[MOD] Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks

[Marvin Martian]

i think also that tactical IZ-jumps should possible without charging or fuelcosts, therefor you have already a last-jump timestamp, that can be higher in case for balance

the problem is on longer turns or long charge the claculated position is completly outdatet at execution that it was finally a useless move

maybe if it's necessary to stay close at vanilla behavior, use wait for charging - calculate position and jump then immediately

[Ezarkal]

I normally don't ask questions about mod inter-relations, but since you're involved with the development of CWIR I'll indulge here:

Does your mod affect the behavior of the CWIR Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer the same way it affect the behaviour of the vanilla Sucellus? I've been making a hold out against xenons in Ma-BR-prevarication and my sucellus vanguards almost never use their IHC canons. (All 5 star captains)

I thought they simply didn't have time since most xenon capships are only there for a minute before they jump again, But even against those that stay and fight I almost never see the big guns firing.

I'll do more tests soon and try to further confirm the behavior.

[Lord Crc]

- Have the correction jump use no fuel.

FWIW I vote this. The game will also make capships jump without fuel if they can't buy any so there is precedence.

Right. Suggest setting your Balors' Defence Officers to "defend" to keep them from firing torpedoes until you decide that they should. They do inherit their squadron commander's defence officer's setting, so you could put them all in a squad, and order the whole squad to open fire when you think they're ready. Will consider an outright prohibition to firing on small ships, but think having you have the option to authorize it if you want to for some reason is better.

Hmm the problem I have with using Defend is that I need to babysit them, as they'll let their commander's ship get blasted to pieces without doing anything.

In addition, if I have a Balor in my squad and I order it to attack a capship, once the missiles are away, it will move in to engage it with its turrets. This is of course a very, very bad idea.

This sounds like a bug. They should not close in to engage UNLESS their primary target is a small ship. Do you happen to remember if they closed in with just regular engines? (No jumping or boosting?) That's usually an indication that they're targeting a small ship.

As far as I recall, yes they were moving with regular engines. But it looked like it was going straight for the capship. Which would make sense since I ordered to attack the capship, so why would it instead move to attack a fighter?

I'll see if I can reproduce it.

That in itself is also odd though unless the capship was beyond radar range when they received the order to attack, and the most dangerous thing they spotted is a small ship close to a capship.

The Balor was less than 10k from the capship when I ordered to attack IIRC.

I don't have much time these days for games, way too much at work, but I'll try to record a few battles next time.

Thanks again.

[w.evans]

Looks like we have it unanimous for the correction jump to not use fuel! Suits me just fine since that's the easiest, and shouldn't even require any testing. Will give it a couple more days to see if there are any more opinions on the matter.

Question is here, by the way:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 86#4614286

Does your mod affect the behavior of the CWIR Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer the same way it affect the behaviour of the vanilla Sucellus?

Haven't kept up with latest CWIR, unfortunately, but we cooked up a way to communicate between mods and at one point, the Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer was registered with MICT, so it should use appropriate movement. That is, it should go to extreme big gun range, whatever extreme range is on that ship's gun, and keep front oriented to the target. As long as the gun is oriented on the target (low tolerance, only 10 degrees) it should fire. But if it's off by even a little bit past tolerance, the gun won't fire.

@Marvin, why wouldn't it make sense to use fuel for IZ jumps? Still uses the jump drive. Your idea with plotting position right before the jump: get_safe_pos, then fake the jump with an instantaneous warp? That would be extremely effective, but think it might be too effective. Absolutely no chance for error then. Might get boring.

@Lord Crc, they do actually use the vanilla back-up mechanism for jumping without fuel, but it takes a pretty long time to charge up. Like Marvin said, by that time, the position they plotted before starting to charge up probably won't make sense anymore.

Repro for that Balor case would be extremely useful. If you explicitly ordered the Balor to attack the capship, then it should not have targeted anything else. Could happen if the Balor was in a squadron, and the squadron commander were ordered to attack the capship, but again, not if the capship was only 10km away which is well within the Balor's radar range.

@pref, point. And yes, a single move_to would be the back-up plan as outlined in option 2. Would probably need to at least track to the target after the move_to since even a boosted move takes time; but they should already do that except if they have to track directly upwards or downwards, which they can't, possibly necessitating yet another correction.

[pref]

I'd be curious to hear others experience, but mine is that its just impossible to have coordinated movement without these alignment jumps.
If memory serves me right a single turn when move_to begins can take more then 20 secs while the ship is stationary, which means the target is likely out of range or too close by the time its done.

I found another capship movement mode where they start to move before adjusting direction, but with that turn rate there is no way they can move in a controlled fashion - probably on boost they would take 3 zones worth of space for a single 90deg turn.

There was another move type, but that looked rather immersion breaking - resulted in ships boosting sideways and other weird things.

If you figure a way to have a capship move in a controlled way please tell me how (i mean reduce the delay until they align and start to move towards the target from 20-30sec to below 10 or so)..

[Marvin Martian]

@Marvin, why wouldn't it make sense to use fuel for IZ jumps? Still uses the jump drive. Your idea with plotting position right before the jump: get_safe_pos, then fake the jump with an instantaneous warp? That would be extremely effective, but think it might be too effective. Absolutely no chance for error then. Might get boring.

i personally use and prefer a longer off-time, actually 4min between jumps, but no fuel and imediate jump (like light pre-charging), so the ship needs to boost also, if fuel is available or not
my intention for the hint about the delay was because of boosting - behavior especially on slow turning LR-Ships where the position is outdatet at arrival

but you could here do it skill dependent how good the positioning will work, maybe with some possible failures (like change of distance higher then weaponrange)

[UniTrader]

If you figure a way to have a capship move in a controlled way please tell me how (i mean reduce the delay until they align and start to move towards the target from 20-30sec to below 10 or so)..

If this is meant by using the spline FCM thats not caused by alignment but by path calculation - so reducing overall load might be a good start. Also if the moveto command is given simultaneous all ships should start at nearly the same time (didnt test this yet, but i am pretty confident it would work)

[Ezarkal]

Does your mod affect the behavior of the CWIR Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer the same way it affect the behaviour of the vanilla Sucellus?

Haven't kept up with latest CWIR, unfortunately, but we cooked up a way to communicate between mods and at one point, the Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer was registered with MICT, so it should use appropriate movement. That is, it should go to extreme big gun range, whatever extreme range is on that ship's gun, and keep front oriented to the target. As long as the gun is oriented on the target (low tolerance, only 10 degrees) it should fire. But if it's off by even a little bit past tolerance, the gun won't fire.

Thanks for the info. I'll make some tests on some stations.

[w.evans]

5.June 2016 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.67

- Fixed MICT long-ranged ships using up jump fuel past the fuel reserve for the correction jump.
- The correction jump should charge up much faster.

Please note that the correction jump will probably still take a very long time if the ship does not have enough jump fuel for even one jump. To avoid this situation, MICT ships should always have at least 100 fuel cells when going into combat.

Many thanks to The Puppeteer and Eightball for reporting and confirming the issue.
Thanks to Marvin Martian, pref, Ezarkal, and Lorc Crc for contributing their opinions on the matter.

note: I entered the date wrong in content.xml. Will correct in the next update. Only thing it'll affect is the date will appear wrong in the in-game extensions menu.

[w.evans]

Cleaned up the OP a bit. Information there should be more correct than not now. Also remembered that I forgot to add documentation on supp9 that was initially uploaded on the 22nd of November:

supplement 9:

The Stromvok is treated by all AI ships as a freighter. It will probably still be ignored by plundering ships unless provoked since it still doesn't have cargo capacity, but it should be able to slip past patrols of factions that are hostile enough to target military vessels but not civilian vessels.

[Lord Crc]

Thanks for the update.

Sadly I've got enough at work for 3-4 clones at the moment, but planning on getting back to XR during my summer vacation in a months time. I'll try to reproduce the Balor issue then.

[w.evans]

no prob. couldn't play much either since i've been getting these really bad headaches if i stare at a computer screen too long, and i kinda sorta have to stare at a computer screen for work. anyway, if you do encounter the Balor issue again, let me know.

[w.evans]

Tester Request:

Calling all MICT admirals with at least 1 Sucellus in their fleet.

Just uploaded the file detailed below.

As those of you who have been following this mod's development may know, we've been having some occasional problems with the Sucellus.

The problem stems from my insistence that they ought to use the y-axis because, you know, space. Also, they are much more effective above or below the ecliptic because they don't have to deal with the clutter of ships that are usually on or near the ecliptic. Plus, you know, space.

However, capital ships cannot pitch above or below a certain angle, and because the Sucellus IHC has such a narrow firing angle, they often find themselves in a position from which they simply cannot turn enough to orient their main gun onto the enemy.

MICT_supp10 should fix that by relaxing that restriction. Hopefully, remove it.

Aside from checking to see if it works, I would also appreciate any feedback as to whether or not it also looks weird. In addition to removing the pitch restriction, supp10 also removes the roll restriction, so they may be rotated at all sorts of crazy angles with respect to everything else. If there is consensus that it does look weird, it is possible to remove the pitch restriction without touching the roll restriction.

If you all think that it's fine, this will be included in the main package of both MICT and the MCT.

If you think that it's fine, but some of you think that it looks odd, it will remain an optional supp.

If I'm an idiot and it doesn't work, heh.

For those of you who do not use MICT but are curious, you can install MICT_supp10 by itself without the base mod, as with all other supplemental files associated with this mod.

As with all MICT supplemental files, MICT_supp10 is available at the Nexus (link in the OP), under "Optional Files".

.......
17.June 2016 - initial upload MICT_supp10

experimental: this should allow the Sucellus to pitch above and below their normal range of movement.

I am not sure if this is sufficient to allow them to turn up or down 90 degrees, but it will certainly allow them to use the y-axis more effectively, especially when firing from long range.

If this works, this should also make the correction jump discussed in the last couple of updates completely unnecessary.

[w.evans]

18.June 2016 - MICT_supp2 updated to v0.49

If a member of a MICT Squadron:

- is attacked,
- or finds a hostile target

while the MICT Squadron is authorized to engage,

all members of that squadron use that ship's sensors to find and engage hostile targets.

Also did some optimization. Ships in a MICT Squadron should now respond to squadron actions faster.

.......
edit: oh, and in case the use of this update isn't apparent, placing a radar ship (a ship with long-ranged radar, even if it isn't really good for much else) in a MICT Squadron now effectively extends that Squadron's engagement range. So radar ships are now a thing.

[w.evans]

21.June 2016 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.68

Capital Ship Combat Movement

- MICT ships that attack order any ships in their respective squadrons to immediately attack as well.
+ if MICT_supp2 is also installed, this will trigger them to go on high alert and scan for any hostile targets within their squadron's radar range, and select and engage particular targets as outlined in MICT Squadron doctrine.
+ if MICT_supp2 is also installed, and no hostile targets are found, they will immediately engage their commander's target.

- Optimized station demolition.
+ when attacking a station, they will engage that station's outermost parts first, and work their way inwards. Feedback on this feature in particular most welcome.
+ when a station module they had targeted is destroyed, they should automatically switch to the next station module that is furthest from the station's center.
+ they should continue working their way inwards until they can no longer find any operational station components belonging to the station that they are attacking.
+ please bear in mind that this does not change the fact that stations are overwhelmingly powerful! be bold by all means, but carry a big gun.

- MICT Ships that have retreated will no longer disengage, but will keep their distance until they judge that they have repaired and replenished their shields to a point where they think that they can go back into the fray for more. Please do bear in mind that they might be wrong. (note that this is a revertion to earlier behavior. at some point, this was changed to have them disengage after retreating and resume previous orders.)

- The Sucellus now moves with roll and pitch unlocked. (What used to be MICT_supp10 is now included in the main mod). They might move funny. Feedback welcome. However, this makes the next entry possible:

- The correction jump for the Sucellus to compensate for going to positions where it cannot pitch enough to bring its big gun to bear on target has been removed.

Capital Ship Target Acquisition and Firing

- Capital Ships consider all hostile station modules, capital ship engines, and capital ship jump drives as valid targets for the Sucellus IHC and the Balor torpedoes. Contrary to some reports, the Balor should not purposely fire their torpedoes on fighters and surface elements other than capital ship engines and jump drives, although the individual torpedoes may acquire fighters or surface elements on their own.

- Minor change to supress pointless debug spew due to a wrong assumption. Behavior wasn't changed as it is fine.

...
MICT_supp2 (MICT escort script) updated to v0.50

- MICT Squadrons should respond much more quickly and reliably to the following orders:
+ Disengage - give a MICT Squadron Commander any order while any member of the Squadron is engaged in combat. Please note that Split pilots can be stubborn about complying with this order.
+ Refuel - giving a MICT Squadron Commander an order to refuel will order the whole squadron to refuel. Only reason i have seen this fail is if a gas station is out of gas.
+ Go - telling a MICT Squadron Commander to go somewhere will order the entire squadron to go there. (not nearly as tidy as UniTrader's CAC method, but they all get where they're going very quickly.)

- Some restructuring to improve responsiveness and make it more reliable. Should also improve performance.

- Fixed a small cosmetic bug that could result in MICT Squadron Subordinates showing "Escort - Jumping" even though their jump has been long finished.

- Removed vanilla code for target acquisition and response to attack as it is now redundant, and apparently has been for a while now.

- Any MICT Subordinates who have acquired a target will now chase that target regardless of how far it goes relative to the rest of the squadron. If this results in MICT Squadrons being separated for extended periods of time, please do let me know. They should catch up with each other when their respective targets are destroyed, they are destroyed, or the MICT Squadron Commander (or you) order them to disengage, whichever comes first. MICT Squadrons tend to gang up on isolated hostiles that have been acquired but have wandered off. Thing to watch out for: isolated MICT Squadron Commander on solitary patrol while everyone else in the squadron is off chasing a hostile ship that has left the immediate area. Opinions welcome.

[DeadMor0z]

No CES-compatible version?

[w.evans]

A lot of the changes in this last revision are in MICT_supp2, and that should be compatible with CES.

Didn't port the changes to the movement script to the CES edition because CES handles targeting. So ships will go after the furthermost station modules, but CES probably won't have them on the targeting list (or might. come to think of it, am not sure.) so won't fire.

Guess could add the signal to attack immediately. I hesitate though because then, the two scripts (MICT and MICT_CES) will start diverging widely, and will start becoming a pain to maintain. (Rather than maintaining a mod and a version of the same mod with a change, it will start becoming like maintaining two entirely different mods. The likelihood of errors creeping in will be much higher in that case.)

The changes to the DO script won't apply, of course, since CES does that in CES + MICT_CES.

[w.evans]

Thinking of clearing out all of the old versions from the nexus. Anyone mind?

[Scoob]

I assume the silence means no one minds...I don't mind either

Scoob.

[w.evans]

Alright. Here goes.

edit: oh boy. have to delete them one by one!