Discuss AI here (After Engineer mods removal)

[PhanttoM]

Had to vote "other" in order to be truthful.

Reason is that I haven't noticed a different. I didn't run into any NPCs with clear and visible bugs (like the rapid-fire-PA).
The only NPC mod I've noticed over the weekend, was the occasional "Impulse Attack"...but even then I didn't get hit enough to see what that actually did to my ship.

 

[Ziljan]

Put a few large beam turrets on an Anaconda and play some Yakity Sax Benny Hill music while you watch as they attempt to actually hit their target. Beam turrets dont even come close to even HITTING a small agile target for the 10 seconds required to strip its shields when it's glued to your ass or playing orbit the large ship. Here's how a fight typically goes.. Oh.. a viper. Beam turrets fire.. hit. Viper boosts. Beam turrets still think the viper is where it was 2 seconds ago. beams slowly track behind the viper in its general direction hitting nothing. Viper has turned and boosts straight at you. Beam manage to get their ass in gear and graze it for a second or two. Viper is now behind you. Beams have no idea to do now.

I then boost, FA off, flip to face the viper, throw it in reverse.. turrets cannot cope with the FA off.. they become even more useless. I open up with everything else. Oh cool. Chaff. Can't hit a damn thing. Sometimes the fixed beam hits. Sometimes not. Doesn't matter anyway.. viper has now boosted and is behind me again. Now do that scenario for about 5 minutes if you're alone. It's not that the AI is difficult. It's just tedious as every ship does the same thing. Either a permanent pitch battle so they can superglue themselves to your glutes.. or zoom and boom jousting. That's it.

The AI should be able to outturn turrets at close range, or dip to your underbelly where they can hit. The alternative would be game breaking for small ship CMDR pilots.

In any case Turrets vs Small Ships isn't an AI issue. More of a "big ship vs small ship" issue that goes across all areas of play. Unless you count your own Turrets as AI, in which case you are asking to buff the AI?

Here's a tip: I have been flying a Viper with good results in 2.1. The NPC AI on large ships are not bad at all, and are actually pretty darn good at countering my moves. Maybe you should try using those moves you saw the AI use by flying a Viper against a bigger NPC ship. Note what the large ship AI does to counter you, and then use that maneuver or build against other small ships when you fly an Anaconda.

 

[howardtay]

OT: Kinda looks like it's giving us the finger... It's just right now, so f..

Spoiler

fly safe commanders... No swearing from me, learn't my lesson a while ago.

They haven't nailed the balance, They've just nailed players.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

That's exactly right although the original game that I purchased was for me and now it isn't, and that's why I'm no longer playing it, I hope that Frontier survive because new players will leave within days of playing it, and Frontier will eventually loose the market. I'm not the only player that has stopped playing there are many more, So enjoy it while you can.

See, this is what I don't get it. You feel sour, I understand. Due of gaming being in active development you feel devs owe you old version where you had little challenge from NPCs. That's understandable POV, although I disagree.

Problem is that every time someone feels that way he feels he needs to add "I hope FD survives new players leaving" clause. Seriously, stop. That's not the way to represent your position. You don't know what new players want. I am ready to bet that FD knows it a bit more than you do, because they are professionals. All you see is game ruined for you - I am sorry. Really. But that's not gonna change.

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Mark Allen comment on instakill issue

Given the speculation about what might be causing this bug, and what it means for the game - I thought I'd clarify a few things on the technical side . Sadly it wasn't as simple a change as an un-initialised or out of range value, my head would be a lot less hurty this week if it had been!

So, to try and explain.
The data for a module in Elite is split up into a set of blocks: things like power consumption, vulnerability to overheating, health, and of particular interest in this case, Weapon data. Weapon data is about 40-50 values controlling everything from the more obvious rate of fire & range, to slightly obscure things like how fast the beam fades after you release the trigger. More or less any combination of values is allowed (you want a laser shotgun? sure, take a pulse laser and set the Rounds Per Shot value to 12). This flow is identical between players and npcs, even stations and skimmers actually.

Prior to 1.6/2.1 the cached pointer each weapon held to its data was a simple affair pointing at a bit of data loaded from resources, but as part of the changes to make items modifiable I had to change this so it could also be a pointer to a block of data constructed from a base item plus a set of modifiers - ideally without the code reading that data caring (or even knowing) where it actually came from and therefore not needing to be rewritten to cope. This all works great in theory, and then in practice, up until a few naughty NPC's got into the mix and decided to make a mess. I'll gloss over a few details here, but the important information is that a specific sequence of events relating to how NPCs transfer authority from one players' machine to another, combined with some performance optimisations and an otherwise minor misunderstanding on my part of one of the slightly obscure networking functions got the weapon into an odd state. The NPC's weapon which should have been a railgun and had all the correct data for a railgun, but the cached pointer to its weapon data was pointing somewhere else. Dangling pointers aren't all that uncommon (and other programmers may know the pains they can cause!) but in this case the slightly surprising thing was that it would always be a pointer to a valid WeaponData - It's correct enough that it'd never have tripped any of the sanity checks or asserts that something was wrong, and yet.. clearly it's not right either!

What did this do exactly? Well in that example the weapon would have thought it was a slugshot: it'd make decisions on ammo, when to fire, how much power to consume and heat to generate as if it were a slugshot. It then tells the game to fire 12 shots but now we're outside the areas that use the cached data, the weapon manager knows its a railgun and dutifully fires 12 railgun shots . Depending on which machine this occurred on exactly it would either be as a visual artefact only that does no damage, or (more rarely but entirely possible) the weapon would *actually* fire 12 shots and carve a burning trail of death through the space in front of it. The hilarious part (for people not being aimed at) is that the bug can potentially cause hybrids of almost any two weapons... In my testing I've seen cases of railguns firing like slugshots, cannons firing as fast as multicannons, or my favourite absurd case of a Huge Plasma Accelerator firing every frame because it thought it was a beam laser... Ouch.

Why does this never occur on players? Well AI and players aren't governed by different rules in combat - but one thing AI's do that players never do is transfer authority between machines (it's rather hard to move out of range of yourself after all), which is the trigger at the heart of this bug. Removing modified weapons from NPCs earlier in the week will have reduced the frequency of the problem as it's more-or-less tied to how many modified weapons are in the session, the fix included in the build Zac mentioned coming soon should stamp it the rest of the way out. With the usual caveat of programmers: I fixed the problem I found, can't promise it's the last one!


Much as I love the insane weapons, and part of me likes having the proof that actually the system is hugely flexible... lets add them when we mean to next time! er... Sorry

-Mark

 

[Cheops1975]

The AI should be able to outturn turrets at close range, or dip to your underbelly where they can hit. The alternative would be game breaking for small ship CMDR pilots.

In any case Turrets vs Small Ships isn't an AI issue. More of a "big ship vs small ship" issue that goes across all areas of play. Unless you count your own Turrets as AI, in which case you are asking to buff the AI?

Here's a tip: I have been flying a Viper with good results in 2.1. The NPC AI on large ships are not bad at all, and are actually pretty darn good at countering my moves. Maybe you should try using those moves you saw the AI use by flying a Viper against a bigger NPC ship. Note what the large ship AI does to counter you, and then use that maneuver or build against other small ships when you fly an Anaconda.

I don't have simultaneous analog control over my pip/thruster/flight management. When I do I'm sure I'll be able to mimic what I see them doing with no issues. You said get a turret for small ships. You then follow that up with well.. turrets shouldn't be very effective against small ships, you should learn to fly. Pick one.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

Whatever happens with the AI mods..the Elite NPCs must have them..Elite must be kick bottom & make you think twice!

I now continue scooping in my Vulture when under attack from a wing - 'yeah yeah..I'll be with you in a minute!'

 

[Tinman]

I'm not saying they have or haven't, but this pole only has ~5% of the votes the last one had; a little too early to call me thinks.

I don't call anything based on forum polls.

Just found it a bit funny.

 

[verminstar]

Starting to get the hang of this ing thing now after spending most the weekend trolling this place and reading through literally books of text on this game...few more pieces of the jigsaw started falling into place last night after a solid 6 hour session till 3 in the mornin...that in itself speaks volumes considering it's a week night.

Still being ed fairly regularly in safe space, although easier to manage now. Did get killed eventually, although to be fair I was asking for trouble working for mafia contacts in the anarchy systems. I was quite intentionally there and on a mission at the time and...ok yeah I got fed up running and went for it and lost but here's the thing. The Irish in me has been provoked by this game now so I picked meself up and went for it again and won the second fight...after making a few small adjustments like ditching the heat sinks fer chaff.

This game made me angry and I sorta took it out on this forum over the weekend and yeah...however, I got serious work to do here. When I logged in last night, I was one death away from bankruptcy, and I logged out with 4 rebuys and and a brand new class b power distributor...I'd call that a result but I got a ways to go, I am under no illusions on that score.

Oh and I been playing open play only since...no chat filter either...odd why the forum seems to have one but possibly not a bad thing either.

I actually find safe space worse, although as I learn how it works, they have become much easier to deal with. Still get ed in damned near every system if i spend more than 2 minutes of it, but adversely find anarchy systems somewhat easier to move around in. Took me 20 minutes to find one last night and I was there looking for them which is a bit of a paradox...maybe it's just me.

Anyways...I got a lotta work to do so I ain't got time to sit here talkin bollox all night...cyas in the black ^^

 

[killerofstars]

Here's a tip: I have been flying a Viper with good results in 2.1. The NPC AI on large ships are not bad at all, and are actually pretty darn good at countering my moves. Maybe you should try using those moves you saw the AI use by flying a Viper against a bigger NPC ship. Note what the large ship AI does to counter you, and then use that maneuver or build against other small ships when you fly an Anaconda.

Right but larger ships have been made somewhat useless. BEFORE the 2.1 update, I could be effective even against smaller AI ships in a gimballed federal corvette. If an update makes many of the ships useless? There's something seriously wrong there. Especially since we A) worked so hard and so long to get those bigger ships and B) those bigger ships have humongous tradeoffs (*cough* FSD. *cough*) to rationalize how they can be effective in combat.

 

[Steve50]

hah, why do I get the feeling that some people will constantly vote "too hard", until the NPC's just sit in one place and don't even shoot back.

 

[Bartizan]

Other
I spent a lot of time in RES last night and while I could definitely feel the difference with NPCs not having a "I Win" button....there is still an issue with maneuverability physics. Some of the ships are pulling off turns and maneuvers that are simply not possible with the available tech to players. Chasing a competent level adder, there should be arcs in turns, not point blank flips. And yes, I am proficient at using FA in combat and understand tight maneuvers, but what I am seeing is outside those limits. I am finding it very difficult to ever put a cross hair on a even matched ship for more than a second or two due to this behavior, never mind higher leveled.

 

[howardtay]

See, this is what I don't get it. You feel sour, I understand. Due of gaming being in active development you feel devs owe you old version where you had little challenge from NPCs. That's understandable POV, although I disagree.

Problem is that every time someone feels that way he feels he needs to add "I hope FD survives new players leaving" clause. Seriously, stop. That's not the way to represent your position. You don't know what new players want. I am ready to bet that FD knows it a bit more than you do, because they are professionals. All you see is game ruined for you - I am sorry. Really. But that's not gonna change.

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Mark Allen comment on instakill issue

That's O.K no need to apologise, I have asked Frontier for my money back they gave me a refund for Horizons after the 2.1/1.6 update.

But let me just suggest something, if you purchased a Washing Machine or some other item, and it worked great i.e cleaned your clothes brilliantly and you were highly satisfied with it, and then the Washing machine company came and fitted a new part to your wonderful new machine, after which the machine stopped working as it did before and your clothes were no longer being cleaned, would you complain? request your money back? be angry, annoyed? I think so. It may be a silly analogy but I think it's valid.

 

[killerofstars]

As of the time of this posting.

-------------
Too hard - 23 votes
Just right - 63 votes
Too easy - 23 votes
--------------

FD seem to have nailed the balance then!

Also keep in mind, the die hards are here in the forum. Most of the more casual players don't come here as often, and many of them are at work right now.

 

[Cheops1975]

Right but larger ships have been made somewhat useless. BEFORE the 2.1 update, I could be effective even against smaller AI ships in a gimballed federal corvette. If an update makes many of the ships useless? There's something seriously wrong there. Especially since we A) worked so hard and so long to get those bigger ships and B) those bigger ships have humongous tradeoffs (*cough* FSD. *cough*) to rationalize how they can be effective in combat.

Expect variations of the inevitable replies of ..

Well use a different ship. If you have trouble with small ships then use a small ship.
Big ships should struggle against small ships (because reasons).
You should be in a wing to use a large ship.
Big ships were never meant to be able to do (x).

That big ship looks really tasty and you may really really want to fly it. But unless you like tumbling across the galaxy as you FA off boost and pitch in order to get a small ship in your sights for longer than a nano second.. I'd think about my purchase.

 

[WR3ND]

I don't call anything based on forum polls.

Just found it a bit funny.

I tend to agree with you on this, but in the grand scheme of things, it might be a bit of character flaw of ours...

Spoiler

It should be noted that this poll was started before alternate means of gaining rep with Engineers was something Frontier said they would implement and have since done.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=246739

Thankfully Frontier seems a bit more willing to listen to reason than some of us might be.

 

[Ziljan]

I don't have simultaneous analog control over my pip/thruster/flight management. When I do I'm sure I'll be able to mimic what I see them doing with no issues. You said get a turret for small ships. You then follow that up with well.. turrets shouldn't be very effective against small ships, you should learn to fly. Pick one.

I didn't say "turrets shouldn't be effective". I said Turrets should be able to be dodged with good flying. There's a key difference. Skill with turrets (eg keeping targets within the effective range) should be countered with skill with a flightstick (eg staying outside the effective range while flying unpredictable paths). It's a LOT harder to fly a small ship well than a large ship.

Try it.

Btw I don't have an analog thruster either. Just button press. I do OK. Not a pro either. I just understand the basic principles, and am still learning and mastering them myself.

 

[Seonid]

Gotta be careful, though. Threat 0 salvage USS in low-sec and anarchy systems may be ambushes.

The single cannister of AI Relics or 20 of Gold is a bit of a giveaway though. Spent most of the night trucking around Medium security systems, zero interdictions.

 

[rrobes]

He didn't mention modded weapons. But I think they are coded by mission rank, so "super NPC" could simply mean a deadly rank FDL coming after you on high paying BB station mission.

I suspect a lot of people are accepting high rank, high payout trade missions, or secret ops, and doing it in squishy ships that can't evade or flee. Then are surprised by the when normal power high rank NPCs show up to prove why the payout is so high.

These are assumptions on your part, I was not in a "squishy ship", I was in a fully decked reactive armored Python, I am not an ace, but have over 9k kills. My experience was duplicated any number of times since the upgrade. This was not pilot error in all of the occurrences, too many of them: it's real easy, in this game and even in real life, to blame the pilot or the victim, unless it happens to be you.

Read the posts from FD, there was a bug and they admitted to it and have fixed it. So I guess the alleged "whiners" and "complainers" were right. Shows when you jump to conclusions and make assumptions based on opinions and ignore or belittle others experiences, you may have to do some "mea culpa" penance.

 

[Cheops1975]

I didn't say "turrets shouldn't be effective". I said Turrets should be able to be dodged with good flying. There's a key difference. Skill with turrets (eg keeping targets within the effective range) should be countered with skill with a flightstick (eg staying outside the effective range while flying unpredictable paths). It's a LOT harder to fly a small ship well than a large ship.

Try it.

Btw I don't have an analog thruster either. Just button press. I do OK. Not a pro either. I just understand the basic principles, and am still learning and mastering them myself.

I've been playing since gamma with right around 4W of playtime.. I've understood the basics of this game for some time now. I'm not talking about an analog thruster I'm talking about the analog control AI has. The AI can access pips and manage thrusters etc far faster (near instantaneous) than any player can.. so telling me to watch an AI ship and then copy its flight ability is virtually meaningless. Turrets against a small ship at almost any range are mostly garbage and a waste as they simply cannot track small ships with any real degree of accuracy. I'm also not talking about flying small ships. I'm talking about dealing with the maneuverability of small ships when you are flying a large one. I know how to FA off, I know how to boost, I know how to use fixed weapons against chaff, etc etc etc.. I know how to combine all of these things at the same damn time and right now.. in a large ship.. small ships of any type can be a pain in the ass. Not in any way that's difficult.. just time consuming and TEDIOUS.

 

[codenchips]

After losing my ship 3 times since the update I thought I'd give it another go tonight as most posts seem to be confirming it's better...

I was in a Low RES in Empire space where I have good standing. Loads of heavy security around... I got a couple of kills, probably too easy but the system conda's were helping a lot...

Then, it all happened so quickly, I don't really know what it was that happened;

.. I came under heavy fire, noticed I'd became wanted .. "Impulse attack" .. BOOM

I hadn't fired a shot for around 60 seconds before that and certainly didn't get time to react in any way. It seems my security pals had turned on me - but for what?!??!

This is the second time this has happened this week in almost identical circumstances. I can now no longer afford the insurance.