Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Deshara on May 31, 2021, 11:32:26 PM

Title: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on May 31, 2021, 11:32:26 PM
is that your fleet's AI is unplayably timid. Anyone else notice this? I have a fleet entirely of reckless & aggressive officers & I can't get them to engage an enemy fleet in a fair fight. It's coming up in basically every combat encounter that I have that I have to manually order my fleet to engage every enemy 1 at a time, which Alex has specifically made (with the command points mechanic) not doable.
Heres a quick screenshot of what im talking about.
https://imgur.com/a/bBAVrrE

1 vigilance with a tac laser is keeping 1 cruiser with an ion & kinetic beam and 2 tac lasers & missiles and 1 destroyer with dual heavy burst lasers & missiles at bay at 2k range. Notice that neither ship is moving towards an enemy??? One of them has a reckless officer, the other aggressive. Yes, I'm using mods, but Im p sure none of them affect the AI, and I get the same problem in vanilla. This is an evenly matched battle in theory bc its 1 cruiser & 1 destroyer plus frigates vs 1 cruiser & 1 destroyer plus frigates, but in actual practice its 3 frigates vs ^ bc more than half of my fleet (if u count a destroyer as 2 frigates & a cruiser as 3) is being knocked out of the fight by the friendly AI just being borked & refusing to fight anyone for no discernible reason.
or, later, having manually cleared out all of the enemy's fleet & having nothing but an enemy cruiser with 4 tac lasers left, I order my entire fleet to eliminate the cruiser and this is what they do
https://imgur.com/a/oBXBHoy
nobody's doing any damage, or taking any (except for my flagship), nobody's advancing. It might look like they are trying to catch up to the enemy but just before I took that screen all of my ships were nearly in range at 1k and just backed away from the cruiser to 2k range with 0 flux. My flagship is literally running out of CR & about to start breaking down LITERALLY WAITING FOR MY FLEET TO SHOOT AT HIM
In fact! (I tried to take a screenshot before exiting the game to reload a save to try this fight again which I've been doing on repeat for at least the last 2 hours but it didnt fire this time so I didnt get it), since that last screen shot where my flagship is at 40% CR & waiting for my cruiser destroyer & brawler to engage the enemy cruiser, I literally hit 0% CR while waiting & my 7 hammers went unused bc my reckless brawler sat at 2k range & just watched me literally age to death. Its absurd

Every battle is like this.

My first non-frigate battle this release (before I modded) was joining an ally fleet defending against a tritach drone swarm fleet of an Astral & a couple of shepards. I had my HVD brawler & my heavy torpedo drover flagship go after the enemy Astral, if I tanked for my brawler until it cracked the Astral's shield I could hammer it into dust, and then once it was nuked the rest of the battle would be a cake-walk & I spent like a solid 5 hours trying to get my brawler to shoot the Astral. I can force it to get near range of the Astral by making it escort me, but at basically no point was I able to get it to fire at the Astral more than once before the Brawler flipped around & presented its unshielded backside to the Astral to destroy.
Even when the Astral's wasps (which are such little of a threat + so incapable of the Brawler to deal with anyway that it shouldn't even be acknowledging them if there are either enemy or ally ships nearby) were elsewhere bc they were focused my ally fleet, the Brawler refused to shoot at it and would just sit inside the range of the Astral's guns until it or I died having done 0 shield damage to it.

I don't get it. The game definitely didn't have this problem back in 0.6. Back then I tested the AI heavily at the time bc I was impressed with it & remember noting explicitly that the battle AI was more or less point-perfect in how it handled battles, how when outmatched the AI would do its best to get in what it could get in before dying & give its allies a shot at taking down their opponent (I spent literally hours testing an enemy lasher against varying fleet comps to test the AI).
Now my fleet REFUSES to fight -- even literally a reckless cruiser and an aggressive destroyer will not engage a vigilance.

I get that the reason its been changed to be this way since the procgen was added to the game was to allow AI fleets to last longer while traveling around the overworld, give them more self-preservation instinct, bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbuuut, it seems to be to such an extent that its making the game nearly unplayable for me bc MY ai does not respect what battles I want to fight. It feels like, there's no point in giving me a choice what battles to engage or not engage in bc my fleet AI is going to decide for me whether the battle will be possible or not. Might as well just have the game select battles on my behalf, not even waste my time asking me. It feels like I'm the second in command in my own fleet. If they did this in an IRL military they'd get a pistol bullet to the back of the head for dereliction of duty.

I just don't find my #1 enemy in every engagement being my own reckless officers refusing to engage unless I manually order eliminate on every enemy one at a time until I run out of command points then watching my ships die from CR loss as they refuse to engage while I wait for a point to replenish to be fun. At this point I don't know that I'm gonna reinstall for 1.0, bc the game that I love died after 0.7

edit: and yeah, just double checked, no mods that change the AI. https://imgur.com/a/0F9yXfE
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Histidine on June 01, 2021, 12:03:14 AM
Post the save before the battle, if you still have it. (Both for Alex to have an easy repro case, and because I want to try this battle myself out of idle curiosity)

(If the issue turns out to be that the AI breaks if it doesn't have any hard flux sources, I will be simultaneously annoyed and amused)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: ElPresidente on June 01, 2021, 12:37:57 AM
I second the Command Point annoyance.

You can't even order your low CR ship to retreat without CP, and in large battle you can have several ships get below 30 at the same time. And you have to order them to retreat INDIVIDUALLY! You cannot just select 5 ships with low CP and hit retreat - no, you have to spend 5 command points!

This is garbage!
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Histidine on June 01, 2021, 01:59:14 AM
You can't even order your low CR ship to retreat without CP, and in large battle you can have several ships get below 30 at the same time. And you have to order them to retreat INDIVIDUALLY! You cannot just select 5 ships with low CP and hit retreat - no, you have to spend 5 command points!
You can retreat any number of ships for just one CP, additional retreats don't cost any points as long as you haven't closed the map and the "command frequency open" bar in the top-right hasn't run out. (IIRC this also works with assigning multiple ships to a single order)

Although this doesn't help if a bunch of ships need to retreat at different times, and it's annoying having to spend a CP again if you forgot to issue an order before closing the map.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 01, 2021, 02:06:32 AM
Post the save before the battle, if you still have it. (Both for Alex to have an easy repro case, and because I want to try this battle myself out of idle curiosity)

(If the issue turns out to be that the AI breaks if it doesn't have any hard flux sources, I will be simultaneously annoyed and amused)

i dont have it -- autosave ate it, but I'm having the exact same issue with an ambush on a mercantile convoy thats passing by. Just turn off sustained burn & head to the nearby jump point & attack it when it comes to u & you'll see. I've compressed my save file & mods to a 7zip, & just double checked in the game that thats the right save. Now I just have to figure out how to get it onto your hard drive, as this site wont let me upload it (too big) & any file sharing site that doesn't want my social security card is giving me an error. Media fire is working but it's ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssslow, so Im gonna leave it uploading & go to bed. Its at 10% rn, just gonna drop the link now https://www.mediafire.com/file/3vlygjsmghowj0p/test_save.7z/file

On a whim, I took ur advice & not only did I put high scatter amp on all my beam ships but also stripped their missiles (& eccm), and while taking the salamanders off of my brawler turned it into a steely-eyed murderer that hard-burned into the face of the nearest enemy and then held the trigger down until he or they were dead (as he should), the cruiser paired off with a lone Mule & sat in its mauler range outside of its own gun range & ate shells until it was half-dead & the destroyer did the same thing with a hound.
Which doesnt surprise me. As I said in my OP, I had the same issue when I was being wingman'd by a brawler with HVD's, and I had the same issue in 8.0 year(s?) ago when I wasnt trying to run high tech like I am now
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Snrasha on June 01, 2021, 02:09:53 AM
Weird, because for my part, the AI work properly. A aggressive or reckless will never go 1 v 10, this is logic. But often i got some reckless ship which go very far of the battle for take 5/6 ships with him for than my battle is more easy.
Depends often of the ship too. A ship with low range weapon and a shipsystem for engage will be more aggressive but never if the ennemi got thunder wing and some rocket.
And i do not talk about fearless AI, they are very aggressive and ignore the danger.

Maybe Starsector lack of a wiki which explain what do each AI and what they will really do for some case. My Reckless Tempest will always focus on easy target or attack capital when i attack on the other side. Maybe they work less if you do not play with them. (Also i never give orders to them except when the battle is near the end and i need some focus)

I play Vanilla.


Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 01, 2021, 02:10:24 AM
I secound what is in the post about the AI. They always too timid during fleet battles, and you really dont have enough CP to manually order eliminate for every enemy ship.
In the case of station fights its the opposite every one of them, even frigates, decide that they can 1v1 a module so they get up to its face, literraly, even my dominators with hellbore cannons get up to 0 range thus blocking eachother and getting into danger, instead of firing from a safer distance.
Please please change the AI, or give more direct control to the player and more CP.
Or if none of these is possible at least incorporate a more advanced tutorial that tells you in depht about commands and what they do, how to use them.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: michail on June 01, 2021, 04:03:54 AM
This might be just a bias on my part, because I've played much more in this update than the previous and have simply seen more battles, but the AI does seem too conservative at times (I swear I've never yelled "Move you worthless cowards" at my fleet, nonono). It's somewhat consistent, the latest episode I remember was a dozen of my frigates with a few destroyers pursuing a cruiser with virtually no escort by maintaining a perfect semicircle of 1000+ radius around it. The only way to convince them that we do indeed outnumber and outgun the enemy was soloing the thing by yolo driving into it on my enforcer and unloading remaining reapers into its face. THEN they finally decided to attack and mopped up the remaining 3 frigates or so.

OTOH, the AI can also be actively suicidal on occasion and attempt to ram a station.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Megas on June 01, 2021, 04:20:25 AM
Ah, the cowardly AI that has scourged the game since 0.8a.  While the OP references the player side, having the enemy kite until heat death is annoying too.

Make AI macho (like in pre-0.8a releases) again!
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Linnis on June 01, 2021, 04:33:51 AM
Yes, they are more timid then before, but I have yet to come into one situation where I felt my ships were too timid outside of destroyers not wanting to fight Ventures, even then in that case its understandable because its classified as Cruiser. Overall the AI aggressiveness really is more focused on opportunistic behaviors.

In you case in the second screen shot, I bet you that ship your fighting is moving away from the rest of your fleet at 75su/s right? Add on top of its current zero hard flux. Then add on top that its back is not facing your AI ships. All those together means that your allies with make an cautious approach but not being able to engage because of the cruiser's kiting behaviour.

In this case you should use your head instead of your anger.

The best Strat that always works is to make your own ship's hard flux high to bait the enemy AI in trying to get killing blows on you. This works even in late game against much harder targets like redacted battleships.

The second way is to try to flank them so that their engine faces your teammates. When flanked, the AI really poops out trying to kite. And sometimes spin in circles being indecisive and ultimately taking hull damage even when no where near high flux. 1 phase/teleport frigate and 2 destroyers can kill an redacted battleship this way easily.

The 4th way is to have all your ships sit still, usually escort command is best. Then when the enemy gets far enough with zero flux they will turn to approach you, you fly PAST the enemy and and their inability to change their direction fast enough will force a fight with your ships on escort. Then you can cancel the order and your opportunistic allies will go ham on the enemy.


*****

In your first case its simple because your ships don't want to engage into escort formations. Try putting your own ships into escort formations as well and you will see them grow some balls as well.

Overall I like the AI now much better than before. Yes, they are more cautious now, but their behaviors are now more controllable. To me that's an overall improvement.




Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 01, 2021, 05:10:11 AM
In this case you should use your head instead of your anger.

The best Strat that always works is...

I really really had enough with this kind of comments. NO. JUST. NO. It is so infuriating seeing people trying to justify the unreasonable behavior of the AI. And its even more infuriating that they are trying to blame the player for it. That they just dont play "right", they "jUsT neEd tO UsE a BeTtEr sTrAt". NO. It should not be the players job to play according to specific rules, just to make the AI usefull, this is madness.
Stop pretending that the AI is flawless. It is not. This is an in development game. Things needs to be changed, and the most frquent complains is about the AI. It does stupid things We all know that the are reasons for that, but it needs to be changed regardless. There are countless examples of it. Is it timid? Yes, you agreed on it yourself. Does it have to be? NO. The AI should act reasonably regardless of player input! (and if this is impossible then give full contorl to the player, like in an RTS)

Quote
Yes, they are more cautious now, but their behaviors are now more controllable.

The second half of this statement is just a blatant lie. I never found it harder to make my ships obey my orders, and there are many many complains about the same thing all over the forum and on discord. Ships nowadays even disregard eliminate orders, and usually simply let enemy take control points.
Does it makes it better for you to pretend that everything is perfect, and give condescending replies to those who point out the problems?
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Grievous69 on June 01, 2021, 05:28:15 AM
I mean the flipside of this is AI taking risks and going in and then you'd get this exact same thread but with the opposite problem. I don't play this game because the AI is suicidal and keeps rushing in for no reason, somebody will always complain no matter what's the AI's "usual behaviour". I agree that passive AI is boring and annoying to fight against but it's even more annoying to lose half of your fleet because AI misjudged a scenario or two.

Before anyone says "hey can't we just have a middle ground?", I assure you that it's impossible to achieve that in a game which has sooooo many different factors in combat. One fight the AI plays like a coward, the other it's going nuts. Trying to "fix" this by making the AI just overall more aggressive won't really solve anything.

And btw you can set the default ship personality under doctrine settings, so your whole fleet can be aggressive or reckless if you want (apart from ships which have officers of course). Lots of people miss this so it's worth mentioning.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Megas on June 01, 2021, 05:40:22 AM
... and usually simply let enemy take control points.
Yes.  I can tell my whole fleet to defend a single point, and they let the enemy fleet steal it.  My fleet is incapable of defending a point when it matters.  Makes the whole bonus DP when capturing points a farce.  It is a farce because in non-trivial fights that cannot be steamrolled, the enemy will steal those points and hold them for the remainder of the fight.  There is only a small window when player will be at 60% map size, then will be sent back down to 40%.  Makes reinforcements impossible.

Any fight when player can hold the points is easy enough that victory has been a foregone conclusion, and the only challenge is whether the fight is a flawless victory or if player loses enough ships (perhaps a single big ship) due to AI stupidity to eat all of the bounty reward and then some.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 01, 2021, 06:00:02 AM
Before anyone says "hey can't we just have a middle ground?", I assure you that it's impossible to achieve that in a game which has sooooo many different factors in combat. One fight the AI plays like a coward, the other it's going nuts. Trying to "fix" this by making the AI just overall more aggressive won't really solve anything.

There can definitely be a middle ground. It is again what i mentioned that you try to make it look like that its already perfect and cannot be improved. It can be.
Also, no one wants generally more agressive AI. People want AI that knows when it is safe to attack and when it is not safe. This is of course again not a binary scale. What we have now is that ships refuse to attack a frigate and take a controll point, but they feel like it is good idea to ram a station.
Please dont ever tell that this is normal and can not be any better.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Grievous69 on June 01, 2021, 06:04:31 AM
Why is anyone even arguing about station combat? Like what is AI supposed to do, kite the station which has 3x the range? No, the only option is to go in and shot all at once. If AI didn't do this you'd need 20 minutes to destroy a single orbital station.

Also I'm definitely not saying it can't be improved, I'm saying I don't see a way of improving it without causing another problem instead. You know, one step forward but another back, hello square one.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 01, 2021, 07:14:58 AM
In the case of station fights its the opposite every one of them, even frigates, decide that they can 1v1 a module so they get up to its face, literraly, even my dominators with hellbore cannons get up to 0 range thus blocking eachother and getting into danger, instead of firing from a safer distance.

As someone that hadn't played SS for a long time this was the most surprising aspect to me.
Yes, the AI feels more cautious overall and speed trumps absolutely everything because every enemy that isn't a battleship will try to kite you. However, the behavior when facing stations is beyond ridiculous. I have no idea which part of the code forces the AI to literally hug the station, bumping both into it and into each other, while blocking the firing arcs of every larger ship behind them but it really, really needs to not do that.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Harmful Mechanic on June 01, 2021, 07:17:33 AM
Slap the new never-retreat hidden hullmod on everything.

Now all ships are suicidally brave all the time. Fixed.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 01, 2021, 07:32:57 AM
Why is anyone even arguing about station combat? Like what is AI supposed to do, kite the station which has 3x the range? No, the only option is to go in and shot all at once. If AI didn't do this you'd need 20 minutes to destroy a single orbital station.

No one wants them to kite a station, I just want them not to ram it. Belive it or not the fights would actually become shorter. How?

Beacuse this:
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/193755526_328261048872543_6508662683532318478_n.png?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=RgBoD49O6HgAX-bvHcc&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=9f519095f88f016c7d475cc8d49fa2b7&oe=60DD9AAF)
[close]
is more effective
than this:
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/194099952_477349540218850_8716835382986716463_n.png?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=89ecr13YDtkAX-vvA91&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=7eb0b99b0902184aa3ba7ada65371927&oe=60DBB408)
[close]

Black: station, Blue: ships, Green: possible firing arcs. If it wasnt self explanatory.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 01, 2021, 07:37:11 AM
Why is anyone even arguing about station combat? Like what is AI supposed to do, kite the station which has 3x the range? No, the only option is to go in and shot all at once. If AI didn't do this you'd need 20 minutes to destroy a single orbital station.

No one wants them to kite a station, I just want them not to ram it. Belive it or not the fights would actually become shorter. How?

Beacuse this:
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/193755526_328261048872543_6508662683532318478_n.png?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=RgBoD49O6HgAX-bvHcc&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=9f519095f88f016c7d475cc8d49fa2b7&oe=60DD9AAF)
[close]
is more effective
than this:
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/194099952_477349540218850_8716835382986716463_n.png?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=89ecr13YDtkAX-vvA91&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=7eb0b99b0902184aa3ba7ada65371927&oe=60DBB408)
[close]

Black: station, Blue: ships, Green: possible firing arcs. If it wasnt self explanatory.

Damn you, I was just about to try and draw something similar but I wanted the ships to make adorable "pew pew" sounds.
Oh well, guess your version is a lot more clear and to the point.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 01, 2021, 07:38:27 AM
Slap the new never-retreat hidden hullmod on everything.

Now all ships are suicidally brave all the time. Fixed.

No. It would not fix it. Perhaps it would be better for a few people but definitely not a fix. Ships shall percive better what the enemy ships are cappable of based on weapons and flux levels.
Also they should follow orders more strickly. Before someone says that reckless officers do follow them. No. They dont. All they do is that they more often go after a lone frigate and chase it until the end of the battle bassically contributing nothing.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Grievous69 on June 01, 2021, 07:53:42 AM
No one wants them to kite a station, I just want them not to ram it. Belive it or not the fights would actually become shorter. How?

Beacuse this:
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/193755526_328261048872543_6508662683532318478_n.png?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=RgBoD49O6HgAX-bvHcc&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=9f519095f88f016c7d475cc8d49fa2b7&oe=60DD9AAF)
[close]
is more effective
than this:
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/194099952_477349540218850_8716835382986716463_n.png?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=89ecr13YDtkAX-vvA91&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=7eb0b99b0902184aa3ba7ada65371927&oe=60DBB408)
[close]

Black: station, Blue: ships, Green: possible firing arcs. If it wasnt self explanatory.
I understand that but it goes both ways. In scenario 2 the station can freely keep firing at a single target, where in scenario 1 tanks and faster smaller ships can distract it while glass cannons shoot away. This is why I always put eliminate orders for ships that I know can take the punishment, while the rest gets engage orders. Seems to work fairly well for 60 or so station battles I've probably had in the last year or so. The ONLY ship that goes bananas against stations and immediately dies is Fury, I don't know why it wants to hug it so hard, but I haven't seen that behaviour in other ships.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 01, 2021, 08:02:04 AM
...where in scenario 1 tanks and faster smaller ships can distract it while glass cannons shoot away...

This is not my experience at all.
In my playthroughs so far it's usually the fastest high tech ships, which aren't particularly tanky, that bump into each other in front of the station like they're trying to get to the last XBox on Black Friday. The rest of my fleet, the slower and considerably tankier part, sits behind them and has nothing to shoot at after I'm done cleaning out the defending ships.

It's not a major issue, it doesn't really lose me any fights or costs me any irreplaceable ships, but it looks and feels tremendously stupid.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Sutopia on June 01, 2021, 08:29:18 AM
In the case of station fights its the opposite every one of them, even frigates, decide that they can 1v1 a module so they get up to its face, literraly, even my dominators with hellbore cannons get up to 0 range thus blocking eachother and getting into danger, instead of firing from a safer distance.

As someone that hadn't played SS for a long time this was the most surprising aspect to me.
Yes, the AI feels more cautious overall and speed trumps absolutely everything because every enemy that isn't a battleship will try to kite you. However, the behavior when facing stations is beyond ridiculous. I have no idea which part of the code forces the AI to literally hug the station, bumping both into it and into each other, while blocking the firing arcs of every larger ship behind them but it really, really needs to not do that.

A less known fact: station modules are classified as frigates
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 01, 2021, 08:30:04 AM
I understand that but it goes both ways. In scenario 2 the station can freely keep firing at a single target, where in scenario 1 tanks and faster smaller ships can distract it while glass cannons shoot away. This is why I always put eliminate orders for ships that I know can take the punishment, while the rest gets engage orders. Seems to work fairly well for 60 or so station battles I've probably had in the last year or so. The ONLY ship that goes bananas against stations and immediately dies is Fury, I don't know why it wants to hug it so hard, but I haven't seen that behaviour in other ships.

Im terribly sorry, but I just cant belive that you are writing this seriusly. Like how biased you have to be to belive this? If no ship is hugging the station, then if the station is firing at a single one that can get behiond the others really quickly and efficently.
Please tell me you are just pretending, and playing devils advocate and not really beliving what you are saying.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 01, 2021, 08:36:43 AM
Why is anyone even arguing about station combat? Like what is AI supposed to do, kite the station which has 3x the range? No, the only option is to go in and shot all at once. If AI didn't do this you'd need 20 minutes to destroy a single orbital station.

I think ppl's specific problem here is that the AI doesn't handle spacing themselves out to mob a single target well. They get in eachother's way. It doesn't come up so often with regular ship combat bc most ships dont get hit by the size/number of ships they warrant but it does come up when u build a fleet around Wolf Pack Tactics and pilot a pair of strike frigates against a critical target you have enough combined firepower to smash if it werent for your scared wingman hiding in your shadow (& making u incapable of killing the target)
also kiting the station at 3x range their range but in the station's range getting attritioned to death by siege fire while one of my ships dives in to firing range & gets focused by every station module is exactly what my fleet does. I get that they're not supposed to be easy but I'm p sure I've capped out my fleets multiple times since 0.8 and I've never been able to fight a station without having to just quit to main menu, load save & go do something else instead bc the AI just doesn't handle it right. In fact, I've rescued an allied station from an invasion fleet multiple times yesterday just by joining it with a single kite and sitting behind the station bc the autoresolve knows that the station should be able to get killed by a capped out fleet of entirely onslaughts but when the game has to factor in the AI sitting in the station's standoff range & eating free fire while doing nothing the station wins every time

I mean the flipside of this is AI taking risks and going in and then you'd get this exact same thread but with the opposite problem.
...
Before anyone says "hey can't we just have a middle ground?", I assure you that it's impossible to achieve that in a game which has sooooo many different factors in combat. One fight the AI plays like a coward, the other it's going nuts. Trying to "fix" this by making the AI just overall more aggressive won't really solve anything.

The problem here is that, if the fleet couldn't handle the fight, the player probably wouldn't have fought it. A game where every fight becomes unwinnable bc ur fleet doesnt trust that you picked a fight that they can win (which is a test of skill for the player on the campaign level of gameplay, keep in mind) is infinitely less fun than a game where your fleet trusts that you picked a fight that they can win & give their all and if your AI can't carry the fight on their own they give you the oppertunity to make the difference with your flagship ("being the x-factor"). Does that make sense? Sure you're gonna have problems in either direction but not all problems are made the same; think of which would be worse for a Call of Duty game, sometimes when you pull the trigger on a gun you miss your shots bc u werent aiming well enough, or sometimes when you pull the trigger your gun just doesn't shoot. They aren't the same, the former is the core skill-check of an FPS & the latter makes nobody play that FPS

Picture how famous Starcraft would be if every time a player selects 200 marines & orders them to attack a battlecruiser, every marine individually goes "oh no, Im not strong enough to 1v1 that battlecruiser, I better stay out of my range :/" and then runs & stands in the battlecruiser's range & you lose 200 marines who could have insta'd the BC if they all attacked it once without doing a point of damage. Nobody would have played that game, it wouldn't be the worldwide sport of player skill that it is bc the game would fundamentally undermine a player's ability to express their skill by second guessing them inappropriately (in a way that, as I pointed out in my OP, doing so in a military setting would get you executed for dereliction of duty in the face of the enemy)
& you can say, "oh, but thats starcraft thats a different game it doesnt have to do calculations about whether it can take a fight" except THAT IT DOES. Theres an AI in SC, and it makes those decisions all the time! The thing is,
THAT AI IS TURNED OFF FOR THE PLAYER'S UNITS


and that's the core of the problem for me. I get why the AI needed to have an overhaul for self preservation; AI fleets that dont have the capacity for human reasoning about fleet comps & circumstances getting engaged into battles it cant know it cant handle suiciding themselves against an enemy's shields when outmatched isn't great when the game has a big wide overworld that the AI is supposed to be fulfilling roles on, it doesn't make sense. BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT, I'm making the call about whether or not we can take a fight when I hit the "engage the enemy fleet" button, not the AI, so my fleet should respect that & give me the opportunity to be proven right. If they do & we lose then at least its my fault for making a bad call, and not their fault for refusing to engage. In the former I can continue playing the game safe in the knowledge that the consequences I'm facing are diegetically appropriate -- my character *** up. But in the latter, what do you do? The losses you suffered when half your fleet blew up from running out of CR having not fired or taken a shot & the other half of your fleet blew up from not getting backup arent your fault, so you either load the save & retry the fight over and over and over and over and over again for hour after hour of wasted life, or I guess you uninstall & wait to see if its ever gonna get fixed and when it hasnt 4 years later you kinda just make a conscious decision to forget that the game exists anymore like its a online-only game that had its servers shut down

TLDR; as-is the only way I could think to fix the game shy of just overhauling the AI, again, would be to make it so that intercepting an enemy fleet in the campaign map & then picking "engage the enemy fleet" button automatically puts an eliminate order on every enemy ship -- although even that wouldn't fix the problem entirely bc ships "stick" to eliminate orders once they're assigned to one so if an enemy kite retreats back into its fleet the ship assigned to it will get killed chasing it unless you remove that eliminate order (just happened to me in the game). It's funny how in attempting to reduce how much you have to micromanage your fleet to prevent suicides, we now have to micromanage our fleet to get them to do anything, ON TOP OF having to micromanage the fleet to prevent suicides. I really miss pre-0.8. At this point the only reason I'm continuing to play the game is so that this time when I put it down, I'll be satisfied enough with my final impression of it that I won't pick it up ever again unless that release has the words "OVERHAULED AI" in big flashing letters. Effectively I am processing grief for a game that died 4 years ago & I just haven't come to terms with it yet; I wouldn't be so upset about it if I hadn't loved it so much
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 01, 2021, 08:40:37 AM
I appreciate the feedback, and especially if there's a vanilla scenario that showcases this easily, I'd love to have a look and see if there's perhaps a bug there that's messing it up. That's actually entirely possible. I'll also do some investigation on my own. I *am* curious how much this is a question of expectations; in my playtesting I haven't seen this problem and don't actually use eliminate very often, and things just... go fine? So, yeah, possible that it's an issue that it hasn't come up for me, or that it's something else, or... well, again, I'd love to see a vanilla test case where I can actually see what's happening.


I really really had enough with this kind of comments. NO. JUST. NO. It is so infuriating seeing people trying to justify the unreasonable behavior of the AI. And its even more infuriating that they are trying to blame the player for it. That they just dont play "right", they "jUsT neEd tO UsE a BeTtEr sTrAt". NO.
Im terribly sorry, but I just cant belive that you are writing this seriusly. Like how biased you have to be to belive this? If no ship is hugging the station, then if the station is firing at a single one that can get behiond the others really quickly and efficently.
Please tell me you are just pretending, and playing devils advocate and not really beliving what you are saying.

Please moderate your tone towards other forum members. This is an official warning.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 01, 2021, 10:07:37 AM
so Im gonna leave it uploading & go to bed. Its at 10% rn, just gonna drop the link now https://www.mediafire.com/file/3vlygjsmghowj0p/test_save.7z/file

So out of curiosity, I downloaded the save.  That's quite the mod collection you've got running. :)

So, your cruiser officer looks to be cautious and has been given a converted fighter bay?  My guess is it is using cautious carrier AI, although I'm not positive if a single bay will switch over to carrier AI.   Generally a cautious carrier stays way back, since its fighters have a range of 4000 and cautious means stay at maximum range while having 1 weapon system in range.  The S-mod expanded missile isn't doing much for the ship unfortunately, given it has only 1 Kneecapper MRM pod (which regenerates ammo like a salamander).  The dedicated targeting unit s-mod does give your beams a range of 1500 on its all beam loadout (Graviton, Ion, 2x Tactical, 2x PD, 2x Mining), so that's helping some.  Although, the ship is running 0 extra caps and only 3 extra vents and will slowly build up soft flux on itself.  It exerts only 400 soft shield damage per second on a target, which to be honest is quite low for a cruiser.

The mercantile convoy you talk about has an expanded missile racks + integrated targeting unit equipped Venture with dual annihilator pods, dual annihilator launchers, and dual hypervelocity drivers.  It's only d-mod is damaged flight deck. So flux free HE and 1600 range hard flux kinetics, plus ablative mining drones.  Also 0.95 shield with 470 flux/second in vent capacity.  There's a level 4 officer on the Venture (reliability engineering, helmsmanship, target analysis, elite gunnery implants) versus level 2 officer on the Fury (helmanship and strike commander).  The skills are different from Vanilla so I'm not sure how that factors in.  Also, I don't remember mining pods running that far away from the Venture, I mean like at least half a screen length away.

Given the escort destroyer is only equipped with PD and a salamander equivalent whose role is "Disabler", it wouldn't surprise me if it decides to escort your cruiser every engagement.  Certainly in both pictures you show, the destroyer is very close to the cruiser.  It does have an aggressive officer at least.

The Brawler is reckless, but equipped with 1000 range suppression weapons.  At least in the first image, it looks like it was in fact engaging, so perhaps working as intended.  But it's going to be staying pretty far away even when it does engage, simply because all it's weapon systems are long range.

The mod frigate (Hedone) is equipped with dual light machine guns and an aggressive officer, so it should be engaging (and was according to your screenshots).

The player is piloting a hammer torpedo + pd weapon kite, so good strike while the missiles last (12 total with expanded missile racks + missile skill).

So I tried engaging the mercantile fleet as is.

The destroyer broke off and did in fact try to engage a Mule with a Torch and Hound.  Problem was the Mule was equipped with 2 railguns, a heavy mauler, and ITU and thus severely out ranged the 600 range PD guns (1200 Heavy Mauler and 840 railguns).  But it was trying at least.  It would dive in, shoot, and then pull out because, well, it was losing the range war on the dive in.

Brawler was engaging 1 on 1 with a Heavy Blaster Wolf, but lacking hard flux damage, was losing that exchange off on the right.

The Fury looked like standard cautious officer behavior, and was backing off starting fairly early because of it's long range weapons and fighters.  It destroyed a forward kite fairly early on.  The Hedone was 1vs1 a Hound, but was definitely engaging, as expected of an aggressive officer and ended up at the top of the map.

Behavior looks roughly like what I'd expect given the officers involved.  Your fleet's configuration essentially requires all your ships to focus fire on anything bigger than a Frigate because of the beam composition.  Your fleet's hard flux shield damage is basically a time accelerated Yacht with 2x dual light machine guns, a converted hangar broadsword, and a converted hangar high tech talon (4 fighters with a dual light mg each)?  Given the player is piloting the smallest ship, which basically only has 12 hammer torpedoes, there's very little long term player pressure available.

The Mercantile convoy is all long range and typically ITU boosted, is 85% CR to your 70% CR, and running rare weapons like railguns, hypervelocity drivers, heavy maulers and heavy blasters. The two Hounds have Hypervelocity drivers.  The vigilance is running Graviton + Pilum.  The wolf is packing a heavy blaster and sabots.  One kite is strike it looks like, while the other is harrass (salamanders).  It out numbers your fleet, generally out ranges your ships, and in the case of the Hounds, is roughly as fast.  To be honest, if this were a purely AI tournament fight, I'd expect the Mercantile fleet to win.

Edit:  I ran the fight one more time, and left the player kite to AI control (pressed u).  Watching the overall fight rather than frantically piloting a torpedo frigate attempting to get a good shot, the Fury definitely seems to engage ships smaller than itself.  So I might be wrong about the carrier AI.  It will plasma burn in, but then back off, presumably trying to keep to its optimal 1000-1500 range or so.  All the ships seemed to be fighting something the entire time.  However, superior range and CR took it's toll ending with victory for the merchant fleet.  Without player guided torpedos, the fleet just doesn't kill even frigates or destroyers fast (other than that Hedone - that thing is nasty while it's CR holds).  Overall, it looked like ships were acting in accordance with their officer AI.

Edit 2:  To offer a concrete suggestion, try swapping for a Reckless officer on the Fury (or edit it in the save file to change Quinn from cautious to reckless).
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 01, 2021, 11:40:33 AM
Im really sorry about my tone, i was unnecessary rude, i agree.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Zakaluka on June 01, 2021, 01:15:04 PM
Like what is AI supposed to do, kite the station which has 3x the range?

Kiting, harass and point defense are all tools you actually can use to make an opening for your fleet to close on a 5 star threat station. So, I don't understand your statement. You need a couple ships designed to kite station fire in close, that can avoid overloading when they mess up and get clipped. A centurion or two will actually pull this off for you incredibly well. Also, point defense. Lots of point defense and fighters. Omens and drovers.

I'm interested in seeing your fleet comp against a star fortress. I think the big mistake here is trying to use heavy guns from range. I'm having better results right now with fast ships that can rotate cover, a couple centurions and omens that can kite station fire & fighters, plenty of fighter support, lots of point defense.

---

back to the OP though - there's a bit of a buried philosophical question, and a bit of a knife's edge to walk. If you make the AI really aggressive and coordinated, then the enemy AI will also be really aggressive and coordinated. It's like, you're playing under the same rules as the opponent, no matter what, that will be what you have to overcome: your AI is just as good as the enemy's.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Vextor on June 01, 2021, 01:30:19 PM
I was testing a loadout a week, maybe 2 weeks ago, so I can't remember 100% everything, but I can recall it failing terribly while full assault was on, and working perfectly while it was off.
On the other hand, some fits don't work while FA is off, as in the AI is way too cowardly even though it has the flux, speed and range to harass.

I always mount mid range weapons on everything at least (600), or above that (1000), except on the backside of capitals, but if my ships can't function under the same default orders my fleet is going to be a mess. I.e off: half my ships are fighting, the rest are having a staring contest from 1600 range away with the enemy; on: half my ships are suicidal while the previous contestants are fighting as something could be described as "steady behavior".
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Linnis on June 01, 2021, 05:06:59 PM
In this case you should use your head instead of your anger.

The best Strat that always works is...

I really really had enough with this kind of comments. NO. JUST. NO. It is so infuriating seeing people trying to justify the unreasonable behavior of the AI. And its even more infuriating that they are trying to blame the player for it. That they just dont play "right", they "jUsT neEd tO UsE a BeTtEr sTrAt". NO. It should not be the players job to play according to specific rules, just to make the AI usefull, this is madness.
Stop pretending that the AI is flawless. It is not. This is an in development game. Things needs to be changed, and the most frquent complains is about the AI. It does stupid things We all know that the are reasons for that, but it needs to be changed regardless. There are countless examples of it. Is it timid? Yes, you agreed on it yourself. Does it have to be? NO. The AI should act reasonably regardless of player input! (and if this is impossible then give full contorl to the player, like in an RTS)

Quote
Yes, they are more cautious now, but their behaviors are now more controllable.

The second half of this statement is just a blatant lie. I never found it harder to make my ships obey my orders, and there are many many complains about the same thing all over the forum and on discord. Ships nowadays even disregard eliminate orders, and usually simply let enemy take control points.
Does it makes it better for you to pretend that everything is perfect, and give condescending replies to those who point out the problems?

Your expecting the commands to be something like once you give the order the AI will do that order to the extreme. We had that kind of implementation a long time ago and it sucked. No one ever used commands because the ships will go full braindead and die the second to take your eyes off of them. Commands now are more like suggestions, maybe the name should change? Just like every other feature in this game has had so many revisions that I suspect more than half of the development time has been changing systems back and forth. Frankly every update there are always complaints about the AI/supplies/deployment points/difficulty/skills. Frankly all this stuff is in constant flux that I think we should all just chill on it and let the devs develop new systems and do a final pass instead of this change *** up every update. Also in every update, it was never un-playable.

Eliminate orders works 100% for me I honestly don't know what to tell you. If you tell a slower or a smaller ship to "eliminate" a larger ship its not going to do it unless the enemy is turned or has high flux. What eliminate does is it makes your inferior ship maintain attention and distance waiting for a opportunity on a single ship. If you have a reckless officer on eliminate order a kite will basically still try to ram its enemies.

Maybe Alex should add an command like "Attack at all costs" that turns off most of the AI behavior and just have your ships get as close as possible like the pre-camping days to appease you guys. Honestly I never encounter passivity problems from my ships I don't even know what to tell you, my ships rush ahead of me blocking my shots and taking up all the firing angles trying to shoots its stupid small mounts on cruisers that I often have to order my frigates to *** off and get out of the way.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 01, 2021, 07:19:25 PM
.

I appreciate the feedback! As you mentioned, this isnt an ideal fleet setup & isnt my permanent setup (the destroyer is only slinging triple burst lasers bc I havent found anything else to put on it yet (everyone is mad at me! :c ). I am on the hunt for a HVD cruiser to pilot as the lynch-pin to my weird fleet & until then every fight is gonna be a chore, so I don't expect the AI to win battles with it without me micromanaging it right now, but this setup is exposing weird flaws with the AI -- ones that I remember from 2017.
One thing specifically I wanted to point out; you said my destroyer with heavy burst lasers is losing a ranged war against the mauler it's going up against, and that's why it's darting in, firing off 1 round then backing out. The thing is... that's... the absolute worst thing it can do when it's losing the ranged war. If u lose the ranged war hopelessly (ur maxed out before u even lay hands on the enemy) u should, back go in on them & lay the smack-down, vent once in their face (unless they have a hangman's noose loaded in their missile slots) and then see if u can make them vent before u have to vent a second time.
Also, yeah my fleet requires focus fire. The thing is, I had been trying to get my fleet to focus fire for most of this playthru & aside from manually eliminate ordering my entire fleet onto 1 enemy I can't figure out how to get them to do it -- the reason my cruiser has the cautious officer is bc if it attacks an enemy then the destroyer (even when it had ion & graviton beams, back before it blew up & I lost them) & the frigate sit in its shadow & don't help it. Also don't put too much stock into what officers I have on which ship, I've been cycling them seeing if there was a setup that made them Perform

I actually was just about to make a feedback post for Alex about this, I was testing what happens if u go into missions, give an Aurora maxed flux cap & all defensive hullmods, mining lasers in all its small slots, ran a simulation and faced it off against the assault wolf and discovered that the Aurora, despite being theoreticaly undamagable by that wolf, will actually lose that fight over time (not accounting for timing out), bc the Aurora will sit back at its own max range(less than the wolf's) & strafe, back out some of the time despite being given theoretically 0 threat by that wolf letting the wolf get in a bunch of free shots, and also sometimes drops its shields in the wolf's face & eats several shots from its medium energy slot despite being at less than 1% flux. Something is definitely up with the AI. When I pilot (yes I know AI wont perform as well as a player, shush im testing here) having stripped all mining lasers & giving the ship just 1 , if I press R, T, 2, M2, hold shift & w and just test what happens when the ship is piloted by the simplest AI possible (same level as a TF2 pyro bot, or worse, a TF2 pyro player (https://imgur.com/a/ooXxxN0)), "move towards enemy at all times with shields up letting the gun's AI do all the thinking, vent then pop ship's mobility system when the enemy is too far to shoot me", I max out the wolf's flux stats before it can do any damage to me or even get my flux off of the flux.

In fact, Alex might be playtesting this game with people who know how the game likes to be played, let me restart with no mods (god i hope i remember which mods break my game if i activate them...) & test this like I hate this game. Um, well first thing I've confirmed is that in the vanilla simulator there is no non-pirate wolf? huh??? Anyway, against pirate wolf variant 1 (????) my maxed out defenses & flux cap Aurora with 1 ir pulser in its front radial mount on autopilot knuckled up to the wolf, and after the second blaster hit from the wolf vented in its face & ate missiles blowing thru its armor immediately so it immediately fails this test. So I take the ir pulse laser off, equip it with all mining lasers, start the simulation, then realize how long this is gonna be without the speedup time mod (https://imgur.com/a/sjgt4yn), restart the game in windowed mode so I can leave this running on my side monitor while I harass people I like on twitter until they fear for their lives. I re-did the 1 ir pulse laser test to confirm that it wasnt a fluke that the Aurora dropped shields & ate blaster to the face for no reason, confirm that it wasn't a fluke. Testing the mining lasers, I leave it running & type "POGGO" and "PLAY A DIFFERENT GAME" and "LOL IMAGINE ONLY HAVING 100K VIEWERS KEKW WASHUP" into the chat of the highest viewcount twitch streamer until the wolf starts to break down from CR loss & I can confirm that it didnt take any damage aside from dropping shields in the Aurora's face, which my Aurora also did. Now to idiot test this setup; I reset, same wolf, R T M2 2 SHIFT+W & press F every time it gets out of range, and the wolf vents while being focused by 9 mining lasers and is melted after, like, 4 seconds.
I got bored of the Aurora so I booted up the Medusa, threw beams onto it & it seems fine in the simulator against both bigger & smaller targets, same with beam TTBrawler. So I guess issues I was having with the brawler in-game was down to too much threat for it to function? One thing I did note (having reactivated mods so I can test this with the mod mission with all ships in it) is the Brawler having trouble providing close support against a carrier, but its proving too hard to test this bc anything large enough to be an overwhelming threat by itself has so many fighters that I get insta-died before I can get into range of it -- nothing has as poor of a fighter contingent as the Astral with a couple wasps I faced IRL bc in try mode everything gets exactly what their specs call for, & I cant customize enemies in sim. Plus recreating the conditions I was in of a 30 ship battle with plenty of stuff to distract the fighters while me & my wingman burned up to the flagship is proving too much work & now Im too tired to keep doing this atm
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Fanful on June 02, 2021, 01:41:56 AM
In my experience a lot of annoyance with friendly AI is that it has a very specific playstyle and if you don't follow/use it, you are going to get frustrated.

The AI in general is very cautious, which is kind of a must, otherwise you would be losing a lot of friendly ships while you are engaged in other part of battlefield. But it makes it really hard to force your fleet to really push against the enemy.

For example, when I recently got back to the game after a couple years of break, I would often lose my flagship as I was finding myself suddenly all alone around enemy ships (as I was trying to finish the overfluxed one, while my allies would stay back).
Instinctevely I tried fixing this by setting a couple bigger ships as an escort to my flagship. This doesn't work, because the game understand escorting capital ship to mean staying at the back of it... I guess they were trying to secure my back, but that only works if we are on defense.

There is no simple way to make the AI ships form a battle line and move it together with the player ship, concentrating the fire. Eliminate order helps, but sometimes AI ridiculously ignores it and favours focusing on some other, closer target.

In the end I simply changed my playstyle. Instead of being the tip of a spear for my fleet, I'm trying to stay in line with my other ships and we all fight rather defensevily. This works nicer, as I'm able to retreat behind friendlies to vent flux. Alternatively I get something faster and then move on flanks, but still let my main force and enemy clash before I move all in.


Personally I would welcome some changes to the orders mechanic. I liked the whole system in theory, but I think it clashes a bit with the main game mechanics, which are playing individual ship.  I think the orders should be more focused on formations and support of the player. Give me wingmen, give me orders "cover me", "get back", "shoot at my target" or "defend my flanks" etc. etc. Teach the AI to better position itself in relation to other friendly units (for example frigates should never go directly front of the friendly capital ship). Maybe even teach it reply to an order with "I can't do it now" instead of just not doing it (though I imagine this would be tricky to implement well).
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Yunru on June 02, 2021, 02:00:50 AM
I wouldn't mind some variant of escort order where they escorters focus on whichever ship the escorted is targeting.

I do also experience the frustration of telling ships to take strategic locations, only for them to give them up completely chasing some irrelevant ship that happened to be attacking them and retreating.
Then to rub it in, they trying a kill all nearby ships before reclaiming the point that is currently clear of enemies.

Spoiler
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/9d676854-ca16-4cea-9099-fd954e997e6d/dekrg60-5045fc47-ae7f-4942-9757-9eec7a2bc070.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_720,q_80,strp/frustration_by_blacktemplegaurdian_dekrg60-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzIwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOWQ2NzY4NTQtY2ExNi00Y2VhLTkwOTktZmQ5NTRlOTk3ZTZkXC9kZWtyZzYwLTUwNDVmYzQ3LWFlN2YtNDk0Mi05NzU3LTllZWM3YTJiYzA3MC5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.w5a3_aKBs_ifQ3R7N-UEYt3DYid0a420evzLBEftC7k)
[close]

The strategic location I tell them to hold should be priority one, not combat! If a ship they're fighting moves beyond their ability to engage without leaving the location, they should disengage, not merrily keep fighting! If the point isn't under their control, they should attempt to actually seize it, rather than fight every ship in the surrounding area first!

Sorry, that got a bit ranty the longer this battle went on.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: sector_terror on June 02, 2021, 03:35:58 AM
I agree with Linnis in that several commands, the more extreme ones like hard elliminate, makes the AI follow orders fine. I'd rather slower more cautious battles where I'm the hero instead of an RTS where I'm playing tactician. When I put my units onto eliminate, I better be certain it can be killed fast or is worth the risk, because my ships WILL put themselves into harms way and push their flux and armor to their limits to kill that target. I barely use that command -because- it  draws the AI to be so reckless. Imagine taking that concern to no end. Would you want frigates to follow around and play shield/fire support for s ship currently surrounded and do nothing to fall back when it finds itself getting flanked? Would you want ships to stop their charges and return to defend a point the second even a single enemy shows up to it? Even midway through a joint 2 on 2 between you & it versus another two enemy ships? Would you want ships to ditch you and any hope of a line engagement just to chase the one remaining target with a harass order?

It's this level of babysitting that made me outright quit Mount&Blade. In that game your tactical play was such a deciding factor that your melee skills meant nothing. You barely ever had to fight, or even could, since battles were over in a flash. My archer lines cripples enemies, my melee lines were torn to shreds in seconds. On the other side, a good unit could decimate enemies like nothing. I couldn't just make simple orders and leave them either, because the AI was so good at following those orders, they'd follow it right to their deaths even when it was against their own self-preservation. All of this because combat had each unit more eager to attack then to care for their own survival. It means if I wasn't babysitting, I'd lose units I didn't need to. The same is true here. Losses are massively expensive, and even a few frigates can make bounties lose all profit. If I had to live in constant fear like that, I'd turn my flagship to auto-pilot and never leave the command screen.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 02, 2021, 10:12:43 AM
I wouldn't mind some variant of escort order where they escorters focus on whichever ship the escorted is targeting.

this would help so much. A lot of the problem I'm having is that even if I set my beam cruiser & my beam frigate to escort eachother, when my cruiser gets into range & starts laying the melt down on the enemy, the frigate goes "! oh no ): that enemy is too big for me to fight by myself" and then hides behind the cruiser. If there were a "wingman" order where the frigate escorts the cruiser and shares in its orders, I think I'd have less issues. I get why escort is the way that it is, big ships need small ships to attack the things it isnt attacking, but wolfpack tactics style fleets need the ability to not only order a couple of ships to attack the same target but also for them to stick together & engage at the same time

In my experience a lot of annoyance with friendly AI is that it has a very specific playstyle and if you don't follow/use it, you are going to get frustrated.

Absolutely. I've just been playing this game a long time & want to do something else other than lashers with MGs & LAGs & Vulcans who are capable of a nice, honest 1v1 for when every ship in my fleet pairs off with one of the ships in the enemy fleet, and eagles with the exact same setup but bigger, ect.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Vaulter on June 02, 2021, 02:12:53 PM
And btw you can set the default ship personality under doctrine settings, so your whole fleet can be aggressive or reckless if you want (apart from ships which have officers of course). Lots of people miss this so it's worth mentioning.

Oh..
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 02, 2021, 06:39:57 PM
so since the problem I was having was clearly bc I was trying to run a beam fleet, I got a regular Brawler so I could run a regular, balanced combat ship capable of dishing out each type of damage. Gave it a heavy MG, a frag MG & 60 breachers. Jumped into try mode, ran it against a mule, murdered it without taking hull damage, handed it over to my reckless officer and, well... it wont even engage a freighter running an autocannon and nothing else. So I reinstalled OBS, reset the game, stripped out all my mods (again) except for the mod that adds showcase missions (since theres no mission with a brawler, apparently) & the speedup mod (you'll see soon why thats needed). The one thing is that the only equivalent to the heavy vulcan is double flak, but it made no real difference. Also this is how I discovered that the Breacher wasnt a mod weapon

observe
https://youtu.be/SClwt-RVq8I

there is no non-civilian ship in the game that shouldn't be able to 1v1 a mule that just has an autocannon
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 02, 2021, 07:01:07 PM
observe

Well, that was a waste of 8 minutes...
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 02, 2021, 07:08:06 PM
I feel like what you're doing here is taking a questionable loadout that the AI is never in a million years going to use well, (for bonus points putting it in a situation that's also very tough for the AI to manage) then observing it not do well, and... I'm not sure what you're expecting to see, honestly.

Having watched this video, there's nothing here that I can (or would want to) really "fix". If you put an iffy short-range Brawler loadout in a situation where to win it has to armor-tank while dodging Salamanders and maintaining constant pressure on an enemy ship, it's going to do poorly, period. It's too many things to juggle and too many calls to make that require higher level decisions that are pretty much the exclusive domain of the player. This is also not very representative of actual fleet combat scenarios.

The AI will *always* have trouble with some oddball scenarios. The game is *always* going to involve a healthy dose of figuring out what works well with the AI and what doesn't. Finding some combination of things that doesn't... I mean, that *can* be valuable, if it's something that can be reasonably improved to extend the range of play! But with stuff like this, it's asking the AI to make decisions of the sort where if it gets them wrong, the ship gets destroyed or chipped away at for no benefit, and I'd much rather have it behave this way in a contrived 1vs1 than to risk even a slight negative impact on how it works under more reasonable circumstances. I hope that makes sense!
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 02, 2021, 07:23:48 PM
If you put an iffy short-range Brawler loadout in a situation where to win it has to armor-tank while dodging Salamanders and maintaining constant pressure on an enemy ship, it's going to do poorly, period.

The loadout is all sorts of terrible, but I'm somewhat surprised the AI doesn't decide to get in close and just take it on the chin.
If it was a fight with several ships on both sides, where armor-tanking at the wrong moment could have serious consequences, I would totally understand. In a 1v1 with an enemy that can't really hurt it I was expecting the AI to be less timid.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 02, 2021, 07:39:49 PM
The AI is basically coded for multi-ship combat, though, since that's largely what you get in the game. Even in a 1-1 somewhere off from the main battle, it's probably better for it to be conservative and survive until the player gets there to help than for it to take risks and get blown up or just take damage that limits its further usefulness/costs to repair/etc. The "upside" of it occasionally winning fights like this isn't worth the downsides.

I mean, I get what you're saying! It's just... if the AI makes these sorts of decisions, it'll *definitely* get them wrong sometimes, and that's very bad. What it does now is arguably even good because stalemate-type fights give the player more of a chance to exercise agency over the battle.

"A 1v1 with an enemy that can't really hurt it" - that's practically impossible for it to determine, right? You and I know this is a simulator battle limited to a 1-1. But it what about a real battle, where reinforcements might come in, and where the player's current supply situation might matter, and so on? In this specific case, though, the maneuvering to avoid Salamander hits is far too tricky regardless. But if the Salamanders weren't there and the Brawler had better flux stats, it'd probably run the Mule down, though.

Basically... a 1-1 like this, either it's happening somewhere offscreen and it'll keep. Or it's happening somewhere nearby, and the player is involved, so either they're controlling one of the ships, or it's not a 1-1. The case where the player is watching a 1-1 on autopilot go wrong and not doing anything about it - I mean, that's what we have here, but it's explicitly not a case I'm worried about; it's not one that matters very much, if that makes sense. It can be handy for figuring out what the AI does well, what needs improving, and so on. But I think it's also important to realize which aspects of it don't actually count for much, and be judicious about what to address, and what might create more problems than it would solve.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 02, 2021, 08:05:24 PM
Alright, that makes a lot of sense. If I have to choose between an overly conservative AI that doesn't run down enemies when it could and an overly aggressive one that loses ships when it shouldn't then I'd obviously prefer the safe choice.
I have no idea what's happening under the hood, how all-seeing the AI is compared to the player or what it can and cannot determine, so I'll just take your word for it.
Combat still feels extremely kitey but that's probably a separate discussion.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 02, 2021, 08:43:25 PM
Yep, gotcha - what's easy or not for an AI isn't exactly the most obvious thing! And, yeah, that is indeed the choice. (Though, arguably, there's a bit of room for the "reckless" personality to take some otherwise inadvisable chances.)

Combat still feels extremely kitey but that's probably a separate discussion.

(Hmm, yeah. Can't say much about this since I'd need to know what specifically you mean.)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 02, 2021, 09:30:21 PM
handed it over to my reckless officer and, well...

There is no officer on the ship.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Thaago on June 02, 2021, 09:44:47 PM
I have a brief recollection of entering a sim of a ship from the refit screen then hitting autopilot ignores the personality of that ship (treating it as if it were a player commanded ship because its the ship the player is currently flying). Is that still the case?
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 02, 2021, 09:50:25 PM
handed it over to my reckless officer and, well...

There is no officer on the ship.

not on that one, I did that in my actual playthru with mods then removed the mods & re-created the scenario in the Random Battle mission sim to confirm that this wasnt a mod issue. Reckless officer does the same thing. P sure I mentioned all of this, sorry if that wasnt clear enough

"A 1v1 with an enemy that can't really hurt it" - that's practically impossible for it to determine, right?

... Can it not? I've never confirmed this before; a lasher pursuing a fleeing buffalo, can it not tell that it's not chasing, say, another lasher or something? I didn't know that.

RE: the rest of it; that makes a lot of sense. It genuinely helps to just show footage of what its doing so it can confirmed that the problem is not the game but my expectations
I think, I just remember that the AI used to knife-fight (to the extent that this community came up with a name for it) if that was all you gave it to the point that my go-to comp whenever a frigate has a pair of light ballistic mounts is dual MG's on one mount & vulcan on its mirror mount, & I'm not 100% sure abt this & I'm planning to check whether this is false memories but I think the AI used to armor-tank when it was called for (I spent a long time testing what a lasher will do when outmatched in 2017). I get why they wouldn't anymore tho, back then the game was an arcade shooter where every battle was It for the losing side & it's just not that game anymore. Just a hard transition for me to make, having had the old playstyle ingrained in me as hard as it was. A playstyle that used to be viable to the point that it was the only way u knew how to play, becoming not-viable but the tools it used still being there feels a lot like that game has been broken.
Plus, a big part of it is probably that I just seem to expect the combat to go faster than it does. It's hard to tell how much of it is down to the pace of the game changing now that fleets have a need to be more conservative, and how much this comes down to me having recently gotten really into SC2 coop mode playing zagara the low supply limit & only suicide wave units where the viable playstyle is to maintain a 200+ APA spawning 150 zerglings at a time where the only limiting factor is how quickly you can crash your wall of flesh & claws into the enemy & kill your army off to make room for the next wave. Might download 0.7 to compare for scientific purposes

thanks for putting up with my whining, Alex!

one last thought before I put this thread behind me; I do find it interesting that now that the game has plenty of options to mitigate the loss of low-value ships, from base ship recovery to industrial skills to recovery-guaranteeing hullmods, that the game now suffers from a severe lack of a way to have your ships behave as if their loss is expected and/or acceptable. As-is I would never run a hulk fleet campaign just bc my ships are already piloting themselves so cautiously. I think, if there was a hullmod that guaranteed the ship was recoverable but instead of making it more survivable made it less survivable by making it much more willing to face-tank to turn its remaining armor into free shield to apply pressure, I'd use it to do hulk playthrus


OH it just clicked in my head!! I'm playing a kite slinging extreme anti-armor loadout, waiting for my fleet to Do Work so I can swoop in & assist, while my fleet is waiting for the player to Do Work so I can swoop in & assist. The game expects me to be piloting the strongest ship in my fleet with a generalized enough loadout that I can always lead the flow of battle, & I'm piloting the tiniest ship in my fleet with such a specialized loadout that I am so incapable of leading the flow of battle in a way that it forces me to sit outside of the battle, and the AI just isn't aggressive enough to carry battles without me like that (shy of just fighting enemies too weak to fight back). Makes sense; the game just isn't built to use a kite as my flagship (anymore), its like getting mad at Starcraft for not being playable only turtling in ur first base & never expanding just bc thats how u play the campaign, except that SC having that issue is the fault of the campaign being designed badly whereas SS is just bc something that used to be viable but shouldn't have been & just isnt anymore
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 02, 2021, 10:42:56 PM
What's your point then? If you wanted to force the Brawler to kill the Mule with the given weapons (HMG, DF, 2xBreach SRMs) it is doable. If you wanted "balanced combat ship capable of dishing out each type of damage" while omitting the energy but including the frag it is also doable. Your video shows only just how bad your variant is. Try this for a change:

(https://i.imgur.com/TIPhulv.png)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 02, 2021, 11:58:00 PM
oh yeah, much better
https://youtu.be/HKUU25oGAuU
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 12:32:18 AM
Is this some kind of a bad joke? You changed the Mule variant, didn't pick the officer and didn't install the Hardened shields or changed the flux capacity. Are you actually trying to swindle me?
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 03, 2021, 12:44:00 AM
idk what to tell u bro its a reckless officer (ive since pulled the thumper off & swapped it for 4 AC's) lmfao https://imgur.com/a/mjz0lS2
if u think i've, like, somehow doctored that video(?) feel free to upload a youtube video of your own video of it working. & sure, I clicked the wrong mule, but I know for a fact selecting the correct mule wont make the difference because HMG + Thumper + Breachers against the kittenmule was the first thing I tried on this brawler & it did the exact same thing
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 12:47:09 AM
Right now you are not expected to say anything. Provide the video with the given Brawler variant commanded by the officer with the given skill set against the Mule variant represented in your video on the previous page. That's all.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 03, 2021, 12:50:47 AM
so ur saying that if I take the time to farm an officer with that exact set of skills the thumper-HMG brawler will work? Because that sounds like "the thumper-HMG brawler does not work" but with extra steps

edit: nvm I found the officer. Here's the vid https://www youtube com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 03, 2021, 01:03:07 AM
The AI bases decisions about closing in/backing off on friendly and enemy flux levels, so if you build a loadout with very little ability raise enemy flux at range, it's not surprising that it struggles. It might do better in a fleet situation where it can take advantage of opportunities created by other ships, but it will not do well in 1v1s. The video looks like exactly what I would expect: It takes a ton of damage on approach before it gets into the effective range of its only kinetic damage because it is grossly outranged, so it's flux is always too high and it never commits. Maybe if you put a reckless officer in it, it might commit to getting in range, but it would probably just die if it committed, so I think the AI is being pretty reasonable given the situation it is in.

The best 1v1 brawler weapon combo is probably 2x HVD or HVD + mauler, but I almost never use that ship so I can't say for sure. That's what I would use if I had to put one in my fleet though.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 03, 2021, 01:05:26 AM
Right now you are not expected to say anything. Provide the video with the given Brawler variant commanded by the officer with the given skill set against the Mule variant represented in your video on the previous page. That's all.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, at least not anymore, but why would he need to pick that specific variant with that specific officer?
What would that prove even if it worked? That there's one perfect set of circumstances that gets the job done?

Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 01:08:39 AM
so ur saying that if I take the time to farm an officer with that exact set of skills the thumper-HMG brawler will work? Because that sounds like "the thumper-HMG brawler does not work" but with extra steps

edit: nvm I found the officer. Here's the vid https://www youtube com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

I'm saying that you, sir, are a fraud.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 01:09:45 AM
Right now you are not expected to say anything. Provide the video with the given Brawler variant commanded by the officer with the given skill set against the Mule variant represented in your video on the previous page. That's all.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, at least not anymore, but why would he need to pick that specific variant with that specific officer?
What would that prove even if it worked? That there's one perfect set of circumstances that gets the job done?

Because certain individual purposefully tinkering with the evidence to prove its agenda.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 03, 2021, 01:14:50 AM
Right now you are not expected to say anything. Provide the video with the given Brawler variant commanded by the officer with the given skill set against the Mule variant represented in your video on the previous page. That's all.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, at least not anymore, but why would he need to pick that specific variant with that specific officer?
What would that prove even if it worked? That there's one perfect set of circumstances that gets the job done?

Because certain individual purposefully tinkering with the evidence to prove its agenda.

Well, so are you if you're limiting it to a specific hullmod and officer.
Not that I really care, my point was that the Brawler should just shrug it off and armor-tank regardless of the loadout, but Alex already explained why that doesn't happen.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 01:17:28 AM
Right now you are not expected to say anything. Provide the video with the given Brawler variant commanded by the officer with the given skill set against the Mule variant represented in your video on the previous page. That's all.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, at least not anymore, but why would he need to pick that specific variant with that specific officer?
What would that prove even if it worked? That there's one perfect set of circumstances that gets the job done?

Because certain individual purposefully tinkering with the evidence to prove its agenda.

Well, so are you if you're limiting it to a specific hullmod and officer.
Not that I really care, my point was that the Brawler should just shrug it off and armor-tank regardless of the loadout, but Alex already explained why that doesn't happen.

To prove that Brawler can do it you need only single case. However it is not that only this given variant is usable.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 03, 2021, 01:22:44 AM
The best 1v1 brawler weapon combo is probably 2x HVD or HVD + mauler, but I almost never use that ship so I can't say for sure. That's what I would use if I had to put one in my fleet though.

I mean, at that point were just saying that any gun with less than 1k range isn't viable then, arent we?


I don't really have a dog in this fight, at least not anymore, but why would he need to pick that specific variant with that specific officer?
What would that prove even if it worked? That there's one perfect set of circumstances that gets the job done?

You are 100% correct, but I wouldn't put too much stock in the faulty arguments he makes, he doesn't actually believe any of what he's saying, he just did the redditor thing of seeing someone criticizing a videogame (about something that the dev has literally replied to & admitted is true, but is there for a reason) & decided its his job to personally stop that, & is pursuing that goal by suicide bombing the conversation -- sprint in & scream that they JUST ARENT PLAYING AS GOOD AS ME and that if we were playing AS GOOD AS ME then we wouldnt be having any issues, and when presented with video evidence that he is wrong he just switches to accusing me of faking the video when the space between his loadout suggestion & my video was just a few minutes lmfao
he doesn't care about any of what he says, he's just here to make a fool of himself so that anybody passing by who sees his comments but isn't emotionally invested enough to look into the matter might walk away with the impression that this is a contested issue, when it isn't.
And, if he can't do that, then at least he can try to get the thread locked so people will stop having this discussion that he doesnt like
They used to pass around manifestos on how to do this tactic & how to train people in your community to do it too on 4-chan & its run-offs. The one question is... why is he doing it here???
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 03, 2021, 01:26:47 AM
Right now you are not expected to say anything. Provide the video with the given Brawler variant commanded by the officer with the given skill set against the Mule variant represented in your video on the previous page. That's all.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, at least not anymore, but why would he need to pick that specific variant with that specific officer?
What would that prove even if it worked? That there's one perfect set of circumstances that gets the job done?

Because certain individual purposefully tinkering with the evidence to prove its agenda.

Well, so are you if you're limiting it to a specific hullmod and officer.
Not that I really care, my point was that the Brawler should just shrug it off and armor-tank regardless of the loadout, but Alex already explained why that doesn't happen.

To prove that Brawler can do it you need only single case. However it is not that only this given variant is usable.

Proving the Brawler can do it under a certain set of circumstances wouldn't accomplish anything.
Nobody actually playing the game is bothered about one very specific example or how that could be tweaked to do one particular thing. The original post wasn't about Brawlers but about the AI in general not advancing enough and being too risk-averse. Alex already explained why that happens. I'm not thrilled about it because I prefer to not always lead the charge, but I understand the reasons behind it.

What you two are doing right now seems rather pedantic and not really helpful.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 02:06:48 AM
Right now you are not expected to say anything. Provide the video with the given Brawler variant commanded by the officer with the given skill set against the Mule variant represented in your video on the previous page. That's all.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, at least not anymore, but why would he need to pick that specific variant with that specific officer?
What would that prove even if it worked? That there's one perfect set of circumstances that gets the job done?

Because certain individual purposefully tinkering with the evidence to prove its agenda.

Well, so are you if you're limiting it to a specific hullmod and officer.
Not that I really care, my point was that the Brawler should just shrug it off and armor-tank regardless of the loadout, but Alex already explained why that doesn't happen.

To prove that Brawler can do it you need only single case. However it is not that only this given variant is usable.

Proving the Brawler can do it under a certain set of circumstances wouldn't accomplish anything.
Nobody actually playing the game is bothered about one very specific example or how that could be tweaked to do one particular thing. The original post wasn't about Brawlers but about the AI in general not advancing enough and being too risk-averse. Alex already explained why that happens. I'm not thrilled about it because I prefer to not always lead the charge, but I understand the reasons behind it.

What you two are doing right now seems rather pedantic and not really helpful.

It proves that it proves. The fact that it is working. This makes any attempts at generalizing null and void. Leaving us with certain bad variant as a specific case.

"AI bad in general" turns into "AI bad while using certain variants".
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 03:24:50 AM
Take this as an statement:

Quote
I got a regular Brawler so I could run a regular, balanced combat ship capable of dishing out each type of damage. Gave it a heavy MG, a frag MG & 60 breachers. Jumped into try mode, ran it against a mule, murdered it without taking hull damage, handed it over to my reckless officer and, well... it wont even engage a freighter running an autocannon and nothing else. So I reinstalled OBS, reset the game, stripped out all my mods (again) except for the mod that adds showcase missions (since theres no mission with a brawler, apparently) & the speedup mod (you'll see soon why thats needed). The one thing is that the only equivalent to the heavy vulcan is double flak, but it made no real difference.

And this as an illustration:

https://youtu.be/2JZ5tap30P0
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Ishman on June 03, 2021, 05:55:11 AM
Spoiler
oh yeah, much better
https://youtu.be/HKUU25oGAuU
[close]

Wow you got eviscerated by this.
Spoiler

And this as an illustration:

https://youtu.be/2JZ5tap30P0
[close]

But also yeah, your initial fleet's fits are actually pretty weak, there's not enough of a critical mass of beamspam for it to be effective (and it's wasting a fury's offensive potential to utilize it like that). Since beams are only dealing soft flux damage, you'll be wanting to bring about 2000 flux/s actual value (this overcomes the majority of non redacted dissipation values).

So if we're facing .7 shields (nerfed apogee tier) with hardened shields, officer cr bonuses and skills like reduced energy damage, (and possibly solar shielding), we can lump it all together for ~.45 efficiency against energy. Which means you'll need ~4400 worth of supporting tactical beams (reduced by any HIL/graviton combos you field). That comes out to around 58 tactical lasers having the range and line of sight to shoot at the same thing.

Which is why monofleets of Beholders can beat almost anything in a fleet composition tournament, but beams are otherwise completely ignored (except to punish dropping shields with the HIL/tachyon).
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 03, 2021, 08:43:41 AM
I have a brief recollection of entering a sim of a ship from the refit screen then hitting autopilot ignores the personality of that ship (treating it as if it were a player commanded ship because its the ship the player is currently flying). Is that still the case?

Hmm, I don't actually remember this. Just double-checked and it seems fine.

There *is* an issue - fixed in-dev, but not in -RC15 - where if you run the game in dev mode, go into Edit Variants, check the "player max skills" box, and click on the portrait to select a personality other than steady, then that choice would be ignored. But it was limited to exactly these circumstances. (To be clear, the order in which you check the max skills box and select the personality doesn't matter.)


"A 1v1 with an enemy that can't really hurt it" - that's practically impossible for it to determine, right?

... Can it not? I've never confirmed this before; a lasher pursuing a fleeing buffalo, can it not tell that it's not chasing, say, another lasher or something? I didn't know that.

I think I phrased this rather poorly. It's aware of these things, but it's hard to make this kind of "hard call" that something is in fact harmless. Skills, current state of armor, specific of weapons (and any scripted effects they might have), and importantly "what the current risk tolerance should be based on the larger context"...

RE: the rest of it; that makes a lot of sense. It genuinely helps to just show footage of what its doing so it can confirmed that the problem is not the game but my expectations

*thumbs up*


Proving the Brawler can do it under a certain set of circumstances wouldn't accomplish anything.
Nobody actually playing the game is bothered about one very specific example or how that could be tweaked to do one particular thing. The original post wasn't about Brawlers but about the AI in general not advancing enough and being too risk-averse. Alex already explained why that happens. I'm not thrilled about it because I prefer to not always lead the charge, but I understand the reasons behind it.

(First, I really appreciate your understanding!)

To clear up a point - I think you can fit ships, and give them reckless officers, so they can lead the charge successfully. It's just that for some builds that won't work, but for some builds it *will*.

(If I could safely improve its ability to armor-tank, though, I'd love to. Again, maybe tying that to "reckless" might be a way to go, since anything general-purpose runs too great a risk of getting ships blown up.)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 03, 2021, 09:54:27 AM
The best 1v1 brawler weapon combo is probably 2x HVD or HVD + mauler, but I almost never use that ship so I can't say for sure. That's what I would use if I had to put one in my fleet though.

I mean, at that point were just saying that any gun with less than 1k range isn't viable then, arent we?
No, I'm saying long range guns work better for an AI brawler in a 1v1... Why would you jump to such extreme generalizations instantly?

To make short range loadouts work, you need:
- aggressive personality (either by officer or fleet doctrine) because this lowers the threshold for when the AI backs off
- sufficient speed/maneuverability to close distance quickly (brawler is ok with maneuvering jets but has mediocre top speed)
- enough effective shield HP so that the AI doesn't feel like it's at a disadvantage and backs off (you can increase shield HP by increasing capacity, or by improving shield efficiency).

If you do these things, it works better and if you don't it works worse, as clearly highlighted by the clips shared in this thread...
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Linnis on June 03, 2021, 11:00:17 AM
After watching all those brawler videoes. Makes you really appreciate how much better omni shields are on frigates.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 03, 2021, 12:13:42 PM
Wow you got eviscerated by this.

not really. all it proves is that the brawler will use the HMG if you grind out exactly those 5 skills, get exactly that 1 hullmod & nothing else. It means that the brawler is literally unplayable for me if I happen to be running a fleet with a burn level of 10 because the 4 OP I put on bumping its burn speed up by 1 ruins the vessel's AI.
I mean, if I sold you an electric car that you then say isn't useable & I sent u a video of it doing donuts in my driveway bc I charged it at a battery station in Austin Texas where I live, I haven't really owned you if you don't live in Austin Texas -- except, I guess, in the sense that I've robbed you blind.
I mean, one of the core mechanics of the game is the ability to customize ships, if you can't customize a ship's hullmods when you put these two guns together bc the only gun out of its 2 that the AI will use is the only that can never break a shield, on an enemy with shields, then the game is breaking one of its central promises.
We weren't saying the dude was wrong that it might work with those exact skills (well I was to antagonize him for telling me what youtube videos to make & upload so he'd do it instead), we were saying it shouldn't
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 03, 2021, 01:25:39 PM
all it proves is that the brawler will use the HMG if you grind out exactly those 5 skills, get exactly that 1 hullmod & nothing else. It means that the brawler is literally unplayable for me if I happen to be running a fleet with a burn level of 10 because the 4 OP I put on bumping its burn speed up by 1 ruins the vessel's AI.
You're acting like it just randomly happens to work with specifics skills because the AI is weird, and doesn't with any other combination. But it's not random, it works because the skills specifically improve and enable the ship and AI. I just laid out the factors that play into the AI's effectiveness at using short range weapons. It's not about specific skills or hullmods working with the AI, it's about making the ship better at tanking damage and closing distance quickly. These factors make the ship better at using the weapons independently of the AI. If you piloted the ship personally, having those skills and hullmods would make the fight much easier too.

It's easy to see that most of the changes between your loadout and his very clearly improve the ship in either shield HP or speed which are the key factors in using short ranged weapons effectively, and the aggressive personality increases the chances the ship commits to a fight and takes risks. If you removed some of those factors, the ship would probably work less well, but it wouldn't instantly become useless if you spent 4 OP in a different way... In fact, dropping 4 caps  would probably not decrease effectiveness noticeably at all.

At the end of the day, if a loadout doesn't have the speed to close quickly into weapon range and the shield HP to tank damage while closing, it will not work well, regardless of how good the AI is. You're getting angry at the AI for not winning an uphill battle you constructed yourself. If you just make the battle easier, then the AI does fine.

Also, if you could just throw any combination of weapons and hullmods together and still get a good ship, the entire loadout portion of the game would be pointless. There's no reason to try and improve your loadouts when a random loadout works just as well. The whole point of that aspect of the game is that certain combinations work (a lot) better than others. That's what makes it fun. I think your expectation to be able to put random weapons and hullmods together effectively is unreasonable.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 03, 2021, 03:21:05 PM
Wow you got eviscerated by this.

all it proves is that the brawler will use the HMG if you grind out exactly those 5 skills, get exactly that 1 hullmod & nothing else

That's another lie.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: torbes on June 03, 2021, 04:58:57 PM

one last thought before I put this thread behind me; I do find it interesting that now that the game has plenty of options to mitigate the loss of low-value ships, from base ship recovery to industrial skills to recovery-guaranteeing hullmods, that the game now suffers from a severe lack of a way to have your ships behave as if their loss is expected and/or acceptable. As-is I would never run a hulk fleet campaign just bc my ships are already piloting themselves so cautiously. I think, if there was a hullmod that guaranteed the ship was recoverable but instead of making it more survivable made it less survivable by making it much more willing to face-tank to turn its remaining armor into free shield to apply pressure, I'd use it to do hulk playthrus


OH it just clicked in my head!! I'm playing a kite slinging extreme anti-armor loadout, waiting for my fleet to Do Work so I can swoop in & assist, while my fleet is waiting for the player to Do Work so it can swoop in & assist. The game expects me to be piloting the strongest ship in my fleet with a generalized enough loadout that I can always lead the flow of battle, & I'm piloting the tiniest ship in my fleet with such a specialized loadout that I am so incapable of leading the flow of battle in a way that it forces me to sit outside of the battle, and the AI just isn't aggressive enough to carry battles without me like that (shy of just fighting enemies too weak to fight back). Makes sense; the game just isn't built to use a kite as my flagship

The first paragraph is a neat idea.

The second is the salient point. More accurately that, as intrinsic alludes to, that if you want your AI to dictate the flow of battle they need to be 1)fast and 2)have enough shield ehp to feel safe doing so. I think it's reasonable to have discussions about how much of 1 and 2 ships need in the current version and if there are ways to enable similar outcomes without redo'ing the AI or causing shocks to the system by making it too reckless.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Retry on June 03, 2021, 06:04:40 PM
Can we get some pictures of the ships from the saved linked here?  I'm away from my desktop that has Star Sector so I can't check the builds personally (and I'd probably not have the patience to download the specific modset used anyways)

Based off Hiruma Kai's incomplete description of the fleet in question, the builds used spark very little confidence.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: BigBeans on June 03, 2021, 07:29:46 PM
Can we get some pictures of the ships from the saved linked here?  I'm away from my desktop that has Star Sector so I can't check the builds personally (and I'd probably not have the patience to download the specific modset used anyways)

Based off Hiruma Kai's incomplete description of the fleet in question, the builds used spark very little confidence.

I've managed to work out that the bulk of his complaint is due to trash ship builds.

AI defo has issues and is very cautious and has issues during station combat but its not that bad. That video he posted with the Brawler was entirely due to that deformed ship armament he made. Even if he had the heavy vulcan from mods that would've been a trash brawler.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 03, 2021, 07:52:56 PM
its only a trash ship if the AI doesnt know to get into weapons range, which they used to
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 03, 2021, 09:10:53 PM
Can we get some pictures of the ships from the saved linked here?  I'm away from my desktop that has Star Sector so I can't check the builds personally (and I'd probably not have the patience to download the specific modset used anyways)

Based off Hiruma Kai's incomplete description of the fleet in question, the builds used spark very little confidence.

To be fair, sometimes you just can't find the weapons you want.  Especially in a heavily modded game where weapon pools can be very diluted.  Then there's building fleets to do different campaign jobs.  The fleet in the save is clearly not focused on combat, but rather campaign speed, stealth and sensors.  To be honest, it looks like a reasonable fleet for smuggling or stealth missions. Combined with Navigation and Sensors, the ship has a ridiculously small profile, strong sensors, and a base burn speed of 11.  Other player skills are Helmsmanship, Impact Mitigation, Shield Modulation, Missile Specialization, Wolfpack tactics, Energy Weapon mastery, and Field Repairs.  The skills themselves are also modded.

Anyway, I present a break down of the ships as requested for those who don't want to download the mods/save.

The Fury has:
0 Caps, 3 Vents
s-modded Dedicated Targeting Core, s-modded Expanded Missile Racks
Insulated Engine Assembly (lowering profile)
Fuel Additive (15 OP for +1 burn, 20% less fuel consumption, but makes engine more unstable, 25% more maintence)
ECCM Package
Pirate Handiworks (0 OP, 20% less profile)
Converted Hangar (Broadsword wing)
1x Ion Beam, 1x Graviton Beam, 1x Kneecapper MRM (dual regenerating energy/emp missile,base 6 ammo), 2 tactical lasers, 2 mining lasers, 2 PD lasers

In the saved file, the Fury has a cautious officer with Helmsmanship and Strike Commander - but as noted by Deshara, officers were shifted around.  I think the ship does better with an aggressive officer instead of cautious personally.  Reckless would also likely be an improvement.  There's a level 5 Reckless officer, level 3 aggressive, and level 1 aggressive as well, plus the player.

The Moray (phase skimmer destroyer) has:
0 Caps, 0 Vents
s-modded Expanded Missile racks, s-moded Fuel additive (see above)
Insulated Engine Assembly, Pirate Handiworks, Expanded Magazines, Converted Hangar (High Tech Talon Interceptor, 7 base OP - 11 in this hangar, 4 fighters, light machine gun, bright missile each), High Resolution Sensors
2 Heavy Burst Lasers (forward mounted), 1 burst laser (rear mounted), 1 Kneecapper MRM (forward mount)

Brawler (TT) had:
0 Caps, 9 Vents
Comes with insulated engine assembly built in
s-modded fuel additive, s-modded high resolution sensors
Pirate handiworks, Stabilized Shields, Resistant Flux Conduits, Hardened Shields, ECCM Package, Armored Weapon Mounts
2 Salamander MRM, 1 Ion Beam, 1 Graviton Beam

Hedone class yacht (Time splitter frigate) had:
0 Caps, 10 vents
Civilian Grade Hull built in
s-modded fuel additive, s-modded militarized subsystems (note burn speed 10 + 2 = 12 with this setup)
Insulated Engine Assembly, Pirate Handiworks, Reinforced Bulkheads, Escort Package, High resolution sensors
2x Light dual machine guns (forward mounted), 1 IR pulse laser (360 degree turret)

Kite (A) had:
1 cap, 1 vent
Civilian Grade Hull, Militarized Subsystems built in
Pirate Handiworks, Expanded Missile Racks, Insulated Engine Assembly, Escort package, ECCM package, Reinforced bulkheads
2x Hammer torpedoes (so with Missile skill, 12 total torpedoes), 1x Prickler PD Turret

Given the 4 additional civilian ships (Buffalo, Valkyrie, Phaeton, Salvage Rig) are also configured for minimum signature, maximum speed (burn 10), and sensors (high resolution sensors), the insulated engine assemblies on the frigates unfortunately aren't doing much, given the largest 5 ships are used to determine sensor profile.

As I noted before, letting the fleet fight, it looks like it is engaging the enemy to me according to officer AI.  But given it's a speed/stealth build instead of a more combat focused build, it doesn't fight as well as it might, which can certainly cause problems.  The other way to look at it, is the purely AI enemy side (for example the Merchant fleet) has no issue engaging and destroying ships in the fleet.

While I think it's perfectly fine to make suggestions about the tactics the AI might want to consider using (run in with shields down and armor tank), I'm not seeing this unwillingness to engage.  Especially if I hand edit all the officers to all reckless.

Certainly in this case, the suggested behavior for the mission brawler would be non-ideal for the beam Brawler, Hedone or Kite, for example.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 03, 2021, 09:41:16 PM
The fleet in the save is clearly not focused on combat, but rather campaign speed, stealth and sensors.  To be honest, it looks like a reasonable fleet for smuggling or stealth missions.

you nailed it! Its a fleet built for smuggling marines into colonies, not for conquering chicomoztoc.
Idk if u noticed (or if I had done it by the time I made that save) but I've named the variant for all of my ships, "stealth" lol I'm building my fleet to, call in pirate invasion fleets against main faction colonies with 0 marines, slip through the warzone, help the fleet with the starbound defenses if need be (I put fighters on all my support vessels so I can have all my freighters & salvage rig help kill stations if my allied fleet doesnt manage it. its a sight to behold, a salvage rig attacking a starfortress lmfao) & do lightning strike raids against the planet then leaving & letting the pirates capture the colony.
And in the process I've pretty much confirmed that my issue is 1 part that my fleet isnt built for pure combat the way a lot of the AI fleets are (which im fine with, if I wanted my fleet to punch up I wouldnt be putting sensors & insulation on every ship lol) & 2 parts expectations. I've joined enough allied fleets in combat by now (sometimes even just with 1 kite to slip torpedoes into the backside of the enemy's most important capital and then leave) to get a view of how the game expects itself to be played with the changes to the meta from when I locked into my playstyle in 2017
& yeah the reason the guns on them suck is bc I havent found anything better. I have a mod that makes guns not spawn anywhere outside of friendly military markets & Im hostile with every faction so :shrug: not my fault I have a destroyer with 3 burst lasers. My playthrough is way harder than most ppl's
also, RE putting insulation on my frigates, I was just looking at that, I literally noticed the tooltip says only the biggest 5 ships matter like 20 minutes ago & have yet to confirm how much of a difference it makes -- bc even tho it says ONLY the biggest 5 should matter, pulling insulated engines off of my kites still seems to make a difference
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 03, 2021, 09:57:04 PM
pulling insulated engines off of my kites still seems to make a difference

Loading the save, going to an Nortia, and pulling it off the Hedone and the Kite leaves profile at 324 for me (with sustained burn and transponder off). (300+36+24+24+24+24)*0.75 = 324.

Now, if you pull off the pirate handiworks as well, that will raise your profile as the sensor profile goes from 12 to 24 to 30.  But if your frigates are 24 profile or less, they shouldn't affect the 324 profile.  What if your sensor profile before and after removing insulated engines on the kite?  And what is kite's profile before and after?

Edit: I just realized, if you've been playing that game further, you may have changed your fleet composition, at which point it's possible the kite is one of the biggest 5 ships if you ditched destroyer tier ships for more frigates.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 03, 2021, 11:41:22 PM
oh, no, ur right, the kite's insulation doesnt make a difference. i must have been noticing the kite's sensors making a difference for the sensor strength & misremembered that as insulation affection profile. Okay that frees up a bunch of OP on my fleet since I havent lost any ships but have added an Eagle & a Shrike. Now I just have to mouse down to see what my top 5 ships are and realize that the new pirate buffalo I just got, because I am insane & need to get 1 of every buffalo, needs me to drop 2 story points on it so I can have my 4 must-have logistic mods on it lol why do i do this to myself

edit: I just pulled insulated engines off of every ship then putting it back on if it did affect affect my profile, and in the process freed a total of 9 OP across my entire fleet lol it never occured to me that every one of my 7 support ships counts as a destroyer so if I take it off of any of them then they become the biggest sensor profile in my fleet

so my current project in this game now is to pull every hullmod that isnt necessary for the stealth strike fleet setup or a ship's niche & just dump those points into capacitors, see what it does. No more bulkheads or hardened shields on my kites
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on June 04, 2021, 04:50:24 AM
Just wanna add that i also find the new ai, for player fleets anyway, to be so bad it literally feels like it is working against me. issue command to assault a strat point, and they will fan out around it too far to cap it and let themselves be picked off one by one. a cruiser/capital ship will run off chasing a lone frigate while the rest of the fleet is destroyed by the enemy heavys. they will drive into each other, push each other into the middle of the enemy pack, cut off ships i've ordered to retreat, a ship you tell to escort will park itself RIGHT in front of your big guns, or my personal favorite; position themselves perfectly to be in enemy range, and outside their own, and let themselves be shredded. hell, i've seen my doom ship phase back in on TOP of another of my ships and destroy it. sure, ships following orders imperfectly adds an element of realism, and tbh i actually like that as a concept, but in practice what i see are my ships going the OPPOSITE direction from what i told them to all the time. or shooting everything ELSE when told to eliminate one ship.

i love this game, i really do... but i am losing my mind trying to command a fleet that ignores orders, refuses to engage, and stumbles over itself. worst part is, the enemy fleets dont seem to have these problems at all. even when you issue no orders and leave your capital on auto you see this same behavior; and your fleet will be destroyed by smaller ones because your ships are equal parts stupid and coward. seems pretty apparent the enemy ai does not follow the same rules as the players... and perhaps fixing this issue would be as simple as making them use the same one.

there is a reason this stupid meme was at the top of the subreddit for more than a day.

(https://i.redd.it/gkrukstc2l271.jpg)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 04, 2021, 06:58:34 AM
Me fighting some pirates and using commands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZH2Cr2cD5s
 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZH2Cr2cD5s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX42Bu4XaZo
 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX42Bu4XaZo)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on June 04, 2021, 07:28:46 AM
way to win a small battle against a weaker force that woulda gone the same way had you pushed nothing. sure showed me, and everyone else who plays REAL fights with multiple capitals and full DP usage how its done.

amazing how with few enough elements involved the ai doesnt overly screw up, why i only saw your ships drive into each other once. damned near a miracle that.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Yunru on June 04, 2021, 07:36:36 AM
Dude, you've a valid point that you're spoiling for yourself.
Calm down.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 04, 2021, 07:37:52 AM
... seems pretty apparent the enemy ai does not follow the same rules as the players... and perhaps fixing this issue would be as simple as making them use the same one.

They follow the same rules and use the same AI.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on June 04, 2021, 07:48:36 AM
... seems pretty apparent the enemy ai does not follow the same rules as the players... and perhaps fixing this issue would be as simple as making them use the same one.

They follow the same rules and use the same AI.

then i am truly baffled. i have run default ship loadouts in hands-off battles and watched my ships do all the stupid things i outlined above while the opposing fleet seemed far less incompetent. when i tried recording a battle to show for some reason my PC opted to record my desktop instead. not too sure what is up with that (almost never record things so am a noob on that end), but i will see if i can figure it out to add my own to this discussion.

as to buddy boy, he made a comment in another thread telling me i was basically playing wrong, which was what prompted my response here.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Yunru on June 04, 2021, 07:49:53 AM
... seems pretty apparent the enemy ai does not follow the same rules as the players... and perhaps fixing this issue would be as simple as making them use the same one.

They follow the same rules and use the same AI.
Is it possible there is an observable difference merely because a player might be fielder a few powerful ships vs. AI's normally full fleets of varying power?
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 04, 2021, 08:15:59 AM
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/6OqZKoS.png)
[close]
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/iibaEGe.png)
[close]
Full auto with zero commands.
Fleet utterly destroyed.
Maybe stop being offended by any single tiny thing and acknowledge that maybe you have no idea about some things and then listen and learn?
So far you only talk big but don't show anything note worthy.

I have some gripes with AI system and command system and its not perfect but you really sound like some kid who don't look for answers or solutions but for pretext to whine and moan.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 04, 2021, 08:18:36 AM
Is it possible there is an observable difference merely because a player might be fielder a few powerful ships vs. AI's normally full fleets of varying power?

Numbers, loadouts (and especially weapon ranges relative to enemy ships; if one side is generally heavily outranged, it won't do well), officer personalities/skills, the fleet doctrines (the aggressiveness setting affects unofficered ships), and of course the orders given all affect this. Of note, the AI generally gives a Search & Destroy order relatively soon into the battle, upping the aggressiveness of the ships on their side. But it's the same AI, so this is most likely a question of being outdone in one of these aspects. Or, say, something like (not saying this is going on, but as an example) the AI ships having officers and the player's fleet not having any/many.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on June 04, 2021, 08:36:37 AM
Sariss, i have WATCHED my ships go left when told to go right NUMEROUS times. and vice versa. i have seen EVERYTHING i outlined in my prior post. and based on the feedback i am not the only one. refusing to capture strat points when told to, flying past the ship they are told to attack, backing off and maintaining range PERFECTLY so the enemy can hit them without being able to shoot back until dead. etc etc etc. these are REAL *** issues experienced by a lot, of not all, players.

and 'lol learn 2 play' is not constructive. it doesnt matter how well you play WHEN YOUR SHIPS DONT FOLLOW YOUR COMMANDS. bully for you, yours did that time. they often do for me as well... but that doesnt invalidate the issue outlined in this thread, or my post. and your 'holier than thou' attitude does NOT make me inclined to listen to one word you have to say.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 04, 2021, 08:51:19 AM
Numbers, loadouts (and especially weapon ranges relative to enemy ships; if one side is generally heavily outranged, it won't do well), officer personalities/skills, the fleet doctrines (the aggressiveness setting affects unofficered ships), and of course the orders given all affect this.

you know, thinking about it, it occurs that a majority of these factors are A) new(?)ish(?), and B) not visibly evident. Off the top of my head it actually couldnt guess whether or not there is any way for me to know before or during a battle if the enemy fleet is full of officers or not. If an enemy ship outpaces your ship & it just cant close the gap, there is no way to tell that the problem is that the enemy ship is running away instead of that ur ship isnt trying to engage (I fixed this one with a mod that shows the travel direction on all ships so I can see at a glance if my ship is moving towards the enemy but the enemy is just moving away). Or that the enemy is using search & destroy commands to make their fleet more aggressive -- youd never know that unless the dev tells u. Or, that you can change the default stance of all your un-officered ships in the faction doctrine page before you actually have a faction -- I didn't know that until someone here told me.

refusing to capture strat points when told to, flying past the ship they are told to attack, backing off and maintaining range PERFECTLY so the enemy can hit them without being able to shoot back until dead. etc etc etc. these are REAL *** issues experienced by a lot, of not all, players.

some honest advice, coming from the person who started this thread; take a kite or something loaded down with torpedoes enough that it can help in a battle but can't drive the pace of the battle, find an allied fleet & fly with them for a while joining their battles, & basically just watch an AI vs an AI fight. Because if u watch allied fleets fight enemy fleets you'll notice that the AI has no trouble. Because it isn't trying to micromanage its fleet & expect the ship's AI to be able to respond to your commands in a timely manner while also fighting well at the same time. The game just isn't meant to be played like an RTS & your fleet isnt meant to plow through enemies at a fast pace (anymore). It isnt that you're playing badly, just that your expectations havent caught up yet to the direction that the game is going in -- or rather, the directions that it isnt going in anymore as much as it used to
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on June 04, 2021, 09:06:51 AM
truth, i like to watch more than micromanage. buddy boy's videos there are very different than my playstyle. i usually only issue commands to cap a strat point, avoid a big bad until the chaff is gone, to position my fleets before the battle starts in earnest, or to focus on a particular threat. i never even run out of command points.

i have a couple mods running that make my game harder, as i like it, but when you cant make your fleet respond i dont see what you can do.

here is an image from a fight i had earlier. my forces had captured the jammer as instructed off the bat... but then backed away and let the enemy take it, and refused to recap it for the entire fight after. i actually won this fight with my ships all over the map, the jammer unclaimed, and everyone STILL being told to retake it. i know i know, they moved in a capital ship which is cause for my ships to back off somewhat, but after it went down they still didnt move in to retake it.

Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/HYUaUXs.png)
[close]
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Yunru on June 04, 2021, 09:14:36 AM
I know I already mentioned it earlier, but strategic locations are the single most annoying part of the current AI.
It feels like even with the higher priority command, fighting is their default and the location is their idle, rather than the inverse.

I don't mind the current most extreme order, it works perfectly well... In the role of the lighter order, but there's currently no "Ils ne passeront pas."
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 04, 2021, 09:29:38 AM
Please use spoilers for screenshots.
The enemy said clearly have size advantage and that pushed your side into defensive.
Also they have plenty of fighters and AI isn't good in dealing with them often overvaluing them in combat(especially if the lack PD weapons) and put great effort in avoiding them(I think that was pointed in other places and Alex is on it(maybe)).
Anyway.
Go to your fleet doctrine and increase aggressiveness of your fleet - it will affect your ships without officers.
I can't check your ships or enemy builds but if enemy have both range and speed advantage - the AI can be really careful in their attack - so that can be reason why your ships get pushed out from it.
Other thing.
If you want UP your fleet aggression, use FULL ASSAULT option.
Here is comparison. Both battles on full auto - second one is on full assault.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o24x25-P6q4
Allied fleet destroyed. You can notice destroyers skulking around and scared by single wing of fighters. You can notice reckless officer in Cerberos dying first,m and the one in centurion getting strangled in enemy formation(Reckless officers do best when you field them in large group).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9joyfUZ26wc
Enemy fleet destroyed. Losses suffered but not too bad. Ships go full combat mode.

Sure there are issues with current AI and some of them are will know. Thing is whining and screaming will not help your point. Post screenshots, make videos, provide sources.
Ship builds, fleet composition, officers it all affect AI. If your fleet let enemy push it around that is because your AI feel that its much weaker and stand no chance in frontal assault(it may be wrong assessment on it part  but its to you to lead it in battle).
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Alex on June 04, 2021, 10:33:39 AM
Off the top of my head it actually couldnt guess whether or not there is any way for me to know before or during a battle if the enemy fleet is full of officers or not.

(You can tell in both cases! There are officer portraits - on the ship icons (and tooltips) pre-engagement, when you hover over the ship in combat, and on the ship icon in the combat map. The game tries to make that as clear as possible!)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Arcagnello on June 04, 2021, 11:29:47 AM
Off the top of my head it actually couldnt guess whether or not there is any way for me to know before or during a battle if the enemy fleet is full of officers or not.

(You can tell in both cases! There are officer portraits - on the ship icons (and tooltips) pre-engagement, when you hover over the ship in combat, and on the ship icon in the combat map. The game tries to make that as clear as possible!)

Do you plan on giving us a way to see what Commander Skills AI fleets have by the way? I don't know about other factions but while writing the [Redacted] guide thread I've been pleasantly informed by @AcaMentis that [Redacted] can have up to three commander skills active at the same time, those 3 being Electronic Warfare, Coordinated Manouvers and Flux Regulation.

It's currently more or less hidden from the player unless he/she goes poking around into the Starsector Core files...
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 04, 2021, 02:19:17 PM
truth, i like to watch more than micromanage.

I think thats the core of the problem ur experiencing. I like to watch the sim play out too, sitting in a hammer kite while I wait for my fleet to give me an opening for a strike, & my issue with the game turned out to be that my playstyle was not intended to be supported by the game & the patches in recent years have tuned the game to more closely reflect that. The AI as-is is built with the expectation that you will be piloting the biggest, nastiest ship in your fleet making the big changes happen and that the AI's job is to spread the enemy fleet out & hold them down long enough to give you the best chance to do your job. & if you arent piloting the killdozer then ur failing the AI as far as its concerned, bc its waiting for you to come help it
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 04, 2021, 03:15:23 PM
The AI as-is is built with the expectation that you will be piloting the biggest, nastiest ship in your fleet making the big changes happen and that the AI's job is to spread the enemy fleet out & hold them down long enough to give you the best chance to do your job. & if you arent piloting the killdozer then ur failing the AI as far as its concerned, bc its waiting for you to come help it

Well, not entirely, at least in my experience. The AI can do fine without you as long as it's winning the flux battle.
Your Brawler example showcased that pretty well. The thing was basically helpless until it was able to overload the enemy quicker than it overloaded itself and then it easily won.
The AI also has this odd behavior where it's scared to engage and stays at a distance until some kind of threshold is hit, at which point it'll swarm the enemy so hard that your ships literally push each other out of the way to get in there.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: SCC on June 05, 2021, 12:23:45 AM
We need HELMUT to come back to Odyssey coordination fleet and prove its power once again.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 05, 2021, 01:59:37 AM
They follow the same rules and use the same AI.

It actually does, but the AI is much better at assigning orders than the player. Maybe beacuse it actually know what to expect from them.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 05, 2021, 02:52:49 AM
They follow the same rules and use the same AI.

It actually does, but the AI is much better at assigning orders than the player. Maybe beacuse it actually know what to expect from them.

thisthisthisthisthis. This is why I think ppl need to sit & watch the AI play against itself by joining allied fleets with just ur flagship, just to see what it expects of you when ur in command. I think, the issue (mostly) isnt that the AI isnt good enough, its that the game doesnt do a good enough job teaching the player how to command a battle. Which -- I don't blame it for! Its in early access & keeps changing, any battle command tutorial it could have given would be obsolete by now & have been wasted effort on top of having explicitly ingrained in players habits that will now be causing problems
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: BreenBB on June 05, 2021, 03:16:52 AM
About AI, it have some annoying problems, they often afraid for no reason, which stop them from advancing and venting, it refuses to vent when fired with one tactical beam which isn't threat at all, or scarred of swarmer missiles, they don't want to close to ships with one annihilator, they simply strafing around it despite having low flux. And another one of annoying things as when flux is high, ship can't retreat, he will refuse to flux, and be sitting until overloaded or sustained too much damage, much less if it simply flushed immediately.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on June 05, 2021, 03:01:28 PM
"Escort that ship", "use it as a body shield, aye captain"

maybe i misunderstand the concept. when ya tell a cruiser and two destroyers to escort a carrier perhaps they are SUPPOSED to keep it between themselves and shooting enemies. should i instead tell the carrier to escort the destroyers?
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 05, 2021, 03:05:46 PM
"Escort that ship", "use it as a body shield, aye captain"

maybe i misunderstand the concept. when ya tell a cruiser and two destroyers to escort a carrier perhaps they are SUPPOSED to keep it between themselves and shooting enemies. should i instead tell the carrier to escort the destroyers?

Escort generally means stay behind or at most to the side, and out of the way of the front guns on what ever you are escorting. 

Typically it is intended for things like a frigate to cover the rear arc of an Onslaught or Legion and keep frigates or destroyers from flanking.

I do personally often give carriers orders to escort bigger slower combat ships (cruiser carriers escorting capitals), since they'll stay behind it, and thus be safer, and can have their fighters fly over and support the ship.  Bonus points if they're equipped with tracking missiles that can also fly over, like Hurricanes or Harpoons. 

Having a slower ship escort a faster ship can sometimes cause problems as the faster ship pulls away and the slower ship gets left behind.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 05, 2021, 05:51:58 PM
"Escort that ship", "use it as a body shield, aye captain"

maybe i misunderstand the concept. when ya tell a cruiser and two destroyers to escort a carrier perhaps they are SUPPOSED to keep it between themselves and shooting enemies. should i instead tell the carrier to escort the destroyers?

yes. Escortee is the one you want to do the fighting, escorter is dragged along & will try to protect the escortee's flanks. Don't think of an escort order as two jets flying side by side so they can strike the same target, think of it as an Onslaughter having its engines guarded by a hound. The only way to get an escorter to get between the escortee & its target is to have 4 escorts -- one will get behind, two to the sides, then the last one will be sandwiched in the hotzone. The game... probably should be clearer about this, and/or provide alternatives to the escort command that do what players expect/want it to do
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 06, 2021, 01:46:11 AM
"Escort that ship", "use it as a body shield, aye captain"

maybe i misunderstand the concept. when ya tell a cruiser and two destroyers to escort a carrier perhaps they are SUPPOSED to keep it between themselves and shooting enemies. should i instead tell the carrier to escort the destroyers?

yes. Escortee is the one you want to do the fighting, escorter is dragged along & will try to protect the escortee's flanks. Don't think of an escort order as two jets flying side by side so they can strike the same target, think of it as an Onslaughter having its engines guarded by a hound. The only way to get an escorter to get between the escortee & its target is to have 4 escorts -- one will get behind, two to the sides, then the last one will be sandwiched in the hotzone. The game... probably should be clearer about this, and/or provide alternatives to the escort command that do what players expect/want it to do

Ok fine, if that is how escort is supposed to work. I really want to know how do u get ships to fight side by side supporting each other?
 
How do you make your frigates not rush forward at the start of the fight and die from concentrated firepower, while your slower capitals and cruisers lag behind.

How do u stop your onslaught from chasing frigates and destroyers while the main enemy force is not destroyed?
 
What is the order (or combination of orders) that makes your fleet fly as an actual unified force and not a bunch of morons that just do and chase whatever they want despite elimination, capture, engage etc orders?

I really think this is a game with great potential. In my humble opinion the biggest thing that is holding this game back right now is the very one that is supposed to be the main focus and appeal Fleet Combat.

I have seen during the last month/ years a lot of threads addressing this issue but most of them just go in circles. "The ai does that because of that" "have you tried using ... " "Think of them like actual people that don't want to die".

The thing that bothers me most is that the focus should be on alleviating and improving ai behavior in order to make you actually feel like a fleet commander that also fights on the battlefield and orders his forces. For now all i see are certain explanations for the behavior of ai instead of trying to understand why this current formula doesn't work very well and could see various improvements.
At the present moment most fights feel like you doing 80% of the work while trying to micromanage your fleet to not die.

Lastly, please do no take this as an attack but as actual fanboy who wants to see the game go in a favorable direction.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: BreenBB on June 06, 2021, 02:12:08 AM
Ok fine, if that is how escort is supposed to work. I really want to know how do u get ships to fight side by side supporting each other?
 
How do you make your frigates not rush forward at the start of the fight and die from concentrated firepower, while your slower capitals and cruisers lag behind.

How do u stop your onslaught from chasing frigates and destroyers while the main enemy force is not destroyed?
 
What is the order (or combination of orders) that makes your fleet fly as an actual unified force and not a bunch of morons that just do and chase whatever they want despite elimination, capture, engage etc orders?
About AI issues, I agree with you statements this stuff happens regularly, AI need some more common sence, like make them without order stick together, make them follow order stricker, because is sad to look at circling Aurora against frigate with one annihilator, it will kill it eventually, but that cowardice takes alot of time. Low Tech AI clearly need work, its worst doctorine for AI its really bad with Armor Tanking and Burn Drive, it could launch itself into middle of enemy and get surrounded because of unprotected back, un-able to fire because of being over fluxed, refuse to flush and die. Only way to make it useful is make some sort of un-shielded HullMeta.

Also AI need target prioritization, for example make capitals prioritize capitals first, not chase frigates, frigates prioritize other frigates and etc. Also about personalities, I think is good idea make ability to change its aggressiveness in combat, make officer personality default behavior of ship where it assigned, and cap personality change by one, for example aggresive officer can be steady or reckless, reckless can be depended on orders be aggresive or fearless and etc. And for AI cores, I think is good idea to make ability for them to chose any personality.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 06, 2021, 03:31:29 AM
I have seen during the last month/ years a lot of threads addressing this issue but most of them just go in circles. "The ai does that because of that" "have you tried using ... " "Think of them like actual people that don't want to die".

Lastly, please do no take this as an attack but as actual fanboy who wants to see the game go in a favorable direction.

I really feel you. When new people make actual constructive criticism about the AI the older players often act like this is a personal attack.
But nontheless the AI does unreasonable and unexplainable things. Perhaps we cannot agree on this.
But we should all agree in that fleet command is unintuitive, this is a fact, beacuse if it wouldnt be then there would be not so many people confused abput it. People always give overly convolutad and specific advice on how to make your fleet actually do what you want it to do.

"Ohh you want half your frigates to get to the right and harrass the ships so your cappital can go in and kill them? Dont worry you only have to change all your fits (beacuse the ai cant handle those weapon combinations), set up a waypoint, give eliminate command here, here and here, give avoid combat here, escort here...
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/197162453_285827679897024_6721457489867341400_n.png?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=EpIq30owBFsAX8SYEM8&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=b0bdac42b50c6082c9b607dfce99ecd2&oe=60E2ED6E)
[close]
ahh and also dont forget to do *something tottaly random sounding* so your carrier doesnt kill itself  ;) "

I have heard thing like this sooo many times. If the AI isn't going to be changed then make the commands clearer at least, and add a detailed fleet command tutorial please.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Killian on June 06, 2021, 05:15:35 AM
I really feel you. When new people make actual constructive criticism about the AI the older players often act like this is a personal attack.

Are they actually taking it as a personal attack, though? How do you know? How can you be sure? It can be really easy to misinterpret plaintext. Just because they meticulously deconstructed your criticism doesn't mean they took it personally.



But nontheless the AI does unreasonable and unexplainable things.

It's clearly explainable, as Alex has taken time to point out himself why the AI can't make effective use of what it's been given in this very thread. If anyone knows what makes the AI tick, it's the main developer responsible for telling it how to tick. Hiruma's breakdown of Deshana's save explained quite clearly why the AI was failing to perform effectively with the provided equipment, too, and it seems pretty reasonable to me.

Now, if the AI's reasoning isn't clear to the player in the moment, then it probably needs to be fixed. Perhaps something like Combat Chatter with even more events is needed, and/or the ability to select a ship on the tactical view and peek into its 'brain'. If I ping a ship that's hanging further back than I'd like and it says "Engaging at optimal weapons range" then that tells me that maybe I gave it too many long-range weapons.



Perhaps we cannot agree on this.
But we should all agree in that fleet command is unintuitive, this is a fact, beacuse if it wouldnt be then there would be not so many people confused abput it. People always give overly convolutad and specific advice on how to make your fleet actually do what you want it to do.

"Ohh you want half your frigates to get to the right and harrass the ships so your cappital can go in and kill them? Dont worry you only have to change all your fits (beacuse the ai cant handle those weapon combinations), set up a waypoint, give eliminate command here, here and here, give avoid combat here, escort here...
Spoiler
(https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/197162453_285827679897024_6721457489867341400_n.png?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=EpIq30owBFsAX8SYEM8&_nc_ht=scontent-vie1-1.xx&oh=b0bdac42b50c6082c9b607dfce99ecd2&oe=60E2ED6E)
[close]
ahh and also dont forget to do *something tottaly random sounding* so your carrier doesnt kill itself  ;) "

I have heard thing like this sooo many times. If the AI isn't going to be changed then make the commands clearer at least, and add a detailed fleet command tutorial please.

Some of it will always come down to skills and outfitting and doctrine; if you dump a bunch of stuff into a blender and set it to "puree", what you're gonna get is a sloppy mess.

Same applies to pretty much anything where equipment and gear is customizable to this degree (if not more). If you tell people what you're doing and it turns out you're doing something that really shouldn't work, then people tell you what you're doing wrong and you refuse to take their advice... what are you expecting, exactly?



That all aside, I would kinda like to see a decent fleet command tutorial in the game as well. Frankly, I don't touch Commands very much - I field a small group of high-DP ships, so my usual interaction is "select all ships, order capture & hold on the nearest objective" and then I sit back and let the fight unfold. If I really need pressure on a single, specific target, then I hit them with an Eliminate (or, more likely, I deal with them myself). When the battle has shifted back in my favour, I switch everyone back to Search & Destroy. If I'm pursuing stragglers or a fleet that's trying to flee, I just smack that "Full Assault" button and let slip the dogs of war - though if the enemy flagship is amongst their number I might single them out as a priority target.

It's an inelegant, simple, and often brute-force approach but it gets the job done, especially since I'm usually facing overwhelming numbers. My experience is otherwise much like Alex' in that I tend to let the AI do its thing and everything goes fine.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 06, 2021, 06:21:27 AM
Im sorry, i dintdn wanted to imply that im sure they take it personally, most of them probably dont, but some acts like they do.

I wanst refferring to the fits and tactics int his thread, beacuse honestly, it is a mess.
Even then, if i give guns to a ship, and i say "go kill that ship" and i know for a fact that this ship with this weapons can do it, beacuse i tested it myself, and the the AI just refuses, beacuse of reasons it feels wrong. It is a letdown, even if there are explanations for it.
When does one cross the line when things became "it really shouldn't work"? Maybe the ai needs to make more conscius decision based on enemy weapons, flux levels and its surrounding.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 06:25:29 AM
There are obvious flaws in the game's command system.

First is the planning what was sacrificed for the sake of the dynamic gameplay.

The second is the lack of ability to lead your forces. The irony is what it is in the game. Fighters and motes. They have pre-set formations and very much capable of the "follow my lead - attack my target" logic. Even the cool pointer is included in the set.

Third is the reversed difficulty of the command system itself with the strict limitations in the command points at first when player doesn't really know how to use it. It supposed to be the other way around.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 06, 2021, 09:40:55 AM
"Escort that ship", "use it as a body shield, aye captain"

maybe i misunderstand the concept. when ya tell a cruiser and two destroyers to escort a carrier perhaps they are SUPPOSED to keep it between themselves and shooting enemies. should i instead tell the carrier to escort the destroyers?

yes. Escortee is the one you want to do the fighting, escorter is dragged along & will try to protect the escortee's flanks. Don't think of an escort order as two jets flying side by side so they can strike the same target, think of it as an Onslaughter having its engines guarded by a hound. The only way to get an escorter to get between the escortee & its target is to have 4 escorts -- one will get behind, two to the sides, then the last one will be sandwiched in the hotzone. The game... probably should be clearer about this, and/or provide alternatives to the escort command that do what players expect/want it to do

Ok fine, if that is how escort is supposed to work. I really want to know how do u get ships to fight side by side supporting each other?
 
How do you make your frigates not rush forward at the start of the fight and die from concentrated firepower, while your slower capitals and cruisers lag behind.
in order, order your less aggressive ship to escort the more aggressive ship, order the escortee to attack the enemy you want them to gang up on, once it starts engage add the other ship to the attack order
and, put an escort order on all your slow ships at battle-start, remove them once the slowboys are about to or have made contact

its a bit clunky & could use smoothing out but its doable & once u get into the habit doesnt take very long
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 06, 2021, 09:55:09 AM
Ok fine, if that is how escort is supposed to work. I really want to know how do u get ships to fight side by side supporting each other?
Generally I find if you have enough ships, they'll naturally spread out over the battle space into something that vaguely looks like a line.  If you don't, you can use the way point or capture point command to suggest them to take certain positions.  If there's no enemy presence nearby, they'll go there.  So, getting an initial engagement in an line I find isn't too hard with waypoints.  See the attached images for an example.

How do you make your frigates not rush forward at the start of the fight and die from concentrated firepower, while your slower capitals and cruisers lag behind.

I'll sometimes plop a bunch of waypoints down in a line close to my side of the map, in line with capture points perhaps, and assign ships to each waypoint appropriately (or perhaps just 1 ship per waypoint).  This means my fleet is "together" with frigates and capitals.  I'll tend to put faster ships at the edges, as they tend to flank better.  If you do all this at once while the game is paused, it'll take only 1 command point.

That will get them lined up and waiting together before contact with the enemy.  Once they're in contact with the enemy, I typically remove all waypoints simply because I don't like micromanaging, and I don't want the AI to get tripped up by my out of date commands.  When I forget to do that, I'll often find myself at the top of the map wondering where my backup is and why the fight seems a lot harder than it should be.  Only to open the command map and find my fleet is chilling back on my side of the map at way points I left them at while I'm soloing the entire enemy fleet.

If you are a micromanager, you can keep going back to the fleet screen and updating waypoints or eliminate/engage commands.  However, as coded right now, these tend to be more suggestions than orders, except for maybe eliminate.  If a ship's flux gets too high, or if it feels like it is getting flanked, it will back off.  It prioritizes survival over orders generally.  That happens to be a behavior I personally like.  It cuts down on my losses in general.

Keep in mind, the AI really likes to flank to fly around their opponents when they out number them.   From what I can tell, the AI is designed to prevent this by backing off and trying to get the other ships to trip into each other and block their firing lines.  It doesn't take much to get that back off from being flanked behavior, a frigate loaded with a reaper or even harpoons is a potentially dangerous ship to have on your unshielded side.

How do u stop your onslaught from chasing frigates and destroyers while the main enemy force is not destroyed?

In my current fleet, I generally escort an Onslaught with a Lasher and a bomber equipped Mora, and I've got several free floating Lashers and Enforcers, which tend to adequately deal with the smaller stuff.  I find several Daggers will drop enough ordinance to finish off a frigate fairly regularly. Similarly the escort Lasher also seems to make the Onslaught not turn to face flanking frigates quite so much.  If flanking frigates are engaging frigates and destroyers first, then the capitals won't get distracted by a kite with 2 reapers in it's rear arc.

What is the order (or combination of orders) that makes your fleet fly as an actual unified force and not a bunch of morons that just do and chase whatever they want despite elimination, capture, engage etc orders?

Can you give specific, reproducible cases and what you'd like to see happen in those cases?  I mean, "I don't like how ships respond to commands" is reasonable feedback, but it is very hard to act upon.  It's hard to adjust the AI without the exact stimulus that is causing the behavior in your particular case.  This is often why Alex asks for saves, or easy to reproduce simulator situations.

There's also an implicit assumption you don't want your ships following orders to the point of destruction each time.  Although perhaps you would prefer ships to follow player orders to destruction.  You are likely to get a variety of differing opinions on that question on the forums is my guess.

The aggression of ships and "stickiness" of orders could be ramped up, but that impacts all situations, not just the ones where players are seeing the AI be overly cautious compared to what they would do.  It will lead to situations that previously had reasonable behavior driving the ship to it's destruction, in addition to improving situations where it wasn't aggressive enough.

The AI is certainly not perfect, has room for improvement, and I'm sure Alex would be the first to tell you that.

I really think this is a game with great potential. In my humble opinion the biggest thing that is holding this game back right now is the very one that is supposed to be the main focus and appeal Fleet Combat.

Which is a perfectly fair opinion to have.  Starsector attracts a variety of players with a variety of expectations and which parts they like, along with which parts they think need improvements.

I have seen during the last month/ years a lot of threads addressing this issue but most of them just go in circles. "The ai does that because of that" "have you tried using ... " "Think of them like actual people that don't want to die".

Well, I admit I will often post along the lines of "Have you tried using...", simply to provide advice in getting the game as it exists right now to behave how you want.  It's all well and good to ask for changes and improvements, but you can't play those changed or improved versions right now.  So if someone learns how to get what they have right now to behave how they want, I hope they enjoy the game right now more.

The game is in fact bad at communicating what the various fleet commands do.  It is not obvious what the fundamental differences between engage, eliminate, and simply giving no orders are to a new player.  So sometimes posters like myself like to help inform people.

The thing that bothers me most is that the focus should be on alleviating and improving ai behavior in order to make you actually feel like a fleet commander that also fights on the battlefield and orders his forces. For now all i see are certain explanations for the behavior of ai instead of trying to understand why this current formula doesn't work very well and could see various improvements.
At the present moment most fights feel like you doing 80% of the work while trying to micromanage your fleet to not die.

I'm pretty sure Alex is continually trying to improve the AI as ideas occur to him on how to do so.  And I'm willing to bet he's had a development version of the AI where he's cranked up the importance of player orders, and run into what he sees as problems with how the game plays out.  The fact that he implemented command points also means he doesn't see Starsector as having, say, an RTS level of fleet command where you need to be constantly giving new orders to your mindless minions with 60 actions per minute.

The AI has changed over the years, often times in response to player criticisms.  The AI prioritizing weapons fire on fighters versus the carrier itself, for example.  It is just a complicated high interconnected piece of code that affects essentially the entire game experience.  As you point out, fleet combat is the core experience.  And it must be good enough right now to have gotten so many people passionate about the game, to the point when they see the AI do something dumb it bothers them enough to go out and advocate for improvements.  Which also means changes need to be really well considered and well targeted before pushing them to players, because it'd be very easy to destroy the game experience when every fleet fight suddenly results in the destruction of half your fleet due to over aggression on both sides.

As it stands, the eliminate order is quite capable of getting my ships killed really fast if I use it wrong.  Now imagine if waypoint had the ship sit stock still on the waypoint until the point of death from fire from outside it's own weapon range.  Which of course is a silly straw man that no one is asking for, but, it does raise the question, how much movement should be allowed?  Zero is dumb, but is being pushed across the entire map too much? Then there's the AI's ability to assess the relative strength of two ships (and also be able to this for mod ships) which I'm sure Alex would love to do better on, but I'm betting is harder than one might think.

Lastly, please do no take this as an attack but as actual fanboy who wants to see the game go in a favorable direction.[/left]

And I'm fairly certain Alex reads it in that light.  I'm certainly not taking it as an attack.  Neither is this post intended as an attack, but an clarification of where I'm coming from.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 06, 2021, 11:05:33 AM
Quote
Generally I find if you have enough ships, they'll naturally spread out over the battle space into something that vaguely looks like a line.  If you don't, you can use the way point or capture point command to suggest them to take certain positions.  If there's no enemy presence nearby, they'll go there.  So, getting an initial engagement in an line I find isn't too hard with waypoints.  See the attached images for an example.

I have seen the images and I want so say that it is not impossible to make your ships fight side by side. I have even employed your method on my own several time. My gripe is that this method :
Quote
In my current fleet, I generally escort an Onslaught with a Lasher and a bomber equipped Mora, and I've got several free floating Lashers and Enforcers, which tend to adequately deal with the smaller stuff.  I find several Daggers will drop enough ordinance to finish off a frigate fairly regularly. Similarly the escort Lasher also seems to make the Onslaught not turn to face flanking frigates quite so much.  If flanking frigates are engaging frigates and destroyers first, then the capitals won't get distracted by a kite with 2 reapers in it's rear arc.

Ok than how do you solve this issue when the enemies has more fast ships (frigates, destroyers, high tech cruisers) than you?

Quote
Can you give specific, reproducible cases and what you'd like to see happen in those cases?  I mean, "I don't like how ships respond to commands" is reasonable feedback, but it is very hard to act upon.  It's hard to adjust the AI without the exact stimulus that is causing the behavior in your particular case.  This is often why Alex asks for saves, or easy to reproduce simulator situations.

There's also an implicit assumption you don't want your ships following orders to the point of destruction each time.  Although perhaps you would prefer ships to follow player orders to destruction.  You are likely to get a variety of differing opinions on that question on the forums is my guess.

The aggression of ships and "stickiness" of orders could be ramped up, but that impacts all situations, not just the ones where players are seeing the AI be overly cautious compared to what they would do.  It will lead to situations that previously had reasonable behavior driving the ship to it's destruction, in addition to improving situations where it wasn't aggressive enough.

The AI is certainly not perfect, has room for improvement, and I'm sure Alex would be the first to tell you that.

My counter argument is as follows: This game usually throws at you difficult battles, against your odds. You are supposed to win through optimized builds for your fleet, pilot your flagship excellently and be a superior commander. Against some of the harder challenges of the game the last point i made previously matters most!

Also, i will try and gather footage, screenshots and save files in the following weeks in order to prove my point if that seems to be a discussion point.

Quote
I'm pretty sure Alex is continually trying to improve the AI as ideas occur to him on how to do so.  And I'm willing to bet he's had a development version of the AI where he's cranked up the importance of player orders, and run into what he sees as problems with how the game plays out.  The fact that he implemented command points also means he doesn't see Starsector as having, say, an RTS level of fleet command where you need to be constantly giving new orders to your mindless minions with 60 actions per minute.

I also find the fact that the game doesn't act like an RTS a unique and positive aspect. The problem i see that willingly or not, the very game design puts a lot of emphasis on commanding your fleet and when this aspect fails it can be really frustrating.
 
I think most people that play this game and will ever play it will accept losing a ship or two(even more) from their own incompetence but NOT from the incompetence of the AI.

At the present moment the AI isn't acceptably good at either handling the battle on its own or at following orders (will often ignore orders except eliminate order which it follows to its death even in absurd situation).

Maybe to put in other words it is not consistent. You don't know what to expect out of it and the performance variable is too great leading to a lot of situations where your lose ships/battles for the simple fact that your fleet though it was a good idea to ... , despite you telling them otherwise.

Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: SCC on June 06, 2021, 12:29:58 PM
I wonder. Has anyone found some broken strategy that relies on having unlimited command points? I never paid attention to them much, except in the periods when Autonomous Orders(-like) mod wasn't updated, so I got irritated I couldn't retreat ships sometimes. At a glance I don't see anything blatantly stronger than various loadout-centric or flagship performance-centric playstyles (and there wasn't any such stuff in 0.9.1, either).

The limitation of command points' purpose seems to be "limit how much can the player manage the fleet". I can see three reasons to do this. The first is because there's some cheese, but I don't see any. The second is that it's too unreliable to try and command your ships. HELMUT pulled this off once, so maybe a part of people's issue with tactical map is that they simply don't learn to use it, through being prevented from using it to learn? And this thread exists. The third reason I could see is that tactical map has technical issues that become apparent if you use it for longer. So, which is it, Alex?
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Thaago on June 06, 2021, 12:38:12 PM
I haven't found what I'd call broken strategies, but I frequently use lots of command points in hard fights and sometimes run out. They are a resource that I can extract value out of to win.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 06, 2021, 01:01:59 PM
I wonder. Has anyone found some broken strategy that relies on having unlimited command points? I never paid attention to them much, except in the periods when Autonomous Orders(-like) mod wasn't updated, so I got irritated I couldn't retreat ships sometimes. At a glance I don't see anything blatantly stronger than various loadout-centric or flagship performance-centric playstyles (and there wasn't any such stuff in 0.9.1, either).

The limitation of command points' purpose seems to be "limit how much can the player manage the fleet". I can see three reasons to do this. The first is because there's some cheese, but I don't see any. The second is that it's too unreliable to try and command your ships. HELMUT pulled this off once, so maybe a part of people's issue with tactical map is that they simply don't learn to use it, through being prevented from using it to learn? And this thread exists. The third reason I could see is that tactical map has technical issues that become apparent if you use it for longer. So, which is it, Alex?

I can see a fourth reason which isn't related to power, but to play experience.

My guess it is there to prevent people from feeling like they have to spend all their time on the tactical map to get the best performance out of their fleet.  Dropping to the map and back to piloting all the time potentially interrupts the feel of piloting. 

Given we can issue as many orders as we want at one time, it is not so much a limit on orders but on the player's game experience.  It seems to encourage setting a plan in motion, and then letting the plan develop as opposed to feeling like you need to keep tweaking the location of your waypoint five pixels every other second, or changing the eliminate order from one ship to another in rapid succession as they do the usual ship flux dance.

And I agree with Thaago, you can definitely leverage command points for better performance of a fleet.  Especially if it's some kind of specialist build.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: ElPresidente on June 06, 2021, 11:51:22 PM
Some of it will always come down to skills and outfitting and doctrine; if you dump a bunch of stuff into a blender and set it to "puree", what you're gonna get is a sloppy mess.

Same applies to pretty much anything where equipment and gear is customizable to this degree (if not more). If you tell people what you're doing and it turns out you're doing something that really shouldn't work, then people tell you what you're doing wrong and you refuse to take their advice... what are you expecting, exactly?

IF your ships cannot follow simple orders without a specific loadout and officer personality, then that is a BIG failure of programing the AI.
Weather or not the AI executes a DIRECT orders should NOT depend on ANY factor other than the player order itself.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 07, 2021, 02:49:03 AM
Also it seems fighting powerful Ordos and Doritos seems to be a big discussion point so i just want to throw this out there as food for thought.

Why do u think they are so hard to fight?
As the last tournament has shown the AI simply doesn't employ a good strategy to beat them.

As such you end up in the position where
I think this is the reason why so many people end up calling the ship AI stupid, morons, braindead etc.
I also think this is why some people complain about it being an artificially difficult fight. They simply cannot use their forces to their full extent and end up relying on RAW stats and other mechanics the game uses (built in hullmods, the more powerful of the ship roster that are considered "OP").

As an example:  The Doritos while they are very powerful in regards to flux, weapons, ship system and speed they are only 2 ships in the end. A very simple strategy against them would be to surround them. Because of the current state of ship AI and orders you cannot do this and ultimately have to rely on them making mistakes. To prove my point is that in the few cases where it randomly happens for my fleet to surround them I end up on stomping them(I will work on providing screenshot, footage).

Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 07, 2021, 04:13:46 AM
Ordos and Doritos have very high burst concentration paired with mobility. Resulting in ability to quickly exploit any weakness in player's formations. One moment you are looking at your cruiser menacingly forming the impenetrable wall of plasma and squall fire, you look the other way for a ten seconds and when you are back, one of cruiser is already at high flux, struggling to stay alive. And in the first fights against Doritos I was instantly loosing AI controlled Odyssey before I realized that it was instagibbed by the Rift Lance spam into the area unprotected by the shield.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 07, 2021, 06:25:56 AM
Ordos and Doritos have very high burst concentration paired with mobility. Resulting in ability to quickly exploit any weakness in player's formations. One moment you are looking at your cruiser menacingly forming the impenetrable wall of plasma and squall fire, you look the other way for a ten seconds and when you are back, one of cruiser is already at high flux, struggling to stay alive. And in the first fights against Doritos I was instantly loosing AI controlled Odyssey before I realized that it was instagibbed by the Rift Lance spam into the area unprotected by the shield.

I agree with what you said. The problem is the player fleet has no formations. At most you can try and mimic formation by using orders but that doesn't hold too well.

Even now I am trying to experience different scenarios and the only time I see the AI perform reasonably well is when the battle is either balanced or in the favor of the player (even in the scenario that you have overwhelming advantage it will sometimes "hiccup"  and get some of your ships dead).
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: RustyCabbage on June 07, 2021, 06:29:52 AM
Also it seems fighting powerful Ordos and Doritos seems to be a big discussion point so i just want to throw this out there as food for thought.

Why do u think they are so hard to fight?
  • A)They have better ships
  • B)They are better at commanding their own units?
  • C) Or because your forces don't employ a good strategy in order to beat them. Also this takes in consideration your own orders which the Ai is incapable of following. ( This choice is what i think is the cause)

As the last tournament has shown the AI simply doesn't employ a good strategy to beat them.

As such you end up in the position where
  • the AI doesn't employ strategy on its own
  • you cannot make them employ a good strategy through orders

I think this is the reason why so many people end up calling the ship AI stupid, morons, braindead etc.
I also think this is why some people complain about it being an artificially difficult fight. They simply cannot use their forces to their full extent and end up relying on RAW stats and other mechanics the game uses (built in hullmods, the more powerful of the ship roster that are considered "OP").

As an example:  The Doritos while they are very powerful in regards to flux, weapons, ship system and speed they are only 2 ships in the end. A very simple strategy against them would be to surround them. Because of the current state of ship AI and orders you cannot do this and ultimately have to rely on them making mistakes. To prove my point is that in the few cases where it randomly happens for my fleet to surround them I end up on stomping them(I will work on providing screenshot, footage).
This is false. The latest AI battles against the Tesseracts would have been significantly easier if it was possible to assign orders.

Surrounding them is also doable with some finesse, but its certainly more fleet composition dependent than most fights.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 07, 2021, 06:44:59 AM
Quote
This is false. The latest AI battles against the Tesseracts would have been significantly easier if it was possible to assign orders.

Surrounding them is also doable with some finesse, but its certainly more fleet composition dependent than most fights.

Maybe I didn't express myself clearly. Of course if you try and micromanage every movement of your fleet you are going to have an easier time. But even in that context you cannot transmit clear orders so as to follow a certain strategy( you also limited by command point). So as previously said you cannot rely on your fleet do to its own thing and you also cannot employ a strategy because your ships don't follow your orders properly.

And that leads to very a fleet composition dependent strategy. That is why I believe a vast majority of the playerbase will only use ships that generally considered above others in their class (really didn't to use the term OP).
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Thaago on June 07, 2021, 09:49:02 AM
Perhaps I'm missing something, but shouldn't a fleet composition dependent strategy be the goal of an orders system? So that the player uses different strategies depending on what ships they have. Using orders to win battles depends entirely on knowing the capabilities on your own ships, at least approximately. If I try and treat a Lasher like a Tempest things aren't going to go well. Same with Enforcer (can take a pounding but has low gun firepower) vs a Sunder (glass cannon), etc.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 07, 2021, 10:19:07 AM
Perhaps I'm missing something, but shouldn't a fleet composition dependent strategy be the goal of an orders system? So that the player uses different strategies depending on what ships they have. Using orders to win battles depends entirely on knowing the capabilities on your own ships, at least approximately. If I try and treat a Lasher like a Tempest things aren't going to go well. Same with Enforcer (can take a pounding but has low gun firepower) vs a Sunder (glass cannon), etc.

What I mean in more precise terms is that because it is not possible for you to fine tune your ships behavior or give them precise orders you end up compensating by using a very limited amount of fleet compositions (the most easy and overpowered for the ai to use).
Examples: In my opinion this takes away from the main appeals of the game:
These aspects I think are the responsible for the replayability of the game.

Because the AI can use on its own only a very limited amount of builds and because you cannot try different strategies (current system of fleet orders doesn't allow it) you end up using a very limited amount of fleet combinations/builds for your ships (limited in the context of the potential of the game).

I really don't know to better word this.
As such a lot of possible builds get buried because of the reasons mentioned above.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Thaago on June 07, 2021, 10:31:43 AM
Ah, I see what you mean. I disagree though - the orders system doesn't explain itself well but does let the player command their ships to do different strategies. Then again I've had a long time to get used to it so I'm probably not a very representative sample of how approachable it is.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 07, 2021, 10:37:38 AM
Well if that is what you think I will just say this.

Lets agree to disagree.

I simply wanted to put in words some aspects of the game that maybe (just my opinion) need a bit more attention than they currently get.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 07, 2021, 12:54:39 PM
Gotta agree with CozyCloudy there, I also end up using certain safe builds for the AI over and over.
There's a bit more flexibility with high tech fleets but if I try to experiment with low or mid AI ships I usually end up taking unnecessary losses.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 07, 2021, 01:11:44 PM
IDK, for me the whole point of trying different loadouts is to find the one that works best. The fun part is finding the ones that work well. The AI is just one factor in that optimization, and changing the AI wouldn't make it any more or less enjoyable. If the AI was better, then I would just optimize towards the new best loadouts and the old 'best' loadouts would becomes similarly obsolete to the current 'risky' loadouts. The only problem for me is that the game doesn't do a great job of telling you the rules that you're playing by with the AI, but once you figure them out/understand them, changing the AI is just shifting the optimization goal posts so to speak. That's how I see it anyway.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 07, 2021, 01:29:24 PM
IDK, for me the whole point of trying different loadouts is to find the one that works best. The fun part is finding the ones that work well. The AI is just one factor in that optimization, and changing the AI wouldn't make it any more or less enjoyable. If the AI was better, then I would just optimize towards the new best loadouts and the old 'best' loadouts would becomes similarly obsolete to the current 'risky' loadouts. The only problem for me is that the game doesn't do a great job of telling you the rules that you're playing by with the AI, but once you figure them out/understand them, changing the AI is just shifting the optimization goal posts so to speak. That's how I see it anyway.

I really don't want to sound like I don't acknowledge certain arguments being made.
But what I am trying to argue in these posts is creating the possibility for most people to have fun even if some have different playstyles.

I could point out that after 1 or 2 playthroughs and a bit of testing your the ships you basically have seen all builds that are viable(even though there are A LOT of possible combinations of ships/weapons).

And i would also like to point out that to me it seems like a fallacy saying things like: If the AI was better ... you would just optimize differently.
To me it sounds similar to things like : "If I am going to die anyways  what is the point of ever going to a doctor or taking care of my health?"
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Drazan on June 07, 2021, 01:38:47 PM
Yeah, gotta agree with CozyCloudy. Improved AI doesnt mean that current builds will become obsolete, it means that many more builds became viable, along many more strategies, resulting in more fun.
For example, if the AI could shield tank properly, then lowtech would not be as much of a punching bag as it is now. In a fleet level, if the AI could work together when needed, then support builds and complementary fits would became vible.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Thaago on June 07, 2021, 02:35:21 PM
But all those things already are viable, and low tech is indeed "viable" (its not as strong as high tech, but its sitting at like 90% and can reliably beat every enemy). Support builds in the form of missile ships, carriers, EMP skirmishers, beam flanking sunderers... all of those are currently things which are useful and viable.

...

I really don't want to sound like I don't acknowledge certain arguments being made.
But what I am trying to argue in these posts is creating the possibility for most people to have fun even if some have different playstyles.

I could point out that after 1 or 2 playthroughs and a bit of testing your the ships you basically have seen all builds that are viable(even though there are A LOT of possible combinations of ships/weapons).

And i would also like to point out that to me it seems like a fallacy saying things like: If the AI was better ... you would just optimize differently.
To me it sounds similar to things like : "If I am going to die anyways  what is the point of ever going to a doctor or taking care of my health?"


I disagree with this, as I'm on my 7th or so playthrough of this patch and every one has had a different build strategy. I've done a general unrestricted playthrough, a frigate wolfpack (leadership 9), high tech runthrough with the new furies and frigate backup, done 2 low tech playthroughs, a carrier centric playthrough (didn't finish that one as its just too boring for me, but it was working through midgame 300k bounties well enough, maybe it would fail against omegas though), and am in a mid tech one right now. Maybe another one or two to test specific things? And I haven't even used phase ships or SO at all as primary strategies - I threw them on to do some tests and see if Dooms really are OP (they are lol), but I could see myself doing an all reckless strategy and a phase strategy as their own games.

In all of those playthroughs I needed to figure out how to make good ship builds in order to succeed (still working on it for midline: I'm actually rather unhappy with my Brawler builds and going back to Hammerheads after using Enforcers so much has left me craving some missile support ships to go along with the better guns... I should bite the bullet and advance to cruisers and get some gryphons). Its not like there's only one way to play right now, but there is pressure to play well.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 07, 2021, 02:43:22 PM
I could point out that after 1 or 2 playthroughs and a bit of testing your the ships you basically have seen all builds that are viable(even though there are A LOT of possible combinations of ships/weapons).
I think many builds are viable in the sense that using them is worth the cost of having the ship, and there are almost certainly many combinations I have never tried in my hundreds of hours of gameplay that would work decently against normal enemies like pirates. But most builds are not good in the sense that you could do better by optimizing them, and you will be able to do significantly better in combat by doing so. That's how it should be IMO.

And i would also like to point out that to me it seems like a fallacy saying things like: If the AI was better ... you would just optimize differently.
To me it sounds similar to things like : "If I am going to die anyways  what is the point of ever going to a doctor or taking care of my health?"
That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying if you change your body so that different sets of foods are healthy/taste good, then you will make the same decisions (pick the healthy food if you value your health or pick the good tasing food if you value the enjoyment of eating). The specific foods that are healthy or taste good don't affect the decision making process. Basically, for me, the process of finding the best loadouts is the fun part, and changing what the best loadout is doesn't really change the process of finding it. It's also important to note that the enemy AI becomes better when the friendly AI becomes better, so things that are good now won't necessarily be any more. I do think that if the AI was much close to a humans skill level, then some loadouts that are currently 'safe' would be easily exploited by aggression that the AI is currently not capable of. The player is certainly capable of exploiting many loadouts that AI struggles against currently.

I'm not at all against the AI being improved, but IMO there's always going to be limitations to what it can do, and you're always going to have to figure out where those limitations are to make good loadouts. The AI will always be a factor when making loadouts. You also do have some control over the AI behavior in the sense that you get to pick between timid/cautious/steady/aggressive/reckless which I think is not being considered as much as it should be in a lot of these criticisms. Tons of loadouts work way better if you change the AI aggressiveness to match the weapons and I think that brawler loadout shown earlier was a good example.

I also think there always should be a lot of things that you can do that don't work well because that's what makes the process of finding things that do work enjoyable. If everything works, there's no point in optimizing which is what I find to be fun.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: DownTheDrain on June 07, 2021, 02:49:54 PM
I disagree with this, as I'm on my 7th or so playthrough of this patch and every one has had a different build strategy. I've done a general unrestricted playthrough, a frigate wolfpack (leadership 9), high tech runthrough with the new furies and frigate backup, done 2 low tech playthroughs, a carrier centric playthrough (didn't finish that one as its just too boring for me, but it was working through midgame 300k bounties well enough, maybe it would fail against omegas though), and am in a mid tech one right now. Maybe another one or two to test specific things? And I haven't even used phase ships or SO at all as primary strategies - I threw them on to do some tests and see if Dooms really are OP (they are lol), but I could see myself doing an all reckless strategy and a phase strategy as their own games.

I suppose the viability of certain builds is rather subjective and depends on how well you mastered commanding the AI. That and your pain tolerance.
Personally I don't like spending too much time on the strategy screen so I'm reliant on ships and loadouts that the AI can use without me constantly telling them where to go, whom to escort and what to avoid completely.

That's not to say that it can't be done, just that I don't enjoy doing it. Low tech runs are a good example of that. I tried one and after some initial setbacks I was doing alrightish, but I wasn't having fun. When I start to dread going into battle, usually the best part of the game, then there's no point in me going on just to prove that I can make it through.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 07, 2021, 09:30:21 PM
When I mean viable builds I mean fleet compositions/ship loadouts that can generally tackle most threats (in my opinion high level bountys is really low on the threat level with the exception of certain high tech ones... I am starting to see a pattern).

Quote
I suppose the viability of certain builds is rather subjective and depends on how well you mastered commanding the AI.

I really don't think performance/viability of builds is subjective as it can be reliably measured.

Sure you can make some builds that consists of less used ships (low tech, certain mid line, pirates etc) and do great against pirates, high level bounties except the ones mentioned above. The problem is that you will ALWAYS end up with lower perfomance no matter what combination of ships you use from low tech, mid line than if you simply spam high tech or certain outliers (example champions).
 
YES you can beat Doritos, 3 radiant ordos, doom spam with astral high level bounties and other fleets (that have a lot more than 240DP) but it is going to cost you a hefty price and a lot of nerves.

Another thing that I would like to clarify is that I believe in order to bring other playstyles/doctrines up to level it is not necessary to buff them (stats or ship systems etc). You can bring them up to level by:
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: ElPresidente on June 08, 2021, 12:00:19 AM
Ah, I see what you mean. I disagree though - the orders system doesn't explain itself well but does let the player command their ships to do different strategies. Then again I've had a long time to get used to it so I'm probably not a very representative sample of how approachable it is.

Probably not.

The weapon selection officer personality informing ship behavior is fine when I let the ship do it's own thing, but NOT when I give it direct orders.

The best way I can think of to fix it is to have an override. For example, hold SHIFT while issuing an order, and officer personality/loadout will be ignored. The ship will follow your order AT ALL COST.
If you order it to hold a point it will not move no matter what.
If you order attack it will follow that enemy to the end of the universe.

This gives the player a lot more flexibility (a more abiltiy to mess things up by assigning a wrong ship to a wrong job, but at least now the player has full control)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 08, 2021, 01:50:27 AM
you know something, I recently reinstalled ARMA 3 to play the new DLC, hated it (they sold a singleplayer campaign in a squad-based action-sim game, which itself is designed explicitly for you to have a team on each mission (requiring multiple roles) where they dont give u a squad), decided to give the genuinely incredible East Wind campaign a replay & was reminded how the game starts the first several missions with the player, not being dropped into being a squad leader, or given a tutorial on how to play the game and then immediately dropped into being a squad leader, or even given a tutorial on what buttons to press while being a squad leader then dropped into being a squad leader, but what the game does is it starts with multiple missions with the player being led by an AI squad leader who leads the player the exact same way as an enemy AI squad leader would lead its subordinates.
And what this does, without anything as obstructive & pace-breaking as a tooltip, is shows the player explicitly how the game's squad AI expects to be led.
The game has a commonly noted problem with feeling like the enemy is cheating bc their AI is so much smarter & proactive & sensible than your AI is and what these missions do is shows the player that the reason ur squad doesn't doing anything about the enemy tank while it singlehandedly kills ur whole squad while the enemy hammers ur tank with RPG fire & smoke grenades & gets out of its way to minimize the damage it can do to ppl that cant shoot it back is bc u arent leading them correctly & it shows u what u should be doing when ur leading a squad.

& I think Starsector could benefit from the same sort of contextualization -- not a tutorial of what buttons to press to get ur fleet to do stuff, but a literal diegetic showcase of what commanding a fleet should look like. Gun to my head, I'd say the default starting option should be playing as a convict on commission-parole for the Sindrian Diktat

to wit; the game starts with the commander who defeated & captured u before gamestart showing up to ur trial & offering to parole you & exchange your sentence for time served in his fleet out of recognition of your skills. The game kicks you over to the military ship buy screen & lets you pick & arm 1 ship with its price being incurred as a debt (better ship = longer debt), then ur given a hold of supply & ejected from the market & are treated by the sindrian markets as if u've caused trouble recently & arent allowed to dock until ur debt is paid off (or enough time has passed since ur last action in sindria, in case u somehow break away & abandon the questline, tho if the quest gets abandoned from timing out with no action taken then u get vengeful status with sindria).
Alongside u a sindrian fleet is launched, led by the officer who paroled you, who goes to war with [someone]. Every time u join a battle with that fleet, the allied AI treats your ship as if u were one of its & orders you what to do during the battle. After battle the fleet takes all money from commission bounty & applies it to ur debt; following & completing orders in-battle improves your reputation with the fleet commander, and the fleet takes all loot from the defeated fleet as if you hadn't actually participated in the battle (except for weapons so u can arm up), leaving you with 0 natural supply or fuel income.
Once you run out of supplies the fleet allows your ship to start breaking down & running without supplies to repair, & once ur out of supplies & hit a CR% equal to or less than your reputation with the fleet commander the fleet will intercept u like u ran a distress beacon, run a search of your ship for military contraband (takes back all guns u have stockpiled & arent actually equipped on ur ship) then they let you exchange reputation with the fleet commander for supplies and/or fuel (if theyre going out of system).
The point being, without taking a player's control away, the player is basically leashed to an AI fleet & dragged from fight to fight, locked to their 1 ship being rewarded for paying attention to the AI commander's orders & getting a feel for how the AI commands a fleet. If you obey your orders you'll be on the commander's good side which will give you enough supplies to keep your ship in top shape, which helps you pay your debt off faster. If you don't obey your orders the commander will naturally give you less & less supplies, leaving your ship to rot & struggle to keep up with the fleet until it finally breaks down & they abandon you to the void of space in a steel tomb
once the debt is paid off the systems that keep you going in this special gameplay state are turned off & ur told to go back to Sindria for a court date to confirm you did your time. When u get there the commander is called as the sole evidence/witness against you; your reputation with him is set to be your reputation with the faction. If you did well they'll let u keep ur ship, if not they buy the ship back from u & let u buy a ship from the non-military marketplaces. if u did poorly then they punish you for malignancy (despite doing your time & paying off ur debt) by taking ur ship away, giving u an S-kite with 5 supply & 5 fuel and give u 2 days to get out of system before the faction's reputation gets set & they go hostile to you (when it gets set it triggers an encounter in the bar in Umbra where an old fleetmate pre-capture takes ur malignancy charge as proof you took the parole-commission to sabotage the sindrian effort from inside & it starts a quest chain to get back in with some of your old pirate crew, that involves hunting down, defeating & killing the commander who had commissioned you edit: while only being allowed to pilot your s-kite so its a "prove u can defeat the commander by commanding only" challenge). If u did really well, well enough to be eligible for commission, then the commander offers you an actual commission & whether u take it or not also offers to retroactively double your commission for ur time under him, effectively forgiving debt & giving u cash for all of the ships u had killed for him
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Arcagnello on June 08, 2021, 02:59:56 AM
Also it seems fighting powerful Ordos and Doritos seems to be a big discussion point so i just want to throw this out there as food for thought.

Why do u think they are so hard to fight?
  • A)They have better ships
  • B)They are better at commanding their own units?
  • C) Or because your forces don't employ a good strategy in order to beat them. Also this takes in consideration your own orders which the Ai is incapable of following. ( This choice is what i think is the cause)

As the last tournament has shown the AI simply doesn't employ a good strategy to beat them.

As such you end up in the position where
  • the AI doesn't employ strategy on its own
  • you cannot make them employ a good strategy through orders

I think this is the reason why so many people end up calling the ship AI stupid, morons, braindead etc.
I also think this is why some people complain about it being an artificially difficult fight. They simply cannot use their forces to their full extent and end up relying on RAW stats and other mechanics the game uses (built in hullmods, the more powerful of the ship roster that are considered "OP").

As an example:  The Doritos while they are very powerful in regards to flux, weapons, ship system and speed they are only 2 ships in the end. A very simple strategy against them would be to surround them. Because of the current state of ship AI and orders you cannot do this and ultimately have to rely on them making mistakes. To prove my point is that in the few cases where it randomly happens for my fleet to surround them I end up on stomping them(I will work on providing screenshot, footage).
This is false. The latest AI battles against the Tesseracts would have been significantly easier if it was possible to assign orders.

Surrounding them is also doable with some finesse, but its certainly more fleet composition dependent than most fights.

I have basically played my last 3 Starsector campaigns (all of which have now successfully beaten endgame) without even manually controlling any ship and just using a combination of orders and strategies for everything. What Rusty Cabbage says here is 100% authentic.

You can execute advanced strategies aimed at sploiting your enemies' weaknesses with just the orders you're given with in the tactical view, it simply takes experience to realize how your AI ships actually behave when given any order and what ship variants the AI uses best to execute orders better, which generally comes with experience.

In short, fail enough at the game while keeping an open mind for new ways to do things and you'll eventually come out ontop. This litterally applies to every aspect of Starsector, including fleet orders.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 08, 2021, 04:45:47 AM
I have basically played my last 3 Starsector campaigns (all of which have now successfully beaten endgame) without even manually controlling any ship and just using a combination of orders and strategies for everything. What Rusty Cabbage says here is 100% authentic.

You can execute advanced strategies aimed at sploiting your enemies' weaknesses with just the orders you're given with in the tactical view, it simply takes experience to realize how your AI ships actually behave when given any order and what ship variants the AI uses best to execute orders better, which generally comes with experience.

In short, fail enough at the game while keeping an open mind for new ways to do things and you'll eventually come out ontop. This litterally applies to every aspect of Starsector, including fleet orders.

Well if that is how you see things then I would really like to find some proof of the strategies being employed using orders.
I have watched all youtube (Nemonaemo, Uran, Lowsettings, Asher, WadeStar, MoshiKnight, Friendly Rough Ai,
HELMUT  etc.) material i can find, google things, stalk this forum, reddit and discord but I really haven't seen a single example of the things you mention. (I have yet to see someone with this experience you speak of using put it in practice and recorded).

What I am trying to say I have yet to see someone use orders to deploy an actual strategy beyond: set your fleet to defend these points so they don't all rush forward, capture points, escort, maybe avoid on smth).

The problem I have is not that I can't deal with with the challenges this game throws at me (if at this point they can be called so) but that I am compelled by the current game design to brute force every single one of them.(more info in the previous posts)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Arcagnello on June 08, 2021, 05:23:22 AM
Sure. I can supply you with some screenshot material.
Are you fine with spoilers?

Pardon the short reply but I'm in the middle of editing threads and making screenshot of ship variants xD
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 08, 2021, 05:24:43 AM
Please do.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Thaago on June 08, 2021, 09:48:38 AM
idea

Huh, thats a really interesting idea! I'm not sure exactly how the UI would be presented to the player to give them orders, but showing them what commands are in use would be interesting.

That could also be a neat part of a skill, now that I'm thinking of it. "Counterintelligence" or something. Gives some bonuses and also displays enemy orders.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 08, 2021, 11:05:21 AM
That could also be a neat part of a skill, now that I'm thinking of it. "Counterintelligence" or something. Gives some bonuses and also displays enemy orders.

that's... understatedly brilliant. You could make it a hullmod unlocked by a skill, "clandestine sensor suite" that can only be equipped on civilian ships without militarized subsystems that gives the ship the stealth benefits of militarized subsystems but without making the ship behave as a non-civilian ship, and if deployed to battle will spy on the enemy fleet's comms & tell u what their commander is ordering
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Yunru on June 08, 2021, 11:06:47 AM
Or as a consequence of winning ECM, maybe?
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Killian on June 08, 2021, 11:53:02 AM
I've rarely seen a case where the ECM war wasn't outrageously lopsided (usually in my favour), and this would squash its effects where it would be arguably at its most useful, understanding the Remnant. Those tin-cans can bring up to 60% (if not more) ECM to the field, and you just won't win that fight no matter how hard you try.

On the one hand that might be desirable (keeping them as this powerful, inscrutable nemesis), but on the other hand... maybe not so much.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Morrokain on June 08, 2021, 03:10:10 PM
I 100% agree that a lot of the misconceptions about the AI comes down to lack of information - whether explicit or contextual - or player experience with the AI.

For instance, speed is a big one here. Because space mostly lacks static background things to judge relative speeds, the illusion of a ship "being completely unwilling to engage" can simply be that one ship is fleeing and the other is chasing it and their speed is roughly the same. That's just one example.

I think Deshara and Thaago are barking up the right tree with the idea of explicitly showing the player how the AI is operating while the player is playing the game (rather than a tutorial or tooltip because some players ignore those) in some sort of mission format. This could also significantly benefit hunting down bugs with the AI since a player can give more context if they are seeing something weird.

I mean, I'm not saying the AI is perfect or anything and I am one of those people who does miss the more aggressive AI from .8 - but I'm also more willing to accept ship losses than some players.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Thaago on June 08, 2021, 03:19:34 PM
I also agree btw that the 'steady' setting is too cautious for my taste: I always click up my fleet aggression in the doctrine tab and use aggressive officers over steady. I also find myself switching from HVD/Mauler builds to Heavy Needler/Heavy Mortar ones, at least for ships with officers that can afford to be close to the enemy so that my ships get closer instead of trying to maintain range.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 08, 2021, 03:43:41 PM
If more player-facing info about the AI is added, I really don't think it should be a hullmod/skill, or generally have some sort of in-game cost. If it's too much information, then make it toggleable (an overlay on the tactical map for instance), but paying a skill point for basic information doesn't seem like a good idea. It feels like one of those things where experienced players will see it as a trap if they already have a decent understanding of the AI, but new players will really benefit from it and thus lose out on other things to get basic information.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Lucky33 on June 08, 2021, 09:19:55 PM
This is circular error logic. Fix the system so you don't need to explain its unclear logic. In our case, remove the command points entirely and replace them with the order queue.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Arcagnello on June 09, 2021, 01:37:32 AM
Please do.

Alright, I will admit I don't tend to do all that many screenshots  when I'm actually having to concentrate but I hope some of these screenshots help somewhat, even tough they're a mashup of different battles.

The first thing I do is deploy some 75% of my fast units plus a capital ship or two (preferably the slowest ones, unlike this case) and put capture orders on every single point. I do this because every single AI fleet from pirates to remnants does the same, the more it is going to be occupied contesting capture points away from my frigates and the less pressure is going to come the way of my hard hitters.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/I5Nw3RO.png)
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Next thing to do is properly coordinating my fleet to properly engage the right targets at the right moment
1) I tend to put a "strike" orders on the smallest ships first the enemy fields (since I usually bring my carriers with fighters
2) if I notice one of my frigates is contesting a buoy against a single enemy frigate I give it an "Eliminate" order to quickly dispatch it and go back to capturing the buoy. I do this during the entire duration of the game.
3)I more or less put "engage" orders on anything bigger than a frigate so that all my fast units properly spread out and harass.

I usually have my main combat force manually "engage" one of the enemies I set that order on to focus fire and eliminate enemies more quickly.
I find it to be really important to have the main force possessing a lot of strike damage potential to quickly overpower one enemy at a time. In this case you can easily assume I've got a Gryphon escorting each Conquest, mostly to keep them out of trouble.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/DagMm8j.png)
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I sometimes really want something on the enemy team to get mashed as fast as possible so I switch that "engage" order it most likely had to "eliminate" and manually assign my main force to do the job all at once, like in these two cases. They'll most likely take damage (especially if they have 90 degree omni shields  ::) ) but I'll be left with one less nasty enemy to deal with.
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(https://i.imgur.com/EbeJQf7.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/ik612XG.png)
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I also tend to "balance" the aggressiveness of my main strike forces, usually telling one of those ships with the orders of "eliminating" an enemy to "retreat" instead if it's getting ahead too much, then quickly set it back to "eliminate" once the rest of the ships catch up.

I hope this was useful. I would love to provide more screenshots but I've got some 1900 of them in my folder and I've still got to edit stuff aroun the forum, maybe later  :P
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 09, 2021, 02:57:28 AM
Arcagnello I don't mean to be rude, especially since you put in the effort to try and show me some how you play the game, but I see a lot of problems with what you have posted:

I would really appreciate if people who want to reply and contribute to the discussion would try and read what has been already posted by either me or others in the same thread. (I acknowledge the fact that AI does well on its own or follows certain orders when you are have a fleet advantage)
Also spamming high tech frigates does not help in regards to other arguments being made on this very same thread.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: ElPresidente on June 09, 2021, 03:08:27 AM
Also spamming high tech frigates does not help in regards to other arguments being made on this very same thread.

Have to agree with this.
A tactic that only work if you have an entire high-tech fleet with specific weapons is very specific and just further illustrated the problem of AI behavior being very specific and unclear, and too dependant on ship/loadout.

In other words, it takes too much fiddling to get the ship to behave how you want it to. I don't mind the AI trying to use what it deems the best approach in general, but there should be a way to override it.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Arcagnello on June 09, 2021, 03:38:00 AM
Arcagnello I don't mean to be rude, especially since you put in the effort to try and show me some how you play the game, but I see a lot of problems with what you have posted:
  • Your screenshots don't actually show the full enemy fleet
  • All of your screenshots except the first one show situations in which you are already winning
  • You are using mods

I would really appreciate if people who want to reply and contribute to the discussion would try and read what has been already posted by either me or others in the same thread. (I acknowledge the fact that AI does well on its own or follows certain orders when you are have a fleet advantage)
Also spamming high tech frigates does not help in regards to other arguments being made on this very same thread.

1) I'm lately fighting a lot of remnants (being in endgame and all that), which have both gotten stronger due to new effective ships (unless you're going to tell me a Phase Brilliant is not an issue) and actually competent vanilla ship loadouts.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/0imRH66.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/P9bMTjJ.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/aZkhpCH.png)
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The damage dealt tends to look like this most of the time:
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(https://i.imgur.com/tcxcPPl.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/yihcor7.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/Wfl8ddp.png)
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It does not really go all that well sometimes.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/EXtoYvi.png)
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I've also stuck around in the system after *** off kanta, mostly to farm pirates, this was before partially converting to adding a frigate force:
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/Exfe8Um.png)
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2)Do the above screenshots work better for you? I wouldn't have any reason to purposefully fight gimped fleets now, would I?

3) And? More or less every mod I add either provides the enemy with he same stuff I get, makes the game harder by buffing enemies (second wave option, ruthless sector, starship legends) or even adds better variants for ship, like the following:
Overridden Brilliant variant
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/I1OSw7m.png)
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Attack variant of a destroyer with both a fighter bay and temporal shell
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/Lw55sln.png)
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New, actually competent Brilliant variant from mods
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/k6lVt5C.png)
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Overdriven Glimmer, also from mods
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/IDY3KtZ.png)
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New Remnant ship, also coming in overdriven and with a good setup
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(https://i.imgur.com/5Z1VHAS.png)
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And (spoilers)
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/hGpnhLT.png)
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Which have also gotten stronger due to mods

4)out of my 270 Deployment Points my fleet is made of, 170 is capital ships and 100 is frigates. I'm playing at the 300 default battle size. None of them are overridden. I don't know what passes for frigate spam these days but having such a little portion of your fleet being relegated to frigates (whose main job is contesting caps and distracting the enemy) is not one of those in my book. Then again I would use a bit less frigates if I had a slower fleet overall.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/hFJahHv.png)
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I don't really feel like booting up the game and taking 30 screenshots of a single battle, to be completely honest with you. I hope the usual modus operandi of how I tend to command my fleets comes across better in this post.

Also spamming high tech frigates does not help in regards to other arguments being made on this very same thread.

Have to agree with this.
A tactic that only work if you have an entire high-tech fleet with specific weapons is very specific and just further illustrated the problem of AI behavior being very specific and unclear, and too dependant on ship/loadout.

In other words, it takes too much fiddling to get the ship to behave how you want it to. I don't mind the AI trying to use what it deems the best approach in general, but there should be a way to override it.

You are aware you could distract the enemy a lot better using Monitors, let alone overridden frigates are you not? Ludd strike me, you could even use overridden Lashers...

Frigates are really useful in 0.95 and start becoming vital in almost every fleet makeup the further into endgame you get. Turning into a Cruiser/Capital ship only evangelist for the sake of dismissing everything everyone else proposes you (because it works) is not going to help you in any way, really. It's not like I'm spamming Hyperions or overridden glimmers or radiants here, at least in this campaign  ::)
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: CozyCloudy on June 09, 2021, 04:02:55 AM
As i said I didn't mean to be rude but the first post had too little information.

And I don't use only capitals/cruisers. I tend to balance my fleet with 1-2 capitals, 3-4 cruisers, 3-4 destroyers, 4-6 frigates. The reason why I haven't yet provided screenshot/footage is because i have started a new campaign on a fresh install(I want to limit all external factors) and I don't have that much time to play the game these weeks.

I don't believe the purpose of frigates is only to capture points or only distract the enemy. SO frigates don't last enough for some of the harder battles the game throws at you and the Monitor is an exception(only used as an distraction) from the high tech dominated frigates(these can also inflict some damage). I can build tempests and scarabs to take on cruisers 1vs1.

Also triple S modded ships/fleets (edit)WILL* WRECK EVERYTHING even if you use some of worst ships in the game.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: SCC on June 09, 2021, 10:28:17 AM
S-mods don't change the nature of the ship. A bad ship might become alright with enough s-mods, but a good ship will widen the gap even more with s-mods.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Killian on June 09, 2021, 04:23:35 PM
A triple s-modded salvage rig sure won't be a threat to much of anything either. ;D
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 09, 2021, 06:10:06 PM
A triple s-modded salvage rig sure won't be a threat to much of anything either. ;D

I've killed stuff with my S-modded salvage rig :D SURPRISE WARTHOGS!!
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 09, 2021, 06:10:33 PM
Sorry for the delay in response, I wanted to move my low tech fleet through the story line and contacts further for some more screenshots but haven't had the time.

I have seen the images and I want so say that it is not impossible to make your ships fight side by side. I have even employed your method on my own several time. My gripe is that this method :
  • It is quite convoluted
  • It can be unreliable and it will fail against certain enemies

I'm personally not seeing why what I did was convoluted?  I laid out waypoints in a line, with which ships I wanted where, and they went there.  I waited for the enemy to approach, then removed waypoints once ships were engaged so as to allow them to flank as needed.  I could have also removed waypoints after getting into position, and then placed new ones vertically above the old waypoints on the map if I wanted to advance in a line - however, tactically that is disadvantageous.  Being closer to my reinforcement point and having the enemy be farther from theirs helps achieve local superiority.

I admit I may be too used to the system.  On the other hand, the waypoint orders is how the majority of RTS games I played while growing up worked in terms of getting units where I wanted them.  I send them to a spot, then I send them on to the next spot.  Starsector even has the same control group assignments as those old games (i.e. select ships, ctrl + number, press number to reselect).

After battle is joined, the ships I really want to stay together no matter what, I already have given escort orders to at the beginning.  The rest I generally want to react to what the enemy is doing while staying alive, so I leave those with no orders, freeing them for maximum movement for their own survival.

Although you seem to be asking for a line of combat 100% of the time after engaging the enemy, which I admit is harder to maintain after initial contact, and in some cases just not possible for the entire fleet.  If a Radiant is pushing into a flank, that flank either gets destroyed (i.e. lashers don't last long against 2x Locust + 3x tachyon lances) or it gives ground to preserve fighting strength while the capitals try to use local superiority to destroy enemy ships where they are, or get into position against the Radiant if not engaged.  If you are locally out numbered and slower, then yes, your ships are naturally going to turn left and right and not be in a line as they get flanked.

As a counter point, I do find the escort command to be solid in keeping 2-3 ships close and working together.  Although I tend not pile one too many escorts on a single ship - too many ships in a really small area tends to do more harm than good as the AI has to avoid ally collisions, enemy projectiles, all the while trying to get to their desired position.  I like ships that can fire over allies (i.e. guided missile ships/carriers) as escorts, or cheap (lasher/frigates).  I consider that bowing to the realities of the combat engine, less than the realities of the AI.  The AI on offense is always trying to circle away from enemy backup, trying to get them to trip over each other.  If I've got 2 Onslaughts in a line, and there's a fast frigate, it's naturally going to move to a point opposite the 2nd Onslaught with the 1st in between.  So it is possible that the enemy AI, by having local superiority, is working too well if you can't get your ships to fight in a line.

Again, the more specific situations you can present and explain what the optimal behavior is in that case, the more likely Alex can make a change to help that particular situation, or find a bug to fix.

I'll note for that particular low tech fleet, one of the disadvantages of low tech, it's slow speed, actually makes it easier to keep the capitals together than say, a high tech frigate fleet.  It literally takes over 50 seconds for an Onslaught moving at 30 su to cover 1600 range.  It certainly makes low tech feel like the "hold the line" doctrine and is actually much better at fighting in a line than my high tech fleets (then again, I generally don't want my high tech fleets fighting in a line in the first place, I want them flanking).

For comparison, what kind of user interface or player action flow would you want to see in an ideal game that you would consider not convoluted?  It is possible I'm simply too used to Starsector's UI at this point so it doesn't strike me as that strange or convoluted.  Although I do tend to play a variety of games, usually for a month or two and then move on, so I do have some experience with other UI.

Do you consider this way of doing things a good aspect of the game?

Yes. 

More specifically, I feel Starsector combat is player centric, and a skirmish rather than large two armies fighting, so I find the system fairly enjoyable from that perspective.  That doesn't mean it's the best system ever, that everyone enjoys it, or that there isn't room for improvement, but I can sketch out an initial plan for contact with the enemy, setup small combat groups that work well together, and then I can just let them go while I focus on blowing ships up in my flagship and don't need to look up from piloting all that often.  Maybe issue some retreat orders occassionally.  Fundamentally, I don't want to have to transition between two game modes non-stop for most of the game.  Perhaps the 3 hardest fights the game currently has have a need for really active strategic orders non-stop using end game fleets, which to be honest, is a tiny fraction of the play time, maybe 3%?  Less?  At the moment, I can get away with that even with a low tech fleet, so, it is good enough to have fun.

I prefer "Fire and Forget" commands with a main character type game.  If it is an easy fight, I don't even to do any prep and just let the AI do it's thing.  If I want to focus on formations and the strategic situation, I'll tend to go play something from the Total War series, and if I want to do something with micro unit control I might play Starcraft II or if I'm feeling nostaligic, something from the Total Annihilation series or M.A.X..  People have different things they're looking to get of the game, and another RTS like game is not one of them for me.  I have plenty of those, and which tend to be easier to balance due to much less customization of units, nor quite as many mods.  Starsector scratches the "hero character" itch as opposed to the "hero general" itch for me.

Quote
In my current fleet, I generally escort an Onslaught with a Lasher and a bomber equipped Mora, and I've got several free floating Lashers and Enforcers, which tend to adequately deal with the smaller stuff.  I find several Daggers will drop enough ordinance to finish off a frigate fairly regularly. Similarly the escort Lasher also seems to make the Onslaught not turn to face flanking frigates quite so much.  If flanking frigates are engaging frigates and destroyers first, then the capitals won't get distracted by a kite with 2 reapers in it's rear arc.

Ok than how do you solve this issue when the enemies has more fast ships (frigates, destroyers, high tech cruisers) than you?

The same way?  My escort orders with that combination works?  The Onslaughts and Legions don't take rear fire if there's a friendly cruiser sitting there.  The fastest enemy fleet in terms of speed I can think of is the triple Doom bounty hunter fleet.  3 Dooms (75*3=225 su), 4 harbingers (80*3=240), 5 shades (165*3=495 su), and 3 Afflictors (165*3=495 su).  While the free roam Lasher's and Enforcers did suffer, because well, frigates vs mines, the capitals came out without any hull damage what so ever.  Other than escort and initial capture/waypoints, I gave no further orders.  Could I have done better retreating heavily damaged ships and done some active ordering of bomber runs?  Yeah probably, but using the weakest doctrine aganist arguably the strongest or 2nd strongest (i.e phase ships with level 6 officers and 2-3 s-mod Dooms), with only initial orders worked out fine.

In general, against easier fast fleets, it will might cost me a d-mod on a Lasher or two or might not, but that's kind of a given since they're 4 DP and without an officer.  If they match up against two officered Tempests, they start having issues once the sabots run out.

My counter argument is as follows: This game usually throws at you difficult battles, against your odds. You are supposed to win through optimized builds for your fleet, pilot your flagship excellently and be a superior commander. Against some of the harder challenges of the game the last point i made previously matters most!

Well, how much of the 3rd you need depends on the level of optimization and excellence of piloting.  I agree all play some role in determining the outcome of a fight (except when I'm fighting solo), but I personally put more effort into the 1st two than the last.  Just my playstyle with Starsector. Certainly improving the AI will make the 3rd more important, as player skill remains the same while AI combat improves.

Also, i will try and gather footage, screenshots and save files in the following weeks in order to prove my point if that seems to be a discussion point.

Sounds good.  Keep in mind, if you want to see the game changed, you don't need to convince me. Nor any of the forum goers.  You need to convince Alex.  So presenting your strongest argument of what is wrong backed up by as much evidence as you can provide is your best bet, irregardless of where the discussion goes.  Even better if you give a clear idea of what can be changed to fix it.

I also find the fact that the game doesn't act like an RTS a unique and positive aspect. The problem i see that willingly or not, the very game design puts a lot of emphasis on commanding your fleet and when this aspect fails it can be really frustrating.
 
I think most people that play this game and will ever play it will accept losing a ship or two(even more) from their own incompetence but NOT from the incompetence of the AI.

At the present moment the AI isn't acceptably good at either handling the battle on its own or at following orders (will often ignore orders except eliminate order which it follows to its death even in absurd situation).

Tolerance for the AI's mistakes is going to vary from person to person, and what they're looking to get out of it.  I would love it if it could handle mines and missiles better in terms of omni-shield facing, for example.  However, it is something both my AI and enemy AI have to deal with, and I happen to be a lot better at exploiting that logic flaw than the AI.  It's also a tricky problem with many factors applying.  Overall, the AI is acceptably good enough for me to enjoy the game.  It clearly is not acceptably good enough for yourself as well as some other posters here.

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Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: SCC on June 09, 2021, 11:42:07 PM
Wow! Someone actually fought the doom fleet!
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Arcagnello on June 10, 2021, 01:57:32 AM
Wow! Someone actually thought the doom fleet!

Hey come on I fought it at least 3 times in 3 different campaigns aswell

There's a reason why they call it the PTSD fleet.
There have been so many hilarious moments on twitch with people going in with a "Oh it's going to be fine look at all the ships I got, there's also a Paragon" to "why does that Harbinger with 3 Ion Beams like to system disrupt my capitals into disability for the Dooms?!"

What I find quite interesting is that bounty fleet can scale up to 4 Dooms but seems to be heavily dependant on your total fleet size, so it's going to get significantly harder the bigger of a fleet you tend to lug around.

As a side note, I wish those S-modded phase ships all carried hardened subsystems, it's so easy to outlive them with (most) of your fleet intact even if you don't want to go that route.

I'm also somewhat disappointed those Smodded ships are not coming in with curated setups. a 3 AM Blaster Harbinger or a Light Needler/Ion Beam/Heavy Blaster Doom with Unstable Injector+ITU (which the AI plays a lot better than the missile based ones unless it's sabot spam) would've been really nice to see!
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Stormy Fairweather on June 10, 2021, 11:00:18 AM
So i've recently been noticing a completely new issue i havent seen anyone mention here yet. and while it is possible this is the result of one of my mods (i smashed in like a dozen new ones with this run), it might just be the result of trying new heavy-shielded ship loadouts. anyway, the issue is this; while being shot, especially at longer ranges, my ships are frequently dropping their shields even with low, or even zero, flux. i started noticing this when i starting stacking shield hullmods/skills together. with the hero skill to drop hard flux, and the hullmods to reduce passive flux from shields, as well as stacking vents/extra flux, i've set up ships that could endure everything from one mid sized, or several smaller, while also firing, and still be flux negative. and yet my ships will STILL drop shields when they have no reason to do so, taking hits on armor, or even hull, that could have easily been avoided.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Amoebka on June 10, 2021, 11:29:51 AM
Incremental improvements in armor tanking behaviour.  :D

It is annoying when ships with super-efficient shields decide to drop them to armor tank, but it's also annoying when ships with garbage shields never lower them. People complain about both regularly. It's hard to get it right.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Killian on June 10, 2021, 11:32:07 AM
I don't think mods can directly touch the AI's behaviour, so unless you have one that's radically altered vanilla ships it's probably just a weird confluence of the various hullmods you've installed. Listing them might be helpful!

It seems likely to me that they're trying to maintain the zero-flux speed boost, or it's a similar situation to Zym's thread (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21886.0) where the AI is saying "it's safe for me to drop my shields right now", perhaps because they're near the maximum range of the firing weapon and unlikely to take serious damage (projectiles can hit a short distance past max range, but deal less damage and only soft-flux shields), especially if it's kinetic or frag vs armour.
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Deshara on June 10, 2021, 11:48:52 AM
So i've recently been noticing a completely new issue i havent seen anyone mention here yet. and while it is possible this is the result of one of my mods (i smashed in like a dozen new ones with this run), it might just be the result of trying new heavy-shielded ship loadouts. anyway, the issue is this; while being shot, especially at longer ranges, my ships are frequently dropping their shields even with low, or even zero, flux. i started noticing this when i starting stacking shield hullmods/skills together. with the hero skill to drop hard flux, and the hullmods to reduce passive flux from shields, as well as stacking vents/extra flux, i've set up ships that could endure everything from one mid sized, or several smaller, while also firing, and still be flux negative. and yet my ships will STILL drop shields when they have no reason to do so, taking hits on armor, or even hull, that could have easily been avoided.

yeah ive confirmed this is vanilla behavior, I had an all-mining laser aurora lose to a wolf in sim bc it'd drop shields & eat a heavy blaster to the face despite being at less than 1% flux, when that matchup should be a win by the wolf timing out at worst
Title: Re: the #1 reason I don't play this game
Post by: Morrokain on June 10, 2021, 01:56:26 PM
I don't think mods can directly touch the AI's behaviour,

You can to a point by setting the AI's relevant flags or changing the captain personality. I do this with a couple of my ship systems (mostly to make the AI more aggressive in those cases.) I'm not sure how many other modders actually do this however. I could definitely see it causing problems if you aren't careful with it.

Xenoargh had a mod that actually created a completely custom AI iirc. I don't know any of the details as to how that was accomplished though.