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[Helldiver]

Two AI bugs with phase ships:

Phase ships nowhere near max flux will randomly uncloak near low HP ships about to explode, dying or getting heavily damaged in the process. Already lost multiple Shades to this in this playthrough.

When AI phase ships do the "pass-through" maneuver (where they phase through the ship and turn around to shoot its rear), they often turn around so late that they're already out of their own's weapon range. I have observed phase frigates with Anti-matter Blasters continously do the maneuver on helpless Buffaloes and never actually shooting their guns. I don't know if it's because they don't take their weapon range into account or don't start turning around early enough.

[TaLaR]

2nd issue is particularly bad with c4r elite skill. It boosts max speed, but not maneuverability.

As player, I just turn around ahead of time, even before passing through enemy. AI tries to turn too late.

[Dark.Revenant]

A similar issue I noticed was when a Harbinger with 3 pulsers was chasing some other ship, it would phase a tiny amount of time and inch closer to the enemy ship, never actually getting within striking range of those pulsers.

[Schwartz]

Getting lots of Harbingers and Afflictors blowing themselves up by decloaking within explosion radius of ships they are about to kill.
This is not a new issue but it's happening a lot more to me in this version.

I'm frankly tired of it. No ship should ever get within the explosion radius of an enemy ship. And if it's a flux emergency and the AI has to, it certainly should not try to blow the target up until it's cleared the radius.

[Schwartz]

To demonstrate another issue that still happens a lot. Before and after. That was its own mine btw. Also note the low flux level, there was no pressure to decloak.

I'm thinking there need to be some "margins for safety" for phase mines and ship explosions. This was a Cerberus. Small explosion, but it was enough. Note the 600 range + ITU for the NPC Afflictor.

[Alex]

Thank you! I'm aware of this; there are some incremental improvements re: handling it but it's not something that's likely to be 100% "not happening", especially vs enemy ships - there are too many factors in play, combined with the need to actually get close enough to fire some of the shorter-ranged weapons. There are margins, and the AI does a much better job of avoiding ship explosions in this release, but it'll still happen sometimes.

[Schwartz]

You mention shorter-ranged weapons, but the Afflictors I build don't even have PD. They have a single firing group, all-660 range or higher, depending on officer. They still uncloak point blank at times. Maybe the fact that I play more phase ships plays into this, but to me these guys are as suicidal as they've always been. This is especially frustrating when you put a steady officer on there to try and curb it - only for them not to really give chase to fleeing ships efficiently anymore, yet still die to the occasional right-at-the-end-of-combat point blank decloak blunder.

Going at this from the other side - is there a setting to turn the ship explosion radius or ship explosion damage off? I only find this fun when I happen to catch two unshielded enemies close to each other, and I would gladly forgo that little bit of candy for having "safe" phase ships of my own.

[Alex]

You mention shorter-ranged weapons, but the Afflictors I build don't even have PD. They have a single firing group, all-660 range or higher, depending on officer. They still uncloak point blank at times. Maybe the fact that I play more phase ships plays into this, but to me these guys are as suicidal as they've always been. This is especially frustrating when you put a steady officer on there to try and curb it - only for them not to really give chase to fleeing ships efficiently anymore, yet still die to the occasional right-at-the-end-of-combat point blank decloak blunder.

Hmm, I'm just not seeing the same thing. I've been playing a bunch with phase ships - frigates in particular - and they've been remarkably survivable, even with some of the phase cloak changes that would in theory impact that negatively.

It's *certainly* better than it used to be in 0.9.1a, though; I spent a decent bit of time making the AI respect ship explosion radius more, especially in the case of frigates swarming a single enemy, which would be particularly relevant here.

But, they will mess up now and again, so I suppose this does depend on the importance one assigns to that. If it's "one is too many, and how often it happens matters less than that it happens at all", then sure, and I hear that, but, just saying that this isn't something that can completely go away.

Going at this from the other side - is there a setting to turn the ship explosion radius or ship explosion damage off? I only find this fun when I happen to catch two unshielded enemies close to each other, and I would gladly forgo that little bit of candy for having "safe" phase ships of my own.

You could write a script that does what the ReducedExplosion hullmod does, but for all ships. (It would be a pretty simple one, though further discussion of that specifically ought to go into Modding.)