Idiots

[jlehtone]

We simply disagree Zalzany. My point is that there are no Ace Pilots in the game, and you believe that there are. I believe that the behaviors ships in-game show support my view but you are welcome to your opinion obviously.

The point is there is, your opinion just they should be even better.

Whether "5 star" is significantly more efficient than "1 star" is one topic. The "Move" command shows an entirely different issue.

Lets use the AR marksmen as analogy. You and your trusty AR are given to a task to watch enemy building. If enemy shows on the window, you must shoot that enemy. So far so good?

The enemy shows on the window. You aim and shoot. Your training and skill affect how quickly and accurately you aim and hit the spot you aim at. Top shooter does it in 0.1 sec and hits bullseye. New recruit takes 5.1 sec and hits within inch or two. Still good.

The equivalent of "X4 move command" is that every soldier, when ordered to shoot a target on window will -- regardless of skill -- aim and shoot at random spot that is within ten feet of the window. They are hardcoded to do that. That we feel to be a problem.


When the (big) turrets take a new target, they will fire their first shots before they actually point at the target. Hence first shots miss, even large stationary targets. Surely they can compute the firing solution? The observed behaviour appears to mimic indirect fire of artillery.


The AI could act "smarter". Faster, more accurate, etc. The issue is that the player at start of game does not have advantages. Not in quality nor quantity of equipment and if playing very first time, not accustomed to controls either. Skilled NPC should kill the player on every encounter. In order to win a fight one would have to get technological superiority first. Considering that the skilled NPC Traders would outrun the player to every good deal, it would take quite a while of very careful grind (and many reloads) before you had any chance in a fight. That would not be casual; hardly appeal to larger audience.

Even now, in this thread, most of lament is because the ships of player do not do good. Frankly, that should be secondary. The primary concern should be on the balance between player and NPC. And yes, they are too easy to defeat, IMHO.

[Pares]

Well, first of all unless they manage to create a super resource efficient AGI, Egosoft should forget simulating human behavior in the first place. None of the commands in the game are so super complex that they shouldn't be executable exactly as the player orders. It has no gameplay benefits and negatively affects immersion. The fact that they even implemented stuff like morale, which affects the overall skill rating and who knows what else and the player has absolutely no control over it whatsoever shows how delusional was the decision making process.

The foundation should have been a super simple system with "robotic" people executing everything precisely and to the letter as the player orders. No deviation at all. The deviation should have been in how the NPCs affect the assets they control. Buffs and debuffs to ship and station stats, trade transactions, etc. directly. That indirectly affects how quickly they defeat the enemy, how good they are at trading or managing a factory. You create the difference in NPC experience by buffing/debuffing their stats affecting tangible assets, not by making them less and less slow and incompetent at executing simple orders and other trivial actions until after dozens of in game hours they reach the pinnacle of the AI capabilities the pilot with 5 stars represents.

[Nanook]

Well, first of all unless they manage to create a super resource efficient AGI, Egosoft should forget simulating human behavior in the first place. None of the commands in the game are so super complex that they shouldn't be executable exactly as the player orders. It has no gameplay benefits and negatively affects immersion. The fact that they even implemented stuff like morale, which affects the overall skill rating and who knows what else and the player has absolutely no control over it whatsoever shows how delusional was the decision making process.

The foundation should have been a super simple system with "robotic" people executing everything precisely and to the letter as the player orders. No deviation at all. The deviation should have been in how the NPCs affect the assets they control. Buffs and debuffs to ship and station stats, trade transactions, etc. directly. That indirectly affects how quickly they defeat the enemy, how good they are at trading or managing a factory. You create the difference in NPC experience by buffing/debuffing their stats affecting tangible assets, not by making them less and less slow and incompetent at executing simple orders and other trivial actions until after dozens of in game hours they reach the pinnacle of the AI capabilities the pilot with 5 stars represents.

I disagree with this completely. What you're describing is a game where, once the player figures it out, it becomes too easy and boring. You need unpredictability in the game to make it interesting for both the new player and the long term vets. While the implementation may leave a bit to be desired, I applaud Egosoft for trying.

[flywlyx]

I disagree with this completely. What you're describing is a game where, once the player figures it out, it becomes too easy and boring. You need unpredictability in the game to make it interesting for both the new player and the long term vets. While the implementation may leave a bit to be desired, I applaud Egosoft for trying.

Nah, "human-alike" is only a marketing idea. Their AI barely has anything designed with this purpose, mostly just bad.
Is X4's economic system Interesting because your freights kept messing up your orders?
No, the complex system made up by simple logic is what makes it Interesting.
Unpredictability should come from a complex system which you could keep improve. An RNG torture machine like this brain damaged-alike AI is only fun for certain kind of people, for most players, it is just torture.

[surferx]

Well, first of all unless they manage to create a super resource efficient AGI, Egosoft should forget simulating human behavior in the first place. None of the commands in the game are so super complex that they shouldn't be executable exactly as the player orders. It has no gameplay benefits and negatively affects immersion. The fact that they even implemented stuff like morale, which affects the overall skill rating and who knows what else and the player has absolutely no control over it whatsoever shows how delusional was the decision making process.

The foundation should have been a super simple system with "robotic" people executing everything precisely and to the letter as the player orders. No deviation at all. The deviation should have been in how the NPCs affect the assets they control. Buffs and debuffs to ship and station stats, trade transactions, etc. directly. That indirectly affects how quickly they defeat the enemy, how good they are at trading or managing a factory. You create the difference in NPC experience by buffing/debuffing their stats affecting tangible assets, not by making them less and less slow and incompetent at executing simple orders and other trivial actions until after dozens of in game hours they reach the pinnacle of the AI capabilities the pilot with 5 stars represents.

I disagree with this completely. What you're describing is a game where, once the player figures it out, it becomes too easy and boring. You need unpredictability in the game to make it interesting for both the new player and the long term vets. While the implementation may leave a bit to be desired, I applaud Egosoft for trying.

Yes. 100% agree. 4500 hrs played and I still thrilled with the game. If the game became predictable/easy/boring I wouldn't have made it to half that many hours.

[flywlyx]

Even now, in this thread, most of lament is because the ships of player do not do good. Frankly, that should be secondary. The primary concern should be on the balance between player and NPC. And yes, they are too easy to defeat, IMHO.

NPC and players are using the Same AI, they are equally bad.
You need at least players' level AI to make NPC challenging.

[Nanook]

...
Unpredictability should come from a complex system which you could keep improve. An RNG torture machine like this brain damaged-alike AI is only fun for certain kind of people, for most players, it is just torture.

I think you're confusing complex with unpredictable. They are not the same. Complex things can be figured out to the point where there is no unpredictability. It then becomes boring. If you like complex but predictable, might I suggest chess? I and everyone else aren't arguing that the AI doesn't need improvement. But you have to realize the devs are trying to balance increased complexity of the AI vs game/computer performance. The more complex the AI scripts become, the more computer power it takes to run those scripts. With players and NPC's accounting for thousands, even tens of thousands, of game objects, performance issues can snowball very quickly.

[flywlyx]

I think you're confusing complex with unpredictable. They are not the same. Complex things can be figured out to the point where there is no unpredictability. It then becomes boring. If you like complex but predictable, might I suggest chess?

We are talking about a game for the human brain which can't even predict a chess game. You completely misunderstand what is unpredictable.
Go game is complex enough to prevent any supercomputer on this planet to claim there is no unpredictability. And its complexity is not even close to any MOBA game that is attracting billions of players.
So clearly, most people complain Go is boring not because they can predict it because they can't find their improvement.

But you have to realize the devs are trying to balance increased complexity of the AI vs game/computer performance. The more complex the AI scripts become, the more computer power it takes to run those scripts. With players and NPC's accounting for thousands, even tens of thousands, of game objects, performance issues can snowball very quickly.

You are now assuming people are complaining their AI is not complex enough, which is clearly not what people are saying here.
Their AI is dumb not because it is simple, is because its complexity is on the wrong side.
Homeworld(1998) has way simpler AI and it is working on computers 20 years ago like a charm, and you could easily have hundreds of ships running on the same map.
I don't have any problem if Ego could make all their OOS AI as simple as Homeworld AI and keep their IS AI current stage.
And we will see how fast people will start avoiding IS battle.
Humans hate unpredictable punishment, it is built-in human genes. The fun of gambling is based on random profit, not random punishment.

[Pesanur]

Homeworld(1998) has way simpler AI and it is working on computers 20 years ago like a charm, and you could easily have hundreds of ships running on the same map.

The original Homeworld also have it problems, player idling ships stays as siting ducks when attacked, they not move to evade fire and retaliate. They limit to fire back from an stationary position as long as you don't give to them another order, making them easy targets.

[flywlyx]

The original Homeworld also have it problems, player idling ships stays as siting ducks when attacked, they not move to evade fire and retaliate. They limit to fire back from an stationary position as long as you don't give to them another order, making them easy targets.

I agree Homeworld(1999) is not even close to perfect, HW2 has improved in many aspects. And we will see how good HM3 will be 10 months later.
But its AI design is still better than X4. I am using it as an example just because people claim better AI requests more computing power.

[Pares]

I disagree with this completely. What you're describing is a game where, once the player figures it out, it becomes too easy and boring. You need unpredictability in the game to make it interesting for both the new player and the long term vets. While the implementation may leave a bit to be desired, I applaud Egosoft for trying.

I don't see how eliminating the inability of the player controlled NPCs to execute simple player orders precisely makes the game easier to figure out or boring. Unpredictability shouldn't come from the fact that you never know how your mentally challenged pilots will screw up simple actions. Unpredictability should come from the actions and reactions of the AI factions. You can introduce randomness in a lot of places, but making the tools with which the player interacts with the game behave unpredictably only leads to frustration and dozens if not hundreds of forum topics like this since release.

[Nekudotayim_]

I do agree with the OP.

Let me compare the "Attack target" and "Move to position" orders:

Attack target (station): They speed drive towards the station way too close with high risk of death.
Move to position: They stop the speed drive way too early traveling with low speed the rest of the path, which takes forever.

If a pilot is not skilled well, they should not jump into the enemy station that close and instead behave like the "Move to position" order. The better the pilot the more perfect they hit the right spot to stop the speed drive.
Why these two orders behave so differently is beyond my understanding.

If you as a player approach a Xenon station the first time, did you just jump right into it? No. You did fly towards it carefully, which should be the behavior of a not so well skilled pilot. While a skilled pilot does know, what he is doing and will approach it much more perfect.

[Nanook]

I disagree with this completely. What you're describing is a game where, once the player figures it out, it becomes too easy and boring. You need unpredictability in the game to make it interesting for both the new player and the long term vets. While the implementation may leave a bit to be desired, I applaud Egosoft for trying.

I don't see how eliminating the inability of the player controlled NPCs to execute simple player orders precisely makes the game easier to figure out or boring. Unpredictability shouldn't come from the fact that you never know how your mentally challenged pilots will screw up simple actions. Unpredictability should come from the actions and reactions of the AI factions. You can introduce randomness in a lot of places, but making the tools with which the player interacts with the game behave unpredictably only leads to frustration and dozens if not hundreds of forum topics like this since release.

I think you're missing my point. The flaws in the AI don't come from the fact that AI pilots have varying skills, they come from a relatively poor implementation of those skills. What you seem to imply is that it's ok for the opposing factions to have unpredictability (brain dead pilots and such) but not the player NPC's. That's really the only way to have such unpredictability in the game. Not sure how you'd make the overall strategies for the factions unpredictable.

...
If you as a player approach a Xenon station the first time, did you just jump right into it? No. You did fly towards it carefully, which should be the behavior of a not so well skilled pilot. While a skilled pilot does know, what he is doing and will approach it much more perfect.

I disagree. An unskilled pilot supposedly has no knowledge of the Xenon, so they'd have one of two attitudes, fear or overconfidence. In the first case, they'd stop far away and not even approach a Xenon station. In the second, they'd most likely unknowingly fly right up to it. A skilled (high star) pilot would attempt to approach it knowing it's capabilities. A low-star pilot would likely not follow orders very well, while a high-star pilot would. BTW, what does "much more perfect" even mean in this context?

To you both, I quote myself "While the implementation may leave a bit to be desired, I applaud Egosoft for trying." I'm one of those who dislike both the move to and the attack commands as they stand. Simple actions should be more predictable, such as dropping out of travel drive a reasonable distance from the destination, or not charging up to and banging into a station when attacking. Those kinds of things need to be fixed without changing the whole flavor of the game, IMO.

[jlehtone]

...
If you as a player approach a Xenon station the first time, did you just jump right into it? No. You did fly towards it carefully, which should be the behavior of a not so well skilled pilot. While a skilled pilot does know, what he is doing and will approach it much more perfect.

I disagree. An unskilled pilot supposedly has no knowledge of the Xenon, so they'd have one of two attitudes, fear or overconfidence. In the first case, they'd stop far away and not even approach a Xenon station. In the second, they'd most likely unknowingly fly right up to it. A skilled (high star) pilot would attempt to approach it knowing it's capabilities.

Lets take a "real life" example: my first encounter with Xenon Station. I went to sector "Faulty Logic" with my Discoverer and saw a fight between big Paranids and Xenon around a Xenon station. Right next to it were those "endless" queues of tiny "drone" or something. I had enough firepower to shoot them and many did drop loot. I was exited. Fortune! After a while I got instant The End. No warning. I figured that someone in the fight had oneshot my ship. Reload, repeat, anohter death. After some attempts I concluded that this was too risky and did not visit the sector in the first place.

Much later I did notice that stations can have turrets.

So, did I approach? Did I "jump in"? Indeed I did.

Could I have read the manual enough to know that Xenon Stations are dangerous? I have no idea.

[capitalduty]

I disagree with this completely. What you're describing is a game where, once the player figures it out, it becomes too easy and boring. You need unpredictability in the game to make it interesting for both the new player and the long term vets. While the implementation may leave a bit to be desired, I applaud Egosoft for trying.

I don't see how eliminating the inability of the player controlled NPCs to execute simple player orders precisely makes the game easier to figure out or boring. Unpredictability shouldn't come from the fact that you never know how your mentally challenged pilots will screw up simple actions. Unpredictability should come from the actions and reactions of the AI factions. You can introduce randomness in a lot of places, but making the tools with which the player interacts with the game behave unpredictably only leads to frustration and dozens if not hundreds of forum topics like this since release.

Yet again, challenge should come around the ability of AI factions to react and be unpredictable to the player, not making all around ai unreliable...that's not a challenge..that's unfinished game mechanic.

[Nanook]

And all I'm saying is I think the concept is sound but the implementation needs a lot of work. I do not believe having all NPC pilots do things in a precise and predictable manner is a good idea. Indeed, life isn't like that.

[SirConnery]

And all I'm saying is I think the concept is sound but the implementation needs a lot of work. I do not believe having all NPC pilots do things in a precise and predictable manner is a good idea. Indeed, life isn't like that.

That's what military pilots are taught to do though. You wouldn't want somebody flying a 100 million dollar plane just doing random approaches and wobbling around when flying formation. What do you think his officers would say

a) Great job on keeping the approaches interesting
b) Next time fly the plane correctly or you're not getting airborne

[Nanook]

And all I'm saying is I think the concept is sound but the implementation needs a lot of work. I do not believe having all NPC pilots do things in a precise and predictable manner is a good idea. Indeed, life isn't like that.

That's what military pilots are taught to do though. You wouldn't want somebody flying a 100 million dollar plane just doing random approaches and wobbling around when flying formation. What do you think his officers would say

a) Great job on keeping the approaches interesting
b) Next time fly the plane correctly or you're not getting airborne

And that's the whole purpose of skill levels. Pilots are taught to fly at varying levels. Not all pilots have the skill to land on an aircraft carrier, for example. In general that's a skill set for naval aviators, not air force pilots. Or transport pilots which don't have the same skill set. And formation flying is a skill set that's learned with a lot of practice, i.e., "skill level". So yeah, less skilled pilots may, as you put it, " doing random approaches and wobbling around when flying formation". Real military pilots have a wide variety of training and skill sets. Hard to model all those in a relatively simple simulation.

[SirConnery]

I get your point but right now even the 5 star pilots don't really fly smart. 5 Star pilots should really be the baseline for how pilots operate were this a perfect game. Or a game trying to simulate space military fights.

But that said, I don't really have a big problem with how the pilots fly right now. And that's because I bought the game for it's economy which works very well. The Pilot AI does it's purpose for me.

But I think it's a reach to say that it's more immersive that military pilots in the game fly around like they've never flown a plane before.

[Pares]

I think you're missing my point. The flaws in the AI don't come from the fact that AI pilots have varying skills, they come from a relatively poor implementation of those skills. What you seem to imply is that it's ok for the opposing factions to have unpredictability (brain dead pilots and such) but not the player NPC's. That's really the only way to have such unpredictability in the game. Not sure how you'd make the overall strategies for the factions unpredictable.

I don't think I'm missing anything. The flaws in the AI come from it's quality and also that it is intentionally dumbed down to simulate pilot incompetence. What does an NPC with 5 stars in every skill represent? You cannot get a better NPC than that, so one would rightly assume it represents the absolute pinnacle of the AI capabilities, right? So what is an NPC with 0 stars in every skill? The whole feature is basically a complete black box to the player (another unacceptable but frequent trend in X4 IMHO), but even just from experience we know that it represents a dumbed down, slower, less capable version of the AI.

The whole skill mechanism is implemented completely backwards. Instead of a system where with time the player is improving/complementing the AI with various buffs/debuffs that could be applied to the controlled assets directly, the player is wasting time by reducing the negative effects applied to the AI until getting to a level that should have been the starting point to begin with.

So my point is don't shoot the already handicapped AI in the leg and drop this mental challenge simulation completely.