AI Not Using Torpedoes?

[Agentmass]

I have a fleet of 4 Falx frigates equipped with 4 torpedo launchers. Each torpedo launcher is set as the first primary weapon group and there are roughly 108 heavy torpedoes available on each ship.

When I order the ships to attack a station, they fly straight into the station and blow up. Am I doing something wrong here? I would expect them to stay at least 10km away from the station and unload torpedoes.

The odd thing is they do seem to lose their torpedoes. Even if they are using the torpedoes without me noticing, I do not want the ships to just fly straight into the station and blow up.

The only AI-modifying mod I'm using is Kuda AI, however even if I disable the mod functionality, the ships still suicide straight into the station.

[Agentmass]

I found this post on Reddit and gave the suggested "solution" a shot:
https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... _fighters/

I equipped a plasma cannon on all of my frigates and told them to attack a K destroyer and sure enough they fired their torpedoes at it around 6.5km and then flew away in order to perform another run. I was not able to get the same outcome against a Xenon station, however I will continue to test further.

This is probably the worst bug I've found in X4 over the past month, what makes it worse is that apparently this issue has been around for years according to posts I've found describing the same issue. I don't want to have to equip a plasma cannon / mass driver just to get the AI to play nicely, this seems like a huge hack and could be fixable with a simple slider next to missile / torpedo launcher indicating the distance at which they should engage.

I understand having development priorities and I understand focusing on features which make money, I work in this industry so I understand the game of software development very well, but foundational parts of the game are broken and this is definitely one of them.

I have a weird love-hate relationship with this game, it's like a hot girl who sets your car on fire every other month. I think X4 is the best space game currently available, there's nothing like it, but I always wonder how much more popular this game would be if all of the jank was fixed and everything in the game was explained properly. I think in terms of immersion and gameplay possibilities, there's no other game that offers what X4 does, but man is this game a painful experience sometimes.

While I'm at it, a list of jank:

1. Inability to reorder build queues while building station modules.
2. Inability to mass change default-behaviors / mass update attack orders to more specific criteria. This is a massive pain when you have 50 fighters.
3. Having to rotate the station builder at awkward angles in order to place a module where you want it to be.
4. Having to view a module from a specific angle in order to rotate it on a certain axis.
5. No "Snap to Grid" functionality in the station builder.
6. Having fighters / frigates ram straight into a high-risk enemy like a destroyer or station as if they were a suicide squad and then having them all immediately die. Kuda AI fixes this, why isn't it in the base game?

The worst thing I've seen in terms of jank is station traders refusing to take on orders because the station manager wants them to buy a ware which is not available to continue production. This results in all of the station traders just sitting there while sellable wares are building up because Silicon Carbide is not for sale anywhere nearby and my build queue won't be able to build silicon carbide production for another hour. If the traders do take on orders, a freighter will make 5 jumps to sell 20 energy cells to a station for a 2000 credit profit. Having something like Mules and Warehouses Extended which doesn't lag horribly would be amazing.

[Agentmass]

I did some further experimentation with Falx frigates using torpedoes against stations and can confirm even with a Mass Driver equipped with a 16km effective range, they still ram the station and die.

I believe the reason for this is because the ship is "technically" 15km away from the center of the station when it rams the station. Since the station is 20 km long, the ship has no problem ramming right up against the station 15km away from the center of the station because the ship believes that it is still 15 km away from the station although the ship is right next to it.

This would explain why the strategy works against destroyers, because the total area of a destroyer is much smaller compared to that of a station. My guess is this allows the frigates to accurately judge distance from itself and the destroyer where it can't do the same with a large station.

[ggttcc2]

I did some further experimentation with Falx frigates using torpedoes against stations and can confirm even with a Mass Driver equipped with a 16km effective range, they still ram the station and die.

I believe the reason for this is because the ship is "technically" 15km away from the center of the station when it rams the station. Since the station is 20 km long, the ship has no problem ramming right up against the station 15km away from the center of the station because the ship believes that it is still 15 km away from the station although the ship is right next to it.

This would explain why the strategy works against destroyers, because the total area of a destroyer is much smaller compared to that of a station. My guess is this allows the frigates to accurately judge distance from itself and the destroyer where it can't do the same with a large station.

Interesting, but Ai destroyers do manage to keep their distance fairly well, while technically has less range.

My guess is all m ships are just using the same AI as the fighters, which make them do hit and run maneuvers that leads to a lot of unnecessary flying which in return complicated the aiming and path finding resulting the ramming behavior.

To be honest m ships, especially gunboats really need their own class of AI that makes them keep the distance while slowly orbiting the target. In currently state all m ships are basically useless cannon fodders in AI’s hands.

[Agentmass]

I did some further experimentation with Falx frigates using torpedoes against stations and can confirm even with a Mass Driver equipped with a 16km effective range, they still ram the station and die.

I believe the reason for this is because the ship is "technically" 15km away from the center of the station when it rams the station. Since the station is 20 km long, the ship has no problem ramming right up against the station 15km away from the center of the station because the ship believes that it is still 15 km away from the station although the ship is right next to it.

This would explain why the strategy works against destroyers, because the total area of a destroyer is much smaller compared to that of a station. My guess is this allows the frigates to accurately judge distance from itself and the destroyer where it can't do the same with a large station.

Interesting, but Ai destroyers do manage to keep their distance fairly well, while technically has less range.

My guess is all m ships are just using the same AI as the fighters, which make them do hit and run maneuvers that leads to a lot of unnecessary flying which in return complicated the aiming and path finding resulting the ramming behavior.

To be honest m ships, especially gunboats really need their own class of AI that makes them keep the distance while slowly orbiting the target. In currently state all m ships are basically useless cannon fodders in AI’s hands.

Destroyers usually do keep their distance, but not last night when I ordered by Syn to attack a Xenon Solar Power Plant. I believe the destroyer has the same problem as the frigate does, having problems with the distance calculations on oddly shaped stations which are also large.

If you compare the Xenon Solar Power Plant to the Xenon Defense Platform, the defense platform has a simple circular shape and is much smaller in total area. This is why I think my Syn has no problem keeping its distance from these smaller circular stations which I believe the AI can accurately calculate distance from.

Again, this is just my guess, but my experimentations seem to conclude to this outcome.