Bumping this one. Is the AI "Cheating"?
All fights against AI = afterburn + FA off turning
- Thread starter Cidcaldensfey
- Start date
Bumping this one. Is the AI "Cheating"?
Not really, if they can do it in less than 10-minutes, they need to back the claim up. I could easily screw around for 10-minutes on purpose to "prove" it doesn't work. I'm not claiming it can be done in less than 10-minutes.
This is correct, they have no need. Also I can add that AI combat is getting a big upgrade. It's what I'm working on right now, adding a load of new tactics to make things more... interesting.Oh, and with the new tactics, flying in reverse won't work.
Love your work with the A.I.
They should fly more like CMDR's fly....including FA off. Not all of them....but lets say...maybe the Elite npc's. Especially the ones in the big lumbering ships..Yes...That would be nice.
Keep it up!
IDK, maybe it is the way I fly, but I have never had that kind of trouble against a Cobra...to be fair though, I haven't flown a Viper in some time. My cobra was doing pretty well against most ranks of small combat craft with gimbal MCs all around. Probably just under 1 minute for each kill, faster if they are low rank.
Wings are what really eat my time as I'm trying to stay out of the line of fire for a couple ships while tailing my target.
I'd make a video right this second, but I'm at work
Maybe it is just flying the Viper. I never had great success with that ship unless I was hunting larger ships.
Wings are what really eat my time as I'm trying to stay out of the line of fire for a couple ships while tailing my target.
I'd make a video right this second, but I'm at work
Maybe it is just flying the Viper. I never had great success with that ship unless I was hunting larger ships.
I'd prefer more of a wing commander 5 AI, that would boost sometimes, but didn't have quite such a standard pattern, they had a small collection of preset maneuvers to pick from.
I don't know what ship you use or your tactics, but after 1.3, I decided to install two size 2 medium beam turrets on my Python. There is nothing that lasts 10 minutes, even if I focus on a big target and leave the turrets to fire on what they will (which will sometimes hit the same target, and sometimes pop a Sidey or Eagle.
Edit: Just saw that you wanted proof from anybody claiming they could kill (which?) ships while flying (which?) ship with (which weapons?) in less than 10 minutes.
I will say that Eagles pop in one or two volleys, depending how well I get them infront of me. Same for Sidewinders. Vipers don't last appreciably longer. Cobras aren't much of a step either, while an ASP does actually take a little bit of effort. With ships better than ASP, it depends a lot on the NPC pilot's ranking, as their ship's load out vastly improves with rank.
I don't recall ever meeting an Anaconda that would take 10 minutes, more like 5. (and I'm not that good of a combat pilot, as I only fight for naval ranks or sometimes a small spree of assassinations to gain some system permit.) One time, I got a Python target with two 'dangerous' Vultures as an escort... I couldn't do it in the FDL in spite of 4 attempts trying different tactics.
Well, its late and I can't be bothered making a YouTube video for you or anyone. I'm just telling you, I'm worse than average for pure lack of trying, just doing what I must for certain missions. Its entirely up to you if you want to believe me or not, but no ship takes 10 minutes for me and the small ones pop in less than a minute unless I'm like looking at the galaxy map.
But really, first of all, to talk about anything for real, you should link your ship load out.
I don't know what ship you use or your tactics, but after 1.3, I decided to install two size 2 medium beam turrets on my Python. There is nothing that lasts 10 minutes, even if I focus on a big target and leave the turrets to fire on what they will (which will sometimes hit the same target, and sometimes pop a Sidey or Eagle.
Edit: Just saw that you wanted proof from anybody claiming they could kill (which?) ships while flying (which?) ship with (which weapons?) in less than 10 minutes.
I will say that Eagles pop in one or two volleys, depending how well I get them infront of me. Same for Sidewinders. Vipers don't last appreciably longer. Cobras aren't much of a step either, while an ASP does actually take a little bit of effort. With ships better than ASP, it depends a lot on the NPC pilot's ranking, as their ship's load out vastly improves with rank.
I don't recall ever meeting an Anaconda that would take 10 minutes, more like 5. (and I'm not that good of a combat pilot, as I only fight for naval ranks or sometimes a small spree of assassinations to gain some system permit.) One time, I got a Python target with two 'dangerous' Vultures as an escort... I couldn't do it in the FDL in spite of 4 attempts trying different tactics.
Well, its late and I can't be bothered making a YouTube video for you or anyone. I'm just telling you, I'm worse than average for pure lack of trying, just doing what I must for certain missions. Its entirely up to you if you want to believe me or not, but no ship takes 10 minutes for me and the small ones pop in less than a minute unless I'm like looking at the galaxy map.
But really, first of all, to talk about anything for real, you should link your ship load out.
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See, I literally had this problem a month ago, but I changed my strategy and haven't had a single issue since. OP, is it possible you're just bad?
I can understand the idea that "victory is inevitable" and "long drawn out fights are boring" but there's plenty of ability to kill more quickly and efficiently despite these changes.
Your actual problem is that you're getting into a turning battle with a ship that's terrible at turning. In a viper you need to joust more, or turn against slower ships. Maybe using FA to out turn them works but I'm bad and don't do it effectively.
If you did that it would be obvious you were screwing around. I'm asking you to prove what you say because as far as I'm concern the AI is behaving as intended and no change is going to be made to address whatever perceived issue you have unless you can prove to me and the dev team that there is in fact something fishy going on.
This game is not supposed to be a space combat sim in the same way as freespace. That was a single player story driven game with hundreds of cannon fodder AI, FPS style flight controls and was meant to be a very empowering and cool typical scifi space battle experience where you are the hero. I would hate for the NPC's in our game to be dumbed down to that level just so players can kill multiple ships every couple of minutes. They're supposed to act like real players would and that means trying to survive and avoid fire as much as dishing it out themselves.
I fly a Vulture, mostly in CZ's for now, the only ship that I avoid is the viper. Not because it is tougher, but because it tends to drag the fight out as the OP indicates (runs away a lot). Having said that, it's 3-4 mins max if I do decide to chase it. Just my observations. Also, the AI is MUCH improved from where we were on release. Well done FD
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So wait a second, there are no changes coming to combat AI because its working as intended? I don't get it, are changes coming or no? Because we have some people saying there are changes, and we have other people saying that there are not changes.
What is there to prove? Flying a Viper, Cobra is goofing around and not landing shots, I'm landing shots on it and whittling it away. The strategy is simple, fly, afterburn, FA off, turn. Do it all over again for 5min-10min. And yes, other people have experienced it because if you had read this thread from the beginning you would see other people have felt the same way.
Is this for real? Is this -really- happening? Even the people who don't have a problem with this are admitting it happens.
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I don't really need to do anything as it is not my problem whether people believe me or not. Anyway, not sure if I will be on tonight but if I am I'll play around with the video software you mentioned. Never tried it but wanted to capture some other stuff anyway. Is there a performance drop when running that, btw?
There are changes coming but the AI behaviour in the game currently is working as intended i.e. it's not doing weird broken things we didn't intend for it to do. If you find your approach to the AI boring then change up your ship/loadout/targets or whatever to make the game more enjoyable for yourself. No one is forcing you spend 10minutes getting bored shooting what appears to be an unskilled AI pilot with a tough ship.
Also a cobra is a specific ship. You claim all AI is goofing around in your Title and OP.
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No, there is no performance drop and OpenBroadcaster encodes the file before writing it to the drive, unlike fraps which records the raw format. So you can save space by using OpenBroadcaster. It can either be used for streaming or writing a file.
You're right, no is forcing me to
Really, all you have to do is stop trying to play the game for real and just fly in reverse. Keeping the AI at 900-1000meters (or whatever the distance is) makes their shots miss almost all the time while you can land your shots. 3 pips to engines for a Viper is all it takes to maintain safe distance. The AI eventually breaks away, you can chase it, then go back in reverse and do it again.
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Yes and no. Changes are coming (its SJA job after all
), but it will never be like freespace. The AI will become harder, so fights are more likely to become longer rather than shorter. So if you want more engaging dogfights you'll like the changes. If you want to shoot 10 enemy ships a minute you wont see any meaningfull changes.- - - Updated - - -
Cool, thanks.
Granted I'm not in a Viper these days but an Imperial Courier, so technically it MIGHT be considered a more powerful ship? Not sure hoe 3 medium hardpoitns stack up to 2 medium and 2 small...
Regardless, it does NOT take me 5-10 minutes to kill something like a Cobra. At least, if it does, it doesn't feel like it. I'll have a toy around with this this evening and see what I come up with...
As an attempt to gather some more info Cidcaldensfey, what are your standard combat tactics? Do you use vertical thrusters to tighten your turns? Or is your average tactic just roll and pitch?
Regardless, it does NOT take me 5-10 minutes to kill something like a Cobra. At least, if it does, it doesn't feel like it. I'll have a toy around with this this evening and see what I come up with...
As an attempt to gather some more info Cidcaldensfey, what are your standard combat tactics? Do you use vertical thrusters to tighten your turns? Or is your average tactic just roll and pitch?
This is correct, they have no need. Also I can add that AI combat is getting a big upgrade. It's what I'm working on right now, adding a load of new tactics to make things more... interesting.
I'd just like to point out that assuming the AI has the same physics/controls restrictions as the players, there are maneuvers you can do with FA off that you absolutely can't with FA on:
* Accelerating to full speed laterally or in reverse. (Speed is capped at a lower value with FA on but not with FA off)
* Maintaining the increased turn speed you get from boosting after the boost is expired (used most commonly in the famous "boost-flip-turn" maneuver)
* Maintaining max normal turn speed while accelerating/decelerating out of the blue zone
Looking forward to the combat upgrades. I assume you've got enough tricks up your sleeve to make them more dangerous even without FA off... but IMHO it's still something you should look into at some point. Partly because there's potential for making the AI even more dangerous, and partly because a lot of players use FA off (and so if you want the AI to feel like fighting a player, they should use some of the same tricks).
Speaking from my experience writing spaceship AI, players love seeing the AI pull off the "maintain vector and turn around to fly backwards" move popularized by Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5.
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As things stand, if there were an effective counter to this I would have expected to see it on Youtube; this may well be the case and I just haven't seen the counter.
Are these new tactics based on the game's current flight/combat model?
Here you go, a video which includes numerous combats in which diverse NPcs are destroyed in less than 5 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OJUx-3qDdo
You might also note that they contain no evidence of NPC ships behaving in the manner you claim.
Now, if you genuinely cannot destroy a small NPC in less than 5 minutes then you need to look at your own play.
I have an X55 Rhino. My thruster controls are set to use the castle pad on my joystick, roll is set to twist, while yaw is set to left/right. If the fight is a 1-on-1 (in this case, it was actually a 2-on-1, though the AI was in a Type-6 and a Cobra), I put one pip into shields (or none, if its purely a 1-on-1), maybe one or two in weapons, and the rest into engines. As for strategy, at least against the Cobra, it was pretty simple. If I wanted to joust the Cobra, its shoot, fly past it, afterburn, FA off, turn, then fly back to it. Or, what also works too is FA off with thrust down and you just manipulate the thruster controls (accelerate/decelerate) to counteract the forces and circle around the Cobra. The Viper is able to turn faster than the Cobra, you can avoid most, if all, the shots from it. The Type 6 wasn't doing any damage to me at all even though it was trying.
If I want to end a fight, I just fly in reverse and keep my target between 900-1000m using fixed lasers/gimbled lasers. Fixed lasers just seem better than the gimbled on the Viper, at least where I had placed them, since gimbled requires the Viper to pitch up in order to track targets from underneath the belly (or what seems like the belly) of the Viper. Where as fixed don't require any adjustment as far as I could tell when I used them.
I fly a Vulture, mostly in CZ's for now, the only ship that I avoid is the viper. Not because it is tougher, but because it tends to drag the fight out as the OP indicates (runs away a lot). Having said that, it's 3-4 mins max if I do decide to chase it. Just my observations. Also, the AI is MUCH improved from where we were on release. Well done FD
What you are seeing there is the Vulture's weakness against speed. Vulture against Viper is a clear setup for a long fight, especially if the Viper wants to survive long enough to win. This is why I abandoned the Vulture long ago...I got real sick and tired of chasing after stuff, having a joust and then chasing them again as they zoom away. To me, the Vulture behaves much more like a bomber. It chews up anything large but it isn't great at being a superiority fighter, imo. I will say, though, that with expert handling of power (upping ENG to get more boosts when coming out of turn) the Vulture can be pushed to take on smaller, faster craft with success.
For superiority over other small/mid fighters in combat, I find the Cobra, Courier and Clipper to be the best (haven't finished fitting my Python, so I'm unsure how it will perform).
What are you flying?
How long have you been flying it?
It sounds like you might need more practice?
What kind of ships take 10 minutes to kill?
Do I understand correctly that the AI should not use advanced tactics to survive?
Do you want npc to power down and disable shields when you enter the area?
Or even better perhaps the AI should self destruct when you approach to make every battle last 1 second?
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