When "beamFireOnlyOnFullCharge" is set to true and the beam is a burst rather than continuous, the AI seems to have difficulty landing the shot due to indecisiveness in target choice. This issue gets compounded when the beam has ammo.
When multiple targets are present, the base Tachyon Lance will have no issues picking a target and shooting it. However, if you add back in "beamFireOnlyOnFullCharge", the weapons will often times pick a target, start charging, then midway through the charge decide to shoot something else and change direction, resulting in a completely whiffed shot between two ships. If ammo is added in onto the Tachyon Lance, the AI becomes extremely conservative in picking shots, resulting in the AI second-guessing it's target choice and dragging the charging beam off target before it fully charges and fires far more often. Adding any of the CONSERVE weapon tags will also exasperate the issue further.
Secondary to this, the AI doesn't appear factor in it's own ship turning when firing weapons with slow turn rates, which means beams will get dragged off target if the ship makes a sudden maneuver as the beams charge. Furthermore, beam weapons have their turning disabled on chargedown, resulting in weapons with longer chargedown times (such as the Tachyon Lance) suffer a considerable loss in DPS (and other secondary effects like EMP and arcing) if the ship makes even small turn at the end of a burst.
While this issue is present in vanilla, I've posted it here in modded since it's particularly debilitating with something I'm working on now. No AI hints were added to the weapon other than SYSTEM. I've added a video for reference - the first shot has both beam weapons completely whiff the target even though the ship wasn't turning at the time. The AI's indecisiveness in picking a target is obvious after, as you can see both beam weapons going back and forth between the Dominators in spite of having ammo, before it finally settles on one and fires a beam that lands. The third shot is whiffed due to the ship turning.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/824910699415207937/938260214208135208/targeting_Trim.mp4
Author
Topic: [0.95.1a-RC6] Burst Beam Targeting AI (Read 395 times)