New capital ship command

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al_dude
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by al_dude » Thu, 13. May 21, 20:44

Stations are not powerful. Well, they are if you put yourself in their range but the big disadvantage of a station is that, well, they are stationary. They cannot move. They cannot mod their guns.

I can disable their guns with a M and bring a fleet in later, or few destroyers can get it from its superior range.

Vantharas
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Vantharas » Thu, 13. May 21, 21:35

Panos wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 19:06
Vantharas wrote:
Wed, 12. May 21, 17:10
A new capital ship command is needed. It should just be "Bombard station" which says Use your main guns and sit at range and fire.

The 5 star capital ship AI is Incredibly stupid. And I mean incredibly stupid. I can't stress enough how incredibly stupid they are. I saved my game and just watched as my captain flew helplessly into the station and died.

What is the purpose of these "Stars" if they show no signs of intellegence. I mean my pilots do well in combat. Its just station combat is really really bad right now.

Guys please fix it that'd be really awesome if I could set my ships to a circle formation and have them actually stay in formation and do what was asked. Late game having to micro manage a fleet like this is really cumbersome and really just a game ruining experience.

And soloing a station just takes forever.
Make sure your capital ships have same range guns. Set them to fly 10-12km from the target. Arrange them all to the Attack Group then select the target and execute a Coordinated Attack. All ships will take position to the maximum range of their main guns, waiting for the slow ones and when the last arrives, they will start bombardment from range.
So tell me how you tell them to sit 10KM away and bombard a station and not fly straight into it? I'm sure if there was an option I would have been told by now instead of being told to sit and Micromange my entire fleet a few clicks at a time.

Vantharas
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Vantharas » Thu, 13. May 21, 21:36

al_dude wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 20:44
Stations are not powerful. Well, they are if you put yourself in their range but the big disadvantage of a station is that, well, they are stationary. They cannot move. They cannot mod their guns.

I can disable their guns with a M and bring a fleet in later, or few destroyers can get it from its superior range.
Except those destroyers will fly straight into the station and die without showing so much as a single ounce of intelligence.

Panos
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Panos » Thu, 13. May 21, 21:44

Vantharas wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 21:35
Panos wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 19:06
Vantharas wrote:
Wed, 12. May 21, 17:10
A new capital ship command is needed. It should just be "Bombard station" which says Use your main guns and sit at range and fire.

The 5 star capital ship AI is Incredibly stupid. And I mean incredibly stupid. I can't stress enough how incredibly stupid they are. I saved my game and just watched as my captain flew helplessly into the station and died.

What is the purpose of these "Stars" if they show no signs of intellegence. I mean my pilots do well in combat. Its just station combat is really really bad right now.

Guys please fix it that'd be really awesome if I could set my ships to a circle formation and have them actually stay in formation and do what was asked. Late game having to micro manage a fleet like this is really cumbersome and really just a game ruining experience.

And soloing a station just takes forever.
Make sure your capital ships have same range guns. Set them to fly 10-12km from the target. Arrange them all to the Attack Group then select the target and execute a Coordinated Attack. All ships will take position to the maximum range of their main guns, waiting for the slow ones and when the last arrives, they will start bombardment from range.
So tell me how you tell them to sit 10KM away and bombard a station and not fly straight into it? I'm sure if there was an option I would have been told by now instead of being told to sit and Micromange my entire fleet a few clicks at a time.
I told you how to do it. I am doing it right now as we speak.

al_dude
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by al_dude » Thu, 13. May 21, 21:48

You can make them sit at 10km. You've been told how.

Vantharas
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Vantharas » Thu, 13. May 21, 22:46

Sorry, I'm not interested in workarounds for something that should be in the game, to begin with. I'm glad you are happily micromanaging away. I am however am not. Nor am I impressed with the complete lack of intelligence of any 5 star captain.

If you don't have a solution there's no point posting here. I made it clear originally I was not interested in workarounds.

The command or the intelligence should exist one or the other.

I should be able to be OOS not worrying about how many of my destroyers are going to just die because I gave them an attack command. On a completely undefended station, in a sector, I just spent 45min clearing out.

al_dude
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by al_dude » Thu, 13. May 21, 23:29

So be it then. It's your loss.

Not sure whether you can classify it as "micromanaging" though. You just need two clicks per ship.

Panos
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Panos » Fri, 14. May 21, 12:23

Vantharas wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 22:46
Sorry, I'm not interested in workarounds for something that should be in the game, to begin with. I'm glad you are happily micromanaging away. I am however am not. Nor am I impressed with the complete lack of intelligence of any 5 star captain.

If you don't have a solution there's no point posting here. I made it clear originally I was not interested in workarounds.

The command or the intelligence should exist one or the other.

I should be able to be OOS not worrying about how many of my destroyers are going to just die because I gave them an attack command. On a completely undefended station, in a sector, I just spent 45min clearing out.
What workarounds you talking about? I have atm 1 Syn and 2 Osakas taking down one station after another from safe distance without even triggering the defense drones. Make sure all turrets except the L Plasma are set to Defense or Attack Fighters, set L Plasma turrets to attack main target, set up a task force (Syn head, Osaka Attack for Commander) and right click on a station to do a Coordinated Attack.

They will even rotate, at max distance, around the station attacking their targeted modules set themselves.
This is not workaround is ingame mechanics.

capitalduty
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by capitalduty » Sat, 15. May 21, 14:39

I totally agree with op. Combat capital ships control is way to limited right now and a micro-management hell. Personally I think we should get at least two different attack command for capital ships:

-Bombard stance: Ships attack enemy with a player set input like maximum range allowed, always targeting nearest module first, ships in this stance should maintain aim and do not adjust position until needed.
-Assault stance: Ships charge near enemy and try fire all turrets/weapons on target with maximum dps, doing maneuvers to bring maximum damage to enemy and evading as much a possible enemy shots, ships in this stance should maintain 4-3 km of target during combat.

IMHO stations are already quite powerful and destroyers/battleships are high tier weapons that should be able to reliably fight a station, factions should react during attacks by destroyers fleet sending their own ships and fleets to defend thus making interesting battles around a station siege.
Also it could be interesting to have a dedicated long range turret only available for defense stations that balance this a little bit, targon tracer XL turrets of x-rebirth could make a come back, those where excellent stand off range weapons that really have a good visual and effect design, now could a interesting purpose.

Midnitewolf
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Midnitewolf » Sat, 15. May 21, 19:37

al_dude wrote:
Wed, 12. May 21, 18:13
No point in star rating.

The trick to use destroyers to bomb station is like said above, use fly to. Let it approach a station close enough that it needs not to use its travel drive. It will slowly approach its target and use its main guns at its maximum range.
If it uses its travel drive, they have a tendency to stop right on top of a station, basically dooming itself unless you are dropping like 15 destroyers at once.

Now, that's for in sight combat. In OOS, it doesn't matter.
I can't get this to work. I meticulously spent like 2 hours lining up multiple destroyers using this method and for whatever reason, many of my destroyers just yolo'ed in and died anyway.

The honest truth is that commanding a fleet shouldn't be this hard. Just a few days ago the stupidity of the AI got me raging so bad, I actually like a immature child and posted a horrible rant on these forums about it. A game is supposed to be fun, not rage inducing and I really wish the devs would address this fact.

What finally induced me to rage was that I was in a fairly tight cluster of Xenon stations and I painstakingly managed to coax the Xenon Fleet about 20km away from the nearest station. I then ordered my destroyers to attack the Xenon Fleet. My expectation was they would fly toward the Xenon Fleet but stop short to engage them with their powerful frontal guns but nope. Half of them fly way, way past the Xenon Fleet, directly into the guns of the Xenon defensive platforms to slowly turn around and try to engage the Xenon Fleet. Needless to say they all got shredded in seconds.

I just honestly don't understand why the devs would design the command system and its AI execution this way. It seems to lack any sort of rational sense at all. I mean why can't your fleet, on order of attack, actually maintain formation and jump to, not past, the enemy when ordered to attack? And to the OPs topic, why can't you order a fleet to a position and have them maintain that position and bombard a station without going all yolo on it? It is not fun, at all, that fleet command is so arbitrary and frankly stupid.

I mean talk about immersion breaking. We are taking 4-5 star captains, in command of very large warships and they can't even hold formation, go where they told to go and do simple things like hold X km from the station and fire your long range guns. Grade Schoolers could probably handle these types of commands but not seasoned warship captains. Even outside the immersion factor, the fact that your fleets act so randomly and stupidly is near enough to just make the player throw up their hand and quit the game out of frustration. It honestly isn't fun, not in the slightest.

Also it shouldn't be like the devs don't know that the players feel this way about it. There has to be at least a 1000 posts and comments. This very topic about how to get your fleets to attack a station and bombard has to have come up at least a dozen plus times since I started playing roughly 2 months ago. So why don't the devs address it??

So yeah, fully support that OP on this. There needs to be commands added and honestly the AI entirely re-worked so that, at least at 4-5 stars, captains actually follow your commands with some degree of consistency and accuracy.

As far as it making it too easy to take out stations, that is a separate issue that can be address by changing the way stations work or how the enemy AI defends stations. I mean maybe the way for an AI to defend a station is supporting it with ships, i.e. an active defense instead of just guns on the station acting as a passive defense. Maybe the stations guns should have extended range to prevent enemies from just being able to sit an bombard them to death without risk? I mean a stations power generation capability should be many times that of a starship so give their main guns extended range. In any case, that can be solved in a different manner and I don't really care how as long as they make fleet command into something less painful and rage inducing.

al_dude
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by al_dude » Sat, 15. May 21, 19:50

Not sure why it wouldn't work. I use the method all the time.

I use no mods, remember that.

All I do is park my behemoth first and just order other destroyers to fly somewhere behind my back. Once there, clear orders and let it attack. That's all there is.

There is something I have noticed though. Some destroyers I have are geared up for anti-fighter with beams. They sometimes try to get into beam range but not always. That's pretty much it. This is hardly a trick.

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Pitagora
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Pitagora » Sat, 15. May 21, 19:59

Not trying to be the pragmatic guy here, but game design should allow thousands of game styles and behaviour and that's difficult when the npcs use the exact same rules of the player (quite rare in every game with some AI in them), if you're annoyed by something, feel free to write your thoughts here, maybe a dev can get inspiration from them.

But after... come back to your game, try some workaround or, just maybe, destroy the stations OOS with your destroyer fleets, like any player who wants to keep calm and go on.
Ricarica et impera!

Panos
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Panos » Tue, 18. May 21, 13:50

Vantharas wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 21:35
Panos wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 19:06
Vantharas wrote:
Wed, 12. May 21, 17:10
A new capital ship command is needed. It should just be "Bombard station" which says Use your main guns and sit at range and fire.

The 5 star capital ship AI is Incredibly stupid. And I mean incredibly stupid. I can't stress enough how incredibly stupid they are. I saved my game and just watched as my captain flew helplessly into the station and died.

What is the purpose of these "Stars" if they show no signs of intellegence. I mean my pilots do well in combat. Its just station combat is really really bad right now.

Guys please fix it that'd be really awesome if I could set my ships to a circle formation and have them actually stay in formation and do what was asked. Late game having to micro manage a fleet like this is really cumbersome and really just a game ruining experience.

And soloing a station just takes forever.
Make sure your capital ships have same range guns. Set them to fly 10-12km from the target. Arrange them all to the Attack Group then select the target and execute a Coordinated Attack. All ships will take position to the maximum range of their main guns, waiting for the slow ones and when the last arrives, they will start bombardment from range.
So tell me how you tell them to sit 10KM away and bombard a station and not fly straight into it? I'm sure if there was an option I would have been told by now instead of being told to sit and Micromange my entire fleet a few clicks at a time.
Some times it works some times is not. Spent hours observing their behaviour. Unfortunately is based on pilot combined skill.
I found the calculations done in move.attack.object.capital.xml in the aiscripts.

In my honest opinion for first time opening the xml scrip files, on two points focused my study

a) Low skill pilots have a chance to pick strong quadrant to attack (aka the one with the defense module on their face)
b) Low skill pilots have a chance to charge and attack at close range because their minimum distance calculator said so, again due to their skill

Major problem occurs when they pick the strongest quadrant having the shortest range set to attack.
At least that is my understanding.

Ways to resolve this.
a) deactivate the main guns. leave only plasma turrets
b) have 4+ skill Piloting & Morale captains on the capital ships.

capitalduty
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by capitalduty » Tue, 18. May 21, 18:17

"Some times it works some times is not. Spent hours observing their behaviour. Unfortunately is based on pilot combined skill.
I found the calculations done in move.attack.object.capital.xml in the aiscripts.

In my honest opinion for first time opening the xml scrip files, on two points focused my study

a) Low skill pilots have a chance to pick strong quadrant to attack (aka the one with the defense module on their face)
b) Low skill pilots have a chance to charge and attack at close range because their minimum distance calculator said so, again due to their skill

Major problem occurs when they pick the strongest quadrant having the shortest range set to attack.
At least that is my understanding. "

If you are correct, this actually means that Egosoft embedded a some form of "actual artificial stupidity" into the combat behaviour script of capital ships. This by all means is truly disappointing, cause already ai behaves in a very erratic and unlogical way many times to add another layer of rng via "pilot skill" into one of most important aspect of fight oriented gameplay.

Egosoft will receive flak for this erratic behaviour as long as is exist, captains charging into a overpowered defense layer of a station is always going to be frustrating and infuriating to most players, maybe stations defense could be done via correct faction response to threats by sending defense fleets and ships to protect their stations in a logical approach. No workaround is going to fill the gap for having proper control over our capital ships assets.

For me the point of new capital ship commands stands even if egosoft corrects this behavioral change of capital ship combat script via "pilot skill", there is always space for more control for our fleet assets, undeniably L/XL ships are huge investments to be sorted by luck or chance.

Midnitewolf
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Midnitewolf » Tue, 18. May 21, 21:21

Panos wrote:
Tue, 18. May 21, 13:50
Vantharas wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 21:35
Panos wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 19:06


Make sure your capital ships have same range guns. Set them to fly 10-12km from the target. Arrange them all to the Attack Group then select the target and execute a Coordinated Attack. All ships will take position to the maximum range of their main guns, waiting for the slow ones and when the last arrives, they will start bombardment from range.
So tell me how you tell them to sit 10KM away and bombard a station and not fly straight into it? I'm sure if there was an option I would have been told by now instead of being told to sit and Micromange my entire fleet a few clicks at a time.
Some times it works some times is not. Spent hours observing their behaviour. Unfortunately is based on pilot combined skill.
I found the calculations done in move.attack.object.capital.xml in the aiscripts.

In my honest opinion for first time opening the xml scrip files, on two points focused my study

a) Low skill pilots have a chance to pick strong quadrant to attack (aka the one with the defense module on their face)
b) Low skill pilots have a chance to charge and attack at close range because their minimum distance calculator said so, again due to their skill

Major problem occurs when they pick the strongest quadrant having the shortest range set to attack.
At least that is my understanding.

Ways to resolve this.
a) deactivate the main guns. leave only plasma turrets
b) have 4+ skill Piloting & Morale captains on the capital ships.
4+ skill pilots won't solve the issue. I use a cheat where I can get unlimited seminars because I think the whole star rating is stupid or rather I think that even with 5 Stars the AI sucks so why deal with even suckier AI by not having 4-5 star captains. I can attest that 4-5 Stars means nothing.

Prime example. I asked my 4-5 Star Captains to attack a Xenon Destroyer that had wandered way from the defense platform. It was well out of range of the defense platforms guns and my ships were coming at the Xenon Destroyer in a fashion where they would encounter the Xenon DD prior to reaching the station. My expectation, especially with 4-5 Star captains would be that my Destroyers would you travel drive to fly to within maybe 10 km of the Xenon DD and then use impulse drive, for lack of a better word, to move in an engage the Xenon DD. Some of them did that but two flew way the hell past the Xenon DD, so far past it that they were in range of the Defense Platform guns. They just sat their on axis, slowly turning a complete 180 to face the Xenon DD they just flew past and died to the Defense Platforms guns.

This sort of thing has caused me so much frustration that I have literally came within inches of uninstalling the game over it. I would expect this sort of stuff to happen on a 1-2 star captain but when you have 4-5 star captains, your commands should be followed precisely and the idiotic errors like flying past your target by 15 km or more shouldn't be happening. Also on a 4-5 star captain, they should be able to maintain their formation and actually fly as a group rather than 1 or 2 ships immediately flying out to their deaths will the remainer of the fleet is stuck in place for the next 30-45 seconds trying to figure out what to do. This randomness damn never makes the game unenjoyable and unplayable...well unless your ok with having half or more of your fleets getting wiped out to stupidity.

Panos
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Panos » Wed, 19. May 21, 13:42

Midnitewolf wrote:
Tue, 18. May 21, 21:21
Panos wrote:
Tue, 18. May 21, 13:50
Vantharas wrote:
Thu, 13. May 21, 21:35


So tell me how you tell them to sit 10KM away and bombard a station and not fly straight into it? I'm sure if there was an option I would have been told by now instead of being told to sit and Micromange my entire fleet a few clicks at a time.
Some times it works some times is not. Spent hours observing their behaviour. Unfortunately is based on pilot combined skill.
I found the calculations done in move.attack.object.capital.xml in the aiscripts.

In my honest opinion for first time opening the xml scrip files, on two points focused my study

a) Low skill pilots have a chance to pick strong quadrant to attack (aka the one with the defense module on their face)
b) Low skill pilots have a chance to charge and attack at close range because their minimum distance calculator said so, again due to their skill

Major problem occurs when they pick the strongest quadrant having the shortest range set to attack.
At least that is my understanding.

Ways to resolve this.
a) deactivate the main guns. leave only plasma turrets
b) have 4+ skill Piloting & Morale captains on the capital ships.
4+ skill pilots won't solve the issue. I use a cheat where I can get unlimited seminars because I think the whole star rating is stupid or rather I think that even with 5 Stars the AI sucks so why deal with even suckier AI by not having 4-5 star captains. I can attest that 4-5 Stars means nothing.

Prime example. I asked my 4-5 Star Captains to attack a Xenon Destroyer that had wandered way from the defense platform. It was well out of range of the defense platforms guns and my ships were coming at the Xenon Destroyer in a fashion where they would encounter the Xenon DD prior to reaching the station. My expectation, especially with 4-5 Star captains would be that my Destroyers would you travel drive to fly to within maybe 10 km of the Xenon DD and then use impulse drive, for lack of a better word, to move in an engage the Xenon DD. Some of them did that but two flew way the hell past the Xenon DD, so far past it that they were in range of the Defense Platform guns. They just sat their on axis, slowly turning a complete 180 to face the Xenon DD they just flew past and died to the Defense Platforms guns.

This sort of thing has caused me so much frustration that I have literally came within inches of uninstalling the game over it. I would expect this sort of stuff to happen on a 1-2 star captain but when you have 4-5 star captains, your commands should be followed precisely and the idiotic errors like flying past your target by 15 km or more shouldn't be happening. Also on a 4-5 star captain, they should be able to maintain their formation and actually fly as a group rather than 1 or 2 ships immediately flying out to their deaths will the remainer of the fleet is stuck in place for the next 30-45 seconds trying to figure out what to do. This randomness damn never makes the game unenjoyable and unplayable...well unless your ok with having half or more of your fleets getting wiped out to stupidity.
Do you set formation on your Task force or not? Is one of the options on the lead ship. Set them to V shape.

nOy
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by nOy » Wed, 19. May 21, 22:24

Midnitewolf wrote:
Sat, 15. May 21, 19:37

What finally induced me to rage was that I was in a fairly tight cluster of Xenon stations and I painstakingly managed to coax the Xenon Fleet about 20km away from the nearest station. I then ordered my destroyers to attack the Xenon Fleet. My expectation was they would fly toward the Xenon Fleet but stop short to engage them with their powerful frontal guns but nope. Half of them fly way, way past the Xenon Fleet, directly into the guns of the Xenon defensive platforms to slowly turn around and try to engage the Xenon Fleet. Needless to say they all got shredded in seconds.
just honestly don't understand why the devs would design the command system and its AI execution this way. It seems to lack any sort of rational sense at all. I mean why can't your fleet, on order of attack, actually maintain formation and jump to, not past, the enemy when ordered to attack? And to the OPs topic, why can't you order a fleet to a position and have them maintain that position and bombard a station without going all yolo on it? It is not fun, at all, that fleet command is so arbitrary and frankly stupid.
Midnitewolf wrote:
Tue, 18. May 21, 21:21

4+ skill pilots won't solve the issue. I use a cheat where I can get unlimited seminars because I think the whole star rating is stupid or rather I think that even with 5 Stars the AI sucks so why deal with even suckier AI by not having 4-5 star captains. I can attest that 4-5 Stars means nothing.

Prime example. I asked my 4-5 Star Captains to attack a Xenon Destroyer that had wandered way from the defense platform. It was well out of range of the defense platforms guns and my ships were coming at the Xenon Destroyer in a fashion where they would encounter the Xenon DD prior to reaching the station. My expectation, especially with 4-5 Star captains would be that my Destroyers would you travel drive to fly to within maybe 10 km of the Xenon DD and then use impulse drive, for lack of a better word, to move in an engage the Xenon DD. Some of them did that but two flew way the hell past the Xenon DD, so far past it that they were in range of the Defense Platform guns. They just sat their on axis, slowly turning a complete 180 to face the Xenon DD they just flew past and died to the Defense Platforms guns.

This sort of thing has caused me so much frustration that I have literally came within inches of uninstalling the game over it. I would expect this sort of stuff to happen on a 1-2 star captain but when you have 4-5 star captains, your commands should be followed precisely and the idiotic errors like flying past your target by 15 km or more shouldn't be happening. Also on a 4-5 star captain, they should be able to maintain their formation and actually fly as a group rather than 1 or 2 ships immediately flying out to their deaths will the remainer of the fleet is stuck in place for the next 30-45 seconds trying to figure out what to do. This randomness damn never makes the game unenjoyable and unplayable...well unless your ok with having half or more of your fleets getting wiped out to stupidity.

I think one possible reason why the AI is so bad is due to the, how should I say this, "update rate" or "resolution" of the simulation. To further explain, if you are on a ship/station in Mars for example and you go to the map and look at visible ships in far away sectors like Scale Plate Green, you may notice the jerky motion of ship movements. That tells me that in those cases, the game simulation executes slower and loses fine grain resolution for those far away events. That is understandable because those "events" happen far away from you and does not immediately impact you as a player so no sense in running those in higher resolution and end up bogging down PC resources. Now, for events closer to you, you may have noticed what I call a "queueing" effect, especially when you remotely order a ship to attack a target and that ship's starting position is relatively far from the target.

What I noticed is the ship "queues" the position of the enemy at the time you ordered the attack. What then happens is your ship moves to that queued location and only updates the target location when it has reached that queued location. It then goes to that updated location and it keeps on repeating this until the distance is reduced so much so, that it feels that the update is happening in real time. Maybe it switches to real time updating if the enemy is within gun range or maybe not, I simply do not know.

So in the scenarios above, it is possible that after the attack was ordered, both opposing forces started moving towards each other but since the AI does not update the target location in real time, it goes to the last known target location (resulting in flying past one another), giving the impression that it is stupid for in fact it is if this is truly how it works.

Observe all ship actions and you will see the queueing effect in evidence. There might be limitations in the simulation engine which is why this happens so I do not know if this is something that can be fixed. If so, then some form of micromanagement will always be necessary (if you do not want unnecessary losses). The AI does not always suck mind you but it is still on the whole awful.

And did I forget to mention that asking capital ships to move a short distance is like RNG? You are better off asking them to move far away (lining it up so you cancel their move orders once they go where you want them to go). I don't wanna even get started on DE/BS main gun targeting behavior. I have since learned to keep on repeating the phrase wooozaaahhhh...it helps me sleep soundly at night after a lengthy X4 session.

I still play, I am a sucker.
nOy>>

Diroc
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by Diroc » Thu, 20. May 21, 01:13

al_dude wrote:
Sat, 15. May 21, 19:50
Not sure why it wouldn't work. I use the method all the time.

I use no mods, remember that.

All I do is park my behemoth first and just order other destroyers to fly somewhere behind my back. Once there, clear orders and let it attack. That's all there is.

There is something I have noticed though. Some destroyers I have are geared up for anti-fighter with beams. They sometimes try to get into beam range but not always. That's pretty much it. This is hardly a trick.
Use the dropdowns for the turrets. Beam weapons/flak to fighter only Large Plasma to Capital only. Pulse maybe all enemies, depending on the turret placement.

rubahax4
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Re: New capital ship command

Post by rubahax4 » Thu, 20. May 21, 07:07

Egosoft in X4 has created an excellent strategy map, which was not very much lacking in the previous series.
Now we need to finish the strategic AI, it's difficult, but this is the next level of the X series, the major league, if you like.

About shooting stations from a safe distance. Think, in reality this will not happen.
If you can install a long-range cannon on a flying vessel, then many of the same ones can be installed on a stationary vessel.
And if something is far from logic and realism in the game, then it is not so interesting anymore.
The solution may be to add a long-range weapon station, or to refine the rocket mechanics. I like the use of rockets more.
The station can have a lot of missiles with which it could hit capital ships from a distance. And the ships will have to work with missile defense. So it is more logical and real, and more interesting.

Vantharas
Posts: 39
Joined: Sun, 18. Oct 09, 02:52
x3tc

Re: New capital ship command

Post by Vantharas » Sat, 22. May 21, 00:31

capitalduty wrote:
Tue, 18. May 21, 18:17
"Some times it works some times is not. Spent hours observing their behaviour. Unfortunately is based on pilot combined skill.
I found the calculations done in move.attack.object.capital.xml in the aiscripts.

In my honest opinion for first time opening the xml scrip files, on two points focused my study

a) Low skill pilots have a chance to pick strong quadrant to attack (aka the one with the defense module on their face)
b) Low skill pilots have a chance to charge and attack at close range because their minimum distance calculator said so, again due to their skill

Major problem occurs when they pick the strongest quadrant having the shortest range set to attack.
At least that is my understanding. "

If you are correct, this actually means that Egosoft embedded a some form of "actual artificial stupidity" into the combat behaviour script of capital ships. This by all means is truly disappointing, cause already ai behaves in a very erratic and unlogical way many times to add another layer of rng via "pilot skill" into one of most important aspect of fight oriented gameplay.

Egosoft will receive flak for this erratic behaviour as long as is exist, captains charging into a overpowered defense layer of a station is always going to be frustrating and infuriating to most players, maybe stations defense could be done via correct faction response to threats by sending defense fleets and ships to protect their stations in a logical approach. No workaround is going to fill the gap for having proper control over our capital ships assets.

For me the point of new capital ship commands stands even if egosoft corrects this behavioral change of capital ship combat script via "pilot skill", there is always space for more control for our fleet assets, undeniably L/XL ships are huge investments to be sorted by luck or chance.

This would make a lot of sense seeing as how stupid the pilots are, to begin with.

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