Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Gothars]

The AI sometimes shows behavior that is completely reasonable in most cases, but there is this one tactic with this one ship that can  exploit it. This thread is to report those cases. If we help Alex to identify them that can only lead to a better AI and game experience.

Could you point out the specific tricks? Just fixing those up could be the easier way to go.

If you are not sure whether something fits in this thread or not, maybe you can ask yourself: "If I'd not know if I'm playing against a (intelligent) human or an AI, would this particular behavior convince me it's an AI?" Falling for the same trick again and again is very AI typical, and those tricks are what we are looking for here.

Please keep discussions and spam to a minimum! Only post tricks or point out if something is just blatantly wrong.

I'll start:

- Dominator engages Burndrive to bridge the distance to my Medusa, I come to meet it in the middle and phase-skip to the side . Makes the engines an easy target.

- I notice that a ship uses a single Sabot  (works with some other missiles, too) when we brawl too soften up my shields. So I retreat briefly and vent and come back to take a second sabot. I can easily repeat that until the missiles are (nearly) depleted and only start the real fight then.
The same goes for low ammunition weapons (AM-blaster, Gauss).

- I fly a ship with no rear weapons equipped but a high turn speed (tried with Medusa+aux thruster). I turn my rear to the enemy (Mule) and he drops shields. Then I quickly turn and can fire my strike weapons before the enemy brings up his shields again.


I know there are many more of this tricks out there, so bring them on





 

[Alex]

Thank you! I heartily endorse this thread and will be keeping an eye on it.

[ThePinkPanzer]

I will switch to my back weapons, and the ship will assume my front is safe and fly there without shields. Allowing for me to quickly activate the front cannons and blow them away.

[Gothars]

AI Phase ships do not seem to consider taking armor damage a viable option. If I control a Doom Vs another Doom, all I have to do is stay close to the enemy while unphased. It will unphase for a split second, fire 2 harmless pulse laser shots and cloak again. That will continue until it overloads, where my Reaper grant him a quick end. This behavior is entirely predictable and thus very boring to fight against.

The AI tactic makes actually sense for strike weapons like the AM-Blaster on the phase frigates.


BTW I noticed that an support Lasher will fire all 6 Harpoons at an unphased Doom in perfect condition every time. As if it would consider it overloaded or something.

[Alex]

Good stuff.

BTW I noticed that an support Lasher will fire all 6 Harpoons at an unphased Doom in perfect condition every time. As if it would consider it overloaded or something.

Oh, that's got to be a bug. Must be considering the Doom to be "shieldless"... which it is, but yeah. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Histidine]

AI controlled phase cloak ships like to uncloak when out of range of my autofire weapons, allowing them to vent. Conversely, they cloak when a shot is about to hit them.

I sometimes exploit this by firing single shots (generally the Onslaught TPC, although this probably works with almost any long-range rapid-fire weapon) at them to make them recloak, causing their hard flux to continue building up. Eventually they overload and I can kill them easily.

Not sure how much can be done about this, since if you go too far in the other direction the phase cloaking ships could end up taking hits that they really can't afford to and die as a result.

[BillyRueben]

Isn't that exactly what you are supposed to do against phase ships? The only way to kill them is force them to overload (or burst them before they can phase, which doesn't happen often).

[naufrago]

Isn't that exactly what you are supposed to do against phase ships? The only way to kill them is force them to overload (or burst them before they can phase, which doesn't happen often).

It's actually quite possible to time your shots to hit them the instant they become tangible after unphasing, which happens often enough. You can kill phase frigates pretty quickly with 2-3 shots from a heavy blaster that way (one shot each time it unphases). Even the Doom dies pretty quickly to that, but I'm not sure I'd call it an exploit since the window where you can hit them is so tiny (requires good reactions + good timing).

[nohintofsarcasm]

Well if I interpret this list as "things you can do that the enemy can't" then here is mine:

1) Using disabled ships and to a lesser extent asteroids as cover when you strafe around.

2) While flying an Omen - use the EMP Emitter on a group of pilums coming at you, strafe out of their path and see them blowing up the big ship behind you. Bonus points if you can do it with Harpoons.

3) When facing phase ships and you don't have a speed advantage I would recommend manually fire at them continuously with lasers, at greater range you can't hurt them reliably with anything else if they just do their phase in-fire-phase out-get out of range-vent-get into range-phase out and repeat routine.

4) Shield bash!

5) Firing from point blank to compensate for poor accuracy and/or slow projectiles.

6) Manually overriding my PD weapons to fire at the fighters instead of their missiles.

7) Lure fighter wings away before I engage them so it takes longer time for them to return to their carrier.

8) When I have ships I don't want to fight with but they get automatically deployed I put a Defend or Recon order in a bottom corner, that keeps them safe. (An arguably better trick is to have too few crew members to handle those ships).

9) When facing lots of fighters I focus fire them down a wing at a time rather than randomly as the AI does.

I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of right now.

[Gothars]

Well if I interpret this list as "things you can do that the enemy can't" then here is mine:

Hey nohint,
thanks for sharing those (I like the Omen missile trick) but that's not really what the thread is about. There are many things the player can do that the AI cannot, but most are not exploitable.
If you are not sure whether something fits in this thread or not, maybe you can ask yourself: "If I'd not know if I'm playing against a (intelligent) human or an AI, would this particular behavior convince me it's an AI?" Falling for the same trick again and again is very AI typical, and those tricks are what we are looking for here.

[Reshy]

AI Phase ships do not seem to consider taking armor damage a viable option. If I control a Doom Vs another Doom, all I have to do is stay close to the enemy while unphased. It will unphase for a split second, fire 2 harmless pulse laser shots and cloak again. That will continue until it overloads, where my Reaper grant him a quick end. This behavior is entirely predictable and thus very boring to fight against.

This also makes mod ships that lack shields very weak.

[Gothars]

This trick doesn't help with winning, but it makes the AI look bad anyway: you can hide in a corner of the map with your ship an never be found. I tried both lower corners, once in "Dire Straits" and once in the simulator. Maybe tweak the search behavior a bit?

[firstattak1]

AI Phase ships have the problem of sitting in phase not wanting to take any damage from anything, making it easy to shoot, they phase, unphase shoot, phase unphase shoot, and they overload and get killed. You could fix this by allowing them to take minor damage from beams and low damage weapons, and phase when missles are afoot. And maybe if they are constantly harassed they flee for a short time to vent.

Opps sorry didnt see this posted by Gothers, well i have some fixes for you if you need them alex.

[firstattak1]

Well if I interpret this list as "things you can do that the enemy can't" then here is mine:

1) Using disabled ships and to a lesser extent asteroids as cover when you strafe around.
I have one instance of this, quite inexpected actually (not sure if the AI did this on purpose) I just killed a buffolo and the ship close by started to run away so it used the cover of its fallen mate to escape. I did manage to kill him but i found it very smart of him to do that.

4) Shield bash!
OH! now this i have gotten many times at my doom. Very anoying indeed. Ussualy those this that engine charge thing (dont know the name sorry) and they pull up there shield and bam! they dont seem to do it on purpose but it hasnt just happened once.

[Gothars]

Vigilance vs. Hound: Normally the Hound is damn hard to hit with the pulse laser, always dodging to the sides, circling me. But when I turn my tail, he appears to be almost locked on my 6 o'clock position. The hit ratio is suddenly 80% and the fight is over three times as fast.