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[Nameless]

Another funny issue with reinforcing allies.

Why do ships always hang back and do nothing to help the station?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[SCC]

Another funny issue with reinforcing allies.

Why do ships always hang back and do nothing to help the station?

This is actually deliberate, there's a defence order placed in that spot. It would be way better to have two defence orders on the left and right side of the station.

[Scorpixel]

Another funny issue with reinforcing allies.

Why do ships always hang back and do nothing to help the station?

So i'm not the only one!
EVERY TIME i defend a station most of the allied forces will afk at the gathering point one large square behind the station while only some actually defend the sides.

The worse is that, the point is just close enough to have their CR decay (would place my hand on it) but far enough that they won't intervene even with the entire enemy fleet hugging the upper half of station (would place my other hand on it).
Meaning it's just dead DP bleeding-out outside the battlefield, even when triggered by the odd flanking cruiser they will all immediately back out again the moment the enemy gets out of range.

N°1 reason why i fight the enemy in field battles instead of sieges when i have allies.
Please, put the rally point closer and reinforce the sides, it's painful watching all those red-marked ships waiting for death.

[Nameless]

Another funny issue with reinforcing allies.

Why do ships always hang back and do nothing to help the station?

This is actually deliberate, there's a defence order placed in that spot. It would be way better to have two defence orders on the left and right side of the station.

But why behind the station though?

[NoMercyForLudds_]

AI does just fine 98% of the time. Players say nothing.

AI doesn't do the exact thing the player wants one time. *LOSES MIND*

I think it's called confirmation bias.

One thing that I don't expect myself to complain about is Starsector's battle AI. It works quite ok, and I think improving other game aspects would be a better investment of devs' time.

A sidenote: I don't know how battle AI is implemented in Starsector, but I'd expect a bunch of good old if-thens or smth similar. Converting it to something fancy, like neural nets, may still produce sub-par results (while being a massive undertaking) - we are a long way away from AI wars in our current 2021. Anything resembling general (not narrowly task-specialized) intelligence is a bit of a miracle.

[Razor Feather]

A sidenote: I don't know how battle AI is implemented in Starsector, but I'd expect a bunch of good old if-thens or smth similar. Converting it to something fancy, like neural nets, may still produce sub-par results (while being a massive undertaking) - we are a long way away from AI wars in our current 2021. Anything resembling general (not narrowly task-specialized) intelligence is a bit of a miracle.

Lets also not forget that an actually perfect ai, or even just an extremely good one (IE better than what a typical skilled player can manage) wouldn't actually be all that fun to play against, since it would just stomp you and never really give any openings or opportunities to play off of. There is a lot of challenge in making an ai that hits that sweet spot of playing well but not too well, and also playing in a way that is at least somewhat non deterministic and feels achievable by the human, thus precluding things like perfect timing and coordination across units, like say having a line of capital ships sync fire their guass cannons so that you either block none of them or overload.

Overall I think Starsector hits it fairly spot on, to be honest. The ai could maybe use a bit more emphasis on maintaining cohesion, but overall they react and try to flank/cover ships as the situation develops, and will often punish misplays pretty effectively, but not always.

[RustyCabbage]

The tactical screen may be finicky and newer players could probably benefit from a better explanation of its systems, but it certainly isn't ineffective.

To prove it, I did a run of The Last Hurrah with default loadouts and on autopilot, only giving orders on the tactical screen.

I accidentally cleared all the waypoints I made with a Full Assault order at the end of the battle, but this zoomed-in screenshot some time midway through can probably give you an idea:

image

[close]

(It shows probably half of the total waypoints I made throughout the battle. The tac screen is really flexible and works quite well if you have some foresight and know how to coax it properly.)

Final results

[close]

This is a 177 vs 236 DP (3:4 ratio) battle of approximately equally well-equipped fleets where your opponent has significantly better fighter coverage than you, but you can still pull off nearly flawless victories with some shrewdness.

As others have said, the AI is symmetric and aside from ECM Rating/officer problems that show up in campaign, between good loadouts and proper order usage you should be able to win battles where you're outnumbered even without personally piloting amazingly.

[intrinsic_parity]

@RustyCabbage what is the purpose of all the rally task force waypoints? Based on the tactical screen it seems as though all of the ships are assigned to other tasks, and they are not doing anything.

[RustyCabbage]

They were used throughout the battle to reposition. I just didn't feel like deleting them after I was done with them (ships don't auto-assign to waypoint rally points like they do with other commands once they finish their given task). The main point is to illustrate that, while it may take a lot of orders, you can definitely achieve results with them alone. It's not as clear as video footage, unfortunately, but I was lazy and hoped this would suffice.

[Mordodrukow]

AI does just fine 98% of the time. Players say nothing.

Lol, yes, if you always have superior range, speed (and firepower) or some kind of cheese like mass phase ships, your AI will act good 98% of time.

If you have something average (you know, you may want to play game in different ways sometimes, not just meta-builds), they will act like that:


Apogee and Odyssey got orders to camp the points. But why follow orders if you can pursue single enemy for several minutes? The only order which works is retreat (as you can see in situation with Apogee). And even then will not help, if there is an enemy between your ship and retreat point.

The main problem with design "enemy follows the same restrictions" is: you want to save every ship, and enemy dont care at all. Even if he just as dumb as your allies, he can overwhelm you by tons of meat.

[robepriority]

The apogee isn't assigned the rally task force order.

The odyssey is moving towards the point, but since the hammerhead is faster, the odyssey likely has to backtrack without a zero-flux boost at best and actively deter it at worst.

[Mordodrukow]

Apogee is not assigned, because screenshot was made when it got an order to retreat.

Odyssey is moving AWAY from the point. It was near the point few minutes ago, but decided to chase the hammerhead.

As you can see, there is no Apogee on the first screenshot, because chronologically it was the second one.
UPD. Swapped them now.

[robepriority]

So the screenshot on the top is chronologically second?

[Mordodrukow]

Swapped them to be in chronological order.

[Thaago]

Looking at this, your Ody and your Apogee are getting kited and are trying to fight back. While it would probably be best for you to slap an eliminate order on the hammerhead to just pop it already (seriously, how did it live that long? Ody's should be able to catch a HH), both wanders could have been solved by putting an avoid command on the kiting shipand taking it off once the ody was disengaged and back on.

In both these cases, the AI thinks it is winning, so chases after the outmatched enemy, but the enemy is faster than them. Its an issue that players need to be aware of, and try to fix, either by having fast ships, or finisher weapons, or fighters, or overwhelming burst, or EMP. BUT, the alternative is the AI being more passive. and not chasing enemies down for the kill at all, which I would really not like (and it is not great at already in some circumstances).