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[Sandor057]

Ship System Shunt hullmod when, Alex??!

It merits a suggestion considering that for some ships not using a hullmod at all is more beneficial compared to using it at the wrong time or the wrong way. Examples that come to my mind immediately are the Tempest sending both its drones on a suicide run through half the map with 0 chance to actually reach their targets, the Fury or Odyssey doing their best to make a Leeroy Jenkins impression into the middle of an enemy fleet.

On other ships I don't really see the need to use this. Also, I realize an improvement in the AI's usage of these systems would make the hullmod largely obsolete (as it is and was already discussed in a number of other topics), however lacking that I'd prefer this hullmod.

Possible stats:
Ship System Shunt - 5/10/15/20 OP
The ship cannot use its special system. In return (or as an S-mod bonus) the ship gets an extra 5% flux dissipation and +10% cargo space due to the ship not needing to keep capacity and room reserved for the system or somesuch.

[Genir]

I was already thinking about adding such hullmod to AI Tweaks. If there's demand, I can implement it.

As for stats, I was thinking about something simpler - 0 OP and no other effects except disabling the ship system.

Also, how should the manually piloted ship be affected?

[Sandor057]

Sounds pretty good to me!

For the player ship it could remove the functionality of the F key altogether I guess. Though in a way that if you switch ships in battle the new ship's system (if it doesn't have this hullmod) should work properly and vice-versa. Do note that I am not aware what it would require on the coding/modding side, so in case that's not (easily) possible then switching the system with Flare Launcher would also be fine as I think that would have the least impact on the ship's AI.

[Amoebka]

Yeah, replacing the system with active flares would be a great meme, given this game's history.

[Princess of Evil]

You physically can't switch systems on a ship, it would take too much code even if you do [REDACTED]. I think the only way to even remove one is to constantly spam it with disable code.

[Phenir]

You physically can't switch systems on a ship, it would take too much code even if you do [REDACTED]. I think the only way to even remove one is to constantly spam it with disable code.

You mean mid battle? Because I've seen plenty of mods change the system of ships without replacing the ship completely and I know of at least one that doesn't use skins in the process. Gunnery control mod lets you prevent the AI from using the system (or spam it).

[Genir]

Disabling ship system is easy. You need to call the disable command every frame, as Princess_of_Evil said. It will work fine.

There are other methods, eg you can remove the system AI with a bit of [REDACTED]. It doesn't require all that much code.

[Ruddygreat]

You mean mid battle? Because I've seen plenty of mods change the system of ships without replacing the ship completely and I know of at least one that doesn't use skins in the process. Gunnery control mod lets you prevent the AI from using the system (or spam it).

you can have a system do different things based on the state of a ship, but the only way to fully replace a ship's system (with the current setup, which would probably be changed if something like this were to become vanilla) is to swap out the hull spec

as for an actual point w/r/t this post - this seems like an awful idea?
basically every ship relies on it's system for some major part of it's kit, allowing this as an option seems part noob-bait (or just, outright strictly bad like HSA) and part bandaid solution to "the ai for x system sucks", which would be better solved by improving that AI.

[Amoebka]

There are plenty of situations where you might want the ship to not use its system that can't be reduced to "AI is bad".

Normally AI spams fast missile racks when it should, but what if you want the missiles to last longer at the expense of fire rate? This is no longer the question of which is better, both can have their uses. So having the hullmod would unlock new builds for stuff like Venture.

Or how about 1000 range beam Shrike with support missiles? Not having a system would help, and it's unreasonable to expect AI to know it's not supposed to use it even when "safe".

What about a 360 degree shield Medusa builds? Normally phase skimmer is amazing, but what if I want a shield tank build that never drops shields for any reason? Medusa has pretty amazing stats for it, and the benefit might be good enough to remove the skimmer.

There are all sorts of use cases for removing even normally good systems that AI uses well already.

[Ruddygreat]

Normally AI spams fast missile racks when it should, but what if you want the missiles to last longer at the expense of fire rate? This is no longer the question of which is better, both can have their uses. So having the hullmod would unlock new builds for stuff like Venture.

Or how about 1000 range beam Shrike with support missiles? Not having a system would help, and it's unreasonable to expect AI to know it's not supposed to use it even when "safe".

I think these are both a square peg, round hole situation where you're trying to make a ship do something it's simply not designed for?
like, the ships are a full package with all their quirks and giving the player tools to sand away those quirks makes things less interesting overall.
While I hate to make an argument like this, imagine if this was about changing slot types. It would certainly open up a lot more build variety, but those builds would be less interesting to make because you could just change inconvenient things at will.

What about a 360 degree shield Medusa builds? Normally phase skimmer is amazing, but what if I want a shield tank build that never drops shields for any reason? Medusa has pretty amazing stats for it, and the benefit might be good enough to remove the skimmer.

use a fury! it is, admittedly, more expensive, but it's got all the qualities you want from a theoretical systemless medusa.
vaguely coming back to the idea of more tools making things less interesting - I think that you're so focused on wanting a medusa to be something that it's not that you're outright ignoring other ships that fit the role better.

[Amoebka]

Fury is 20 DP over 12, can't use kinetics, can't use escort package, etc, etc. The ships are just different.

As for square pegs, is it not where the fun of the game is? When the optimal and only build for every ship is the "balanced" autofit variant, there's not much room for creativity. IMO, ship builds is something players come up with, not something heavily handed down by the game designer.

[SCC]

bandaid solution to "the ai for x system sucks"

Well, it would be nice to have that bandaid until the system is fixed. Alex is taking his sweet time with updates nowadays.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

and part bandaid solution to "the ai for x system sucks", which would be better solved by improving that AI.

"Just make better AI" can truly only be said by someone who knows little about coding and/or AI.

And I'll take a band-aid over no aid any day, thanks.

[Genir]

System Shunt implemented: AI Tweaks v1.8.0

[Sandor057]

System Shunt implemented: AI Tweaks v1.8.0

And there was much rejoicing!