drover (and I suppose Condor would make the list if I ever used them) where, ideally, I want a timid captain and for the ship to absolutely not get into direct fights ever.)

[TheWetFish]

I think the AI could do with more feedback to the player.

A lot of confusion arises due to insufficient feedback as to why the AI is doing something.  For example if the AI ship provided some form of feedback to the effect of "I want to attack my target but I am low on flux and scared of being flanked".  This would both improve player expectations and improve player experiences with the AI.

(Hey, very cool wiki page, and lists a lot of factors that are indeed considered! "The players current flagship" shouldn't be on the list, though. I'm sure the enemy AI doesn't know what ship the player is in. Allied AI, I'm 99% sure. ... actually, just checked, and the only case is basically so minor as to be negligible, involving collision avoidance when both ships are frigates and a couple of other conditions are met. But generally when I see "the AI reacts to the ship the player is in" it's in the context of "it's reacting more strongly to the player by attacking or avoiding them" which absolutely isn't the case. ... anyway!)

Glad you enjoyed the page! A lot of work went into it from a lot of different people, particularly from the AI tournament participants.

We were under the impression that one of the stronger factors regarding the player's current flagship is that allied AI will strongly prioritise targeting the enemy ship the player is actively shooting. 

Is this actually a factor?

I thought it was both one of the stronger factors in the allied AI and also one of the aspects more extensively tested by the community.