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31

General Discussion / Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?

« on: July 25, 2022, 11:36:21 PM »

Plasma Jets is a good system that AI makes bad use of. It has fairly long cooldown, so it has to be used with correct timing. Otherwise ship ends up unable to disengage/pursue when needed.

Maneuvering jets have short cooldown, so just using them whenever available (as AI does) usually is not punished too much. Eagle also doesn't up in situations when it's shot without being able to shoot back nearly as often as Aurora (due to having decent weapon range) even when it fails to maneuver correctly.

For AI, I'd rather use Eagles. Them being much more available helps too.

32

General Discussion / Re: New vanilla DREADNOUGHT

« on: July 21, 2022, 10:21:47 PM »

You could interpret these values in reverse. As 1100 armor, but takes only 10% damage making it much harder to fully strip. And with 60k hull you are obviously not killing the ship with just leak-through damage before armor is stripped.

33

General Discussion / Re: How do you use battlecruisers properly?

« on: July 07, 2022, 01:46:00 AM »

If goal is just to make 1v1 AI duel ship, then just spam missiles. Squalls + Harpoons + Gauss Conquest, or Squalls + Harpoons + TL + Autopulse Odyssey. Conquest will win against any standard sim ship including Paragon (in fact it defeats any custom Paragon build I could come up with), Odyssey will beat anything short of Paragon. But these are pretty bad for actual combat due to limited missiles, and waste them easily in multi-target environment.

Player builds rely on precise range management (Conquest) or getting into the other ship's blindspot (Odyssey vs Onslaught or Paragon). AI is incapable of both, so as AI ships both are unimpressive.

34

General Discussion / Re: Unstable Injector hullmod

« on: May 11, 2022, 08:23:46 AM »

On frigates - almost always, on DEs - rarely (something like player piloted Medusa), on cruisers and above - pretty much never.

35

Suggestions / Re: AI issue: Favor the killshot over avoiding enemy's explosion radius

« on: May 08, 2022, 09:04:49 AM »

Shielded ships with some flux reserve to spare and no other immediate threats around shouldn't worry too much. Worst case they kill the target and eat an overload.

For unshielded ships with short range weapons it's more difficult. They need to do the finishing shot while on a breakaway trajectory, and in more extreme cases pick correct angle to attack from (explosions are circular, but ships themselves are not, and for some ships explosions do NOT originate from visual center of the ship). Anyway, that's what I do as player, and AI doesn't.

36

Suggestions / Re: Perhaps sensor strength should also determine how long we KEEP info on things?

« on: April 29, 2022, 03:01:08 AM »

Yes, for static objects it makes sense to keep identification forever/ for expected lifetime.

37

Suggestions / Re: Perhaps sensor strength should also determine how long we KEEP info on things?

« on: April 29, 2022, 02:02:06 AM »

Yes, for the stronger option. Going from identify range to unidentified range should not make UI forget what the fleet was. Only going completely out of sensor range should reset identification.

38

Suggestions / Re: Simplified target info

« on: April 05, 2022, 06:23:10 PM »

For speed I'd really like visualisation of speed vectors for both piloted ship and target. I even did a small mod to do exactly this at some point and found vectors very useful.

39

General Discussion / Re: Afflictor and Doom

« on: April 04, 2022, 04:47:29 AM »

I just have 4 Afflictors for player only use. A character optimized to pilot them is going to be sub-optimal at anything else anyway. Having 4 makes it possible to defeat fleets of any size and chain battle as much as needed. As extreme opposite to hangar queen Ziggurat.

40

General Discussion / Re: Is it just me, or are destryers the weakest hull size?

« on: March 30, 2022, 10:19:16 PM »

I'd also like Medusa/Wolf to get faster skimmer recharge. It's so atrociously slow that most larger and lower base speed ships with other mobility systems can catch a Medusa over long enough time period. And make AI actually use it properly. As it is, even a player squeezing every bit of usefulness of each charge doesn't make it quite far enough to justify piloting a Medusa over a super-frigate or a larger ship.

41

Blog Posts / Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 1

« on: March 22, 2022, 12:22:50 AM »

@Alex
Invictus seems to stress test target ship's ability to time system use (as in, if target doesn't use mobility/defense system exactly right, it's dead or at least so massively disadvantaged, it will be soon). Any improvements to AI in that regard?

I'd particularly like to see AI's defensive use of Plasma Burn (turn at least partially broadside to threat it in advance, time PB to dodge). Otherwise AI Odyssey is just a big fat target.

42

Suggestions / Re: Revert Aurora nerfs from 0.9a

« on: February 21, 2022, 09:35:44 PM »

AI can easily lose even perfect kiting machines, immortal from my point of view (mod ships with ridiculous combined range/speed/flux advantage over vanilla opponents they were facing for test fights). So I expect even less from just fast ships that have range disadvantage to deal with.

Aurora/fury don't have the hull/armor to tolerate reckless IMO.

Imo, nothing does. Even Onslaught will kill itself on first Radiant it meets. For non-SO ships Reckless is a win-more behavior that only works when there are no enemies that can threaten a ship before it kills them. SO ships don't have other choice than bum-rush anyway, so I guess it's fine for them.

I also feel like the AI doesn't really use mobility systems to achieve specific goals (like getting into range or chasing something down) with much consistency. It feels like it mostly just pops it randomly and doesn't do much, although I'm sure it's doing more than that under the hood. It feels like scarabs in particular love to pop their system and then just hover out of range.

Yep, definitely feels this way. Which is why AI works best with simplest to use ship systems (maneuvering jets or accelerated ammo feeder).

43

Suggestions / Re: Revert Aurora nerfs from 0.9a

« on: February 21, 2022, 12:14:01 AM »

Aurora and Fury are hard to pilot efficiently for AI (unsurprising, since they actually aren't that strong and need to be very aware of when they can press on vs when they can't). Aurora in has very long cooldown that it must plan ahead for, and AI just doesn't. Forward only system is only barely usable on broadside Odyssey, and is crap for forward-facing Fury (no way to use it defensively).

For player-piloting Odyssey always seems like a better option than either. It's even better than Aurora at catching stuff (Odyssey's system is faster in a straight line over long term) and stronger in a straight fight. While using Odyssey's system defensively is inconvenient, it still provides decent value when player-piloted.

44

Suggestions / Re: "Accelerated Shields" has got to go

« on: February 15, 2022, 11:35:21 PM »

I use accelerated shields when I pilot Conquest or Odyssey. That's a lot of flux upkeep I don't have to pay if my shield raises fast enough to allow effective flickering (and it's not without AS mod).

Stabilized shields is just tax many ships have to pay, because their base shield upkeep is outrageously high.

45

General Discussion / Re: Wobbling Player AI

« on: February 15, 2022, 11:31:46 PM »

I discovered a pretty game breaking bug with Shieldless Frigates running SO wherein they will not get close enough to targets to kill them.

When you kill a ship you need to be outside it's death explosion. For short-ranged frigate vs some capitals this may require very specific maneuvers:
 
Fire guns while already one escape trajectory from enemy, so that you are only at safe distance by the time shots hit, not when they were fired. And this must be done at specific angle relative to enemy - for example, front or rear of Conquest, never it's sides (because death explosion is circle, while Conquest's hull is not and front/rear stick out the most).

AI is only aware of problem of death explosions, not the above solution, so it simply doesn't fire.