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Post by harpyeagle on Nov 20, 2018 23:55:40 GMT
I'm having an issue with some designs I'm playing with in sandbox, where the AI's missiles lock onto their own ship's flares. Surely the crew would be able to determine if the target's signature was weaker than their flares, is it possible to make it so that the AI does not launch missiles in close combat when this is the case? Or even better, hold fire with missiles until the target is close enough that it can be locked on with missiles.
Or maybe just give us the ability to take control of both sides in sandbox  |
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Post by doctorsquared on Nov 21, 2018 1:26:45 GMT
The built-in homing command only takes into account what the largest heat signature the missile encounters is. While you luckily can't missile your own ship in the event that your heat signature is larger than that of the enemy's your own flares can work against your missiles if you're just using the homing command (H on the keyboard, or the little crosshair icon on the missile fleet command list) you can fly-by-wire and manually point in the direction you want the missiles to travel in they will lock on to your own flares.
CoDE missiles have what are essentially the first generation of heatseeker sensor heads mounted to a modern fly-by-wire system and are in my opinion not really worth using given how they really require manual guidance instead of being 'fire and forget' weapons.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Nov 21, 2018 7:00:46 GMT
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Post by harpyeagle on Nov 21, 2018 19:12:25 GMT
you can fly-by-wire and manually point in the direction you want the missiles to travel in they will lock on
Seeing as this game, for me, is entirely about evaluating different designs of ships and weapon systems, how will I get my AI opponent to benefit from this as well?
I know that manually I can pretty much get around any of the problems I am raising here. Even if it just means holding fire with the missiles at close range.
But the AI I can't get to do basic things. Another example (this time on the orbital map), no matter what doctrine I choose, once the fleets have run out of missiles they no longer attempt to intercept for guns.
If I instead use instant action, I now have to deal with terrible missile guidance that can't guide missiles to targets more than ~10-15 km away (yet somehow is able to make intercepts with missile groups at targets 1000s of kms away on the orbital map). Correction: this was indeed fixed by using missiles that have lower acceleration, still there is the IFF issue.
It does not work for me to use tactics that the AI opponent's ships aren't able to use. I really would like my ships and my opponent's ships to be on the same footing.
The more I think about it the more I feel that the best solution would be to just allow us to control both sides, the AI is just not adequate. As a band-aid solution anyways. I think it would be amazing if the AI was lua-scriptable, for example, but that's a bit more of a dream...
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Post by harpyeagle on Nov 21, 2018 21:25:23 GMT
Does putting fuses on flares help? If so, all stock flares should be modified like that.
It seems like putting a fuse on the flares prevents friendly missiles from locking on to them, which is great. At the same time, it also causes the AI to completely ignore it's flare doctrine and launch all 60 flares at once  |
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Nov 22, 2018 0:00:36 GMT
Does putting fuses on flares help? If so, all stock flares should be modified like that.
It seems like putting a fuse on the flares prevents friendly missiles from locking on to them, which is great. At the same time, it also causes the AI to completely ignore it's flare doctrine and launch all 60 flares at once Set launch limit on the launcher. |
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Post by harpyeagle on Nov 22, 2018 0:04:54 GMT
It seems like putting a fuse on the flares prevents friendly missiles from locking on to them, which is great. At the same time, it also causes the AI to completely ignore it's flare doctrine and launch all 60 flares at once Set launch limit on the launcher. That was my first thought. I tried putting a launch limit of 5, but it ignored it completely. |
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Post by doctorsquared on Nov 22, 2018 1:15:27 GMT
AI is sort of hamstrung by really only focusing on: Maneuvering
- When to maneuver in orbit (at orbital nodes, at apoapsis/periapis, at Lagrange Points, anywhere, etc.)
- % of dV to be budgeted for orbital maneuvers (you're not going to run an enemy ship out of fuel since they will only use up to 95% of their dV as seen with the Reckless AI)
- When to launch missiles/drones and how much distance will be kept between launches.
- How aggressive to be in setting up interceptions/avoiding interceptions.
- % of dV to be budgeted towards maneuvering in combat.
Gunnery
- How much ammo needs to be available in order to use the Ignore Range command.
- Prioritization of targeting (active lasers, missiles/drones, hot radiators, thrusters, etc.)
- The minimum amount of ammo needed to continue firing weapons.
Missile/flare launch distances and laser activation distances are controlled solely by the value you put into the 'engagement range' and other settings in the module editor screen. And unless you have the AI set to 'Aggressive' or 'Reckless' most of the time an enemy ship will wait until your within what the module editor defines as being 'accurate range' for any rail/coil/conventional guns.
You also start running into issues with ships that have weird doctrines (need to keep a certain angle for armor to work, guns hidden behind armored skirting, etc.) since the AI seems to move to make sure that the maximum number of guns pointing and firing towards the enemy. Ships like the Sentinel (guns on all one side behind a thick hunk of armor) will attempt to orient broadside to keep the guns pointing at the enemy, while a Gunship will orient nose-forward to keep all of its guns pointing forward, and a Corvette will try to keep oriented broadside. The true extent as to how much the AI knows how to do this is unknown (I have no clue how this kind of code works) and is mostly just based off of what the game says and what the screens show.
That said I would really like the option to control both sides in a fight just to test out strategies and see how effective my designs are when I'm not using them.
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