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[arcibalde]

I was testing some Mule variants and i noticed something strange. My Mule got 1x Heavy Burst Laser, 2x small rail gun (WS on back was empty) and 2x Harpoon MRM (set to alternate), Hardened Shield hullmod and 11x vents.  

I turned AI pilot on in simulation and let my Mule fight vanilla Mule. Only time when my Mule launch harpoon on enemy was once, when enemy was overloaded and very close (they was maybe 1 ship apart from each other). My Mule did overload vanilla Mule couple of times and they was 2-5 ship apart from each other but it didn't shoot harpoon on it.
Here is picture:
It reached full flux and start venting but my Mule didn't shoot at it.

Spoiler

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Her it is again enemy is venting full flux and my Mule ain't shooting harpoons:

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[Gothars]

That's venting, not an overload. Maybe if the time to vent was < the time the harpoons would need to hit?

[arcibalde]

That's venting, not an overload.

Yes that was venting I didn't take pic of overloading.

Maybe if the time to vent was < the time the harpoons would need to hit?

That's what I thought but no, it vent 8 sec. It's enough time for harpoon to fly over.



It shoot harpoons but only when 2 ships are really close. Like, 1 ship apart.
If nothing else this can be easily reproduced, just make Mule like mine go in simulation and let it fight vanilla Mule.

[Alex]

Thank you - there was indeed a bug in that logic. It was properly recognizing that it had the time to land a hit, but still thought the enemy ship could raise shields, even though it was venting/overloaded - oops. It is now fixed.

Tested a bit with the configuration you posted - seems to do a good job of landing missile hits. Still a bit conservative, but will generally use ~4-6 missiles over the course of the entire fight, and always seems to land hits when it does fire.

Of course, all this does is highlight the need to be more cautious about venting

[arcibalde]

Was that connected with Mule, AI or Harpoon? I mean, will it happen with Harpoon missiles on any other ship? I didn't check Harpoon thingy with any other ship. Vanilla Mule didn't hesitate to shoot it's missiles (i think it was salamanders) they was all over the place so i guess it's harpoon thingy

Well, i have to make new variants for all ships (this modding is so damn addictive) so i will testing lot of ships and if i come across something like that ill report it back

[Alex]

It was related to how the AI evaluated high-explosive, limited-ammo missiles. So, Harpoon racks and Reapers, in vanilla.

[arcibalde]

This Enforcer build:

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against vanilla Assault Enforcer variant. My Enforcer didn't shoot Reapers to overloaded vanilla Enforcer. He waited for overload to stop and then he shoot one Reaper. That Reaper was shredded before he was able to hit target. They was 2 ship (length) apart, from start overloading till it ends.

I guess that is still same bug right? I just do not get it why he chooses to shoot torpedo when overload of enemy was finished?

[Alex]

Well, I can't speak to what the AI was thinking in any particular instance. It considers a lot of factors, and there's also some unpredictability thrown in.

Strike weapons are also treated differently because despite not being optimal against shields, they nonetheless can be very effective against them. Firing off a Reaper against a shielded target is perfectly OK as far as the AI is concerned. Depending on some other circumstances, including (but not limited to) the relative motion of the ships, which affects how likely it thinks it is to land a hit.

[arcibalde]

Firing off a Reaper against a shielded target is perfectly OK as far as the AI is concerned. Depending on some other circumstances, including (but not limited to) the relative motion of the ships, which affects how likely it thinks it is to land a hit.

Separated by two ship lengths facing frontally each other. The moment overload ended he fired reaper. Just saying. If it's in nature of AI to do little "hiccups", that's fine with me, people crack under pressure, something go wrong (Murphy love us all:)), there is uncountable number of reasons why is something happening that shouldn't be. I just do not want some nasty little bug to go under radar

[Alex]

Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to point stuff out. Made some nice improvements because of that in the last few days

I'm just saying that if it's a one-time occurrence, there's not much I can do to look at it. Unlike the case where it was refusing to fire Harpoons, which was easily reproducible in that 1-1.

The AI does have some delay built-in to certain actions - so in some cases, it's possible it didn't do something because it simply didn't react in time. For that Reaper shot, it's possible it just missed the overload window - either because it didn't react in time or didn't feel the shot was lined up well enough. Then fired after the overload ended because it was a better shot - after all, if you miss an overloaded ship altogether, that's even worse than hitting a shield. Or it could be something else.