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Author Topic: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules  (Read 881 times)

RustyCabbage

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Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« on: July 07, 2021, 10:45:40 PM »

Essentially, on a carrier that uses modules and fields only fighters/interceptors (no bombers), the carrier will not move out with its fighters even though the autopilot sets them to Engage. I happen to have the AI Flag Tools mod enabled, and it seems the CARRIER_FIGHTER_TARGET flag selects the enemy ship for a few seconds (up to 5-8 seconds) but then the target switches to 'null' and it almost never switches back to the target.

It's not completely consistent but is generally reproducible with enough attempts.

Ships I've seen this occur in (tested in simulator by toggling autopilot - no skills or doctrine changes):
Roider Union Ranch-class
Scy Nation Keto-class
ScalarTech Solutions Gown-class

Yunru

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2021, 12:50:25 AM »

I have a feeling it may be to do with the lack of LPC on the core body. If the core has its own (dummy) fighter to direct, it should keep it engaged.

RustyCabbage

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2021, 07:55:57 AM »

That is explicitly the case I'm referring to. The Ranch only has armor modules, the Keto's bays are on the main body, and the Gown's modules were left empty.

Alex

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #3 on: July 12, 2021, 03:23:09 PM »

Meant to reply here, but got sidetracked!

Hmm - tried reproducing this by putting a bunch of Claws into a high-tech star battlestation, and am not seeing this behavior - it sends them off to fight the sim Onslaught I'd spawned. So either it's fixed in dev (which... maybe?), or the behavior doesn't show for stations, only SHIP_WITH_MODULES. Are you able to verify if you're seeing this behavior with stations?
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2021, 09:55:38 PM »

Sorry, I missed a key specific: it affects fighters on the 'main' body of the ship. Since the fighters on a station are on one of its modules rather than the main body, I don't think the issue shows up there. I don't think there are any vanilla ships/stations that would be affected by this issue.

Here's a video illustrating it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzbNdLwnMxs

Alex

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #5 on: July 13, 2021, 09:11:53 AM »

Oh, hmm. Dug into it and this actually looks like an intended behavior, and I don't think it's module-related. Basically the AI thinks it only has a few fighters and doesn't want to waste them unless there's a good opportunity - the target is facing away, or has reasonably high flux, etc. This totally *looks* like a bug, though - and it's triggered somewhat arbitrarily by the number of wings it has if none are bombers, so maybe it just shouldn't do that - let me tweak it.
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #6 on: July 13, 2021, 11:28:42 AM »

Oh, I think I can see the behaviour you're speaking of - but I don't think it's quite the same issue. Eg:

Condor
- equipped with 1x Claw, 1x empty bay, will stay on REGROUP (unless an opportunity arises)
- equipped with 2x Claw will ENGAGE by default

Heron
- equipped with 1x Claw, 2x empty bay, will stay on REGROUP (unless an opportunity arises)
- equipped with 2x Claw, 1x empty bay will ENGAGE by default

Astral
- equipped with 1x Claw, 5x empty bay, will stay on REGROUP (unless an opportunity arises)
- equipped with 2x Claw, 4x empty bay will also stay on REGROUP (unless an opportunity arises)
- equipped with 3x Claw, 3x empty bay will ENGAGE by default

That sounds about right for what you're referring to, right? It's slightly different for these modular carriers where they actually will be set to ENGAGE but have essentially the same behaviour because they don't have a CARRIER_FIGHTER_TARGET selected.

Checking a little more, the modular carrier issue even occurs with some lopsided fits with non-zero numbers of bombers. The Roider Union Ranch-class has 4 bays,: 2 built-in Breaker Drone wings (3 drone fighters with 4000 engagement range at 2 OP if they weren't built-in) and 2 modular ones. After equipping an additional Breaker Drone Wing and a Trident in the modular slots it will stay passive (but it engages properly if both modular slots are set to bombers).

Soo given it happens even when fitting bombers it's possibly an unrelated issue? Anyhow, thanks for checking into this!

Alex

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #7 on: July 13, 2021, 12:03:19 PM »

Yeah, that sounds about right. Hmm - I was testing this by giving station_small in vanilla (it has the SHIP_WITH_MODULES tag and is not in fact a station) 2 fighter bays and filling one of them with Claws.

I did tweak some other things but it's really hard to see how the base ship having an armor module or some such would cause problems. If you're able to put together a minimod I'd be happy to take a closer look. I can't actually run Roider Union very easily because MagicLib causes a crash in the dev version due to using some obfuscated classes in its "retreat cleaner". (I'm not actually sure if that one's still necessary; iirc it was fixing an issue with ships-with-modules in 0.9.1a which *should* be fixed in 0.95a.)
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #8 on: July 13, 2021, 02:43:18 PM »

Sure! Attached mod includes nothing but a stripped down Ranch-class (no Roider-specific hullmods or built-in fighters or anything), its module and a variant with 4 Claws. Should be able to go right into the dev mode Edit Variants menu and see it happening in the simulator (at least, it still pops up on my end testing against the sim Atlas).

[attachment deleted by admin]

Alex

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #9 on: July 14, 2021, 09:56:02 AM »

Thank you! On my end, it's now engaging both the Atlas and an Eagle, so, looks like whatever tweaking I did fixed it.
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #10 on: July 14, 2021, 10:29:10 AM »

Sweet! Thanks again for taking a look at this even though vanilla doesn't yet have any true modular ships. :P

Alex

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Re: Issues engaging with fighters on carriers with modules
« Reply #11 on: July 14, 2021, 10:41:51 AM »

Glad to do it! Lots of mods do so it's pretty important :)

(... and, one day!)
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