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1

Mods / Re: [0.95a] AdvancedGunneryControl 0.10.2

« on: August 29, 2021, 10:34:03 AM »

Were you in between your allied ship and an enemy? (In that case, it's probably an issue with the "do not fire at friendlies"-logic)
Or did the ship simply fire at your ship? (In that case, it's probably an issue with your ship being identified as a hostile for some weird reason)

This happens only when I'm in the way; friendlies don't start just firing at me for no reason, thank god. For what it's worth, the few times I've noticed this happen the offending friendly firers basically get close enough to ram me in the rear before lighting me up, so maybe it's some issue with friendlies being too close to the weapons being fired to be "seen"?

On the TargetShields/AvoidShields issue:
To be perfectly honest, I'm not really sure if I understand what the issue is. Weapons set to AvoidShields should only fire at targets that have a) high flux, b) high-ish flux and shields turned off or c) no shields. TargetShields does the inverse. If you have a kinetic weapon set to TargetShields and a non-beam Energy weapon, wouldn't it make more sense to simply set the Energy weapon to default mode? Other weapon groups set to Target/Avoid shields shouldn't really have any impact on how the weapon group in question behaves. If you could rephrase this issue that would be much appreciated!

Basically the problem is that with kinetic + energy damage pairings, the energy weapon is pretty much shelved. Unless the latter outranges the former, AI simply sticks to using the kinetic weapon instead even if the target is >95% flux or overloaded; it's extremely shy about using the energy weapon, only fires it for like 1-2s at a time and there's no rhyme or reason about when it decides to do so (I've seen a ship in 1v1 battle sim decide to fire an AvoidShield energy salvo at a 50% flux shield once).
I guess this isn't much of a problem in vanilla, but my array of mods does provide some energy-damage ballistic weapons and some kinetic-damage energy weapons, so the two damage types wind up occasionally coexisting sometimes--and on ships with too many/too big mounts for their flux stats to handle firing at will, I try to get them to pursue flux efficiency per damage via weapon groups, though as above success is limited when the pairing isn't kinetic-he.

Anyways, thank you for the hard work--I can only imagine how hard it is to herd AI behaviour in a many-entities environment like Starsector combat, especially with an unpredictable player in there running amok.

2

Mods / Re: [0.95a] AdvancedGunneryControl 0.10.2

« on: August 27, 2021, 04:54:52 PM »

Update on the friendly fire problem: After some more playtime, I'm starting to think only the player-controlled ship is being "unseen" to AI ships. And before anyone asks: no, I'm not talking about me simply wandering into friendly AI's projectiles. I mean I'm flying in a forward straight line, AI comes up directly behind me also in a forward straight line, then proceeds to fire non-shop directly into my engines until I give it an order to btfo and go elsewhere entirely.

3

Mods / Re: [0.95a] AdvancedGunneryControl 0.10.2

« on: August 25, 2021, 05:10:16 PM »

I recently updated my mods en masse, and ever since I've been seeing some instances of ships in my fleet making ruthless friendly-fire barrages--I'm talking about "relentlessly unload into friendly destroyer/cruiser-sized ships at point-blank without trying to maneuver out from behind them". Since I updated quite a few mods at once, I can't say for sure that this mod was the culprit, but none of the other mods are supposed to alter combat AI. I also haven't messed with this mod's settings either. Has this happened to anyone else using this mod?

I'm not seeing this issue but am on v0.10.1. Are you on v0.10.2/0.10.3?

0.10.3, yes. Before mass-updating my mods I was on 0.10.2 and didn't spot AI ever doing that back then.

Edit: Also some of my two cents now that I've used this mod for a while in the lategame:
- Would it be possible to make "TargetShields/AvoidShields" behave more closely than their name suggests? With the default Settings.editme values, they do behave as labeled if you took two weapon groups of the same weapon and set one to TargetShields and the other to AvoidShields (which, of course, is kind of pointless in practice). Meanwhile, with one kinetic weapon and one HE, they largely ignore these 2 modes and instead simply pursue damage efficiency, which IS still fine, but...kinetic + energy weapon combos result in a loadout that overwhelmingly prefers the kinetic weapons while its usage of the energy weapon can be described at best as "whenever it feels like it", regardless of which EITHER is set to or the flux level (or overload status!) of the enemy ship. Big problem for hybrid ships, since unless you got yourself a decent energy weapon that does kinetic/HE damage (probably modded...), whichever fares worse against shields will probably be ignored by the AI most of the time.
- This mod seems to override the vanilla AI behaviour of automatically turning turrets forward (or at least in SOME intentional direction) when not in the middle of the firefight; add the fact it apparently doesn't check the turret's current facing before firing, and we get an AI that makes a habit of completely whiffing the first few shots on any low-turn-rate weapons it doesn't manually aim that face the sides by default (e.g. Legion, Dominator class). Especially on missile ships, well, AI loves aiming missiles for whatever reason, so those two examples given are very frequent victims to this little flaw.
- Speaking of missiles, this is probably my biggest sore point regarding odd AI behaviours, both with and without this mod. Both AI versions love manually aim missile weapon groups, even missiles with great tracking and DO_NOT_AIM tags and does this at basically every opportunity, usually with a dps loss for every other weapon group whenever it launches missiles since apparently they also make it forget that autofiring exists. This is vanilla behaviour, so I know the mod can't be blamed for this, but it would be wonderful if you could find a way to fix it somehow.
- On top of that missiles also completely ignore every AI mode from this mod that tells it not to do something--which is to say, Fighters, NoFighters, AvoidShields, so on. Swarmer launchers don't care that they're anti-smallcraft, AvoidShields missiles of any type get happily launched as soon as refire delay ends even on 0-flux targets, etc. Pretty big bummer for low-tech lovers like me, this basically made me give up on the idea of autofiring most missiles on my flagships and only equip ok-to-spam missiles like sabots and salamanders on most my ships, or even leaving slots empty. Definitely an issue I'd be delighted to see a fix for.

4

Mods / Re: [0.95a] AdvancedGunneryControl 0.10.2

« on: August 25, 2021, 01:59:48 PM »

I recently updated my mods en masse, and ever since I've been seeing some instances of ships in my fleet making ruthless friendly-fire barrages--I'm talking about "relentlessly unload into friendly destroyer/cruiser-sized ships at point-blank without trying to maneuver out from behind them". Since I updated quite a few mods at once, I can't say for sure that this mod was the culprit, but none of the other mods are supposed to alter combat AI. I also haven't messed with this mod's settings either. Has this happened to anyone else using this mod?

5

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / AI keeps manually aiming DO_NOT_AIM missiles?

« on: August 16, 2021, 09:39:50 PM »

I'm playing with the Advanced Gunnery Control mod (though not sure if it's causing this specifically) and it seems like the AI loves to switch to manually aiming DO_NOT_AIM missiles (and firing them with apparent disregard to tactical value and AGC settings), especially (irritatingly) the Swarmer SRM Launcher, seemingly ignoring my AGC weapon group settings (enemy ship has shields up with middling flux, there's a different weapon group set to TargetShields and Swarmer is set to Fighters Only and there are no fighters in sight, yet it's apparently still manual Swarmer time). Even worse is the fact half the time this happens, the AI turns off autofire on every other weapon group (yes, even PD) for the entire launch animation of the missiles in question despite low flux and sometimes even while the sole nearby enemy is overloaded, resulting in a massive loss in opportunity to dish damage.

Does anyone else run into a similiar problem and know if it's a specific mod combination that causes this? Aside from AGC, I'm also using Nexerelin and several mods that add extra factions/ships/weapons, though I hesitate to blame any of them aside from AGC as the culprit since this also happens with vanilla ships and weapons.

6

Modding / Re: Visual issue with projectile sprites fading prematurely at >800 projectile speed

« on: August 14, 2021, 09:26:29 PM »

Turns out it's collisionClass' fault, switching to PROJECTILE_FF makes it work fine even without BALLISTIC_AS_BEAM. I was hesitant to use it because I didn't want these projectiles with torpedo-level numbers to be deleted by random Broadswords wandering into them, but it seems even on PROJECTILE_FF it IS able to pierce right through fighters to some degree so I guess it's fine.

EDIT: Turns out BALLISTIC_AS_BEAM is ALSO incompatible with both PROJECTILE_FF and HITS_SHIPS_AND_ASTEROIDS, since those combinations make the projectile just phase right through ships without doing any harm. collisionClass and spawnType are kind of a mystery lol.

7

Modding / Re: Visual issue with projectile sprites fading prematurely at >800 projectile speed

« on: August 14, 2021, 08:27:30 PM »

Nope not missiles, just regular ballistic bullets. No idea if I'd done anything that'd make them early-fade at >800 speed, so I'll just post the .proj file for them. If it matters, their weapon_data.csv range is 1100 (I did try setting it to 2000 briefly, and >800 speed shots still fade rapidly at around 80-90% of that).

Code

{
	"id":"dawn410mmKSStriplecannon3_shot",
	"specClass":"projectile",
	"spawnType":"BALLISTIC",
	"collisionClass":"HITS_SHIPS_AND_ASTEROIDS",
	"collisionClassByFighter":"RAY_FIGHTER",
	"explosionRadius":64,
	"length":82.0,
	"hitGlowRadius":275,
	"width":18.1,
	"fadeTime":3.0,
	"fringeColor":[255,110,25,175],
	"coreColor":[255,255,255,200],
	"glowColor":[255,110,25,105],
	"glowRadius":60,
	"textureScrollSpeed":64.0,
	"pixelsPerTexel":15.0,
	"passThroughMissiles":true,
	"bulletSprite":"graphics/missiles/dawn_410mm_shell.png"
}

EDIT: I saw that Gauss Cannon uses "BALLISTIC_AS_BEAM" as its spawnType, so I also slapped that on mine and now it works! Yet other projectiles with BALLISTIC spawnType don't seem to get this problem...I can only guess it's some kind of weird interaction between spawnType, collisionClass and collisionClassByFighter going on here. For now though, BALLISTIC_AS_BEAM avoids the problem and doesn't seem to otherwise change the projectile's behaviour in any undesired way, so I'll settle for that instead.

8

Modding / Re: How does projectile fadeTime work really?

« on: August 14, 2021, 07:32:40 PM »

So after fiddling with this a bunch, it seems like fadeTime really is just the number of seconds it takes for a projectile to fade out after exceeding maximum range, BUT it turns out the visual fade-out for projectiles with speed above 800 exclusive (e.g. 800 speed is ok, but 801 is where the problem starts). fadeTime only applies to their damage dropoff and eventual despawn; the projectile sprite on the other hand visually fades within ~0.5s of reaching about 80-90% max range.

I suppose it being a purely visual issue (at least, I think?) means it's not that bad, but it still looks very weird ingame because all you'd see in edge-of-range firefights is the opp being bombarded by vanishing phantom bullets, and not seeing the projectile around its max range also means it's harder for a human player to gauge how widely they're missing their shots. Does anyone happen to know a way to get around this problem without lowering proj speed below 800?

9

Modding / Visual issue with projectile sprites fading prematurely at >800 projectile speed

« on: August 13, 2021, 04:45:25 PM »

I have two weapons copy-pasted from the same template, just with different numbers. They have both the same weapon_data.csv range, and one has almost twice the projectile speed of the other. The issue comes in when trying to set fadeTime for each of them: they both seem to fade out after a specific amount of time (which isn't even the same for both projectile--the fast projectile fades out extremely quickly and will have completely vanished by the time it reaches about 80% range, meanwhile the slow projectile keeps on taking its sweet time and is way beyond range by the time its graphics finish fading), and even drastic changes like changing fadeTime from 4 to 12 seems to do nothing to fix this. They also both seem to still exist and have collision after visually fading out, though I couldn't quite gauge whether fadeTime affects how long/far their hitboxes remain. True to their respective visual fade-out though, the slow project seems to lose damage much less rapidly at extreme ranges, despite clearly having needed more time getting there.

So here's my question, what does fadeTime in .proj files actually do? Is there some kind of known formula we can use to eyeball its effects on a projectiles visual and actual fade-out?

Just a quick PS for some extra ***, I actually put in 3 versions each of the weapons above, 1 for each size with range and projectile speed proportional to size. When all 6 are set to the same fadeTime, for SOME REASON a) the medium versions end up fading out the fastest compared to their different-sized counterparts, and c) the small version somehow manages to get the faster projectile to fade further away instead of the other way around??