Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Exasperation]

I think the biggest, most obvious, and most common source of AI stupidity I've noticed is that the AI appears to consider fighters to be full scale ships instead of PD targets.

Fighters were ships until 0.8a.  Fighters became missiles or weapons since 0.8a.

And yet the AI doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, since this behavior is all observed in 0.95.1a.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think the biggest, most obvious, and most common source of AI stupidity I've noticed is that the AI appears to consider fighters to be full scale ships instead of PD targets. 

The decision of how much attention to give fighters is not a trivial one, and there are lots of situations where fighters will just kill you (or overload you) if you try to power through them. Most PD weapons are not amazing at killing fighters (especially shielded or armored wings) because they are aimed at shooting down missiles and have low DPS and frequently frag damage, so using real weapons to shoot fighters is usually a good choice.

There could be some improvements for sure, but I think fear of fighters is pretty warranted in a lot of situations. It's only really when you stack lots of armor and bonuses where most fighters don't really pose a threat.

I recently had a fight where a pirate Colossus got separated from the other pirates.  I told a capital ship to engage, and it moved towards it along with two destroyers and a light cruiser that didn't have any specific orders.  The enemy launched its fighters and my capital ship, despite specific orders, an aggressive captain, 8 LR PD lasers and 2 Paladins, and supporting friendly ships turned around and ran away from the fighters.

Engage is not a very strict order, it's more like 'stay in the general vicinity of this ship and shoot at it if you can, but deal with immediate threats first'. You probably want eliminate in that situation, that will definitely cause it to ignore fighters.

[MrTwister]

Best you can do is set some ships to defend other ships (usually 1-2 frigates to accompany larger hulls) and then be thorough with how you spend your command points - use tactical pause and position all of the key ships manually around the battlefield.

For me this is usually enough.

[Voyager I]

I think the biggest, most obvious, and most common source of AI stupidity I've noticed is that the AI appears to consider fighters to be full scale ships instead of PD targets.

Fighters were ships until 0.8a.  Fighters became missiles or weapons since 0.8a.

And yet the AI doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, since this behavior is all observed in 0.95.1a.

Try powering through a wave of Broadswords to engage a combat ship and let us know how it works out.

[Exasperation]

I think the biggest, most obvious, and most common source of AI stupidity I've noticed is that the AI appears to consider fighters to be full scale ships instead of PD targets.

Fighters were ships until 0.8a.  Fighters became missiles or weapons since 0.8a.

And yet the AI doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, since this behavior is all observed in 0.95.1a.

Try powering through a wave of Broadswords to engage a combat ship and let us know how it works out.

I have tried it.  What generally happens is this:
1) my ships panic and run from the fighters.
2) since the fighters are faster, they catch up to my ships anyway.
3) my ships kill the fighters in a couple of seconds.  If I'm lucky, none of them manages to plasma cannon a friendly in the process.
4) with the fighters gone, my ships realize there's nothing to be afraid of and return to chasing the nearest Kite instead of following their orders.

[intrinsic_parity]

Try powering through a wave of Broadswords to engage a combat ship and let us know how it works out.

I have tried it.

He means try personally piloting the ship and doing what you think the AI should do. You might end up seeing why the AI didn't want to do that. You didn't post any videos, so it's hard to say if you are right or wrong, but there a definitely a lot of situations where 'back up and shoot down the fighters' is the best course of action.

[coolio]

This is a constant problem, and everyone exept the "old guard" agrees that the AI needs drastic changes. I dont even thing it would be that hard to change their hardcoded behavior.
The reason why older players dont see this as a problem is beacuse they are so used to this game that they have accepted long ago that the ai is like this. They do nott think its a problem, they think it is a part of the game. Those who thought otherwise didn't stick around long enough to beacame older players.

this seems a bit dramatic

[MrTwister]

The AI is fine, especially if you play mostly from tactical view.
It is only a problem if not using command points and prefer to fly own ship instead of fleet control.

I understand not everyone likes to play this game like RTS, but you can get far better results  compared to flying the ship.

If you really don't like commanding the fleet, at least you could assign all the ships into wing-like formations of 3-4 ships each.
Just pause at the start of the battles and assign each 2-3 of the frigates/destroyers to guard the larger cruisers/capitals..
After that let them fly like they normally do and already the results should be better.

[Dexy]

I hate how the AI behaves when it thinks that it's outnumbered. It becomes very cautious to the point that it's unable to kill anything and then it fails to reduce the number of enemy ships fast enough to even the odds.

[Igncom1]

I do get the frustrations of the AI. Like how my hammerheads will naturally sit behind my carriers for protection.

And yeah the game is 100% built for the player to do at least 50% of the work in battles, this game isn't built to be a fleet command autoplay game.

But you can do it! But what you need to understand is that fleet composition, ship loadouts, and a healthy expectation that ships will just get themselves into dumb situations and killed is very important. And yes you will get into frustrating battles where a player might easily win, but the AI gets stun locked behind fighters who's weapons can't damage the hull.

Assign carriers to gunboats, not the other way around. Point to positions on the map for the fleet to gather and know that your formation will always be elastic, the enemy AI is usually more aggressive and will push your formation, even encircling it.

Frankly picking your battles is just as important as everything else, you can basically only fight half as powerful fleets as a player lead fleet.

[SCC]

My interactions with my fleet in battle are limited to mostly giving out a single defence command on my slowest ship and the occasionally retreating damaged ships (I relied on automatic orders mod to do it for me earlier). It's hard for me to gauge how effective my AI ships are, as I either am not winning yet and are focused on fighting enemies, or I am winning and running out of enemies to fight, so I check out what the rest of my fleet is doing on the tactical map.

[MrTwister]

I do get the frustrations of the AI. Like how my hammerheads will naturally sit behind my carriers for protection.

And yeah the game is 100% built for the player to do at least 50% of the work in battles, this game isn't built to be a fleet command autoplay game.

But you can do it! But what you need to understand is that fleet composition, ship loadouts, and a healthy expectation that ships will just get themselves into dumb situations and killed is very important. And yes you will get into frustrating battles where a player might easily win, but the AI gets stun locked behind fighters who's weapons can't damage the hull.

Assign carriers to gunboats, not the other way around. Point to positions on the map for the fleet to gather and know that your formation will always be elastic, the enemy AI is usually more aggressive and will push your formation, even encircling it.

Frankly picking your battles is just as important as everything else, you can basically only fight half as powerful fleets as a player lead fleet.

Eventually, if you get the right composition and learn to control it tactically to your advantage, you can start winning really difficult fights, where you are outnumbered 2 or 3 to one. Fights vs multiple fleets merged or fights vs fully upgraded battlestations with fleets supporting them. And these are winnable without extreme losses too.

That's what I enjoy the most about the game - it's hard to master but very rewarding once you learn good tactics and get to the next level.

[baxt]

Eventually, if you get the right composition and learn to control it tactically to your advantage, you can start winning really difficult fights, where you are outnumbered 2 or 3 to one. Fights vs multiple fleets merged or fights vs fully upgraded battlestations with fleets supporting them. And these are winnable without extreme losses too.

That's what I enjoy the most about the game - it's hard to master but very rewarding once you learn good tactics and get to the next level.

One issue is there is no real tactics to this game other than big dirty alpha strikes and speed, it tells you this by only giving you 5 command points and the AI ignoring 90% of commands you give anyway. Winning is just being able to delete as many ships in the shortest amount of time so your fleet AI changes from playing passive to playing aggressive. If you fail to do this or otherwise don't the AI will stumble all over itself waiting for you to personally turn the tide before it will begin any kind of assault. It really narrows what ships you should even fly. You can use other ships but it's only going to draw the battle out for ages and incur extra losses. I don't really like flying SO Chaingun Hammerhead but if I don't then their frigates will always harass the life out of anything slower than it, dragging it to a corner where it turns into wasted deployments points.

Actual formations that could be set and locked would go a long way to improving how these battles play out. I would happily settle for 3 Escort variants, Frontal Escort for Monitors, Omens etc, Rear Escort to cover Onslaughts and Fank Escort for just about everything else.

A formation maker in the outfitting window would be a god send.

[Igncom1]

I mean to say that formations simply don't work is not true.

It's just that the shifting of the battle can make or un-make them.

My mid-game cruiser battles will often end up with mine and enemy lines of battle duking it out, where as all the little ships harass each others flanks, rears, or the capture points.

The hardest thing to pull off is the really satisfying flanking attack, by drawing the enemy fleet into your own in the corners of the map, then deploying a second wave of fast killers to kill their backline ships. AI destroyers can be a little too hesitant to do this on their own. But encirclements are basically the only way for smaller ships to beat bigger ones.

It doesn't get more formation then that really and I'm not sure what you'd really want more then that. You have big gunboats (infantry), missile/carrier boats (skirmishers), and quick speedy flankers (cavalry).

The execution could use improvement for sure. If that is the direction the developer wants to take it in.

[MrTwister]

Eventually, if you get the right composition and learn to control it tactically to your advantage, you can start winning really difficult fights, where you are outnumbered 2 or 3 to one. Fights vs multiple fleets merged or fights vs fully upgraded battlestations with fleets supporting them. And these are winnable without extreme losses too.

That's what I enjoy the most about the game - it's hard to master but very rewarding once you learn good tactics and get to the next level.

One issue is there is no real tactics to this game other than big dirty alpha strikes and speed, it tells you this by only giving you 5 command points and the AI ignoring 90% of commands you give anyway. Winning is just being able to delete as many ships in the shortest amount of time so your fleet AI changes from playing passive to playing aggressive. If you fail to do this or otherwise don't the AI will stumble all over itself waiting for you to personally turn the tide before it will begin any kind of assault. It really narrows what ships you should even fly. You can use other ships but it's only going to draw the battle out for ages and incur extra losses. I don't really like flying SO Chaingun Hammerhead but if I don't then their frigates will always harass the life out of anything slower than it, dragging it to a corner where it turns into wasted deployments points.

Actual formations that could be set and locked would go a long way to improving how these battles play out. I would happily settle for 3 Escort variants, Frontal Escort for Monitors, Omens etc, Rear Escort to cover Onslaughts and Fank Escort for just about everything else.

A formation maker in the outfitting window would be a god send.

Sorry but I have to disagree - that's totally not my experience, perhaps we play the game differently.
Alpha strikes matter - yes, and speed too, but you certainly don't need SO speed to be in control.

I use location guard commands a lot and split my troops into many separate task groups 3-6 ships at a time and give them separate orders and fight from defensible points around bonus areas. This is usually enough to stop the zerg rush dead in its tracks and to control pressure and start picking off vulnerable ships in key areas.

I also start with 8 command points and get skills to regen them quicker. Most of my line ships are effective shieldtanks with high flux stats, I'm mostly using hightech and midline mix and lots of missiles and energy weapons. They soak damage, back off and vent it and cover each other effectively.  The battles where I am heavily outnumbered drag on and I need high CR to win them, but eventually it turns out victorious with few losses if any. I never use SO on any of my ships, except for some early game fun.

I also never fly my ship and give it to the AI 100% of the time, because I don't have the time for this, using command points and observing the battle is far more important.