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[keckles]

If you aren't/weren't using a flagship then it purely comes down to your fleet composition and builds. As others said, the AI of all ships are mirrored, your ships are losing because they are bad compared to the ships they fight against. 99% of the time when people complain about the combat or how the AI doesn't work they way they want it to it comes down to their builds being very very bad. Short of you reinstalling the game and posting a build yourself there's no easy way of helping you figure out what you did wrong.

[Alex]

Can't speak for Wyvern, but I've seen this happen when the Monitor has a lot of flux built up (~70-80%) and is about to take a few missile hits. Rather than Fortress up, it... turns off the shields and dies to said missiles.

Thank you, I'll take a look!

Really? That's quite surprising - in my first run, I don't recall coming across scary pirate fleets until much later on, but in this run I encountered pirate fleets that would absolutely wipe the floor with mine shortly after finding that Legion (XIV) bizarrely early. Must be confirmation bias. What do fleet spawns scale off?

There's no much scaling at all; some generic just-flying-around-the-system pirate fleets get larger with time, maxing out after around 2 cycles, and a "fast start" speeds up the progress by about half a cycle. Aside from that, it's based on other factors, such as the conditions at the colony the fleet is from, or how close to a pirate base you are, that sort of thing.

I do not; this is behavior I tend to see in context of large battles, and likely stems (in the case of the monitor) from the AI not understanding that activating Fortress Shields will allow its hard flux level to go down*; in the case of the Omen it at least feels like it's more a case of not understanding that it has basically zero hull/armor and that even at 80%+ of hard flux, it's got significantly more effective HP from keeping its shield up than from actual hit points.

* Admittedly, this does require stacking basically everything in your favor to get there: hardened shields, s-modded stabilized shields, s-modded front shield emitter, solar shielding, 15 flux vents, elite field modulation, 100% CR... put that under player control and you can just sit in front of the sim onslaught until you run out of CR. (This is not hyperbole; I literally just tested this.)

Thank you, that's still helpful! I suspect you're right. (And, haha, wow. I guess that's not *too* surprising.)

[SafariJohn]

Looking at your builds PrimeMinister, my impression is that most of them are bad. I see insufficient anti-shield, random missiles, not enough finishing power, too much PD, no PD, too many beam weapons, fighter speed mismatch, and LOTS of range mismatch.

You need high efficiency anti-shield weapons to win the flux war first. Then you need high hit strength weapons to break armor. Finally you need high DPS/burst weapons to take down hull and secure the kill.

Some build examples from my latest game:

Spoiler

[close]

Aurora is a player-flagship focused on bursting down most anything. I dump sabots and AMBs to force an overload, fire AMBs to break armor, sweep over with Ion Pulsers for DPS and disabling weapons, then usually finish with AMBs as they end their cooldown. The Swarmers are just on there to fill slots, add DPS, and pressure small ships. I could have skipped PD but I didn't.

Venture is mainly a brick. It has HACs and Graviton for dealing flux pressure, sabot to drive off rushers, and finally Gorgons to deal real damage. I skipped PD because it has Mining Drones for that and it can't move very fast while running from missiles anyways.

This Brawler is mediocre, but it can run up enemies' flux, disable weapons with its Ion Cannon, threaten with its Reaper (until it wastes it), and deal decent hull damage. It might even stay alive due to its decent speed and shields.

Beam Medusa is a waste of a Medusa, but at least it is functional with the weapons I had at the time. It can run down weak ships and eventually wear them down, it can support allies' efforts with its Graviton and Ion Beam, and it can sometimes deal hull damage with its Harpoons. The PD can probably stop Salamanders and keeps it from panicking at the sight of missiles.

[landryraccoon]

Just 2 things I noticed:

- You have a paragon
- You mentioned mounting plasma cannons

I beat the phase ship battle handily without piloting my flagship (AI control only) using a 4x HIL disco ball paragon (with escorts, I had a doom, an eagle, and a heron, and a few frigates, maybe other stuff I can't remember but it wasn't that important).

My build was : 4x high intensity lasers, tactical lasers wherever i could fit them, advanced optics, advanced turret gyros, hardened accelerated shields. Went all beams just to have an advantage that fight.

The flux from the HIL is so low that your disco ball is continuously firing, and the range of the weapons greatly outranges anything the phase fleet can bring to bear.

As soon as they drop out of phase the HILs wreck them. As I recall nothing in their fleet has shields. Plasma cannons are especially inefficient against phase ships imho - they eat a ton of flux and they're easy to dodge.

Also, reading though your comments I suspect you're not conceptualizing how the AI works in Starsector. The very limited rate of command points should give you a hint - this game isn't really about micromanaging the AI. If you think of your orders more like suggestions and just think that the AI is gonna do what the AI is gonna do, you'll have a better time. If you're counting on the AI to exactly engage when and where you want it to, you'll probably have a bad time. It's not really like Starcraft or Red Alert or a traditional RTS.
 

[Vanshilar]

I'm just gonna leave this here: starsector is not a RTS: ships will not follows order blindly like some kind of mindless drone. I actually think this is what make the brilliance of the game combat, and shows how much the AI is well build and programmed; despite its flaws and shortcomings that are in my humble opinion a little too much emphasized in some complaints here and there.

But that's both itself the brilliance and the problem all in one. Since the ships do not directly follow the letter of the order, then the ship AI had better be really good and nearly flawless in its decision-making, otherwise it just results in player frustration since the player can't directly correct any of the ships's actions when the AI gets things wrong. In regular RTS games, the way around this is precisely that each unit will follow the player's order directly, for better or for worse. No admiral would tolerate any subordinate disobeying a command, yet in Starsector the ships do all the time.

For example, there is exactly zero way to tell a ship "go here -- I mean seriously, go here, stop whatever you're doing, head in this direction". Every positional command has some AI override where the AI will ignore the purpose of that command. (I think the only exceptions to this are "Avoid" and "Direct Retreat", but those have their own issues.) I don't mean because it's under attack and must leave for self-preservation; I mean things like, running off to chase a frigate or whatever. For example, I'd like a command where a ship will simply stay in the region around an objective unless forced off due to enemy pressure. "Control" doesn't really work; the ship still feels free to roam around thousands of su away from the objective, where by the time it sees an enemy frigate come in, it's too late for it to run in and keep the objective from being captured. I've tried all sorts of "Defend" orders around the objective, "Rally Task Force", etc., none of them work. There is simply no way to park a ship by an objective and prevent it from being captured by the enemy fleet.

I think roughly 70% of the problems with the AI comes down to it making a bad decision about where to be. Such as a ship wandering too far away from the player's intended location, or one ship being too far in front of the rest of the fleet, etc. Just tonight I was messing around with flagship Onslaught with Conquests (Squall/Mjolnir/HVD/Harpoon/Tac/Grav) and Gryphons (Squall/Harpoon/Breach/HVD) vs double Ordos, and ordered a Conquest and a Gryphon to "Eliminate" a Radiant. The Conquest stayed at long range, while the Gryphon literally ran into the Radiant until it bounced off of the Radiant's shields. Both ships are long-range ships. It is not at all obvious to the player why the same command given to two different ships would cause one to stay at long range, while another would decide to suicidally charge headfirst into a Radiant (and the more fragile one to boot). The Gryphon running in also meant that it blocked the Conquest's line of fire, even though there's supposed to be code to prevent that. Fortunately, I finished off the Radiant before it could finish off the Gryphon, but that's the kind of AI issues that I see frequently in battles.

The ships giving more feedback as to what they're doing would also help immensely. When a ship disobeys a player's order, there is no feedback as to why the ship is ignoring the player's order. Having it say something like "holding off -- flux too high" or "too many enemy missiles" or "too many enemy ships nearby" or "being harassed by frigates" or "need more reinforcements" or whatever would help the player learn what the AI is actually thinking. Right now the system is pretty much opaque, so the player simply sees the AI disobeying commands without really understanding why, leading to player frustration.

[Grievous69]

The ships giving more feedback as to what they're doing would also help immensely. When a ship disobeys a player's order, there is no feedback as to why the ship is ignoring the player's order. Having it say something like "holding off -- flux too high" or "too many enemy missiles" or "too many enemy ships nearby" or "being harassed by frigates" or "need more reinforcements" or whatever would help the player learn what the AI is actually thinking. Right now the system is pretty much opaque, so the player simply sees the AI disobeying commands without really understanding why, leading to player frustration.

Find out how one man defeated every single AI complaint single handledly! I'm serious btw, this is a fantastic suggestion and it would help a lot with players not understanding the "why" behind seemingly dumb AI decisions.

Just not sure where this text would be implemented and how detailed should it be. Obviously it would get too cluttery with every single decisions AI makes. Thankfully there are more clever people on this forum than me.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Oh yeah I'm loving this idea. Only today I had a situation where a Manticore LP disengaged from a Rampart and then kept going, and going, and going for over 2000 su. I finally realized that the AI probably tried to get out of the range of the Squall missiles that the Rampart had before venting... it makes sense, but no way a new player is going to know that, it just looks like AI being crazy.

[SafariJohn]

Made a suggestion: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=27347.0

[averagebaughb]

I wouldn't have it show the decisions during the fight, but have a replay option for after the fight. you could have the AI decisions hover over the ship as they happen, or have a window to the side of the fight keeping track of the decisions. this would also help in reporting bugs/odd behaviors

[Kinsume]

... I figured most fights you're pressured to take are supposed to be winnable, if at a steep loss.

I remember the first time I was doing the main story questline, went into it pretty early on without much built up and had to story-point run away from almost all the fights. There is a certain high tech fleet full of s-mods that comes at one point I still feel like its impossible to beat lol.

[Midnight Kitsune]

As someone that has played SS and shooters with a trackpad for years, I would highly suggest getting a real mouse for it as the garage "Unified" track pad system that Apple has, and sadly others have adopted as well, is unfit for this kind of game. You NEED dedicated mouse buttons for this game if you want to play it with a trackpad.

Another thing you can do is slow the combat down via the settings file or by the Speed Up mod

[Histidine]

One of the first things I noticed in the imgur collection is capital ships (and a gun Heron) without DTC or ITU. Which is why I've suggested before that the refit screen have a nag popup when a cruiser or capital lacks DTC/ITU, like when the player is about to leave the screen without setting weapon groups, but this would only work once per playthrough.

[TerranEmpire]

So I managed to read through all the discussion regarding the AI. Someone said that AI not exactly following orders is good, since it gives AI controlled ships personality. Others point out that this only works if they make good decisions.

I think the main problem is that even if they make good individual decisions, they are not coordinating. Either you make them to follow orders or they should be able to interpret the intent of the order.

My problem is that some factions rely a lot on formations, different ships acting as one. I can't order them to do that by explicit orders, since they won't follow that and the AI doesn't take into account the "big picture". The reason why regular strategy games implement units in such a way that they always follow orders is because they give up on implementing an AI that can read the intent of the player. If player can create formations by giving explicit orders, the mistake is the player's fault.

But in our case we have a big *** moving in any direction, totally uncoordinated. We need a fleet coordination mechanism or we need the AI to better follow orders. No army or navy accepts individualistic out-of-formation behavior and this is for a very good reason. Historically, usually the better coordinating fleet can win engagements even if the odds are against them.

I don't really care about ships making individual decisions as long as they don't get in the way of others and simultaneously blocking their own way of retreat. I think everyone knows what I'm talking about. Also, an escort should cover the capital ship and not block it. I had countless instances of Onslaughts getting outflanked because their escort is actually charging ahead and blocking the Onslaught's fire, thereby *** up the situation twice (with balanced fleet and officer aggression).

The funny thing is that if by sheer luck I can form a square formation of Onslaughts, nothing can break through since they can mutually cover each others back. I would be totally fine with not being able to give exact orders if my Onslaughts would naturally try to cover each other by assuming the proper formation dictated by the situation. But as long as I need to build the formation, they better follow my orders...

A fleet should act like a fleet and not as gladiators in the Colosseum.

Pullo! Formation!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0&t=1s&ab_channel=LuciusVorenus

[Goumindong]

I think the main problem is that even if they make good individual decisions, they are not coordinating. Either you make them to follow orders or they should be able to interpret the intent of the order.

So. This is kind of true and kind of not. They do not have explicit formations but they are coordinating. They do consider the relative strength of allied units in vicinity when making their attacks. They do this both indirectly (by considering if an enemy is able to actively shoot it/is targeting it) and directly by considering allied power nearby.

This is for two reasons.

1) you cannot actually do what you want. Writing this AI is impossible due to the number of fleets possible and the number of “specific formations” that would be required

2) you do not actually want to have said control over units because it will get smashed by a fleet with the current AI scheme.

This kind of thing can kind of works in RTS where individual losses are not important and where individual control is not as detailed. Or in TBS where you have infinite time to make your moves. But not in starsector because each unit has too many things to consider and control is not so simple. Think of what a move order means for a battleship. If you make one inconsiderate move order your battleship will suicide and not even really defend itself. If you don’t give a move order your battleship does nothing. Think about what an ideal formation looks like (a line) and then think about how that moves when an enemy moves (this ideal line needs to dynamically reform in order to meet the enemy!). Think about what happens if your primary ship turns and what this means for the rest of the formation on the edges of this line… If you have a fixed formation any asymmetric advantage you have cannot be capitalized on and any asymmetric weakness you have will be. This is super bad. Think about the fact that how a ship executes and given move order matters when you have different acceleration in different directions and may make many move orders actually impossible to execute in a way that does not destroy the ship.

I think it’s far more likely your fits just… aren’t actually that good. And your order usage is sub-par. And you may be fighting fleets that simply are stronger than you due to s-mods and officers or loads of frigates and simply not realizing it. 

[TerranEmpire]

Look I'm not exactly new to the game

I know that if the AI follows orders more explicitly, the player will have to take more responsibility for the orders. And I'm fine with that. And I'm also open about the fact that I'm not a good pilot. However I'm pretty sure I'm familiar with basic naval tactics due to my other interests etc...
So for me implementing fleet coordination would be a big boost and I'm sure I'm not the only one here who thinks that.

Also, you have to be careful, because considering other units nearby is not the same as coordinating. I don't think it needs further explanation, but if you think this, we have very-very different conception of "coordination".

Btw imo just implementing better escort algorithm would be a huge improvement over current AI.