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[Blothorn]

Automatic Orders

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Github repository
Required mods:
LazyLib

This is a spiritual successor to the (now outdated) Autonomous Ships mod, providing AI personality overrides and configurable automatic retreats. All settings affect AI-controlled ships (including the player ship, if on autopilot) in the player fleet; ally and enemy ships are unaffected. Each order will only be given once to each ship for each reason: for example, if a ship starts to retreat due to low PPT and you cancel the order AO will respect that, but may still issue a retreat order because of low hull or expended missiles, if those are enabled.

There are two primary sources of configuration:

• automatic_orders_settings.json (in the mod folder) allows setting default retreat thresholds for CR/PPT and hull damage, and whether personality hullmods override officer personalities.
• A range of hullmods (all under the "Automatic Orders" category, for easy filtering), including:
  
  • Personality overrides: override faction doctrine, but not officer personality unless the relevant setting is changed in the settings file.
    
  • Retreat threshold overrides: these override the defaults (I advise setting a high default and overriding it to a lower threshold for disposable or SO ships).
  • Retreat when all missiles are expended: compatible with other CR/PPT/damage retreat options.
  • Search and Destroy: gives the ship a S&D order when it enters the battle (or, if the flagship, when first turned over to the autopilot).
  • Escort (small/medium/heavy): give the ship an escort target order on battle start (applies to the flagship even under player control). The AI will automatically fulfill these orders; you can use S&D orders to prevent ships from being assigned to escort.

Mod integration
Most mods should work without configuration, Automatic Orders does have two extendible CSVs for additional configuration:

• data/config/automatic_orders/ship_blacklist.csv: Add hull ids for independent ships that should not be given orders. Fighters, ships without AI, and modules are already excluded; this should be used for independent frigate+ sized ships, such as deployable platforms.
• data/config/automatic_orders/missile_regen_systems.csv: Add systems that regenerate missiles, such as Vanilla's Autoforge. This is used to avoid ordering missile ships to retreat when they are out of ammo but have system charges left.

[pringdew]

i am going to run this right now and try it out...if i find anything out of the ordinary i will let you know....

[Harpuea]

I have a homebrew updated version of Autonomous ships running in my game. It is nice to know someone officially updates the mod.

Edit*

Can you also adds the Auto retreat when HP is at a certain percent back? It seems to be missing from this version. It is really helpful to not have to pause the game and look for a tiny frigate that is about to die to issue a retreat. However, I found this to be unreliable in my own homebrew version. It sometimes doesn't register properly or too late. Auto retreat at HP % function also doesn't work with Combat Chatters. Still, it is much better than micro managing dumb AI that doesn't understands and fear death like a normal human crewed ship would. Thanks for the work.

[Blothorn]

Note that this is a blank-slate implementation, not an update of Autonomous Ships--I drew inspiration from its features, but wanted to take a different direction in the implementation.

There already is auto retreat on hull damage, configured by the settings file--this defaults to 50%, but can be set to any percentage. I know it works with combat chatter--if you can reproduce any oddities please let me know.

[pringdew]

so far i am not having any problems, its pretty slick, the mod cycles out the damaged ships and i can reinforce the fleet from the ships waiting in the wings...not having to micromanage so much is a hoot...

[Hussar]

I think you should put up a disclaimer that this mod is potentially save breaking. I know you've tried to mark it as utility but once added to the save file - you can't play without it.

I had experienced save breaking the other day while trying to access Prism Freeport from SCY - the problem had faded away after reactivating the automatic orders mod. But now with the AO, I can't for example do a ForceMarketUpdate command anymore. At all.


As for the mod itself... It's radical, I love elements of it. I would be testing more out of it - if we could add and remove it at will from the save. Though one can definitely appreciate the automatic disengage orders upon taking a certain amount of damage.

If I can give any pointer, if you'd tried to restructure the setting file to not be a one continuous line in notepad - it'd would make it easier to get around the various options. A small thing, call me nitpick'y but user experience matters too.

[Euphytose]

Use notepad++ and you'll never want to use notepad again.

[Hussar]

Use notepad++ and you'll never want to use notepad again.

Fair enough. I'll give it a try~

[Blothorn]

Right--this was originally a utility mod, but ceased to be one when I added hullmods. I'll drop that tag in the patch for ships-with-modules. If you do want a utility version, deleting hull_mods.csv should suffice, and still allow you to use the settings-file thresholds for CR/PPT and damage. (Of course, that change would still be save-breaking.)

I use \n newlines; the latest Notepad, and essentially all other editors, should handle it fine.

[Blothorn]

0.3.1 released!
Some minor fixes:
 - Remove the utility tag (incorrect since adding hullmods)
 - Exclude ship modules
 - Allow other mods to extend the missile regen system list
 - Add retreat threshold override hullmods
. - Disregard missile regeneration when deciding whether to retreat due to expending missiles.

[BTracer]

Small Issue: When in the hull mod screen, using the filtering buttons on the bottom has no effect on items this mod adds. For example if I filter for "Common" your mod items still show up. Hope you understand what I mean, still new to the game and not sure the names of things.

And being new, this mod is a life saver - I have no idea how I'd stay on top of everything with 5 ships let alone 30!!

[Blothorn]

Huh--I'll look into that. I had originally had them under the "Common" manufacturer/"Automatic Orders" type; I switched the manufacturer in a recent update and I thought it was filtering correctly.

[Wyvern]

If it helps: I can filter out this mod's hullmods if I exclude both "Automatic Orders" manufacturer and type - either one alone and the mods still show up in the list.  Weird, and almost certainly not intended behavior, but it is at least still something I can work with.

[Blothorn]

Thanks for catching that! I'll look into that and possibly remove one of the tags.

[TimeDiver]

Thanks for catching that! I'll look into that and possibly remove one of the tags.

Having been irritated by said issue myself, I got rid of all of the first column instances of the 'Automatic Orders' tags in hull_mods.csv.

This leaves behind just one 'Automatic Orders' category behind, and can be properly excluded from being lumped in with the other categories.