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[Alex]

Hmm. I'm not seeing any consistent or glaring problems here. It makes the occasional mistake, but then it's supposed to - its reaction times are intentionally not perfect, but more in the human range. Tempest vs Dominator, in particular - the Tempest actually wins with >95% hull, for crying out loud

Still, something I'll definitely keep an eye out for.

[naufrago]

Hmm. I'm not seeing any consistent or glaring problems here. It makes the occasional mistake, but then it's supposed to - its reaction times are intentionally not perfect, but more in the human range. Tempest vs Dominator, in particular - the Tempest actually wins with >95% hull, for crying out loud

Still, something I'll definitely keep an eye out for.

Part of it is that I loathe taking any damage, and any shot that gets past shields makes me =(. It's more of a problem when that one shot that gets through or hits the engines is a mining blaster or a hellbore or if it has to face any additional ships after its armor has been stripped away, but really, the AI is perfectly acceptable in most cases. I'm mostly just nitpicking at this point.

And thanks for your time, I never get this level of interaction with devs anywhere else.

[Reshy]

It makes the occasional mistake, but then it's supposed to - its reaction times are intentionally not perfect, but more in the human range.

Can we get a special 'Ace' level AI for playing with that has perfect reaction times for modding purposes?

[Gaizokubanou]

Mmk, came up a scenario where the frigate drops shields at odd times against a larger ship. Run a simulation with a Tempest (1x heavy blaster in the left slot, 1x graviton beam in the right slot, 1x cap, 10x vent, resistant flux conduits, hardened shields, extended shields) and send it against an Outdated Dominator. It nearly maxes out its flux quite frequently with the blaster and drops its shields sometimes when kinetic damage is incoming.

Wouldn't this be more of a problem with too much flux intensive weaponry for ship's chasis to handle?  Heavy blaster is bordering on too much flux even on destroyer chasis... And dropping shield against kinetic damage when flux is high is actually one of hallmark of AI improvement.  Before AI used to maintain shield all the time and it was so exploitable by spamming cheap kinetic weapons (like MGs) at the AI ships to overload-stunlock them to death.

[naufrago]

Mmk, came up a scenario where the frigate drops shields at odd times against a larger ship. Run a simulation with a Tempest (1x heavy blaster in the left slot, 1x graviton beam in the right slot, 1x cap, 10x vent, resistant flux conduits, hardened shields, extended shields) and send it against an Outdated Dominator. It nearly maxes out its flux quite frequently with the blaster and drops its shields sometimes when kinetic damage is incoming.

Wouldn't this be more of a problem with too much flux intensive weaponry for ship's chasis to handle?  Heavy blaster is bordering on too much flux even on destroyer chasis... And dropping shield against kinetic damage when flux is high is actually one of hallmark of AI improvement.  Before AI used to maintain shield all the time and it was so exploitable by spamming cheap kinetic weapons (like MGs) at the AI ships to overload-stunlock them to death.

It wouldn't be as much of a problem if the frigate used it more like a strike weapon than a spammable weapon. Just because it's possible for a ship to max out its flux by using a weapon doesn't mean it should.

[Gaizokubanou]

It wouldn't be as much of a problem if the frigate used it more like a strike weapon than a spammable weapon. Just because it's possible for a ship to max out its flux by using a weapon doesn't mean it should.

Hmm that's true since heavy blaster does come closer to strike weapon than anything else on frigates.  The second part is bit trickier to code in though... because it is very situational whether a ship should fire to max flux or hold fire and try to vent.  Generally against slower ships it would be better to pull out, but against faster or almost dying target it would be better to keep firing, but I'm not sure if the AI in this game can distinguish such situations (as in, not sure if the game even feature a code for the AI to take notice of such conditions).

[Thaago]

Something I've noticed: that overloaded enemies aren't seen as threats (or at least it seems this way to me) can lead to the occasional 'doh!' moment. In particular: a Hyperion overloads me in a Hammerhead and proceeds to rack up to full flux whacking me - but then can't teleport away when I wake up and lay into it at point blank - boom. Another is that I've seen ships get damaged by the death explosion of overloaded ships a decent number of times, but never really anymore from non-overloaded ships (the AI is great at it!).

I'm having trouble getting a clean way of reproducing this in a straight matchup, but if I find one I'll post it.

[Mattk50]

On the topic of ai annoyances, if you set a capture point and theres say, an enemy paragon between you and the capture point, and you have a bunch of fighters, the fighters will one after another attempt to get to the capture point by flying straight through it and all die unless you stop them. Its really annoying, the ai could really be smarter about that kind of thing and more self preserving, especially considering we rly shouldnt be microing our other fleet ships.

[Voyager I]

I do agree that the AI is prone to serious lapses in self-preservation, but they seem to be pretty good about taking care of themselves when they aren't under direct orders.  I have seen fighter wings very deliberately stay outside of PD range in engagements.  Perhaps commands are overriding their survival instincts?  They already have the ability to evaluate threats, so maybe they just need the ability to path around dangerous areas instead of making beelines, and maybe some general anti-suicide protocols so they can understand that "intercept this bomber wing" does not mean "follow this bomber wing unsupported into the heart of the enemy carrier fleet".


With regards to the Tempest;

First of all, the AI devotes an inordinate amount of effort to killing the Terminator Drone.  While it's certainly too strong to ignore, between its small size, phase cloak, and phase skip, getting rid of it is always a chore...and then the Tempest just pops out a new one.  Quite often, the better way to get rid of the drone is to kill the Tempest itself, given that they're a fragile unit with a small shield arc and one of the few hi-tech frigates that doesn't have an escape ability (other than being obnoxiously fast).  Don't take this as hate on the Tempest or his little buddy, because I think they make an awesome unit and the 20,000 credit pricetag is a pretty fair check on their usefulness; I just feel like the AI should be directing much more attention to getting rid of the Tempest itself, rather than its easily replaceable drone.

The Tempest itself does seem to get a little bit suicidal, sometimes.  I'm running three of them in my fleet right now, and by far the greatest cause of Tempest losses is their habit of hugging enemy ships that are about to explode and getting caught in the blast.  I'm currently giving them a Pulse Laser, PD Laser, and a single-shot Atropos with Advanced Optics, Auxiliary Thrusters, Resistant Flux Conduints, and a whole lotta vents.  Given that they're a fragile, evasive unit with 800 range on their primary weapon, I have no idea why they're doing that makes them get that close to the enemy.  I don't think they're trying to do bombing runs, because I had the same problem when I was using a single-shot Harpoon in place of the torpedo.  They also have this behavior when using a Heavy Blaster as their primary gun.


I've also noticed that enemy Phase Cloakers have a habit of popping out of phase for split seconds when surrounded by hostiles.  I'm not sure what their goal is, since they don't have time to vent anything.  They just end up increasing their flux with the activation cost and taking a bit of damage from any beam weapons that happen to be watching them.  This often happens in situations where they had no chance of escaping before being forced out of phase anyways.  The only guess I could venture is that the "I need to vent" and "I need to stay in phase" priorities aren't talking to each other correctly.

[naufrago]

I'm currently giving them a Pulse Laser, PD Laser, and a single-shot Atropos with Advanced Optics, Auxiliary Thrusters, Resistant Flux Conduints, and a whole lotta vents.  Given that they're a fragile, evasive unit with 800 range on their primary weapon, I have no idea why they're doing that makes them get that close to the enemy. 

Advanced Optics only increases the range of beam weapons. The Pulse Laser doesn't get the 200 range bonus. Just fyi.

[heskey30]

I do agree that the AI is prone to serious lapses in self-preservation, but they seem to be pretty good about taking care of themselves when they aren't under direct orders.  I have seen fighter wings very deliberately stay outside of PD range in engagements.  Perhaps commands are overriding their survival instincts?  They already have the ability to evaluate threats, so maybe they just need the ability to path around dangerous areas instead of making beelines, and maybe some general anti-suicide protocols so they can understand that "intercept this bomber wing" does not mean "follow this bomber wing unsupported into the heart of the enemy carrier fleet".

Well what if you want it to follow the bomber wing unsupported into the heart of the enemy carrier fleet? I think that should be up to the admiral - if you order intercept, be careful about it!
But about the capturing beacons AI, maybe there should be a threat calculation for capturing a beacon, and if the AI thinks you need more than a fighter wing to capture the beacon, it will send something bigger (if you have it).
Or maybe you could have a "second in command AI" warn you about situations like this if it detects them so you can do something about them.