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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: [0.95a] Centurions using damper field instead of shooting leading to stalemate  (Read 671 times)

AsterPiano

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Video here
Behaviour happens at about 2:20 onwards and continues for the rest of the video, until eventually they get lucky and manage to finish the Astrals off.

The Astrals are low on health, so the Centurions probably want to defend from the incoming death explosion, and so they use Damper Field (they use it even when they're not being shot at), which prevents them from using weapons and actually finishing it off. The officers in the Astrals have the Shield Modulation skill so this goes on for several minutes

The Centurions' loadout is only Antimatter Blasters and Reapers (They also have Safety Overrides).
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Alex

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Thanks for the report!

This isn't really a bug. As you say, it's a combination of low-range weapons and being afraid of the ship explosion. Trying to "fix" something like this - a really contrived scenario; I don't mean this in a negative way, but I think that just describes it fairly accurately - would just lead to bigger problems (i.e. more ships getting caught in explosions) in the course of more normal events.
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Helldiver

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Thanks for the report!

This isn't really a bug. As you say, it's a combination of low-range weapons and being afraid of the ship explosion. Trying to "fix" something like this - a really contrived scenario; I don't mean this in a negative way, but I think that just describes it fairly accurately - would just lead to bigger problems (i.e. more ships getting caught in explosions) in the course of more normal events.

Isn't this a non-issue if the ships just attack with their shields up? There's no reason to spam Damper Field when their shields can block a ship explosion just fine (at worst a frigate will overload). Maybe block the AI from using Damper Field against ship explosions if their shield can face them?
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Alex

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Ah, my bad - I watched the video, but looks like didn't pay enough attention and thought it was the general "afraid to get too close to a ship about to explode" dance. Right, yeah. Funny thing! The Damper Field AI is supposed to do exactly that, but wasn't due to a bug - it was only computing whether the possible ship explosion is in its shield arc if there were *also* dangerous missiles nearby. Fixed this up; thank you for pointing this out!

(So now, a Centurion armed with an AM Blaster actually fires it off very reliably vs a sliver-of-hull Onslaught; looks like the range on the AMB is just enough to where it can do it fine. I was thinking that it was too short and it was just having trouble due to that...)
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Helldiver

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Isn't this a non-issue if the ships just attack with their shields up? There's no reason to spam Damper Field when their shields can block a ship explosion just fine (at worst a frigate will overload). Maybe block the AI from using Damper Field against ship explosions if their shield can face them?
Ah, my bad - I watched the video, but looks like didn't pay enough attention and thought it was the general "afraid to get too close to a ship about to explode" dance. Right, yeah. Funny thing! The Damper Field AI is supposed to do exactly that, but wasn't due to a bug - it was only computing whether the possible ship explosion is in its shield arc if there were *also* dangerous missiles nearby. Fixed this up; thank you for pointing this out!

(So now, a Centurion armed with an AM Blaster actually fires it off very reliably vs a sliver-of-hull Onslaught; looks like the range on the AMB is just enough to where it can do it fine. I was thinking that it was too short and it was just having trouble due to that...)

Woo, that was my productive post of the week. Glad it helped.
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