The Anaconda in that video looks very docile indeed because it never fires back never uses chaff and a few times it manages to get some distance by boosting away but then doesn't do a boost-flip to face you. The Anacondas I encounter in CZs and RESs manoeuvre much more aggressively. They boost-flip to face me and hit me with their large fixed beams while flying backwards and then try to ram me when I try to get behind them again. And on top of that they have beam turrets that hit me almost uninterrupted because they ignore chaff. I can kill them nearly always before my shields drop but it is quite a struggle because of the low pitch rate of the FdL. Like you I use the good lateral acceleration of the FdL to make the difference.
Anaconda: the 2nd most maneuverable ship in the game!
- Thread starter DanaM
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The Anaconda in that video looks very docile indeed because it never fires back never uses chaff and a few times it manages to get some distance by boosting away but then doesn't do a boost-flip to face you. The Anacondas I encounter in CZs and RESs manoeuvre much more aggressively. They boost-flip to face me and hit me with their large fixed beams while flying backwards and then try to ram me when I try to get behind them again. And on top of that they have beam turrets that hit me almost uninterrupted because they ignore chaff. I can kill them nearly always before my shields drop but it is quite a struggle because of the low pitch rate of the FdL. Like you I use the good lateral acceleration of the FdL to make the difference.
If you are a combat player and you are using FA On, your just wrong..... FA OFF is the only way to go now.... FA OFF with timed boosts can make any ship out maneuver (minus the type 9) a FA ON player.. If you boost in FA off, while holding up pitch and up thrusters, your ship will wipe around... Even my Cutter can out pitch most with this technique.
Also, if you are within 500M, chaff is almost worthless.... as my C3 beams turrets will still hit you.... just not as often... also, you can unselect the target and shoot turrets as fixed weapons... so if you are with 500M to my front... I have fixed beams on your spamming chaff ship.....
As for how to out maneuver a ship... don't go to where it is at.... go to wear it is going... If you have gimballed weapons, look to where the blue circle is and fly to it... you will cut off your target!
Also, if you are within 500M, chaff is almost worthless.... as my C3 beams turrets will still hit you.... just not as often... also, you can unselect the target and shoot turrets as fixed weapons... so if you are with 500M to my front... I have fixed beams on your spamming chaff ship.....
As for how to out maneuver a ship... don't go to where it is at.... go to wear it is going... If you have gimballed weapons, look to where the blue circle is and fly to it... you will cut off your target!
I think you're misremembering. Yes, SJA moved on to work on other things around the 1.4 release timeframe, but up until that point she was the lead programmer for all the AI functions of the NPCs. Their use of the base flight model has been a thing since day one, they were released that way. Now admittedly at first they couldn't do pip management, always running balanced, they were a bit doofus-like in how they applied those control inputs, making them fly really erratically but if a human player was daft enough to do thesame thing with their controls, their flight path would be just as goofy and just as suicidal. Now if you go over all the release notes between release and 1.4 you'll see a lot of tweaks to the NPCs AI. They got more sensible flying around stations, they learned to keep to the "green" side of the letterbox when entering/leaving the station and to avoid each other when landing/launching at the pad. They learned to do pip management - badly at lower ranks but becoming VERY good at it at master-rank or higher. (A brief hat-tip is in order here. It is relatively easy to write AI code that does things like pip management flawlessly, better than any human player could ever manage. making their "ability" to do it scale like that instead of being a simple binary "don't do it"/"do it perfectly" is insanely more difficult to develop logic for and applause for going this more difficult route and pulling it off so well is very much deserved)
SJA was always clear about what was in place, what was in development and what was simply planned whenever she spoke to us about the AI logic.
Even now with her not being either as deeply involved in the programming of the AI or as vocal on these forums (although I know she still reads them) her influence on new AI developments is far from absent. Go back through the last few weeks patch notes and dev updates and you'll find mention of tweaks to the AI, which of course made her name come up in the discussion thread. Regarding the newer tweaks it was acknowledged that "yes, she wrote most of that code" so even the stuff she wrote but that never made it to release at that time has not been abandoned.
She is indeed "MoM" and her "children" are growing up......
i can only back this. mainly taking on anacondas in a courier or eagle. but even in my python (or yesterday in a DBE, got interdicted by an deadly npc pirate!) this is the only way to go. sometimes it feels like a couple dancing
concerning chaff: i don't think npc turretts ignore chaff, otherwise i would be dead in seconds in my eagle attacking higher ranked anacondas. what happens is the turretts firing "unprecisely", if you get closer than 500 m, wobbling around. a medium or large ship will get hit. you can do the same with gimbals (and probably turrets), while a NPC anaconda spams chaff - if you are closer than 500 m, your gimbals will still hit "something".
This weekend I set out to test if NPC turrets and gimbals respond to chaff or not and I found that turrets do ignore chaff but gimbals don't. I tested at short and long range but when I pop the chaff there is no extra movement in the beams besides the normal small tracking wobble. Quite different from gimballed weapons which immediately start wobbling wildly in wide arcs only hitting me sporadically even at short range.
Those video reminded me my own experiments with iEagle and anacondas. It was back in 1.4. This particular anaconda was full of beams, but for some reasons never fired them. It seems that they start firing only after they get you into their sights, even for a moment. And if they never get a chance to do it, they will not shoot at all...
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Yes I noticed that too. Sometimes they never shoot back. AFAIK that is due to a bug in pip management where they put no pips in WEP initially. But most times Anacondas (and other NPCs) start shooting their turreted beams as soon as I open fire (preferably behind them) and they never stop until they blow up. When I dive for their belly they quickly roll to get me in reach of their turrets again.
They're nearly all docile if they don't get a look at you. About 50% of them use chaff. All that does is make it take longer to kill them, while you wait for the chaff to stop.
As I said, I've killed about 1000 Anacondas, in every situation, so I've seen every type of behaviour. I know exactly what you're talking about. I used to have trouble with them too until I learnt how to out manoeuvre them. It just takes a bit of practice to get a technique that works. When they reverse, you must downthrust to counter it. Sometimes, they start to win, so immediately go to their flank. Their lightning reactions will make them roll to counter that. If you think you're going to lose, just point your ship downwards. They can't reverse as fast as the FDL can go forwards.
I can't see how a boost flip could be a problem. You just keep the nose of the FDL pointing at the rear end of the Anaconda. They don't boost very fast, so you can follow their tail all the time. The flip bit is what I mean by it leaning on you, which is what you see relative to your position.
They can't use fixed beams on you if you don't get in front of them, which is pretty easy to avoid. All this boom and zoom might work for some people, but I just use thrusters.
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Can't believe anyone could have any trouble with NPC condas. Poor things seem to have no idea what to do 99% of the time, just turning around and flaring boost randomly. At best they can scratch cobra with turrets, anything above asp dismantles their shields and power plant in well under minute. In Vulure and FAS one can just take a nap holding trigger.
That's right. I often feel sorry for them. It doesn't seem fair.
I've killed about 3000 Anacondas so I know how they behave. That is why it struck me how docile the Anaconda in the video is. Clearly you attribute that to your flying and you're probably right but it could be the pip management bug is helping you. What happens if you 'wake up' the Anaconda first by flying briefly in front of it when you attack it?
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this sounds very weird, and should be reported as a bug, best with video.
You get constant fire fom the turrets, which means you have to use one or two shield cells. I only use beam lasers, so it takes me a bit longer to kill them than players with PAs and cannons.
I don't know if it's a coincidence, but it seems to me that for any ship, if you dish out a lot of punishment in the beginning, they seem to spend more time trying to get away rather than shooting you. That's specially true for Clippers and FASs, which are very difficult to handle when they keep pointing at you. I find that if you just wing a ship and end up out of position so that it gets an early shot in, they appear to be much more agressive.
No they just plain cheat...same diff.
Yes that is my experience too. AFAIK that is caused by the pip management bug. Their pips are initialised at zero but once they get a shot opportunity they can't refuse -so to speak- they start using pips properly to maximise performance.
NPCs cheat, not just with turn rates either.
But there isn't really anything close to "AI" in this game, it's all pretty basic scripted routines. It randomly generates NPCs inside your current instance and they are assigned to a single task/script only, then they are gone. Theres no continuity or persistence what so ever.
But there isn't really anything close to "AI" in this game, it's all pretty basic scripted routines. It randomly generates NPCs inside your current instance and they are assigned to a single task/script only, then they are gone. Theres no continuity or persistence what so ever.
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I've had plenty of occurences where i've turned my fedvette around on an NPC and he's bounced off my shields because he was coming in too quickly.
You guys grossly underestimate how manueverable the bigger ships are. Any large ship in hazardous RES are credit sinks when you pummle the powerplant, all you have to do is be hitting them from above or below, fry them and they sit there.
You guys grossly underestimate how manueverable the bigger ships are. Any large ship in hazardous RES are credit sinks when you pummle the powerplant, all you have to do is be hitting them from above or below, fry them and they sit there.
Ai is getting ridiculous sometimes. I have even gone solo in my t9. But sill getting interdicted and blown up loosing millions from relentless Ai masslocking. The last one was yesterday and took me out in under 20 seconds. With shields, That is unacceptable. It makes trading in a t9 useless.
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