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Author Topic: Utterly broken fleet AI  (Read 1944 times)

AlphaFortyOne

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Utterly broken fleet AI
« on: April 05, 2023, 08:00:48 AM »

After some time playing I finally decided to create an account and voice my opinion: the AI which controls your fleet is abysmal and the command point system prevents you from taking any meaningful action.
The AI either stays way behind the ship it meant to escort and does absolutely nothing when it is attack head on - or it rushes into the enemy and doesn't even slightly consider flux management as the enemy AI does. It often becomes sidetracked and puts its whole attention on smaller ships flanking but can't manage to really push them away. The command points barely even suffice for fixing the AIs mistakes not to mention don't allow for tactical micro. Especially when the enemy has more ships (not really more powerful as objectively estimated through the bonus XP before the engagement).

This always results in you needing more ships to "catch" enemy fire instead of tactically managing and microing the situation. Strangely the placement of enemy ships is often rather good and seems about what I would partially expect from my fleet to do.
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Schwartz

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2023, 08:08:33 AM »

You mentioned the enemy AI considers flux and has decent placement - but there is no functional difference between player fleet AI and enemy fleet AI. The only difference would be the player giving a command that overrides what a ship would otherwise do, such as eliminate or avoid.

Yes, there are plenty of awkward situations when the fleets are not well-matched, such as the player having no fast harassers and taking on a handful of frigates with just 2 Enforcers. Or conversely being understatted for an encounter where they have to face off against bigger opponents. Or range mismatches that one party can exploit. Are you sure your ships are just not struggling to keep up with events due to being too weak, too slow or not kitted to work effectively?

I've found the AI is usually fine, but it has no concept of looking out for dangerous burst damage.
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AlphaFortyOne

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2023, 08:17:50 AM »

I'm no seasoned veteran to be sure - I have problems analyzing the situation tbh to see the were the defficiencies lie.

https://imgur.com/a/yLWAi6P

It is the imminent encounter (can't miss it). I don't expect to come out completely unscathed but I'm getting destroyed way to easily.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2023, 08:33:58 AM by AlphaFortyOne »
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Grievous69

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2023, 08:18:26 AM »

Apart from the usual "the grass is always greener on the other side" things that gets people suspicious, here most new folks don't pay enough attention in the refit screen, or just trust autofit too much and don't bother changing the loadout a bit. Yes I know well such thing require time and experience, it's the hardest part of the game imo.

So in the case of your ships having poor flux management, they're probably heavily overfluxed or don't have enough capacitors to deal enough damage in time. Pay attention to your total flux output compared to your flux dissipation, it ideally shouldn't be much higher (unless you're piloting it yourself and know what you're doing). There's also some ships with very bad shield efficiencies, consider putting the Hardened Shields hullmod if their base efficiency is 1.0 or higher. Hell you can put it on other ships if you have the OP.

Autofit also puts whatever it has available at the time, so some wonky setups happen a lot. Try to have similar ranges on your assault weapons (PD range can be whatever).

With workable loadouts the AI rarely needs direct orders. And pay attention to officer personalities for your ships. Everything but steady and aggressive is pretty much a trap (this is generalized ofc).

EDIT: Just saw your response, would you mind uploading a screenshot of your fleet? I doubt many are going to download a random save file here, and you didn't even mention if this is pure vanilla or with mods.
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Lawrence Master-blaster

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2023, 08:26:01 AM »

Generally speaking, how well the battle goes is a function of how good your ships are. That includes which hulls you use, how you fit them, your officers and any fleet skills you have.

If you have good ships then the game basically plays itself and you hardly have to do anything at all - order to capture few objectives at the beginning, make sure the bulk of your fleet is where the bulk of enemy fleet is and at that point you can literally stand up and leave the computer then come back to a victory screen.

If you don't have good ships then... well, things you are describing will start happening. Ships caught out isolated, ships afraid to engage, ships too slow to disengage, ships not shooting at the thing you want them to shoot, etc. At that point you will start issuing orders to try and fix the situation which will likely not help because the game uses "soft" orders, then you will run out of command points and you're going to end up frustrated. Happened to me plenty of times.

Basically what I'm saying is, if you're issuing a lot of orders then your fleet is simply not good enough and orders aren't the problem(or the solution)
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AlphaFortyOne

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2023, 08:35:22 AM »

Basically what I'm saying is, if you're issuing a lot of orders then your fleet is simply not good enough and orders aren't the problem(or the solution)

I guess that is the case though I had hopes that you can mostly rely on tactic.
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Deshara

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2023, 08:46:13 AM »

nope, that's why the game limits your ability to give commands.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2023, 09:50:02 AM »

Orders can do a lot, but your fleet has to be up to snuff, too.

Looking at the pictured engagement: if you have a lot of flagship skills you should be piloting the Fury, otherwise your fleet isn't strong enough to handle being swarmed by that many pirates.

There is a subtle effect where a group of ships can cycle out of direct combat to vent flux, effectively regenerating hit points. If a group is attacking one ship, the single ship will eventually run out of flux to fire its weapons and keep its shield raised. It's a death spiral from there.
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Schwartz

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2023, 10:15:17 AM »

Broadly speaking, when you have fewer ships and get ganged up on, putting a single Defend command on a good point like a Sensor point and sticking together there until the scales have evened out can be a way to win. If you feel confident in your piloting, you can also have the fleet Defend there while you go and distract, harass and pick off ships to a large enough degree that pressure is taken off the rest of the fleet.

Apogee is a good tank, Hammerhead can be a good damage dealer, Fury and Shrike are both kinda weak for their size class. I would consider giving the Apogee to the AI to play hold-out while you use the Fury to turn the tide. If not Defend, then have the Apogee escorted by the destroyers.
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Hatter

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #9 on: April 05, 2023, 10:25:22 AM »

Consider grabbing a couple frigates. They're useful as distractions or harassing larger ships.
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xenoargh

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #10 on: April 05, 2023, 10:48:17 AM »

Saw your screencap. Short of some clever piloting or really careful equipment setups, you're toast.

The problem is the carriers- all five of them, if we include the weak drone-spammers. While the Pirate "carriers" are absurdly weak if you can ever catch them, that's 15 Talons to deal with. Your fleet can't defend from them (which eats their Flux balance and is basically a negative trade, even if they do zero damage) and simultaneously deal Flux at a higher rate than it's taking it. For High Tech, that's a big L.

You need some Low Tech with anti-fighter weapons in your fleet to help out, fighters of your own to intercept the enemy, a missile spammer equipped for anti-fighter duties (i.e., a Gryphon or other type suitable for the role), or you need to pick a fight like that only when you're absolutely certain you can successfully pilot that Fury (which is kind of meh in Vanilla) and inflict some Frigate kills very quickly before retreating to a defensive position.
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basileus

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #11 on: April 05, 2023, 02:18:50 PM »

Consider grabbing a couple frigates. They're useful as distractions or harassing larger ships.

This.  If you want to stick with high tech, Omens are a good choice for punching up.  Apogee is a great campaign support craft; however for combat, find yourself an Aurora rather than the Apogee or Fury.  I just finished taking out fleets like the one you were fighting with an Aurora, 3 Omens, and either 1 or 2 Tempests.  Officers level 2-4.  2 s-mods each.  I was piloting an Omen.

EDIT: Also, let me re-emphasize what others have already said about proper flux management.  My Aurora has 3 empty small hardpoints.  25 capacitors.  35 vents.  Stabilized shields.

1230 venting.  200 shield upkeep. 1140 weapon flux.  Pilot is only level 3 and has neither ordinance expertise nor field modulation yet.  Hardened Shields is an s-mod.

Also, officer personalities are very important.  I am using all steadies right now, which I valued over optimal starting skills for an aggressive early phase.  By the late game, I tend to be running mostly aggressive officers.  Using the wrong officers will bork your fleet.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2023, 03:24:44 PM by basileus »
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Serenitis

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #12 on: April 06, 2023, 01:06:26 AM »

Another thing to consider is numbers.
When faced with poor numerical odds (such as 4 vs 18) the AI on the side with the smaller force will behave very passively in an effort to try and preserve ships, on the basis that it's less bad to wait for the player to do something than it is for the AI to do something and lose those ships.
Any orders given to those 4 ships in this instance are going to be p. much ignored, as they'll get overidden by the numerical disadvantage.

You could possibly fly the Fury yourself and get rid of those carriers asap, then whittle down the frigate escorts while avoiding the Eradicator until its almost alone.
Apogee has the firepower to do this, but not the mobility.
Honestly, I'd story point that encounter, run away and find some more ships to bulk out my fleet. Literally anything will help.
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Rusty Edge

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #13 on: April 06, 2023, 01:41:29 PM »

Basically what I'm saying is, if you're issuing a lot of orders then your fleet is simply not good enough and orders aren't the problem(or the solution)

I guess that is the case though I had hopes that you can mostly rely on tactic.

 You can rely on tactics to a certain extent, but you will need to even the odds a bit for them to be effective.

 Use the pause function to plan out your tactics. You can use 1 command point to issue as many orders as you need, as long as the battle is paused.

 Think in more general terms when you plan your battle, don't micromanage. Use your tough, slower ships to set up a battle line. Use your faster offensive ships to take out key targets.

 I also recommend looking up line warefare, try HistoryMarche on youtube. Many of the tactics used in historic battles can be used in Starsector, as long as your fleet is properly outfitted and you get the hang of how orders work.

 Do NOT overuse the escort command, I see newbies and youtubers make this mistake all the time.
 And(in general) do NOT use fast strike ships(fury, shrike, tempest, LP Brawler, ect) as escorts. Escort hampers mobility and offense, and is best left to a particular group of ships.
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Schwartz

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Re: Utterly broken fleet AI
« Reply #14 on: April 06, 2023, 06:02:16 PM »

On the other hand - a lone Shrike against these odds will get surrounded and melted in no time. That's why I suggested an Escort just to keep the small guys alive in the shadow of a tanky Apogee. Generally I don't use Escort either. A Defend command for the AI fleet would do the same thing and may allow for some more individual maneuverability.
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