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Author Topic: Ships and weapons turning off target  (Read 1616 times)

Draba

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Ships and weapons turning off target
« on: June 30, 2022, 02:05:34 PM »

Ships with forward hardpoints often turn off target even when winning, and slow turning turreted weapons lose lots of uptime when they switch targets.
The worst offenders (gauss, hellbore, HIL, tacyhon lance) can waste most of their potential damage output when lots of relatively fast targets are around the mounting ship.
Not strictly bugs, but I think these get in the way very often so would be worth another look.


Slow turning ship letting a beaten target get away
(click for big version):


Dominator with a reckless officer has beaten a lone brilliant it had an eliminate order on, all it had to do is keep shooting.
Turned away at ~20% flux and let Brilliant vent instead, with burn drive available.
Loadout:
Spoiler
[close]
Worst offender is the Dominator (Onslaught can recharge TPCs when they are not shooting and Apogee does it less/has an L missile anyway).
If the base is hard to improve giving the hardpoints a slightly wider arc could help at least improve a bit, Dominator is decent but Onslaught is generally better so wouldn't be too much IMO.


Slow weapons looping between targets
Easiest to see on HIL/tach champion or gauss on atlas mk2.
One way to improve it could be giving higher priority to current targets for weapons with slow turnrates(or ships mounting them), so switching is less common.
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Delta_of_Isaire

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2022, 09:48:02 AM »

Yeah the current AI is not optimized for slow-turning ships and slow-turning weapons. Its biggest mistake is switching between targets too often, which I think is caused by the AI wanting to attack ships that threaten to flank it. That's where 'looping between targets' behavior comes from.

Solving this is not easy though.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2022, 05:55:34 PM »

It is pretty annoying with tach lances when it fires but immediately moves off target so you only get around 1/4 of the damage.
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Thaago

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #3 on: July 04, 2022, 12:32:41 AM »

It is pretty annoying with tach lances when it fires but immediately moves off target so you only get around 1/4 of the damage.

Luckily thats been identified as a bug and fixed! But yes, its annoying and applies to all burst weapons right now.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #4 on: July 04, 2022, 02:54:04 AM »

It is pretty annoying with tach lances when it fires but immediately moves off target so you only get around 1/4 of the damage.
Luckily thats been identified as a bug and fixed! But yes, its annoying and applies to all burst weapons right now.
Damn I feel like there's a ton of AI bugfixes coming in the next patch. Is that normal?
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Grievous69

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #5 on: July 04, 2022, 03:06:49 AM »

Damn I feel like there's a ton of AI bugfixes coming in the next patch. Is that normal?
Yup, every single patch there's a TON of bugfixes and QoL changes, since the update cycle is so slow.
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Draba

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2023, 11:01:18 AM »

Playing a battle every now and then, got the Dominators back into the fleet and after watching them for a while this behavior takes the bite out of their main guns.
In the 2 screenshots they are winning easily and armor is undamaged but they never turned towards their target. Just plinking away with the turreted railguns and heavy maulers.
They are often pointing towards far away fighters, might just be a coincidence mentioning it just in case.



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BCS

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2023, 11:43:18 AM »

I don't know if it's related or something else, but I've seen AI rotate the ship to fire... guided missiles. I used to run Sunders with Sabots and AI used to "flick" the ship whenever it switched to the missiles to fire them, throwing the HIL completely off-target.
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Alex

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2023, 11:48:53 AM »

I don't know if it's related or something else, but I've seen AI rotate the ship to fire... guided missiles. I used to run Sunders with Sabots and AI used to "flick" the ship whenever it switched to the missiles to fire them, throwing the HIL completely off-target.

Hmm - I think you might've been seeing something else; even though it considers Sabots "guided, but poorly" and tries to aim with them, this would *not* apply to the Sunder's already-forward facing hardpoints. If you have an easy-to-reproduce example I can fire up in the simulator, I can take a look!

(Nor would it apply to something like the Apogee's off-angle missile hardpoint, btw...)
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Draba

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2023, 09:24:10 AM »

Been trying to also get an easy-to-reproduce sim example for this one, it's hard to catch it against those enemies so recorded a short video instead.
Followed a Dominator assigned to escort an Onslaught (usually not doing this, escort just usually makes the problem much more noticeable).
  • 0:00 top Dominator is focused on a Brilliant out of range, blocked by the Onslaught. Ignores the Radiant in front, then briefly focuses it, then wanders off again when the Radiant is overloaded.
    Bottom Dominator isn't even trying (assigned to the other Onslaught so could be understandable)
  • 0:36 turns away from the Fulgent right in front of it to focus on a Brilliant out of range that's also moving away
  • 1:00 doesn't target the Lumen in range and turns away from the incoming Radiant, towards something off screen
  • 1:36 turns away from the incoming Radiant to focus a Lumen out of range, blocked by the Onslaught (note the turn starting before Radiant jumps)
  • 1:42 ignores the overloaded Radiant, turns away towards something out of range and blcoked by the Osnlaught

The recurring theme is that they really like to turn towards targets they can't shoot, while ignoring something right in their faces.
Sometimes also get stuck pointing between 2 targets in front when the shield arc would be wide enough to cover both if it used the main guns on either. (not wiggling between the targets, just looking between them for a good while)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-7MNJDbVNk
« Last Edit: January 31, 2023, 09:28:58 AM by Draba »
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Alex

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2023, 09:29:25 AM »

Hmm, I see what you mean. Is this a vanilla or a vanilla-ish save? If so, if you could send it to me - ideally right before a battle where this shows up - that would really help sort this out!

fractalsoftworks [at] gmail [dot] com
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Draba

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #11 on: January 31, 2023, 10:40:05 AM »

Hmm, I see what you mean. Is this a vanilla or a vanilla-ish save? If so, if you could send it to me - ideally right before a battle where this shows up - that would really help sort this out!

fractalsoftworks [at] gmail [dot] com

Did see the same behavior in unmodded playthroughs so hopefully the mods aren't interfering much.
The ones used here, shouldn't alter battles beyond visuals and the optional speedup:
  • Detailed combat results 5.2.1
  • LazyLib 2.7b
  • MagicLib 0.42
  • Nexerelin 0.10.3i
  • SpeedUp 0.7.2
  • zz GraphicsLib 1.6.1

Sent a savegame and a zip with the mods for it.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2023, 03:39:59 PM by Draba »
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Alex

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2023, 10:41:49 AM »

Thank you! Got it, taking a look now.
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Alex

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2023, 05:58:04 PM »

This ended up being a bit of a rabbit hole, but, made some improvements. Turns out there were some cases where the AI was considering certain ships to be a threat where they realistically weren't. Fixed this up (which addresses part of this facing issue) and also made it more willing to commit to facing a closer target if the target it wants to face towards is further away and in the same general direction. I think a fairly good improvement overall here; thank you for bringing this up.

Nice fleet, by the way! The Doom build in particular is very interesting. And both the Onslaught and the Dominator builds are extremely effective. (And I have some *doubt* about those level 7 officers, but we won't talk about that.)

(For reference, managed to beat those two Ordos - with everything on autopilot - only losing the Lumens. It's pretty rng, though, the worse-case win had something like the Astral/Doom/Dominator left. And of course this is with all the in-dev changes... still, that was pretty fun.)
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Ships and weapons turning off target
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2023, 10:40:57 PM »

Was the inverse also true, where ships were discounting real threats?
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