AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

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Dreez
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AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Dreez » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 19:12

I had a Helios Vanguard that i used as a piracy ship carrying troops to board capitalships, with a 4 star pilot and 4 highranked crewmen,
yet every time i sent the helios to a destination in the system, close to the target ship, the helios would stop it's traveldrive halfway
to the target and slowboat it 60-50km to the target... and everytime i had to take direct control over the helios to engage travelmode
and quickly hit the breaks once pretty much ontop of the target.

I then changed from the helios to a Rattlesnake because they carry more marines, and i transfered the almost 5star-piloting captain
to the new Rattlesnake for better boarding, faster and more manouverabloe ship.
Yet the same issues remained, the highranked captain continued to stop the travelmode 50-60km from the target and slowboat it.. every time.

Why is the AI doing this, and is there a setting to make them use the travelmode better ?.
Of all the things i've lost, i miss my mind the most.

GCU Grey Area
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by GCU Grey Area » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 20:04

Suspect it just errs on the side of caution to minimise the number of ships which drop out of travel mode too late & overshoot their intended destination. Have certainly flown ships which took quite a while to come to a stop from travel mode, usually as a result of the ship mods I've installed in them, e.g. one of my Rattlesnakes in my last game always took at least 25km to come to a complete stop from travel mode.

By the way, this was also the reason why in my last game I ended up putting my marines in Cobras & using them to run boarding ops, rather than anything bigger. L ships (unless flown personally) just take too long to manoeuvre into position before launching pods, whereas M ships are much better for a fast approach to the target & close pod deployment. Did however take the precaution of storing those Cobras aboard a captured Colossus to keep them safe when not in use. Was also a convenient place to keep spare marines to replace losses incurred during boarding ops.

Dreez
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Dreez » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 20:15

Large ships comes to a complete stop faster than small ships when leaving travelmode, just hit the breaks.
An Helios at full travelspeed of 3500m/s can come to a full stop almost instantly when disengaging the travelmode and hitting the breaks,
so i don't know why a highranked AI captain shouldn't be able to use that technique.
Of all the things i've lost, i miss my mind the most.

Slashman
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Slashman » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 20:18

Dreez wrote:
Thu, 10. Jun 21, 20:15
Large ships comes to a complete stop faster than small ships when leaving travelmode, just hit the breaks.
An Helios at full travelspeed of 3500m/s can come to a full stop almost instantly when disengaging the travelmode and hitting the breaks,
so i don't know why a highranked AI captain shouldn't be able to use that technique.
It may have something to do with how much a drain on AI that creates. I'm assuming it is something complex like that which drains CPU cycles and may affect performance. Way too long in the game for it to be an easy fix IMO.
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Fishille
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Fishille » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 20:26

I got this technique from being an old Eve online player, we used to overcome an old game mechanic doing something similar:
You can set the Fly-To to be past the target by about 50k in the line of travel and your ship lands nearly on top of there you want, quickly change orders and presto. Your ship is where you want much faster.

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Tamina
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Tamina » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 21:36

Well this is for all ships in all situations since Patch 4.0. I hope this is or gets fixed with 4.1 again. Aaaaaany minute now. Aaaaaaaaaany minute.

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Alan Phipps
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Alan Phipps » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 22:00

I was recently parked in my boarding Cobra underneath a FAF Rattlesnake with operational engines but low shield level that I was preparing to board when it noticed a fairly slow multiple Phoenix patrol starting to follow it and sending just a couple of fighters ahead of them which were quickly eliminated by the Rattlesnake at the cost of some light hull damage.

The Rattlesnake then decided to 'withdraw from battle' directly away from the capital patrol rather than be further engaged. However, instead of just quickly traveldriving away from them (by this stage nobody had been shooting at it for a while so the drive should have been available for sustained use) it instead went into a rather poor choice of 'boost a bit - stop when shield is empty - recharge shield a bit - repeat ad nauseam' cycle. It didn't even use its superior cruise speed for more than a second or so at a time.

As a result, the capital patrol got itself into main battery range from directly behind the Rattlesnake and started chewing it up while it had no effective shielding. I gave up on that boarding because my parking position was exposed to the patrol's fire but at least the plunderer was removed by the authorities (for once).
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GCU Grey Area
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by GCU Grey Area » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 22:10

Dreez wrote:
Thu, 10. Jun 21, 20:15
Large ships comes to a complete stop faster than small ships when leaving travelmode, just hit the breaks.
An Helios at full travelspeed of 3500m/s can come to a full stop almost instantly when disengaging the travelmode and hitting the breaks,
so i don't know why a highranked AI captain shouldn't be able to use that technique.
Not necessarily. Particularly not if you've specifically modified a ship to have a high travel mode speed & reduced it's drag. Same AI has to cope with both your slow Helios & my heavily modified Rattlesnake which is moving almost twice as fast. That's what I meant by erring on the side of caution. If it was changed so your Helios was stopping exactly on target every time, my Rattlesnake would be routinely overshooting the mark by a good 25km or so every time it stops.

Slashman also raises a good point. It's probably a lot cheaper (in terms of CPU cycles) to have a relatively dumb 'one size fits all' approach to this, rather than continually monitoring every single ship in the game while it's in travel mode (suspect there may be hundreds of them at any given time) to determine precisely the right moment for each one to exit travel mode based on it's individual characteristics (mass, engine type, ship mods, etc).

Fishille
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Fishille » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 22:24

I don’t mind the system the way it is, learn and adapt.

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Botschafter Von Den Glück
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Botschafter Von Den Glück » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 22:48

after so many years of playing and paying computergames,

im tired of getting treated like being the butler for x (yes this amount of/ repacing this amount of) games.

time for them to serve back.

--
also, as you rise up from **soldier* to *king* within a certain time/years,
YOU finally become the one being asked for wishes.
if a game does not serve, just play your own game.

if the simulation can serve PARTIALLY, is better than not at all.

soldier-> First person shooter.
but the clever man will rise to captain and leader, and this will ask other skills so here comes the strategy.

and once you handle strategic questions in same situation, but from the eyes of the bird, not the frog,
you will feel the need to kick out those bugs.

egosoft is not yet there but we are.
so time for a break for egosoft. not for me. I go ahead without loss of speed.
Botschafter von den Glücksplaneten: Zu 100% Doktor. Die vertrauen mir!

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Baddieus
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Baddieus » Thu, 10. Jun 21, 23:30

If Egosoft made the AI better & better, then before you know it we'd have AGI piloting our ships, and with Terraforming already in play, then suddenly Xenon would appear & take over.

*Be careful what you ask for .. *

=Baddieus=

NightmareNight91
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by NightmareNight91 » Fri, 11. Jun 21, 07:52

I see no sane reason that the AI cant just stop travel drive at like 10km instead of 50-60km...the AI should be programmed around vanilla stats and not take ship mods into account for simplicity sake. ( directed at the above argument about a modded rattlesnake) besides, overshooting by 25km would STILL be better than slowboating 50km...

GCU Grey Area
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by GCU Grey Area » Fri, 11. Jun 21, 09:27

NightmareNight91 wrote:
Fri, 11. Jun 21, 07:52
I see no sane reason that the AI cant just stop travel drive at like 10km instead of 50-60km...the AI should be programmed around vanilla stats and not take ship mods into account for simplicity sake. ( directed at the above argument about a modded rattlesnake) besides, overshooting by 25km would STILL be better than slowboating 50km...
Really not sure I'd describe that as 'better'. Could be catastrophic for a warship. When I'm getting my fleet ready to attack a station I order them to fly to a position that is conveniently close to the station but still well out of range of it's guns. Generally this is around 20km from the target. Not sure I'd have many warships left if they routinely flew right past hostile stations, stopped 5km away from them, slowly did a full 180° turn (while under fire) & then attempted to fly back past the station to get to their intended destination. Have seen stations with over 70 L Plasma turrets, they'll rip a fleet to shreds if you give them half a chance.

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Tamina
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Tamina » Fri, 11. Jun 21, 11:25

This is all besides the point that this is clearly bugged currently. Breaking distance doesn't change dynamically, no need to calculate this every second but once. And the AI is obviously not tied to any physical calculations. Just watch your pilot fly you somewhere, they will suddenly strafe at high speeds in any direction and stop immeadiately again. It could not look more fake than it does.

If you ever played before 4.0 you know this worked correctly in the past.

Yesterday, I flew with my escort ships and got attacked by some Xenon but my defence fighters never arrived, they stopped 40 km away, and then moved slowly in. That is 3-4 minutes of me having no chance to survive. And the best part is they got attacked and did not even respond, nope they continued flying to my last position I had long left behind before recalculation a path to my new destination. 1/3 was destroyed without firing a single shot back. It is frustrating.

And it is the reason many people beg Egosoft for fixing the "AI".

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Und wenn ein Forenbösewicht, was Ungezogenes spricht, dann hol' ich meinen Kaktus und der sticht sticht sticht.
  /l、 
゙(゚、 。 7 
 l、゙ ~ヽ   / 
 じしf_, )ノ 

capitalduty
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by capitalduty » Fri, 11. Jun 21, 16:32

Tamina wrote:
Fri, 11. Jun 21, 11:25
This is all besides the point that this is clearly bugged currently. Breaking distance doesn't change dynamically, no need to calculate this every second but once. And the AI is obviously not tied to any physical calculations. Just watch your pilot fly you somewhere, they will suddenly strafe at high speeds in any direction and stop immeadiately again. It could not look more fake than it does.

If you ever played before 4.0 you know this worked correctly in the past.

Yesterday, I flew with my escort ships and got attacked by some Xenon but my defence fighters never arrived, they stopped 40 km away, and then moved slowly in. That is 3-4 minutes of me having no chance to survive. And the best part is they got attacked and did not even respond, nope they continued flying to my last position I had long left behind before recalculation a path to my new destination. 1/3 was destroyed without firing a single shot back. It is frustrating.

And it is the reason many people beg Egosoft for fixing the "AI".
I really dont mind if doesn't look realistic or cool, travel drive being activated should make all squadron go fast into a fixed formation and then move as one unit to the move position coordinate...they even could brake almost instantly...don't care, but make work reliably please!

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Botschafter Von Den Glück
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Botschafter Von Den Glück » Fri, 11. Jun 21, 22:48

sometimes, the creators of a problem think, there is more time to explain and to repair.
but it is not. the consequences already coming.
this is sadly true icî
Botschafter von den Glücksplaneten: Zu 100% Doktor. Die vertrauen mir!

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Nort The Fragrent
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Re: AI bad at using travelmode - why ?.

Post by Nort The Fragrent » Sat, 12. Jun 21, 20:46

I zip about in an Alligator gas. Quick, nimble, gets me there fast.
When using travel drive, it was once the case that when the gate square is the same width as the shield display, I could disengage the travel-drive, and the Alligator slowed just at the gates entrance.
This has changed ! Disengaging travel-drive takes an age to slow down now ! ( over shooting )

However ! If I have a pilot at the helm, and I am just standing watching. The pilot can Travel-drive right up to the gate and stop instantly !
:?

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