Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: SonnaBanana on September 30, 2019, 09:50:37 AM
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In your opinion, what are things AI is good and bad at?
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AI is good for controlling carriers, bad at controlling ships with safety override unless you set the proper fleet aggressiveness, and absolutely terrible at controlling phase ships. Everything else it is pretty average.
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Ai works best with simple, idiot-proof ships. Some examples:
Good:
As others said, carriers are the best case. Just keep yourself away, sic your fighters at something and use offensive ship system on cooldown if present. Not that AI does anything particularly smart, carriers just don't have to be as smart as other ships to be effective.
Decent:
Falcons and Eagles: good range and speed, decent firepower. Very easy to use mobility system on a short cooldown (so that using it at wrong time is not punished harshly).
Hammerhead is decent hull and AAF is straightforward buff on short cooldown.
Ok:
Conquest has same easy to use maneuvering jets system and decent base stats, but being broadside complicates things.
Paragon is nothing to write home about how AI pilots it, but being the biggest brick of stats around helps a lot anyway.
Bad:
Medusa's skimmer is very flexible system, but hard to master. Up to 3 slowly replenishing charges that need to be used at exactly right opportunities. Easy to waste for no gain and can even backfire if you phase into shots.
Very Bad:
AI phase frigates can defeat front shielded ships, but only in sterile lab conditions without fighters and missiles to distract them. In real fleet engagements they tend to faff around until they CR out. In comparison, chain deployed player piloted phase frigates can single-handedly win almost any fight, so piloting quality gap is immense here.
Horrible:
Hyperion is single worst piloted ship by AI in whole game - it's all about tricky usage of teleport system, which AI is absolutely incapable of.
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The Ai isn't that bad at controlling phase ships and Hyperion. If they manage to find themselves accidently isolating the opponent ship, they do go round the rear and shoot at it. It's just that they are too conservative and don't have any real way to know whether it is entirely safe to do so or not.
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Doom is also rather forgiving to use.
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The Ai isn't that bad at controlling phase ships and Hyperion. If they manage to find themselves accidently isolating the opponent ship, they do go round the rear and shoot at it. It's just that they are too conservative and don't have any real way to know whether it is entirely safe to do so or not.
Player-piloted Hyperion can trivially bypass omni-shields and is pretty much invulnerable as long as CR lasts. The only reasons it's not very good in the end are extremely short CR time and limited dps - it just doesn't do enough until it runs out of CR, compared to Afflictor.
AI-piloted Hyperion may occasionally get behind a front shielded enemy... Just doesn't come anywhere close to it's potential.
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The Ai isn't that bad at controlling phase ships and Hyperion. If they manage to find themselves accidently isolating the opponent ship, they do go round the rear and shoot at it. It's just that they are too conservative and don't have any real way to know whether it is entirely safe to do so or not.
What are you talking about? The AI is absolutely abysmal at controlling either of those. A Hyperion given to the AI will die in record time, and phase ships get so distracted by missiles they don't do anything at all. Check out the videos in this thread to see how bad Phase Ship AI is http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16676.msg264558#msg264558
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AI Phase ships do fine as long as you don't give them all missiles. If it was 2 Light Assault Guns and 2 Atropos or similar it would had done perfectly fine, destroying the Eagle with ease. It had no problem finding and sticking to the rear of the Eagle.
Phase ships do seem reluctant to fire with explosive missiles, possibly because it can't tell where the missile will land on the armour or shield, or it thinks it will be caught in the blast. (As a side note, when a capital explodes, the explosion is obscenely huge; beyond antimatter blaster range. Normally it doesn't matter since if a shield is up the explosion does nothing to shields, but phase ships have no shields.)
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If you are uber pro, you can enter cloak before the AMB projectile hits the capital though, helps if you don't get that skill that makes projectiles faster.
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The AI is in general very good at flicking shields on/off to maximise damage absorbtion. It also avoids being overloaded quite well.
On the downside it's not quite aggressive enough in key situations and will fall back when a small push could finish off the enemy ship.
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If you are uber pro, you can enter cloak before the AMB projectile hits the capital though, helps if you don't get that skill that makes projectiles faster.
Only works against front shields. To bypass omni shield you need cloak's speed boost, so you must shoot on unphase.
To kill omni-shielded capital safely you need to fire at farthest from center corner of target ship (front or rear of Conquest, but never it's sides/rear ears of Paragon/etc), from max range and on a get-away course as you unphase. Even then it's razor-thin margin.
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The AI is very good at flicking shields on and off to avoid damage.
The AI is very good at flicking shields on and off to take damage.
The AI giveth and the AI taketh away.
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rear ears of Paragon
Can't unsee. Thanks.
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In my experience, phase skimmers are awesome for the AI. While it will waste initial charges on going in, it is very good at jumping in and out of an existing fight (something it likes to try anyway, even with slower ships). If your Medusa or Wolf dies a lot, you have not given it a good shield setup. Those are high-tech shields, meaning they really can not armor tank, and should never be required to.
Even more general, the AI can use most ships as long as they are overbuilt in terms of defense. If you drop caps and vents, give it upgraded armor (combined with a specialist officer). You can only skip both on dedicated carriers.
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I thought the A.I. was good at piloting the Hammerhead. Then in a huge one-sided battle, the A.I. thought it would be a good idea to take one of my hammerheads to the edge of the map despite orders to stay and defend a control point, where it got surrounded and quickly wiped out by a huge number of pirates.
This happened two more times. I was furious.
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I thought the A.I. was good at piloting the Hammerhead. Then in a huge one-sided battle, the A.I. thought it would be a good idea to take one of my hammerheads to the edge of the map despite orders to stay and defend a control point, where it got surrounded and quickly wiped out by a huge number of pirates.
This happened two more times. I was furious.
That's not specific to Hammerhead. AI ships easily allow themselves to be isolated and ganked, though of course slower ships are in more danger.
Tying up your fleet together with defend orders helps.
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They're very good at dumping harpoons into an overloaded target and flickering shields. Beyond that i've found it tends to do best if you use loadouts like the default hammerhead.
A low flux flux building weapon group (railguns), a shield down punishment group (motars/assault chainguns), PD (lasers), and missiles of choice.
Also when in doubt i'll usually just jack up their flux stats as it gives the AI more room to play with.
If you want PD support that's usually pretty easy since you can do some beams with ITU + optics or something with LMG's/HMG's/Flak + turret gyros and have it escort your target. I've also started to like throwing a converted hanger + interceptors on these kinds of ships as interceptors only cost 18 OP total then and can help cover a ship when things get crowded.
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I've also found that escort orders are a lot better than point orders (waypoint or control) for keeping ships together. I windup up with a sort of daisy chain of escorts so that my ships stay mostly together and no one winds up off and isolated, unless I specifically think that's ok (destroyers/frigates in their own pack so they can be more mobile).
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Others have all made great points, but I'll add that in general in my experience the AI is both good and bad at kiting -- it seems like a binary where ~90% of the time, a fast ship will decide to kite slower ones, diving in for attacks and then retreating to vent/dissipate... But sometimes the AI seems to be like "eh f*** it" and flies a super fast ship right into the center of the enemy fleet. This, from the same ship with the same build and officer, in subsequent battles against the same basic enemy (e.g. pirates or Remnant).
It also tends to waste missiles on low value targets, or use too many/too few based on the defenses of a given target (like launching tons of sabots vs a frigate, or dropping reapers on a 0% flux Atlas Mk II. It's superhuman at aiming missiles though.
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At running away abandonig other friendly vessels to their doom. Also at exposing engines to bomber strikes. This is good parts. Bad parts - if it can choose worst target for each weapon it will 101%.
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The AI is insanely good at micromanaging shields. When receiving fire from a single enemy ship it will sometimes cherry pick HE projectiles in middle of the salvo while letting kinetic projectiles hit the armour. A ship with omni-shield can POP several missiles in a fraction of second by turning the shield on just for an instant to receive the impact.
Of course there are also moment where the AI will systematically fail to use its shields effectively and when facing fire from multiple opponents its much more likely to make mistakes (although missiles still rarely get through shields if the AI has flux left). I think it would be nice if the AI was a bit more unpredictable and prone to "human error" when it comes to stuff like this.
The biggest weakness of the AI in my opinion is the inability to recognize good opportunities for damaging and finishing opponents. The AI will often reverse away from an enemy that is venting flux or near flux cap even when they have good flux situation or missiles and finishing the opponent would have been a trivial matter.
Overall I think the AI is very good and fairly natural as it is. Predictability aka lack of random errors and some systematic errors are its biggest weakness.
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A non-obvious problem I found with AI phase ships is that an afflictor would for example sit in the exact middle of an enemy ship for some time, especially when that ship is surrounded by other ships. It just seems to "fall" into the centre. Also Shades would activate EMP emitter against missiles, but then immediately phase afterwards to make itself invulnerable to missiles, even when the EMP emitter would had made it safe, making activating it pointless.
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Yay first post.
I've only played about 20-30hrs but I've found that Wolves are quite good at one thing in a large scale battle. Stalling the enemy. For reference my first cap was a conquest(and I love it) and the amount of times I've won fights not cause wolves have killed anything but just by being a pain and holding the enemy fleet still whilst I slowly broadside theirs from left to right is pretty damn often. On the flip side I've only once seen an AI Legion NOT die in an even fleet fight.
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The AI does what AIs usually do: fight and die. Ships with turreted weapons, replenishing missiles like the pilum or salamander, and ships with strong flux stats and wide shields are good for your fleet AI. Any ships that require timing to fire weapons at full effectiveness will be lost on the AI; it just doesn't get them. Phase ships in my experience love to just wobble around in phase space thumbing their nose at the enemy until their flux is full..and then die. Any cooldowns that are best saved for any reason are wasted; the AI burns everything it can at the first opportunity. Ever start a battle with a row of ships that have movement abilities? All their charges are gone before first contact, leaving me double facepalming as they get surrounded and stuck. God help you if you use reapers and one of your officers decides NOW is the best time to dodge in front your ship to PrOtEcT yOoOoOoOu! Boom. I swear to god they wait for it too. It's the reason I stopped using torpedoes and they still try their damndest to get in front of my guns and beams.
The best use I've found for the fleet AI is tanks. Heavy, durable, well-shielded ships with tons of point defense so they can just stride up to the enemy, go "OOGA BOOGA," float off to a corner somewhere and stick their chest out without dying while I alpha strike the dog$#*^ out of the enemy's juiciest targets. It's also why I always give my officers defensive skills over any sort of weapon enhancements. Anyone can flicker a shield; the AI can't fight itself worth a damn.
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Any ships that require timing to fire weapons at full effectiveness will be lost on the AI;
Yeah, Beam Paragons are better with HIL instead of Tach Lance under control, AI doesn't time the Tachyons to fire when enemy shields are down.
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Not that I'd trust a paragon to the AI...but if I did, I'd just give it four autopulse lasers with extended mags. It doesn't HAVE to time anything; it just gets a target in its sights and unloads. If it doesn't kill the target outright it WILL bring their shields down for me to alpha strike it.
Unless it's maybe another paragon...
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Autopulse on the turrets are really easily distracted... watching a Paragon unleash 45 rounds of autopulse against a distant fighter and missing is depressing. Autopulse on the front is good though!
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Autopulse on the turrets are really easily distracted... watching a Paragon unleash 45 rounds of autopulse against a distant fighter and missing is depressing. Autopulse on the front is good though!
That weapon probably just needs a STRIKE, USE_VS_FRIGATES tag added to it.
(At the risk of sounding like a broken record :P )
I have been saying for a while now that I think alpha strike weapons are wasted on fighters too much just in general. I really think it's one of those things the AI will never get right because the potential variance of each situation is stacked so heavily toward a pendulum of "oh that was nice!" and "why on earth did it do that?!" response from the player. The AI needs to be more willing to rely on a binary behavior between weapon types because that is easier for the AI to grasp and create a "works in all situations" kind of feel. You know what you will get out of it almost no matter the context and so you, as the player, can plan your strategies reliably around expected results. Otherwise there are too many specific situations where it feels off or even, at worst, a wasted opportunity that can invoke frustration.
Trying to have the AI be really smart about strike weapons often makes it seem dumb instead (when it really isn't).
(I do like the idea of hybrids, but on the AI level hybrid weapons need their own tag. That tag should operate like current strike weapons and strike weapons just simply shouldn't be used on fighters at all imo. The player can, of course, and that in-and-of-itself is fine. That's one of the reasons we are all "hotshot pilots" as players. We do things standard pilots would never do.)
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Could work like BurstPD behavior - only use few top charges when auto-firing against a fighter, dump all against serious targets.
Autopulse has enough tracking to be serious threat to fighters, and outright ignoring them is more likely to just acerbate situation with AI fleets getting steamrolled by carrier spam.
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Could work like BurstPD behavior - only use few top charges when auto-firing against a fighter, dump all against serious targets.
Autopulse has enough tracking to be serious threat to fighters, and outright ignoring them is more likely to just acerbate situation with AI fleets getting steamrolled by carrier spam.
I agree, I was more talking about weapons like the AM blaster or really any low ammo/high flux impulse weapons. Autopulse would be one of those hybrid candidates for me.
The problem with carrier spam is a little more complex than just one weapon though, so idk if it would be ideal to base any fixes or design considerations around weapons other than maybe PD/Anti-Fighter dedicated weapons. Imo, its better to tackle that issue at the root. A big part of that root to me is how the AI considers fighters tactically. They get too distracted and focused on them and it leads to other problems that snowball into crushing defeats at times.
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Could work like BurstPD behavior - only use few top charges when auto-firing against a fighter, dump all against serious targets.
Autopulse has enough tracking to be serious threat to fighters, and outright ignoring them is more likely to just acerbate situation with AI fleets getting steamrolled by carrier spam.
Thats a really great idea!