Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: JDCollie on March 26, 2018, 01:15:30 PM
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I love commanding and controlling my flagship, but there are times when I want to give over full control of the weapons to the AI, be it briefly or for the duration of combat. My suggestion is a sixth "weapon group" that only appears in the combat HUD UI, and only contains the item "Full AI Fire Control". Pressing '6' would give control of all weapon groups over the the AI until the player switches to another weapon group. This would allow the player to fully focus on flying and shield orientation when needed.
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Don't really understand what you're proposing. Just set the weapons you want to be used by AI on autofire, if you're not very good at aiming, quickly enabling and disabling autofire works good if you have to keep your flux low. Having AI control every single weapon group and when to fire certain groups kinda defeats the whole point while flying a ship. You're meant to keep an eye out for shield positioning, weapons and speed at the same time. Otherwise it just takes the skill from it. I'm not saying how you should play the game, after all it's single-player, but we already have so much controls that this seems a bit needless in practice.
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Don't really understand what you're proposing. Just set the weapons you want to be used by AI on autofire, if you're not very good at aiming, quickly enabling and disabling autofire works good if you have to keep your flux low. Having AI control every single weapon group and when to fire certain groups kinda defeats the whole point while flying a ship. You're meant to keep an eye out for shield positioning, weapons and speed at the same time. Otherwise it just takes the skill from it. I'm not saying how you should play the game, after all it's single-player, but we already have so much controls that this seems a bit needless in practice.
The AI ignores the selected weapon group, even if it is set to autofire.
And I hate the argument that the player should be blocked from handing tasks off to the AI--some of us who are bad at real-time multitasking like to play too! I would actually press for the other direction--I would like to be able to give the AI control of omni shields, since it is difficult to finely control aiming of a hardpoint-dependent ship outside strafe mode, and you cannot rotate the shield and ship independently in strafe mode.
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The solution is to put a salamander on its own fire and just click every once and a while. But yes the ability to deselect all weapons would be nice.
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Would be helpful. Right now every build either has to have an non active weapon or a blank slot, which limits to weapons you can toggle for AI down to 4.
Not a huge thing but could be helpful too when accidentally forgot to bind weapon keys for a new ship.
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There are few ships, mostly weirdos like Apogee, where I would like the use all five groups, but if I do that, I have no way to force all groups to autofire. I am limited to four groups if I want to use 5 as global autofire.
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Uhh, guys?
The AI ignores the selected weapon group, even if it is set to autofire.
The solution is to put a salamander on its own fire and just click every once and a while. But yes the ability to deselect all weapons would be nice.
Would be helpful. Right now every build either has to have an non active weapon or a blank slot, which limits to weapons you can toggle for AI down to 4.
Guys?
You can already switch to a non-existent weapon group by pressing 6 (or higher), and it frees up all other weapon groups for the AI to use if they're on autofire. ;D
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Are you sure?
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Guys?
You can already switch to a non-existent weapon group by pressing 6 (or higher), and it frees up all other weapon groups for the AI to use if they're on autofire. ;D
Now that you mention it, I think I discovered that and then forgot it again... oops.
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Uhh, guys?
You can already switch to a non-existent weapon group by pressing 6 (or higher), and it frees up all other weapon groups for the AI to use if they're on autofire. ;D
If I have less than five weapon groups, selecting one of the empty action groups activates this behavior, but I am unable to get my ship to do this with five full weapon groups by pressing 6 or higher. There's also no keybinding for any weapon group higher than five. (Hence why I made the suggestion in the first place)
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for this to already be in the game, but at least for me, I'm not seeing it. (Is there a config option or something I need to enable?)
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You can already switch to a non-existent weapon group by pressing 6 (or higher), and it frees up all other weapon groups for the AI to use if they're on autofire. ;D
Pressing 6 does nothing for me. Weapon group that was manually selected before pressing 6 remains so after pressing 6.
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Having less than 5 weapon groups and putting all weapons on auto fire and then pressing 5 put all weapons in AI hands. Pressing 6 doesn't do a thing. Having all 5 weapon groups and pressing 6 doesen't do a thing. At least for me.
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The always empty weapon group 6 appears to be supported by the game, but Starsector lacks a keybind for switching to it. Setting the weapon group through the modding API seems to work perfectly.
Here's a tiny utility mod adding a keybind for it. (https://bitbucket.org/LazyWizard/prototypes/downloads/Empty%20Weapon%20Group%20Selector.zip) Pressing 6 will deselect all weapon groups.
Hopefully vanilla adds a keybind for the next version, because as others have said, handing over full weapons control to the AI can be very useful at times. :)
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... Weird. I'm sure I've unlocked all weapons by hitting 6 before. ??? I hope I didn't hallucinate that...
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Yeah, I could swear it worked in the past as well.
Maybe it was lost when the number of weapon groups was increased to 5?
Edit: booted into .52a, and apparently there have always been five weapon groups for as long as refitting has been a thing. I think I'm experiencing one of those weird "stepped into an alternate universe" moments. I could swear I remembered a lengthy forum thread from a few years back where people were requesting an extra weapon group and Alex replied saying he had added one.
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The always empty weapon group 6 appears to be supported by the game, but Starsector lacks a keybind for switching to it. Setting the weapon group through the modding API seems to work perfectly.
Here's a tiny utility mod adding a keybind for it. (https://bitbucket.org/LazyWizard/prototypes/downloads/Empty%20Weapon%20Group%20Selector.zip) Pressing 6 will deselect all weapon groups.
Hopefully vanilla adds a keybind for the next version, because as others have said, handing over full weapons control to the AI can be very useful at times. :)
You are a lovely individual, thanks again!
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I remember several threads about that very subject were people always claimed that selecting a "6th" weapon group would let all the others in AI control, and every time it turned out to be false. It guess it illustrates well how difficult it is to debunk common knowledge falsehoods.
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There were only 4 weapon groups at one point; then there were 5.
Hopefully vanilla adds a keybind for the next version, because as others have said, handing over full weapons control to the AI can be very useful at times. :)
I think this is just a case of a working failsafe for a non-existent group being selected.
As far as this vs what the OP is asking for, I think there's an important distinction here. Setting everything on autofire is not the same as giving the AI full weapon control. If you set everything on autofire and just focused on piloting/shields, it would perform extremely poorly - you'd flux out quickly, and it would dump all missiles instantly.
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It is for few ships like Odyssey (or Paragon) where it is a good idea to focus-fire the big guns at one target, but for times when the ship gets swarmed by lots of little things, it is useful to select an empty weapon group and let the AI use each turret (and all weapons) independently. This is only possible if at least one weapon group is empty. If all five groups are used, this is not possible. Because of this, it is imperative that group 5 is always empty for every ship. Enabling 6 allow all five groups to be used without killing option of AI control of all weapons.
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This makes me want to revisit building an Omni shield AI for players; that can’t be too hard, other than overriding the control inputs.
I think that’s a real need; the tank controls are just a bit too much when both shields and weapons are there, especially when using the mouse steering mode. I’ve lost count of how many times a Conquest build doesn’t work because the weapons can’t be focused because the shield needs to be elsewhere (for example, taking out a wounded Dominator that’s flanked while tanking hits from an Onslaught).
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This makes me want to revisit building an Omni shield AI for players; that can’t be too hard, other than overriding the control inputs.
I think that’s a real need; the tank controls are just a bit too much when both shields and weapons are there, especially when using the mouse steering mode. I’ve lost count of how many times a Conquest build doesn’t work because the weapons can’t be focused because the shield needs to be elsewhere (for example, taking out a wounded Dominator that’s flanked while tanking hits from an Onslaught).
Yeah, optimal player behavior here could be switching current group to auto (and selecting empty one, while targeting Dominator) -> use mouse to control shield -> disable auto on previous group, re-select it once crisis has passed. All while using tank controls.
Maybe doable as exercise in manual dexterity, but not something I can reasonably do in normal play... Though it looks like a rather nice idea for macro. Need to try it sometime later.
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As far as this vs what the OP is asking for, I think there's an important distinction here. Setting everything on autofire is not the same as giving the AI full weapon control. If you set everything on autofire and just focused on piloting/shields, it would perform extremely poorly - you'd flux out quickly, and it would dump all missiles instantly.
Having seen builds shared by various players... flux-neutral builds (or as close to flux-neutral as possible) remain popular. Omitting missiles to spend more OP on other things is not as common, but nowhere near unheard of.
I think they're generally dumb builds unless one's doing things like Grav Beam cheese, but if they don't want to utilize their flux bar offensively, that's their decision.
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I think they're generally dumb builds unless one's doing things like Grav Beam cheese, but if they don't want to utilize their flux bar offensively, that's their decision.
I think it is mostly for AI benefit. AI is terrible with flux-intensive loadouts. AI does much better with (close to) flux-neutral loadouts. The main battle is winning the flux war, and the AI cannot do it if it kills itself with horribly flux inefficient loadout.
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There were only 4 weapon groups at one point; then there were 5.
Hopefully vanilla adds a keybind for the next version, because as others have said, handing over full weapons control to the AI can be very useful at times. :)
I think this is just a case of a working failsafe for a non-existent group being selected.
As far as this vs what the OP is asking for, I think there's an important distinction here. Setting everything on autofire is not the same as giving the AI full weapon control. If you set everything on autofire and just focused on piloting/shields, it would perform extremely poorly - you'd flux out quickly, and it would dump all missiles instantly.
There are designs where I want it to do exactly that, but will pilot the ship because I want it to do that from a specific angle (and thus holding fire until the right moment is important). I've made alpha strike builds that I really wish I could just have on "hold fire" and "nuke everything" modes once I pilot them into position, since the extra click is pointless for such a build. Ditto on certain laser boats or other ships.
Most obnoxiously, carriers. I like piloting carriers like the mora, but especially early game when I can't afford the build I want, I usually wind up with weaponry I want to always fire. I still want to pilot the ship so it doesn't get to far away from the fleet and so it gets all my characters "piloted ship only" bonuses, but I really don't want to be forced to remember to spam fire that one turret or salamnader that I couldn't put on autofire.
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Having seen builds shared by various players... flux-neutral builds (or as close to flux-neutral as possible) remain popular. Omitting missiles to spend more OP on other things is not as common, but nowhere near unheard of.
Feels like that's also where you don't need all five groups nearly as much.
There are designs where I want it to do exactly that, but will pilot the ship because I want it to do that from a specific angle (and thus holding fire until the right moment is important). I've made alpha strike builds that I really wish I could just have on "hold fire" and "nuke everything" modes once I pilot them into position, since the extra click is pointless for such a build. Ditto on certain laser boats or other ships.
Most obnoxiously, carriers. I like piloting carriers like the mora, but especially early game when I can't afford the build I want, I usually wind up with weaponry I want to always fire. I still want to pilot the ship so it doesn't get to far away from the fleet and so it gets all my characters "piloted ship only" bonuses, but I really don't want to be forced to remember to spam fire that one turret or salamnader that I couldn't put on autofire.
Just to make sure you're aware: if you have 4 groups or less, you can select an empty group and all your other ones will autofire. For builds like you're talking about, this seems pretty much ideal.
That said, it occurred that there's a fairly easy workaround for this on my end, without adding new controls. Made it so that if you turn autofire on when a group is already selected, it will autofire. Re-selecting the group will enable the override. Basically, the most recent action - selecting the group to take manual control of, or turning autofire on - will take priority.
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What will eat up weapons groups is varying missiles, especially on ships with launchers all over the place. I easily reach five groups with missile boats. Apogee is another weird ship. Aside from two weird missile mounts, it also has the bow with badly mismatched mounts that is hard to match ranges with.
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That said, it occurred that there's a fairly easy workaround for this on my end, without adding new controls. Made it so that if you turn autofire on when a group is already selected, it will autofire. Re-selecting the group will enable the override. Basically, the most recent action - selecting the group to take manual control of, or turning autofire on - will take priority.
Awesome! A very fluid quality of life solution. (I appreciate taking the time to look into this)