[SCR] AI Ammo Cheat + DMG Mitigation (v1.08 - 17.12.11)

[someone else]

yeah... the fight lasts more, but it remains boring imho.

I already fended off waves upon waves of PBE-equipped tinbots or endless pirates/yakis and the tactic is the same:
they open fire
I cut the engines and turn on enemy
I go to full thrust pointing them
all the shooters go evasive (collision avoidance, they are too close)
one of them goes BOOM
the survivors open fire
I cut the engines and turn on enemy
I go to full thrust pointing them
all the shooters go evasive
one of them goes BOOM

Rinse and repeat. Forever.
No difference from Xenon to Pirate to Kha'ak, nor from M5 to M4 to M3 to M6. Always the same identical stupid AI is in the cockpit. It can become invulnerable but still is too easy to fool.
I did the same with M3 (various) and M6 (vidar).
(the "fly between 2 M2 and watch them shooting each other to death" is another example)

[Gazz]

Collision avoidance and break off speed/distance are hardcoded into the low level flight instructions.
Scripts can neither change them nor turn off the collision avoidance part.

With very expensive (CPU wise) workarounds you can let a few ships fly using your collision rules but this won't do for an "AI upgrade".

That part of the AI is not changeable with scripts but other items are, like for how long they evade afterwards.

[someone else]

I was a bit heavy, but I hope you got my point.

I'm not against collision avoidance, that is ok, it is the evading that is too long and easy to exploit and the "attacking manouvers" that are simple and easy to fool. (Ok, they can kill you if they are too much... but well, they need to be hudreds... and that is a bit too epic for just a "patrol sector" mission)

and maybe different tactics used by different ships... now we have only one tactic:
Move straight to enemy and shoot, launch a missile sometimes. Even if the ship that uses them is a TS.

I hope that scripts can change that a bit...

[Hieronymos]

AI ships rarely have full shields or a weapon loadout that is as optimised as on a playership.

The DDRS mod for 3R and now DDTC mod for TC created a jury-rigged workaround for this problem: all npc ship hardpointss spawn with 2 sets of weapons--one for best anti-fighter, second for best anti-bigship--and have a simple weaponswitcher script that swaps in the appropriate weapon based on target type. Crude but surprisingly effective.

Also, by ensuring that all npc aggressors spawn with full engine, rudder, & cargo tunings; DDTC ensures they become much harder to hit. They still have the same braindead ai, but at least have more mojo to play with
...........

The next step would be to create a simple "missleswitcher" script, that would load up ships with 3 or perhaps 4 missle types: best anti-M5/M4; best anti-M4+/M3; best anti-M3+/M6; best anti-TL/M7/M1/M2...and fire the appropriate missle only at its matching target type.

[someone else]

Also, by ensuring that all npc aggressors spawn with full engine, rudder, & cargo tunings

that would be a very cool addition to your script, Gazz... any time a ship is engaged it gets ammo and max tunings/.

The next step would be to create a simple "missleswitcher" script

I think that it would be fairly simple to create a "Missile cheat", all fighters that engage enemy get their cargo bay cleaned of missiles and at Gazz's (script's) discretion a missile will be summoned and launched.
Just to add a bit more realism we can say that the number of missiles "summoned and launched" will be proportional to the ship's cargo bay.

[Anubitus]

hi,

i love the idea of this script but when i use it ingame, it dont work for some reason.. tried to shut it off and restart it, have only the weaponcheat on but it still dont work.. as for the "taking less damage" cheat, im not too sure but the ammo cheat deffo dont work

i spawned in two titans, made one argon and one xenon, gave them both weapons that need ammo and 1 box of ammo to see if the script did its job, but after a short while both of them stopped shooting..

could it be its not working cos i changed the lasernames..?
should it work with lasers that hadnt ammo requirements befor..? (i did some modding of the weapons)
is the script ment to work only with weapons called "mass driver", "gaus cannon" and "enegy bolt chaingun"..? if this is the case, how do i change that..?

thanks in advance..

[imperium3]

Damage mitigation is a cool idea (I've always thought capship fights are way too short). However...

Any ship with hangars is a carrier.
These are faster ships which are not intended to take damage but run away.
Carriers do not have damage mitigation.

I'm a bit worried about this. Does this mean that any M7/M6 with hangars has no damage mitigation whatsoever? Including ships like the Shrike (which is so slow it'd have difficulty running away from anything) and Deimos, Hyperion etc? So doesn't this punish the player for picking a ship which can carry his personal M5 as well?

[Gazz]

i spawned in two titans, made one argon and one xenon, gave them both weapons that need ammo and 1 box of ammo to see if the script did its job, but after a short while both of them stopped shooting..

Did you spawn them properly? A Xenon ship would have a patrol/fight/whatever script, not just turret scripts.

could it be its not working cos i changed the lasernames..?

No. I don't do "hardcoded" scripts like that.

So doesn't this punish the player for picking a ship which can carry his personal M5 as well?

Hardly. The players strafe ability alone can be a several hundred % bonus for damage reduction.

[Anubitus]

Did you spawn them properly? A Xenon ship would have a patrol/fight/whatever script, not just turret scripts.

well, first i spawned them player owned, using a cheat, then i cheated them some weapons wich require ammo, gave them 1 box of ammo, set them to attack all enemies, set the turret to attack all enemies and then i changed the ownership to resp argon and xenoon.. after a while they just stopped shooting.. but i dont think it matters wether i spawned them or not cos after a while some other argon cap ships came to join the fight, GOD spawned them with my weapons and they too stopped fireing after a while..

[Gazz]

I tried it again but I find no way to break it.
Spawned a nekkid Xenon Yokohama, gave it 20 MAM lasers. No ammo.

As soon as it got into a fight... it started shooting back and slowly gaining ammo. *shrug*

On ships that don't actually fight this script never runs. That would be a pointless waste of CPU time.

should it work with lasers that hadnt ammo requirements befor..? (i did some modding of the weapons)
is the script ment to work only with weapons called "mass driver", "gaus cannon" and "enegy bolt chaingun"..?

There is not a single ware name mentioned in the script so that's not possible.

[Anubitus]

perhaps its a compattibility issue..? i have some scripts installed namely pirate guild, RRF, improved races and some ship command scripts..

EDIT: i reinstalled it and i noticed that i already have a file called !ship.signal.attacked.bigship, mine is 2,26kb and yours is 2,04kb.. also the !ship.signal.attacked, !ship.signal.attacked.ts, !ship.signal.attacked.khaakth files are already in my scripts folder.. again the size is different so i guess its another one too.. i must have gotten them with another script i ve installed.. or they might have been in vanilla game..? im not sure.. i try to never overwrite stuff to keep my game in working order.. but that would mean that i cant use your script.. could you perhaps give those files another name..? or is it safe to overwrite them..?

[chaosras]

Hey good stuff Gazz, installed this already. Anything to help the AI.

The Damage Mitigation is interesting, but I won't be using it for now. I may look at your scripts and try to determine how it works for later modification. I personally feel the hull strength on ALL ship should be higher, and this would be a nice way to do it w/o having to increase all ship hulls (and repair expense) or reduce all weapon hull damage values.

[Gazz]

EDIT: i reinstalled it and i noticed that i already have a file called !ship.signal.attacked.bigship, mine is 2,26kb and yours is 2,04kb.. also the !ship.signal.attacked, !ship.signal.attacked.ts, !
...
is it safe to overwrite them..?

Yes but it's even better to backup and then overwrite them. =)

These files have been extended with a functionality that this particular signal doesn't (reliably) have in X3.

Some day the bug that requires this workaround might be fixed. Then the overwriting business would no longer be required.
But until then - you might as well use a script that works with AI ships that *gasp* actually shoot at you!

The Damage Mitigation is interesting, but I won't be using it for now. I may look at your scripts and try to determine how it works for later modification. I personally feel the hull strength on ALL ship should be higher, and this would be a nice way to do it w/o having to increase all ship hulls (and repair expense) or reduce all weapon hull damage values.

TBH, it's been more of an experiment. To see if a script can affect "Mod" values that scripts cannot affect. And it worked. =)
And it fixes a lot of design uhh... oddities... without modding the whole game. IMO, M2 should last longer than 15-20 s (!) when being shot at. *shrug*
They are X3's "battleships". They do nothing else. It's ridiculous that their damage-taking qualities are in the same league with carriers which are (in theory) supposed to let their fighters project power while staying out of harm's way.
M2 (and battle-M7 like the Tiger) give up all claims to versatility with the complete lack of hangars. They need to get something juicy for that.

But how does the TC reality look? The Panther is a carbon copy of the Tiger... plus 32 hangars. That's some kind of joke, right?

[aka1nas]

Between the damage mitigation and CMOD3, my capital battles are extremely epic now.

[Anubitus]

thanks, i ve backed them up and replaced them.. now its working perfecly.. havent noticed anything besides the awesomeness of your script from changing those files.. thanks again..