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1

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 27, 2025, 12:06:48 PM »

About the shield assist bug and incompatibility with Advanced Gunnery Control: the issue will be fixed in AGC 1.19.1.

2

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 27, 2025, 12:04:13 PM »

Hello! Some mild incompatibilities with another mod, Random Assortment of Things:

• "Leanira" cruiser ship system "deploys" a turret (ship) onto the battlefield. When the ship is controlled by an NPC, the ship system is never used. However, if this ship is piloted by the player, the autopilot will use the ship system. This behavior occurs with and without the Custom AI hullmod.
• "Hypatia" destroyer ship system causes it to enter "phase space", allowing it to travel very quickly, but prevents the usage of weapons or shields. The system acts as a toggle, with activation causing the ship to enter "phase space" and re-activation causing it to exit "phase space". When the ship is controlled by an NPC, after some period of time in battle, the ship activates the system, but never deactivates the system, causing to circle endlessly in "phase space".

I ran both ships and wasn't able to recreate the issue. Both ships engaged and disengaged their systems, with or without Custom AI.

I talked about the bug with Lukas, RAT author. He said the issue may be on his side and he'll be working on the systems AIs.

3

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 26, 2025, 09:13:54 AM »

v2.0.3 is out. Download

Changes:

• Custom AI: Full assault order increases ship aggression.
• Autofire AI: Fixed an issue where the Voltaic Discharge was not discharging. Reported by CrashToDesktop.
• Autofire AI: Voidblaster does not attack enemy shields, same as Mining Blaster.
• Autofire AI: Added LunaLib setting to enable/disable PD beam sweep (also known as "constant laser lightshow"). Suggested by Alkkaid.
• Autofire AI: Added LunaLib setting to enable/disable AI behavior where weapons tagged USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS (such as the Mining Blaster and IR Autolance) will not fire at shields, ever. Suggested by DR, undead Changed Bean of f-mes.
• Debug: Added LunaLib setting to enable Custom AI in all eligible ships on both sides, without the hullmod. Suggested by syndrome.
• Autofire AI: Fixed a bug that caused weapons positioned inside a target’s collision radius to aim away from that target. Reported by Norath.
• Autofire AI: Staggered fire mode no longer applies to phase ships, allowing them to fire all weapons immediately after exiting P-space. Suggested by ymfah.

4

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 25, 2025, 07:29:00 AM »

Awesome mod! I just tried this on a ship with safety overrides and it blazed through enemies. Amazing what a smarter AI can do for ships. cheers!

Thanks!

I personally use the modded AI for long range artillery ships. For SO ships the AI tends to be suicidal, but I guess that can work well in some settings.

5

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 25, 2025, 07:26:19 AM »

Could you please add an option to unconditionally enable «Custom AI hullmod» for all compatible ships? For allies and enemies. I'd like to test this mod, but i don't want my ships to be smarter than the enemy's.

In the simulation your AI appears to handle the Onslaught-class ship significantly better than the standard one.

Sure, I can add such option. I'll put it in Debug tab in LunaLib config.

But don't expect good results. Custom AI is far from being finished and doesn't work too well on the enemy side, especially when given orders by Admiral AI.

6

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 19, 2025, 03:10:28 PM »

v2.0.2 is out. Download

Changes:

• Custom AI: Fixed an issue where weapon logic delegated to vanilla AI overrode the ship target selection. The issue affected especially Invictus Lidar burst, causing weapons to hold fire.
• Custom AI: Further improved collision avoidance logic: Ships will move pass each other more effectively and not bump into each other.
• Heavy Adjudicators no longer conserve ammo for point-defense; with the right build, the Onslaught Mk I will now broadside while Heavy Adjudicators are reloading.

7

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 15, 2025, 02:21:29 PM »

Man, conceptually this is really cool, so I guess I'll try it, though I'm wary of the balance impacts and even more than that the 'uncanny behavior' (immersion is important after all.)

Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds.

I assume AI is too complicated to do piecemeal and make more modular in the sense of being able to keep the 'it should just work this way already' changes like broadsides but have vanilla PD behavior instead of a constant laser lightshow? And also accuracy. Don't really want inhumanly accurate ships, lol.

It depends on the AI component. I can add a setting to disable the beam lightshow without much trouble. Also, you don't like it? It's one of my favorite improvements. But reverting completely to vanilla PD AI, that would be much more difficult. That's because weapon AI provides a lot of input for ship movement, at least in my AI implementation.

Is the awful, awful, indescribably awful behavior exhibited by particularly Hyperions when there are fighters on the field something in the scope of this mod? It's the most obnoxious thing and probably the worst example of bad AI behavior I've seen. Imagine a Hyperion kitted out for anti-ship, it's got a reaper and some kinetic weapons, it's got 360 degree shields with extended shields. What does it do? It spins around in place trying to shoot little pirate fighters with machine guns or block their attacks from landing on its fully shielded self rather than... attacking the enemy carrier that's about a foot away from it.

Lol, it kind of is. I also get annoyed by that behavior from time to time, but right now I'm focused on bigger ship AI. I won't be moving to frigate AI any time soon.

8

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 15, 2025, 01:39:55 PM »

Hello! Some mild incompatibilities with another mod, Random Assortment of Things:

• "Leanira" cruiser ship system "deploys" a turret (ship) onto the battlefield. When the ship is controlled by an NPC, the ship system is never used. However, if this ship is piloted by the player, the autopilot will use the ship system. This behavior occurs with and without the Custom AI hullmod.
• "Hypatia" destroyer ship system causes it to enter "phase space", allowing it to travel very quickly, but prevents the usage of weapons or shields. The system acts as a toggle, with activation causing the ship to enter "phase space" and re-activation causing it to exit "phase space". When the ship is controlled by an NPC, after some period of time in battle, the ship activates the system, but never deactivates the system, causing to circle endlessly in "phase space".

Thanks for the report! Added to backlog.

9

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 15, 2025, 01:39:08 PM »

Not sure if it's vanilla or this tweak mod, but I've noticed a few times now that ships will preference shielding themselves from a possible collision with an asteroid over shielding themselves from a ship that is actually shooting at them.

That's vanilla. I removed that behavior in Custom AI.

10

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 15, 2025, 01:37:07 PM »

found this while testing some ship explotion stuff
with the mod on the turrets turn away and target some ghost ? (there is nothing up there) when geting close to other ship
without mod turrets stay on target and keep fireing

Interesting! This happens when the ship is under manual control, correct?

11

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 15, 2025, 01:34:49 PM »

Followup, I got around to trying it without QoL, and it's not the cause.  I can't even begin to guess what other mod is causing it, but if you don't mind a suggestion, perhaps automatically toggle the assist mode off when the battlespace is clear of hostiles?

Thanks! I'll add the issue to backlog.

12

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 15, 2025, 01:33:02 PM »

The ship build

The ship will engage in range, then after a while will back up

I see you didn't equip the Custom AI hullmod. This means the ship is under (mostly) vanilla AI control. Backing off for no apparent reason is one of the vanilla issues that motivated me to start writing the custom AI. You can try equipping it and see how the ship behaves.

13

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 06, 2025, 09:04:17 AM »

v2.0.1 is out. Download

Changes:

• Autofire AI: Improved aiming logic for low turn rate turrets. Now it's significantly less likely a ship will interrupt a burst when turning towards the target.
• Autofire AI: Improved aiming logic for PD weapons, Paladin in particular. Now they defend against swarms of low-HP threats more effectively. As if Anubis didn't invalidate missiles and strikecraft hard enough.
• Custom AI: Subsystems delegated to vanilla AI no longer exhibit fearless behavior on automated ships.

14

Mods / Re: [0.98a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 05, 2025, 01:25:31 PM »

Having an issue with the shield assist, where if it's toggled on when a battle ends, it starts enabled in the next battles, but it's nonfunctional - doesn't raise the shield, and if I raise it manually it doesn't control it at all.  toggling it off and on doesn't solve this, the only fix I've found is to make sure it's toggled off at the end of *that* battle, in which case it's functional again next time.  Possibly a mod incompatibility - if so, my immediate suspect is Puretilt's QOL pack, due to the shield facing settings in there.  I mainly use the qol pack for automatically toggling the transponder in hyperspace anyway, but also possible that something in the 0.98 update caused it maybe? Keep forgetting to try disabling the qol mod and I can't try now unfortunately, irl stuff going on (I only just happened to think to make a comment).

I haven't tried running the shield assist with QOL pack. It sounds very likely there's an incompatibility. I'll take a look at the issue.

15

Suggestions / Re: [0.98-RC5] AI overloads too easily

« on: April 04, 2025, 09:02:19 AM »

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity, and I hope this doesn’t come off as condescending—please excuse me if it does. How did a bug like this manage to slip through testing, especially when it’s so apparent in every battle?

Well, because its not a bug per se, its a bug fix that ironically resulted in the AI beingw orse at the game. There's lots of ways that can happen.  Game AIs are a teetering pile of weighted action priorities that interact in sometimes surprising and sometimes unfortunate ways when subject to the chaos of the actual simulation in a complex game like Starsector.  It's more common than you think for literal bugs stopping a game AI from working 'properly' to actually result in an AI that looks smarter to the player because its making more optimal decisions, even if it's ultimately doing them for the wrong reasons.

Oh yes, AI code is an absolute bug minefield! You get all sort of unexpected interactions, obscure special cases and, of course, regressions. I probably spend more time debugging than adding new features when working on Custom ship AI in AI Tweaks mod. What Alex implemented is really impressive, especially considering the sheer scope of Starsector AI.

On the testing end of things, the proper behavior of AI ships is very subjective. You won't even notice the AI messing up if you're just slamming enemy ships with a salvo of Reapers the moment their flux gets high.  Plus, on some level, AI messing up shields is intentional. Theoretically the AI could be so good at shield management it would basically never overload except as a last ditch. God knows its better at flicking omni shields around than a player ever could be.  So judging the line there can be difficult.

Yes, I guess subjectivity is to be blamed. Still, I'm curious how Alex perceives the expected AI behavior. For me the shield issue was completely apparent after playing 2, maybe 3 battles. I saw simillar opinions on Discord, including players refusing to use 0.98 until the shield AI is fixed. There seems to be a large discrepancy between what players expect and what was delivered as the expected behavior.