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Author Topic: Preventing friendly fire without annoying the player.  (Read 1649 times)

BTracer

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Preventing friendly fire without annoying the player.
« on: August 25, 2019, 10:21:54 AM »

I wanted to start this discussion to see if other players are affected and to what degree.
Proposals (if you can call them that) are only for actual player piloted ships, I couldn't care less if the ai gets in its own way.

1) Friendly ships fly directly in front of the player, between the player and their target.
In 99.99% of the cases this happens, there is zero reason for the ship to be there. This is particularly egregious when piloting a ship like the Hammerhead, and you just engaged ammo feeder for it to do absolutely nothing because that Kite just flew in front of you and won't move.

2) Friendly ships prevent autofire weapons from firing even though they are nowhere near the line of fire.
In trying to prevent friendly fire, I really feel like this particular mechanic is way over tuned. Ships that are at a near 45 degree angle from me and my target, are preventing my autofire weapons from firing. Again, with the Hammerhead, with its very narrow front firing 'arc', a ship directly to my side (and even not so directly) will stop weapons from firing even though there's no physical way to hit the friendly.

If I'm being honest, it's not that big of a deal, it's annoying, but it usually resolves itself. It can feel like it takes forever for the AI to move out of the way, or for your weapons to start firing after the AI decides the ship half a light year away is safe from your weapons, but it's probably only a few seconds at best of waiting.

If I could ask for one tweak to the AI, it would be to never, at any cost, fly between me and my target. And targetis the important word. There certainly seems to be some sort mechanic where the AI tries to 'save' the player by getting in front of them when the player is taking a lot of damage. I'd like that to remain, but it would be up to the player to 'deselect' their target if they want to give the AI a chance to protect them, otherwise, as long as I have a target selected, the area between me and my target should be absolute no go zones.

However, I know there's more to it then that, and this is coming from the perspective of fairly up close battles, where if a friendly needed to move from point a to b and it crossed my line of fire, that going 'around' me would be fairy cheap in terms of distance. I could definitely see this as an issue with much longer range ships creating huge no go zones that other friendlies would have long travel distances to get around me.

I doubt there's an easy solution, but I'm curious if its really a problem that everybody experiences, or fairly isolated to certain playstyles/ships.
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Alex

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Re: Preventing friendly fire without annoying the player.
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2019, 10:58:48 AM »

This - the "getting in front of you" part - is something that should have (and probably has) gotten considerably better in the most recent release, but I'll keep an eye out.

It's hard for me to say anything specific without seeing the situation in motion, and preferably being able to reproduce it - there are just so many reasons why the AI might end up moving in a certain direction. Thank you for bringing this up, though;  like I said, I'll be on the lookout.
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sotanaht

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Re: Preventing friendly fire without annoying the player.
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2019, 11:13:16 AM »

I see it happen a lot with my player Paragon and AI frigates.  I only run 5 frigates in the fleet, and they still manage to get between me and whatever I'm shooting at every fight.  It's one of the reasons why I'm not sold on the whole "range is everything" paradigm, because the closer I get to my target, the less likely allies are to get between us.  Then again, I've been almost touching an enemy and had frigates fly between us for some odd reason.  Probably is a "cover me" mechanic, the enemy does it so often that I'm fairly sure it's intentional there.
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BTracer

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Re: Preventing friendly fire without annoying the player.
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2019, 12:18:36 PM »

...is something that should have (and probably has) gotten considerably better...

Indeed it has. In this particular case, the reason I decided to post, was it happened numerous times over consecutive battles and tilted me just a little bit  ;D

Sorry I can't produce anything except maybe some screen shots, but I'm content knowing you'll at least 'keep an eye out'. Thanks!
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cerebus23

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Re: Preventing friendly fire without annoying the player.
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2019, 12:29:08 PM »

small ship do have nasty habit of wandering into your line of fire and getting them selves blown up, but its rare and especially if i keep an eye out on them instead of my target. they should have a bit more sense to avoid your nuke beam of death though when they drift towards my attack, they can do that for the opposite ai right? being aware of big ships and their big weapons and not hovering about them like idiots because you cant fire through them oddly.

can be worked about be sending your small ships elsewhere of limiting their spots. and stick to sub caps. point defense at that point i think gets more key or running some carriers for defense. chasing down small orfast retreating ships is a pain but the follow up attack can finish off if you spam your small craft to kill them off. bigger ships anyway at some point they will just turn tail and run and you will get nothing.
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Thaago

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Re: Preventing friendly fire without annoying the player.
« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2019, 04:25:52 PM »

It is a reasonably rare occurrence except for station fighting. It seems that once they feel 'safe' (station high on flux, possibly with weapons disabled) frigates love to hug the surface of stations at minimum range, blocking all other ships from firing. I usually will switch to manual control of my guns, blow the offending frigate to pieces, then continue to kill the station in peace.
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