It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

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thijso
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It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by thijso » Fri, 30. Sep 22, 21:48

Attacking a trio of Xenon destroyers, two K and an I, with my Behemoth force. I have 8 ships, one of which I'm personally controlling. I send the other 7 a little away, and I outflank the group of Xenon. The I is lagging behind, so I have a clear shot at him. When suddenly the two K's that are nearly in range of my main force zoom over to me (like superspeed, I see them literally zoom across my screen) to end up behind and to the back of me. I don't even have time to turn before they blow me out of the sky. WTF!?

I am really pissed off now. There is no reason for this to be possible, except plain cheating by the AI. Why?

Anyway, I have a save just before, so let's try that again...

CBJ
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by CBJ » Fri, 30. Sep 22, 21:51

The AI isn't supposed to cheat, so if it turns out that your savegame is unmodified and allows you to reproduce the problem fairly reliably, it would be helpful if you could make a report in the Tech Support forum with that savegame and the other information requested in that forum.

Imperial Good
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by Imperial Good » Fri, 30. Sep 22, 22:03

The Xenon were likely not taking damage so used travel mode to out flank you?

This is a big concern if you are in a destroyer that cannot take a few hits from them. Likely not cheating through as you can do exactly the same thing back to them.

GCU Grey Area
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by GCU Grey Area » Fri, 30. Sep 22, 22:40

Enemy capitals rapidly repositioning while in travel mode can present problems. Xenon K in travel mode moves at over 3.3km/s. This is why I always include a carrier full of fighters in every fleet. Usually around 1/3 are heavy fighters with thick hulls & strong shields, used to attack subsystems on enemy capitals & prevent use of travel mode. Remaining 2/3 are high speed interceptors, to protect those heavy fighters (& the fleet's capitals) against enemy fighters.

thijso
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by thijso » Fri, 30. Sep 22, 22:59

Don't have the savegame anymore, but they were moving in one direction towards my 7 Behemoths, and then did a u-turn (in like a second) and zoomed over to behind me. Nice, but that is not how travel drives work. At least, not mine.

Imperial Good
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by Imperial Good » Fri, 30. Sep 22, 23:09

thijso wrote:
Fri, 30. Sep 22, 22:59
Don't have the savegame anymore, but they were moving in one direction towards my 7 Behemoths, and then did a u-turn (in like a second) and zoomed over to behind me. Nice, but that is not how travel drives work. At least, not mine.
Could be a limitation of low attention logic. Low attention logic does not simulate ships turning so while they are in low attention they can make impossible 180 turns. Such low attention ends when they are nearby the player, such as under 40 km away. They can still be visible but in such low attention due to being more than 40 km away letting them perform impossible turns. Ships can also teleport during the transition from such low attention into high attention levels where flight physics (turning) are simulated.

Such simplification of ships in low attention is required to simulate such a massive and complicated universe in real time.

LughC
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by LughC » Fri, 30. Sep 22, 23:34

thijso wrote:
Fri, 30. Sep 22, 22:59
Don't have the savegame anymore, but they were moving in one direction towards my 7 Behemoths, and then did a u-turn (in like a second) and zoomed over to behind me. Nice, but that is not how travel drives work. At least, not mine.
No, this is how travel drive works I regularly have to do it in a syn when I tab back in too late and miss a gate. Though from what I understand the AI doesn't use this technique and it's player only.

Odds are you encountered a bug

Weren't paying as close of attention as you thought you were

Or you're just really salty after losing some ships

burger1
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by burger1 » Sat, 1. Oct 22, 07:00

Enemy ships have some sort of boost without using shields or something. Have seen xenon do it quite a few times. k do it often. Try to stay behind them or at least to the side towards the back end. If your in front of them they might overtake your faster ship.

thijso
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by thijso » Sat, 1. Oct 22, 11:00

All very good replies, but I'm still calling B**shit. They were moving *away* from me towards a group of my other ships. Unless these big destroyers can turn on a dime in 1 second (and if so I'd want a conversation with the devs about at least the tiniest bit of plausible physics) they should not be able to boost/travel drive/magick themselves back to behind me in a couple of seconds.

And sure, low attention, but even then I'd say they should take into account original travel direction and turning speed. Otherwise you're just in fantasy land.

And of course I was very salty. Still am, even though in my reload the I killed one of the K's because it was shooting at me as I was stuck to the back of it like a tick. I lost my ship and had to reload because something out of my hands happened that shouldn't be possible.

Rei Ayanami
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by Rei Ayanami » Sat, 1. Oct 22, 11:41

I very, very rarely spot AI ships perform impossible moves. It is as if their physics temporarily stopped, they get pulled with very high speed along an invisible rail to their target destination (be it forward, sideways, up or down, or fancy looking spirals), at which point they continue with normal physics as if nothing happened. Most often this happens in very crowded areas with many capital ships in the same area. Unfortunately this is hard to predict and reproduce.

The player's autopilot also performs impossible moves quite often, suddenly zipping in directions that are totally different from the ships orientation.
This usually happens when you fly really fast, have a guidance target far away in a different direction and then activate the autopilot. Also happens often when the autopilot moves through gates with travel speed.

All that being said, it's hard to say from just reading whether it was a bug or if the K's were just far away enough to be in low-attention mode and were able to turn around faster.

BitByte
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by BitByte » Sat, 1. Oct 22, 11:57

It's well known fact that AI does not suffer from ship drag which already makes things unfair (2D and 3D when player is below 20km from the ship).
If Minotaur Raider or Drill Sentinel comes through accelerator and it's controlled by player you end up to 20+km from the accelerator until can get control of ship and turn it go direction where you came.
AI can stop ship immediately after the accelerator (no matter which ship), turn 90+ degrees and start flying new direction.

Same with gates that AI can "control" their direction of flight when coming out from gate (e.g. Xenon M, N, S, P) and avoid / fly from side of defence platform which is placed to center of gate path. Player will always come from center.
If player would come angled through the gate their direction in other side of gate would also be angled. That would be somehow more fair.

Then asteroids - 15km ahead SCA Phoenix hit the big asteroid (I saw the red explosion / black dust cloud) and no speed / travel drive loss. I hit small piece of rock leftovers from asteroid AI hit with higher same speed (also Phoenix) and had to restart the travel mode - chase lost.

So yes AI cheats even in high attention state.

GCU Grey Area
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by GCU Grey Area » Sat, 1. Oct 22, 12:45

BitByte wrote:
Sat, 1. Oct 22, 11:57
Same with gates that AI can "control" their direction of flight when coming out from gate (e.g. Xenon M, N, S, P) and avoid / fly from side of defence platform which is placed to center of gate path. Player will always come from center.
Not entirely accurate. Player emerges from a gate in the same relative position as they entered the other side, albeit always perpendicular to the gate (irrespective of entry angle). For example, encountered this station in one of my recent games: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l1goh3y2en5d0 ... 1.jpg?dl=0. First time I used that gate I quite literally bounced off the side of the station, because I was a bit too far over to the left when entering the gate in the previous sector. For subsequent use of that gate I kept to the right & could fly past without incident (aside from a bit of turret fire).

Then asteroids - 15km ahead SCA Phoenix hit the big asteroid (I saw the red explosion / black dust cloud) and no speed / travel drive loss. I hit small piece of rock leftovers from asteroid AI hit with higher same speed (also Phoenix) and had to restart the travel mode - chase lost.
Recommend reporting this as a bug, preferably with a save if you've got one which reliably replicates the issue. Collisions with asteroids dropping a ship out of travel drive was supposed to be fixed:
5.0 patch notes wrote: Fixed player-controlled capital ships aborting travel mode when colliding with asteroids.

taztaz502
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by taztaz502 » Sat, 1. Oct 22, 17:54

Personally i love it, Capital ships would never split up anyway. I think they should stay in formation up until something big gets into range then pursue it. Ignoring fighters other than letting turrets shoot them if they're in range and launching its own fighters to counter them.

Rei Ayanami
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by Rei Ayanami » Sat, 1. Oct 22, 23:46

BitByte wrote:
Sat, 1. Oct 22, 11:57
Then asteroids - 15km ahead SCA Phoenix hit the big asteroid (I saw the red explosion / black dust cloud) and no speed / travel drive loss. I hit small piece of rock leftovers from asteroid AI hit with higher same speed (also Phoenix) and had to restart the travel mode - chase lost.
Not sure what is happening there, because with my Erlking I am able to travel through Family Zhin in a straight line, smashing through asteroids without losing speed or travel mode.

BitByte
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by BitByte » Thu, 6. Oct 22, 19:55

Recent example from AI cheat - SCA Phoenix went through accelerator after I destroyed it's engines.
On other end of accelerator ship was capable do 45 degrees turn (this part happened in 2D / low attention).
when I catched the ship in other sector it still didn't have engines.

If that would have been player ship it would have flied straight out from accelerator and no turning possibility.

LameFox
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Re: It would be nice if the AI wasn't able to cheat

Post by LameFox » Thu, 6. Oct 22, 20:41

AI ships do sometimes perform totally impossible manoeuvres in travel drive, even in high attention. In fact, a ship with the player aboard can do it, but the player themselves cannot cause it AFAIK, only an AI pilot or autopilot. I've reported this in the past (back before CoH I think) but it's hard to predict it except at gates, where it happens very frequently if their destination is at a sharp angle to the gate. However you wouldn't catch a capital ship doing it that way because they use gates differently.

Same thing I posted about more recently here: viewtopic.php?f=146&t=448515&p=5134091#p5134091
***modified***

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