Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Zsar on February 22, 2023, 03:22:06 PM
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Very few ships can exhaust the current limit of 7 weapon groups, but the Onslaught easily can, so can the Odyssey and Paragon. Given that the keyboard row containing all currently existing weapon group hotkeys has another five keys available to the right, it would seem sensible and future-proof to add five more weapon groups.
Notes:- I actually do not request this for manual control at all but because the AI treats weapon groups quite differently depending on what mix of weapons is inside. E.g. putting differently-ranged weapons into the same group may cause the group to not fire until all are in range, putting several flux-hungry weapons into the same group may cause that group to be used more sparingly than others. hardpointed beam weapon groups may stop firing altogether when targets move quickly whereas each-beam-in-one-group will keep some of them engaged. As such I strictly speaking just want more weapon groups, hotkeyed or not. For up to five more groups hotkey support and thence manual-controlling-player compatibility is also warranted, though.
- I would gladly take less than five additional groups, as well. I don't think I'd really use more than two in the current version myself.
- If additional groups are an issue, a special non-keyed group of "always autofire, always pick appropriate targets per individual weapon" that we could "dump" our "sidearms" into, might be second-best.
- Note that currently AI-controlled ships override your Autofire setting, so you cannot just set aside an existing group for that.
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Using the whole row runs into the issue that keyboards from different countries sometimes have different keys in the last two slots.
Adding the last three numbers does sound like a great idea though.
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But that is an issue all games have. E.g. using a QWERTZ layout myself, I always check hotkeys before playing a game for the first time because there is almost always something bound to Y or Z that I'd better swap. So, yes, technically a small usability issue, but not a dealbreaker, I'd think.
... I want to remember that it was also possible to get the key (not the associated symbol, but the adress of the physical key) in some input APIs, so maybe this is not even an issue to begin with. I have certainly played some games that seemed to have a static hotkey layout but were able to display the correct character associated with the keys (that is, the displayed hotkey would change between Y and Z when switching keyboard layouts, while the real key remained unchanged). Might have been manual work though.
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Iirc even expanding weapon groups from 5 to 7 was already slowed down by legacy code constraints, so I doubt we are going to get even more of them.
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I think another issue is UI space. 7 weapon groups has to share space with fighters and ship systems.
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I'd like to emphasise the need for this suggestion. Attached is a screenshot of MSS Garuda from "The Last Hurrah", a mission without Story Points. (I had to crop it a lot to get under the file size restriction, so sorry for not showing the whole refit screen.)
Her starboard side is completely empty and yet she'd need a group '8' as the bare minimum already. If this were the campaign with up to three built-in mods, the situation would only be more dire. I'd like to replace one of the Storm Needlers with a Devastator Cannon - but it just does not fit.
... If adding more weapon groups is out of the question, maybe an alternative would be to create a "hardwired" autofire group, which cannot be controlled in any way (thence also does not need any keyboard integration), but whose weapons each individually track whatever target is most fitting to them?
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Having a group where everything individually autofires would be really nice.
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Her starboard side is completely empty and yet she'd need a group '8' as the bare minimum already. If this were the campaign with up to three built-in mods, the situation would only be more dire. I'd like to replace one of the Storm Needlers with a Devastator Cannon - but it just does not fit.
Your choice of weapon groups is weird. I'm going to assume that the missiles-mixed-in-with-PD is to convince the AI to just fire them whenever, but do you really need two different PD groups for that? And you can put the Hydra and Squall in a single group with no trouble: just set it to alternating instead of linked. And the phase lance and heavy mortars are both dedicated anti-armor weapons; no reason not to put them into a single group. As for that devastator you wanted, well, even if you only follow my suggestion for the Hydra and Squall, you've got a spare group for it... but you should probably test out putting it into the PD group, or into a dedicated anti-armor-weaponry group.
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Err, I did not assign the PD to any group, because there is no free group left. They are in their auto-assigned groups - the game does this automatically whenever you add a weapon into an empty slot.
... The PD should have gone into a group 8, but there is no group 8. There should have been a single Devastator Cannon in group 9, but there is no group 9.
What I ended up doing was put the PD into the same group as the Phase Lance, because the AI will waste that weapon against fighters anyway, but it is clearly not sensible.
Note that the AI will
- fire the Phase Lance at fighters, so it should not go into the same group as Heavy Mortars. (Unless that keeps it from doing that?)
- count Squalls as "fired" after the first missile, not after the whole burst, so other missiles should generally not be put into the same group (and it would seem, more generally, that more than one Squall per ship just does not work for the same reason).
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I'd like an "always uses Autofire" group and "do not ever use except manually by player" group, personally. The first would simplify a lot of stuff w/ AI (all Groups for a Variant could be consolidated to that one before combat) and the second type would both be nice for Built-In weapons that the AI can't use well for <reasons> and / or as a place to put weapons that are passive in nature or should not use standard autofire AI but aren't Decorative, for example.
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A: The phase lance is really good at shooting down fighters - when I install a phase lance, anti-fighter work is exactly what I want it to be doing. What else are you expecting from this?
B: Having tested AI use of a Conquest with a Squall and a Hydra in a single alternating weapon group, this appears to me to be working just fine. What is the actual problematic behavior you are seeing?
Overall, if I were going to field a Conquest with this sort of weapons outfitting, I'd end up using all of four groups for it.
I'd like an "always uses Autofire" group and "do not ever use except manually by player" group, personally. The first would simplify a lot of stuff w/ AI (all Groups for a Variant could be consolidated to that one before combat) and the second type would both be nice for Built-In weapons that the AI can't use well for <reasons> and / or as a place to put weapons that are passive in nature or should not use standard autofire AI but aren't Decorative, for example.
Er, what? No, you can't just merge all groups into one like that. An important part of flux management, both for the AI and for the player, is being able to selectively turn off specific weapons. If it's all one group, that ability is lost.
That said, I wouldn't mind having an ability to add a few more tags to specific groups - things like "use aggressively" for high-ammo-count missiles so that you don't need to mix them into PD groups to get the AI to just put them on autofire - and your "do not fire under AI control" suggestion would be of potential use for niche Neural Link setups... (But weapons that are "passive in nature" or "should not use standard autofire AI" should probably just, y'know, get their own autofire AI assigned to them, even if that AI is 'don't fire this ever'. Which you can already do, but it's per-weapon stuff, not by weapon group.)
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More weapon groups is always welcome, I don't care about the UI getting too big.
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Mmh, admittedly, all my "somewhat rigorous" tests were in the last version, so maybe some things have improved since then? That was, of course, before the Hydra, but it did yield these rules of thumb:
- always put a single Squall into its own group
- never put a second Squall onto the same AI-controlled ship
- never put weapons with very different projectile speeds into the same group
- only put differently-ranged weapons into the same group, if you are okay with the longer ranged weapons waiting for the shorter ranged weapons (or if the group will Autofire even under AI control)
- avoid putting unguided weapons with non-overlapping arcs into the same group as it encourages the AI to wobble between them
- the AI will override your Autofire rules as it pleases, so they do not matter
The overall AI performance seems to have improved in this version at least a bit, so maybe (hopefully) some of these need re-testing.
Here is a detailed rationale for how I chose the weapon groups in my screenshot:
- Hydra - is the only finisher, must be fired whenever at whatever in range and without shields / close to death
(could have been grouped with other finishers, but I have none) - Squall - will count as "fired" as soon as the first missile flies (for the purpose of both AI chosing to fire another, and for how Alternating Fire Mode works), AI wants to always keep this firing, so can only be grouped with other weapons for which this is true - and I have none => one group
- Storm Needlers - should be linked to maximise burst damage (overload the target as quickly as possible) => one group, Linked mode; only the Squall is another anti-shield weapon but unlike the Squall the needlers should not fire all the time => not grouped with anything else
- Proximity Charge Launcher - like the Squall the AI likes to keep this firing all the time, so it cannot be grouped with anything else (but, I guess, the Squall, but the latter can aim whereas this one cannot... I admittedly have not tried out what would happen, if I put it into the Squall group... from experience with mixed weapon ranges, I'd expect the Squall to not fire until the Proximity Charge Launcher can hit something, which is not what I want to happen here and the reverse would be just as bad)
- Breach SRM Pod - belongs in an anti-armour group... as a guided missile it targets something else than the guns though, so I have not dared to group it with the Phase Lance or Heavy Mortars (but maybe either would actually work fine?)
- Phase Lance - the only dedicated Anti-armour weapon on this ship (Mortars do the right damage type but little damage per projectile and have considerable spread) should shoot at exposed armour of ships at every opportunity => only the mortar group fits (except, quite possibly, the Breach SRM Pod group, see above); it also should not go into the mortar group because its "projectile" hits instantly whereas the mortars have very slow projectiles, so they have to aim at different points to hit the same spot => the mortar group also does not fit
- Mortars - like the Needlers, these should concentrate their fire on a single target => same group, Linked; they should fire after the Needlers, ideally (and at least sometimes the AI correctly acts that way) => not the same group as the Needlers; see above why not the same group as the Phase Lance
(side note: in this battle specifically, all targets for the Garuda are large and sluggish, so here we can get away with it; if that would stop the Lance shoot at fighters, it would even be worth it) - all "regular" PD - should not be grouped with the non-PD weapons, should have active Autofire (and AI will switch Autofire on immediately, if you leave it off in the Refit screen) => group 8
- (hypothetical) Devastator Cannon - has so much damage output that it does not need to share targets with the other PD weapons => group 9
So, there are some optimisation opportunities here, but my point is very much that Weapon Groups should not be a limited resource that I have to optimise for in the first place.
What if I wanted to build a "punch down" symmetrical Conquest with a different weapon in every non-PD slot? It might potentially need up to 14 groups. Arguably that is an extreme, degenerate example, but following this suggestion, we'd have (originally) 12 groups at our disposal, which is not so bad even then - and with the newer alternative, we might have a "shoot wherever" group without hotkey and need only maybe 4 to 6 "proper" groups.
(Re. Phase Lance shooting at fighters - it is overkill and the Phase Lance is
- slow firing
- flux inefficient
- not the IR Autolance
so if there were no hostile ships around, I would not mind it sniping at strike craft at all - nor would I mind the Heavy Mortars try their luck in that case. But as soon as a "real" target is in the vicinity, even if not yet in range proper, I want the thing to stay ready to fire at that target, rather than waste cooldown and flux swatting flies with a sledgehammer.)
FWIW: I attached another screenshot of the groups that had won me the scenario in the meanwhile.
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Having a group where everything individually autofires would be really nice.
This seems like the most convenient solution if there's no longer the issue where mismatched-range weapons in a group will sometimes fire at empty space. You wouldn't need to, for example, put two Gauss Cannons in two separate groups so they can activate individually. But it might be even more confusing for new players if there are multiple types of weapon groups
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Having a group where everything individually autofires would be really nice.
This seems like the most convenient solution if there's no longer the issue where mismatched-range weapons in a group will sometimes fire at empty space. You wouldn't need to, for example, put two Gauss Cannons in two separate groups so they can activate individually. But it might be even more confusing for new players if there are multiple types of weapon groups
Interesting... an eighth unnumbered firing group, set in a different colour and labelled as 'independent', that has everything in it act as solo automated would be a neat solution.
As long as the player themselves can't access it in combat but can clearly see the weapons firing confusion should be minimal, and I can see PD weapons being sorted into it by default.