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Author Topic: Reliable Ship AI behaviour exploit: venting while inside HIL range  (Read 569 times)

Arcagnello

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I was in the middle of testing totally fair and balanced Radiant/Brilliant builds for the faction to spawn in Vanilla Starsector when I stumbled across a rather peculiar behaviour from the AI:
Large ships, the ones with the most HP and Armor most affected, seem to heavily, heavily underestimate the hazard that is the High Intensity Laser and vent while sitting inside weapon range with non-critical flux levels either, instead of keeping the shield up as long as possible while attempting to back off.
Some Examples:
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This one is the most egregious I've captured: flux is at around 25% and HP is at less than 15% but the ship AI decides to vent anyway
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The "exploit" seems to happen regardless of ship as long as there's only Graviton beams and HILs doing the work. Introduce even a single Ion beam into the mix and the AI behaviour seems to fix itself as it looks like it really does not want EMP damage on the hull.

The two ship variants I've used to test this with that reliably reproduce it:
"Borer" Brilliant:
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"Bastion" Radiant:
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« Last Edit: June 10, 2021, 06:44:25 AM by Arcagnello »
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Wyvern

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Re: Reliable Ship AI behaviour exploit: venting while inside HIL range
« Reply #1 on: June 10, 2021, 01:45:58 PM »

The "exploit" seems to happen regardless of ship as long as there's only Graviton beams and HILs doing the work. Introduce even a single Ion beam into the mix and the AI behaviour seems to fix itself as it looks like it really does not want EMP damage on the hull.
That actually raises a question: does this behavior go away if you add a little bit of EMP damage to the HIL? I'll have to test, because that could be something that would let a mod fix the HIL-being-treated-as-low-threat issue without having to wait on the next Starsector version.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Reliable Ship AI behaviour exploit: venting while inside HIL range
« Reply #2 on: June 10, 2021, 02:31:17 PM »

The "exploit" seems to happen regardless of ship as long as there's only Graviton beams and HILs doing the work. Introduce even a single Ion beam into the mix and the AI behaviour seems to fix itself as it looks like it really does not want EMP damage on the hull.
That actually raises a question: does this behavior go away if you add a little bit of EMP damage to the HIL? I'll have to test, because that could be something that would let a mod fix the HIL-being-treated-as-low-threat issue without having to wait on the next Starsector version.

I have no idea what causes it, only that the HIL in general seems to not register in the AI's radar when it comes to shield management and venting.
It's almost as if it's only seeing the 800/2 (kinetic) and 150 energy damage per second and chooses to either lower shields or vent, ignoring the fact there's also a 500x2 (high explosive) beam eating through armor and hull alike which is very strange considering the shield AI is usually very much on top of things when preventing HE damage from reaching the hull.

Giving it some small EMP damage might work, considering the AI does not like getting Ion Beamed and all that. You've got my blessing in that endeavour. I'm sorry I could not record a video of this exact behaviour, since it would be very telling.
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Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.
The therapist removed my F5 key.