Idiots

This forum is the ideal place for all discussion relating to X4. You will also find additional information from developers here.

Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum

flywlyx
Posts: 957
Joined: Sat, 15. May 21, 03:45
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by flywlyx » Thu, 13. Jan 22, 07:59

tsathogguah wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 03:27
@ jlehtone

Truly I don't know. When the AI goes off the rails, I'm not sure if it's because pilot skill or wonky AI. Do you know?

For instance, if I say "fly to" and the AI either won't engage travel mode, or will disengage travel mode way before the destination, or won't align anywhere near the actual command, is that related to pilot skill at all or just bad AI? Either alternative seems bad and should get fixed.
"Fly to" command itself is massed up, it is designed not to Drive your ship to its destination(somerandom position away from its destination based on ship size) and disengage travel drive earlier than ideal(1 min earlier So it always needs 1 extra min flight).

Nanook
Moderator (English)
Moderator (English)
Posts: 27829
Joined: Thu, 15. May 03, 20:57
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by Nanook » Thu, 13. Jan 22, 18:39

flywlyx wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 07:59
...

"Fly to" command itself is massed up, it is designed not to Drive your ship to its destination(somerandom position away from its destination based on ship size) and disengage travel drive earlier than ideal(1 min earlier So it always needs 1 extra min flight).
1 minute? Try 10 minutes! I recently called in one of my L freighters to pick up some cargo I'd 'liberated' from a build storage. It entered the sector and proceeded via travel drive to my position. It dropped out of travel drive at 50+ km and continued flying towards me at a blistering 87 m/sec. Calculated time to arrival ~10 minutes real time. :shock: The crates likely would've despawned by then. :roll:
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.

dtpsprt
Posts: 2794
Joined: Wed, 6. Nov 02, 20:31
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by dtpsprt » Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:09

Nanook wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 18:39
flywlyx wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 07:59
...

"Fly to" command itself is massed up, it is designed not to Drive your ship to its destination(somerandom position away from its destination based on ship size) and disengage travel drive earlier than ideal(1 min earlier So it always needs 1 extra min flight).
1 minute? Try 10 minutes! I recently called in one of my L freighters to pick up some cargo I'd 'liberated' from a build storage. It entered the sector and proceeded via travel drive to my position. It dropped out of travel drive at 50+ km and continued flying towards me at a blistering 87 m/sec. Calculated time to arrival ~10 minutes real time. :shock: The crates likely would've despawned by then. :roll:
For both of you.
The position that the ship (any ship) will change from traveldrive to normal drive is calculated with the distance a Dragon Raider with Argon MK3 Combat Engines and MK1 Normal Thrusters will travel before coming to a stop!!!
It does sound stupid I know, but that has been my conclusion after many tries.
The first time (in my knowledge) this came into view was during the V3.00 BETA when, after an argument I had with Imperial Good for the absurdity of not been able to give numeral coordinates to ships. I made a test save for him to try to send a freighter to a certain position (Guild Mission Deliver Ship). Trying to do so, the extreme distance that the freighter would always stop and start normal travel was first observed by Egosoft.
The conclusion of a whole discussion about it (from moderators, players and devs) was that of they make it closer to the target some ships will overshoot. This drove me to the conclusion that there is only one solid parameter in this part of the flying algorithm, probably so that the CPU will not have to compute simple Newtonian Equations in addition to every boulder and up in the Galaxy all the time as it does now to the detriment of everything else save time included every tie a ship enters normal drive from traveldrive. It was left like that...
Have fun...

P.S. Of course there is a tiresome and micromanaging workaround for this:
Spoiler
Show
Just "nudge" the "go to" point a bit and the ship enters traveldrive again and stops very close to it
EDIT: Just stating facts and trying to be polite to Egosoft since this is their website afterall...

Nanook
Moderator (English)
Moderator (English)
Posts: 27829
Joined: Thu, 15. May 03, 20:57
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by Nanook » Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:21

dtpsprt wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:09
...
The position that the ship (any ship) will change from traveldrive to normal drive is calculated with the distance a Dragon Raider with Argon MK3 Combat Engines and MK1 Normal Thrusters will travel before coming to a stop!!!
It does sound stupid I know, but that has been my conclusion after many tries. ...
Hmm. Sounds to me like a placeholder that hasn't been replaced yet. I wonder if it ever will.
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.

dtpsprt
Posts: 2794
Joined: Wed, 6. Nov 02, 20:31
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by dtpsprt » Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:27

Nanook wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:21
Hmm. Sounds to me like a placeholder that hasn't been replaced yet. I wonder if it ever will.
I bet you one DLC over nothing that it will not. X5 will come sooner than this...

GCU Grey Area
Posts: 7778
Joined: Sat, 14. Feb 04, 23:07
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by GCU Grey Area » Fri, 14. Jan 22, 11:06

dtpsprt wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:09
The position that the ship (any ship) will change from traveldrive to normal drive is calculated with the distance a Dragon Raider with Argon MK3 Combat Engines and MK1 Normal Thrusters will travel before coming to a stop!!!
Interesting hypothesis, however doubt it was that specific ship. Think more likely to be a more common ship type & one that's been in the game from the start, rather than one added as DLC. Suspect mining ships might be a better candidate. When fully loaded they can have extraordinarily long stopping distances from travel mode, easily on the order of 50km.

Have been having issues with this myself recently. Needing a ton of Nividium for HQ teleport research & only owning 1 Manorina miner (I counted it twice to make sure) had to do all the mining myself. Discovered if I want to avoid overshooting & come to a complete stop anywhere near the docks I have to start braking at least 85km from HQ when hauling a full load. Suspect it's possible that in this specific case stopping distance is being adversely affected by ship mods (specifically, Lubricator providing around 10% drag reduction & Twister reducing strafe thrust by almost 30%).

dmk
Posts: 682
Joined: Fri, 25. Nov 05, 00:59
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by dmk » Fri, 14. Jan 22, 12:03

i think i can add that if docking with station is moved in orders queue to first place,
then (when player is in other sector) ATLAS can turns 180 degree (i.e. opposite direction) without exiting from travel drive (i.e. full speed).

p.s. while acceleration calculation does require division and can be somewhat slow, still is possible to make one division on situation when mass changed and only once before entering travel drive,
but for exception of that division modern cpu perfectly capable to calculate stopping distance for each medium and large vessel in the game per frame,
and GPU even faster, obviously only if that specifically optimized.
more over game allows for player to use match speed so that travel drive still engage at normal speed, i.e. no need to fully disengage travel drive even if doing finishing of fly to by try & error.
on initial topic, Asgard with +68% shields mod almost killed himself (having other Asgard nearby) by ramming normal Xenon defense station, when player is out of sector.

dtpsprt
Posts: 2794
Joined: Wed, 6. Nov 02, 20:31
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by dtpsprt » Fri, 14. Jan 22, 12:56

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Fri, 14. Jan 22, 11:06
dtpsprt wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:09
The position that the ship (any ship) will change from traveldrive to normal drive is calculated with the distance a Dragon Raider with Argon MK3 Combat Engines and MK1 Normal Thrusters will travel before coming to a stop!!!
Interesting hypothesis, however doubt it was that specific ship. Think more likely to be a more common ship type & one that's been in the game from the start, rather than one added as DLC. Suspect mining ships might be a better candidate. When fully loaded they can have extraordinarily long stopping distances from travel mode, easily on the order of 50km.

Have been having issues with this myself recently. Needing a ton of Nividium for HQ teleport research & only owning 1 Manorina miner (I counted it twice to make sure) had to do all the mining myself. Discovered if I want to avoid overshooting & come to a complete stop anywhere near the docks I have to start braking at least 85km from HQ when hauling a full load. Suspect it's possible that in this specific case stopping distance is being adversely affected by ship mods (specifically, Lubricator providing around 10% drag reduction & Twister reducing strafe thrust by almost 30%).
Well... never had that problem/behaviour in V2.60, at least did not notice it. What makes my hypothesis stronger is that there was no mention of this behaviour/complaint/support thread before... As I said Egosoft noticed it when actually Imperial Good mentioned and showed it to them.
I don't believe any calculation could have been made taking mods into consideration, especially since the mod effects are random.

GCU Grey Area
Posts: 7778
Joined: Sat, 14. Feb 04, 23:07
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by GCU Grey Area » Fri, 14. Jan 22, 14:03

dtpsprt wrote:
Fri, 14. Jan 22, 12:56
Well... never had that problem/behaviour in V2.60, at least did not notice it. What makes my hypothesis stronger is that there was no mention of this behaviour/complaint/support thread before... As I said Egosoft noticed it when actually Imperial Good mentioned and showed it to them.
I don't believe any calculation could have been made taking mods into consideration, especially since the mod effects are random.
Yeah, very much doubt ship mods are taken into account when determining the point at which an AI flown ship should exit travel mode. Rather suspect it's quite basic, to conserve CPU time for more important stuff. Just think that miners are perhaps a more likely choice as a benchmark for ships which take a very long time to slow down, simply because there are so many more of them in the game than Dragon Raiders with a very specific configuration. The comments about my own modded Manorina were largely just for context - that particular ship becoming rather awkward to fly when fully loaded was what got me thinking about stopping distances for miners in general.

taztaz502
Posts: 799
Joined: Sun, 17. Nov 13, 12:22
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by taztaz502 » Fri, 14. Jan 22, 16:01

Guess i'm the only person who doesn't see a different between 5* and 1* pilots other than the extra commands that unlock, this is even using 5* everything for pilots in custom game start, they're still as stupid as ever.

flywlyx
Posts: 957
Joined: Sat, 15. May 21, 03:45
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by flywlyx » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 04:53

Nanook wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 18:39
1 minute? Try 10 minutes! I recently called in one of my L freighters to pick up some cargo I'd 'liberated' from a build storage. It entered the sector and proceeded via travel drive to my position. It dropped out of travel drive at 50+ km and continued flying towards me at a blistering 87 m/sec. Calculated time to arrival ~10 minutes real time. :shock: The crates likely would've despawned by then. :roll:
You are right, 1min is not applied, the judgment is based on the destination's location in the "zone" which as far as I understand has a size of 50km, so looks like you are very unlucky, your destination is on the other side of the end "zone". But they are always expecting ships exit travel drive from 10km anyway. So at least 1 min should be expected.

flywlyx
Posts: 957
Joined: Sat, 15. May 21, 03:45
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by flywlyx » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 05:15

dtpsprt wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:09
The position that the ship (any ship) will change from traveldrive to normal drive is calculated with the distance a Dragon Raider with Argon MK3 Combat Engines and MK1 Normal Thrusters will travel before coming to a stop!!!
I am pretty sure this is not the case for capital ships.
And the whole "move" command never meant to "move" to the exact destination, it only moves to a "safe position". So the whole calculation is not that exact from the very begining.
dtpsprt wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:09
It does sound stupid I know, but that has been my conclusion after many tries.
The first time (in my knowledge) this came into view was during the V3.00 BETA when, after an argument I had with Imperial Good for the absurdity of not been able to give numeral coordinates to ships. I made a test save for him to try to send a freighter to a certain position (Guild Mission Deliver Ship). Trying to do so, the extreme distance that the freighter would always stop and start normal travel was first observed by Egosoft.
The conclusion of a whole discussion about it (from moderators, players and devs) was that of they make it closer to the target some ships will overshoot. This drove me to the conclusion that there is only one solid parameter in this part of the flying algorithm, probably so that the CPU will not have to compute simple Newtonian Equations in addition to every boulder and up in the Galaxy all the time as it does now to the detriment of everything else save time included every tie a ship enters normal drive from traveldrive. It was left like that...
Their whole "move" command is based on a "zone" system, so the ending loop is not specified, looks like the zone size is around 50km, which means in the worst case, your ship will very likely drop out of travel drive 50km (or more) away and adjust the "safe position" and fly again. Since the "zone" mechanism is not clear, how far the final phase will be is also unclear.

Nanook
Moderator (English)
Moderator (English)
Posts: 27829
Joined: Thu, 15. May 03, 20:57
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by Nanook » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 09:15

flywlyx wrote:
Sat, 15. Jan 22, 05:15
dtpsprt wrote:
Thu, 13. Jan 22, 19:09
The position that the ship (any ship) will change from traveldrive to normal drive is calculated with the distance a Dragon Raider with Argon MK3 Combat Engines and MK1 Normal Thrusters will travel before coming to a stop!!!
I am pretty sure this is not the case for capital ships.
And the whole "move" command never meant to "move" to the exact destination, it only moves to a "safe position". So the whole calculation is not that exact from the very begining.
...
Not true. If I drop a satellite or nav beacon, and tell my L freighter to move to it, it will practically bump into it. The problem is with the distance it drops out of travel drive before traveling the rest of the way 'slow boat'. It doesn't stop at your so-called "safe position".
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.

flywlyx
Posts: 957
Joined: Sat, 15. May 21, 03:45
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by flywlyx » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 17:37

Nanook wrote:
Sat, 15. Jan 22, 09:15
Not true. If I drop a satellite or nav beacon, and tell my L freighter to move to it, it will practically bump into it. The problem is with the distance it drops out of travel drive before traveling the rest of the way 'slow boat'. It doesn't stop at your so-called "safe position".
How frequently do you have your capital ship move to the exact location you asked it?
And "safe position" doesn't mean it is collision-free, it is only called so in the AI scripts.
I have no clue why it is called "safe". But it is part of why the ship never fly as we expected it.

Code: Select all

<get_safe_pos result="$position" zone="$positionspace" object="$destination" radius="this.ship.size * 2" max="this.ship.size * 3" ignored="this.ship"/>
It looks like a position randomly selected in a certain radius based on the ship size, but I have no clue why it is necessary.

builder680
Posts: 1315
Joined: Mon, 14. Feb 11, 03:58
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by builder680 » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 18:10

Nanook wrote:
Sat, 15. Jan 22, 09:15
Not true. If I drop a satellite or nav beacon, and tell my L freighter to move to it, it will practically bump into it. The problem is with the distance it drops out of travel drive before traveling the rest of the way 'slow boat'. It doesn't stop at your so-called "safe position".
The actual "fly to" command does send them to a random spot like an electron in a valence cloud, some fuzzy probability field near the spot you told it to go. You can see this if you watch them do the full command.
Supposedly, it is more "human-like." Other commands are more precise in regard to destination, but they do still drop out of travel drive early.

capitalduty
Posts: 365
Joined: Mon, 23. May 16, 02:02

Re: Idiots

Post by capitalduty » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 18:32

builder680 wrote:
Sat, 15. Jan 22, 18:10
Nanook wrote:
Sat, 15. Jan 22, 09:15
Not true. If I drop a satellite or nav beacon, and tell my L freighter to move to it, it will practically bump into it. The problem is with the distance it drops out of travel drive before traveling the rest of the way 'slow boat'. It doesn't stop at your so-called "safe position".
The actual "fly to" command does send them to a random spot like an electron in a valence cloud, some fuzzy probability field near the spot you told it to go. You can see this if you watch them do the full command.
Supposedly, it is more "human-like." Other commands are more precise in regard to destination, but they do still drop out of travel drive early.
Can someone explain why "fly to" command cannot be as ping-point precise as possible? I mean games like HW and others can achieve this without any trouble...I don't understand why rng or imprecise commands are necessary in X4?.

flywlyx
Posts: 957
Joined: Sat, 15. May 21, 03:45
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by flywlyx » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 18:41

builder680 wrote:
Sat, 15. Jan 22, 18:10
The actual "fly to" command does send them to a random spot like an electron in a valence cloud, some fuzzy probability field near the spot you told it to go. You can see this if you watch them do the full command.
Supposedly, it is more "human-like." Other commands are more precise in regard to destination, but they do still drop out of travel drive early.
I have no clue why it is called "human-like", brain dead is not "human-like".
Any human licensed driver could park into a parking lot only 20% bigger than his car, while this "human-like" thing is designed to park within the space with a radius of 3 times longer than its ship.
It is nothing close to human, just a pointless excuse.

builder680
Posts: 1315
Joined: Mon, 14. Feb 11, 03:58
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by builder680 » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 18:48

Egosoft designed artificial stupidity into its commands to be more "human like" and to allow "progression" based on its skill star system. It's basically the entire point of my rant in the op. It's aggravating design.

This post is what I think would be a better skill system if one must exist.

Alan Phipps
Moderator (English)
Moderator (English)
Posts: 30368
Joined: Fri, 16. Apr 04, 19:21
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 19:10

It often seems like half the posts on such topics say that stupidity is deliberately designed into low skill NPCs to make skill progression a gameplay target to achieve more competent NPC behaviour, yet the other half of posts say that achieving skill progression makes no difference at all in terms of NPC stupidity and competence. If both camps are mainly correct then it follows that the intended skill progression effect on NPC competence is somehow broken and needs some attention from the devs. :?
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

builder680
Posts: 1315
Joined: Mon, 14. Feb 11, 03:58
x4

Re: Idiots

Post by builder680 » Sat, 15. Jan 22, 19:16

Basically, skill determines things like percentage distance from destination a ship leaves travel drive, percentage distance it will engage with its turrets assigned to a target type, turnaround to find new trade offers, repair speed, mining speed, and other stuff I'm not sure of. That's what I've read, anyway.

So, it does improve behavior, it's just that the pinnacle of five stars is what the default should be in the first place. Imo skill should give benefits other than basic functionality that had been deliberately hobbled until you got to five stars.

The AI is bad enough, it doesn't need made worse for every pilot not at five stars, which is most of them. How anyone thought this was a good idea on a team capable of creating such a good game baffles me. A lot of the game design baffles me tbh.

Post Reply

Return to “X4: Foundations”