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)
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)
Black: station, Blue: ships, Green: possible firing arcs. If it wasnt self explanatory.
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)
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.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/6OqZKoS.png)
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/iibaEGe.png)
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.
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)
"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.
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.
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)
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.
"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
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]
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)
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)
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.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/EbeJQf7.png)
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/ik612XG.png)
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
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)
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)
It does not really go all that well sometimes.
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(https://i.imgur.com/EXtoYvi.png)
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)
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)
Attack variant of a destroyer with both a fighter bay and temporal shell
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(https://i.imgur.com/Lw55sln.png)
New, actually competent Brilliant variant from mods
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(https://i.imgur.com/k6lVt5C.png)
Overdriven Glimmer, also from mods
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/IDY3KtZ.png)
New Remnant ship, also coming in overdriven and with a good setup
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/5Z1VHAS.png)
And (spoilers)
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/hGpnhLT.png)
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)
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 ::)