Idiots

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Pares
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Re: Idiots

Post by Pares » Tue, 18. Jan 22, 22:36

Nanook wrote:
Sun, 16. Jan 22, 18:28
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_
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Re: Idiots

Post by Nekudotayim_ » Wed, 19. Jan 22, 08:21

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
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Re: Idiots

Post by Nanook » Wed, 19. Jan 22, 20:02

Pares wrote:
Tue, 18. Jan 22, 22:36
Nanook wrote:
Sun, 16. Jan 22, 18:28
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.

Nekudotayim_ wrote:
Wed, 19. Jan 22, 08:21
...
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.
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Re: Idiots

Post by jlehtone » Wed, 19. Jan 22, 21:22

Nanook wrote:
Wed, 19. Jan 22, 20:02
Nekudotayim_ wrote:
Wed, 19. Jan 22, 08:21
...
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. :P

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

Post by capitalduty » Wed, 19. Jan 22, 22:20

Pares wrote:
Tue, 18. Jan 22, 22:36
Nanook wrote:
Sun, 16. Jan 22, 18:28
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
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Re: Idiots

Post by Nanook » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:00

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. :P
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

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SirConnery
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Re: Idiots

Post by SirConnery » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:03

Nanook wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:00
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. :P
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
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Re: Idiots

Post by Nanook » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:14

SirConnery wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:03
Nanook wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:00
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. :P
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. :wink:
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

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SirConnery
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Re: Idiots

Post by SirConnery » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:33

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
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Re: Idiots

Post by Pares » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:47

Nanook wrote:
Wed, 19. Jan 22, 20:02

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.

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Re: Idiots

Post by Pares » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 01:03

Nanook wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:14
SirConnery wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:03
Nanook wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 00:00
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. :P
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. :wink:
The question is what skill range do we want in the game? The current system, where a 0 star pilot represents someone who has just started to attend the pilot academy and has 0 minutes flown yet, or a system where a 0 star pilot represents someone who at least graduated the academy and went through the training like everyone in the military who is allowed to fly a multi million dollar warplane?

The whole current hand holding personal seminar gifting mechanism is a colossal immersion braking waste of time.

builder680
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Re: Idiots

Post by builder680 » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 05:48

Pares wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 01:03
The question is what skill range do we want in the game? The current system, where a 0 star pilot represents someone who has just started to attend the pilot academy and has 0 minutes flown yet, or a system where a 0 star pilot represents someone who at least graduated the academy and went through the training like everyone in the military who is allowed to fly a multi million dollar warplane?

The whole current hand holding personal seminar gifting mechanism is a colossal immersion braking waste of time.
I made this very point multiple times earlier in the thread. The "scale" to me is the problem. I don't personally find it believable that a "0" star pilot would be so unskilled. Presumably, anyone allowed near the controls of an armed flying vehicle would at least have a few hundred hours in a simulator and a basic understanding of throttle, yaw, pitch, roll, etc. I envision 0 star pilots being fresh academy graduates. Or at least fresh simulator trainees. As a rl example,the idea that anyone would hand over the keys to something like an F-35 to some random schmuck on the street just doesn't sit right with me. But maybe it makes sense to others, I dunno. Maybe the space future is different.

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Re: Idiots

Post by Insects » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 06:31

builder680 wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 05:48
. As a rl example,the idea that anyone would hand over the keys to something like an F-35 to some random schmuck on the street just doesn't sit right with me. But maybe it makes sense to others, I dunno. Maybe the space future is different.
When that happens isn't it the player deciding to employ a cheap idiot who has only done some online course?
The 3+ star pilots hiring fee is in the millions, cheap "I spent an hour in MS Flight simulator though crashed the landing" pilot literally standing unemployed in the street is 2k. 5k-10k for the random hire employment agency dealer delivery pilot guaranteed not to blow the ship up leaving port but that's about it.

The player has the option of only employing properly trained pilots, but since most are doing nothing more than being space pizza delivery boys players are happy employing the lowest priced pilot for most jobs.

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Re: Idiots

Post by builder680 » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 07:17

I guess I just think the baseline (0 stars) should be someone qualified to at least walk and chew gum at the same time. That seems to be the disconnect here. The "options" for "properly" trained pilots are seminars (not practical for mass production) or terraforming (at which point the game is pretty much over, you're just managing your economy). There's a lot of game between those points, and basic starter employees in-between those points should have a baseline above "0-star spray-paint-huffing hobo", imo.

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Re: Idiots

Post by Nekudotayim_ » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 07:59

I did attack a Xenon station yesterday with 5 destroyers.

I had to manually micro-manage every single ship as they started to do very stupid things in the mids of the battle.
I had to constantly keep an eye on every single one of them.
I had to teleport to every one of them to manually fix stuff which has been undone, when I gave back control.
I became angry when one of them liked to attack the "backside" of the station basically flying straight through it getting shot to death.

It was a pain.
It was horrible.
It was annoying.
It was no fun.

I have to continue this battle today. I do not really like to load up that save to be honest.

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Re: Idiots

Post by Nekudotayim_ » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 08:14

Nanook wrote:
Wed, 19. Jan 22, 20:02
Nekudotayim_ wrote:
Wed, 19. Jan 22, 08:21
...
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
I think every indiviual in the X universe does know about the Xenon as there have been many threats coming from them in the history of the X universe. I will not believe that there is just one individual not knowing about the Xenon at all.

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Re: Idiots

Post by GCU Grey Area » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 09:49

builder680 wrote:
Thu, 20. Jan 22, 05:48
I don't personally find it believable that a "0" star pilot would be so unskilled. Presumably, anyone allowed near the controls of an armed flying vehicle would at least have a few hundred hours in a simulator and a basic understanding of throttle, yaw, pitch, roll, etc. I envision 0 star pilots being fresh academy graduates. Or at least fresh simulator trainees. As a rl example,the idea that anyone would hand over the keys to something like an F-35 to some random schmuck on the street just doesn't sit right with me. But maybe it makes sense to others, I dunno. Maybe the space future is different.
That seems unlikely to me. Would imply that absolutely everyone, regardless of the job they're expected to do, receives comprehensive pilot training from this mythical academy. Vast majority of 0* pilots I use start out as service crew who have gained high morale aboard one of my freighters, miners or construction vessels. Although in practice they don't stay at 0* for long at all - I do make sure to give them an instruction manual (at least the ubiquitous basic & 1* seminars) on their way to the flight deck. Essentially those are the 'fresh simulator trainees', at least that's how they get to 2* piloting in my games. Academy graduates takes a bit longer to get going, since I have to build the academy first which takes a few days. However once that's up & running they get to start their new career as a pilot at 4*.

Ragnos28
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Re: Idiots

Post by Ragnos28 » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 10:02

All this discution begin to look like some sort of christian lore...where is God and the angels? I can't see them :gruebel: ...well...they live in the clouds, that is why you can't see them 8) ...ahem, ok :roll: ...after two thousands years...great, now we are flying in the clouds, where is God and the angels? still can't see them ...ahh, it was more like a philosophical thing, they don't actually live in the clouds, lol :mrgreen:

The same with pilots skills....the player: hey, my pilots are doing dumb shit...well, they are not skilled, you need 5 stars pilots with 5 stars morale...aham...ok, here...5 star 5 morale pilots, they still do dumb shit...well, it was a philosophical thing, the AI is actually bad, we can't make good AI, you would need quantum supercomputers to use the good AI we would make (even tho some ppl give examples of games from 1995 with better implemented AI). :doh:

Just say the AI is not optimal, keep an eye for it, be prepared for 5 stars pilots to do stupid shit and plan accordingly. Like in the case of station busting, know for a fact that 5 star destroyers pilots, will take that turett fire in the face and be ready to snipe the turetts or not use destroyers at all for station busting, when there are live turetts on.

jlehtone
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Re: Idiots

Post by jlehtone » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 11:00

The best part of this is that while we somewhat agree that AI is not nice, we strongly disagree on the details.
Therefore, Egosoft can conclude that current implementation is an "acceptable" compromise. :twisted:
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builder680
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Re: Idiots

Post by builder680 » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 11:08

Yeah. The "best" part. sigh...

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