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Author Topic: MISSILE_TWO_STAGE_SECOND_UNGUIDED missile AI could use some love!  (Read 1236 times)

MesoTroniK

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This AI that the Squall uses in vanilla and many weapons in mods? Has a pair of fairly serious issues that severely limits effectiveness and also Cool Factorâ„¢.

- The AI does not wait until the missile is aimed at ship center (intercept point really) to enter its acceleration stage. This results in misses 100% of the time if the weapon is aimed sufficiently off-axis. Though on very large ships this is less of an issue.
- There is very little spread factor, each missile takes nearly the exact flight path as the one before it so a miss will always be a miss for the next one instead of them having a margin of error for its aim-point spreading them out in a cone of fire. And yes I know the current AI *does* do this, but it is so subtle that it might as well not exist both in mechanics and visuals.

Here is a video showing what I mean regarding the Squall, and also comparing it to a custom missile AI weapon of mine... Ignore the fact that it also has a MIRV stage, couldn't bother modifying its missile AI or making another custom weapon to demonstrate this.

https://youtu.be/jshYPARTlRI

So in essence and in short I am suggesting that the MISSILE_TWO_STAGE_SECOND_UNGUIDED missile AI gets modified to... Wait until aimed at the intercept before it starts accelerating, and also to have a greater inaccuracy for its aim point to spread them around a bit more as well.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2019, 08:19:02 PM by MesoTroniK »
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Avanitia

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Re: MISSILE_TWO_STAGE_SECOND_UNGUIDED missile AI could use some love!
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2019, 09:06:41 PM »

I second this - Squalls are easily avoidable when using anything that has decent speed and if you can't avoid them - kinetic damage they deal won't kill outright most ships even when taken on armor.

This makes them unsuitable for most tasks other than attacking stations or bombarding enemy line and hoping it hits something...

Changing the aiming to what has been suggested should deal with this issue.

Making Squalls spread a fair bit would also help - if they hit, they shouldn't score all hits at one very small area of enemy vessel, which would make them good against larger targets while lowering their effectiveness against frigates (it wouldn't murder them if the aiming fix would be done)
« Last Edit: July 27, 2019, 09:16:06 PM by Avanitia »
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You haven't played Starsector unless your storage has one thousand Vulcans in it.

Alex

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Re: MISSILE_TWO_STAGE_SECOND_UNGUIDED missile AI could use some love!
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2019, 09:13:41 PM »

It already does what you're suggesting, but was just set to have a bit too high of an acceptable margin of error. Changing it from 3 degrees before initiating burn to 1 degree seems to improve its performance to an acceptable level, i.e. in a similar scenario to your video it hits the enemy ship pretty much smack in the middle as opposed to consistently barely missing it.

Note: this does also depend on having ECCM. Vs a stationary target it doesn't matter but vs a moving target, it'll be significantly less accurate without ECCM. It'll also spend a maximum of 3 seconds trying to aim, so, yes, a sufficiently off-axis shot will still miss, but that's intended.

(And, right, it doesn't do any sort of spread. Just not a feature of it; any spread is just due to minute individual differences in how well the missile managed to aim.)
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MesoTroniK

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Re: MISSILE_TWO_STAGE_SECOND_UNGUIDED missile AI could use some love!
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2019, 09:28:37 PM »

Awesome, thank you for fixing that up and for the explanations Alex. I will say though I think adding some spread would be a good idea and at the least is worth considering :)

Alex

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Re: MISSILE_TWO_STAGE_SECOND_UNGUIDED missile AI could use some love!
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2019, 09:34:35 PM »

Yeah, it might at that; just more than I want to mess with in that area right now!
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