Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Clockwork Owl]

The AI should take possible failure to track due to beam turn rate reduction while firing, as well as what is behind its target, into account when evaluating friendly fire risk.

The AI will use beam weapons that cannot retain its turning speed while firing, such as Phase Lance, to attack fighters when no other target is available.

Which is not a problem EXCEPT when there is a friendly ship present in that general direction and within range, which causes any missed shot or shot that obliterated its target to end up inside a friendly tailpipe.

With the Phase Lance, between significantly reduced turn speed while firing, 600 range of the weapon meaning the fighter is pretty close when it is fired(requiring faster turn rate), and damage output enough to vaporize most fighters on a full hit, the miss and subsequent friendly fire is bound to happen. Not a neglible one either - in one incident it went straight through my Medusas' armor and 20% of the hull.

Currently running a fleet with heavy presence of Phase Lances and beams in general, so I have noticed the issue. In one battle the only significant damage I suffered was a friendly Lancing on my Eagles' rear.

[XazoTak]

The AI treats burst weapons as single-fire.
If it's using a long-reload weapon, it triggers the weapon then instantly decides it's done using the weapon even if the weapon is still firing.
This can be seen with Phase Lance and Heavy Needler on hardpoints. The ship lines up a shot, triggers the weapon, and while the weapon is still firing it will turn away because since its hardpoint weapon is on cooldown there's no point in tracking the target.

When trying to hit a fighter with Phase Lance, the AI only cares about the first instant of the laser being a hit, it doesn't give two hoots about what the laser does after that because it doesn't even acknowledge that the laser is still firing.

[Vind]

Not only this but ships will chase down strike craft exposing rear armor to nearby enemy ships with bad results. Gun emplacements prefer to shoot heavy guns on strike craft and miss - usually hitting some friendlies than target cruiser in range. Target priority is seriously flawed.

[Alex]

Thanks for the report! I'll check this out.

(Please let's not turn bug report threads into discussions.)

[Alex]

Finally tracked this down. The issue was with the assumption that if the target blocks a friendly ship, then it's ok to fire at it - this is fine for ships, but fighters can either get vaporized or just move out of the way quickly, and so shouldn't be considered as blocking the friendly ship.

Also added an exception for short-duration or continuous beam weapons, since those are both accurate and shut off very quickly, and so generally ought to be used in that situation.

Fixed issue where ships would fire at fighters despite a high risk of hitting friendly targets beyond the fighter
      Affects some beam weapons (i.e. Phase Lance) and projectile weapons
      Does not affect continuous or short-duration burs weapons such as the Tactical Laser or the Burst PD Laser