[6.20 beta 5] ships ordered to attack don't use travel mode - Fixed in 7.00

[rudi_pioneer]

Ships ordered to attack a target don't use travel mode. See capital ships in this save ordered to attack terran station: https://www.dropbox.com/s/altyk1a8qjpr0 ... ml.gz?dl=0

if i tell same ships to fly and wait, and then attack, fly and wait part will use travel drive correctly.

[Scoob]

I reported this one a number of times myself. A ship can be given an attack order, and it'll show-boat to the target. However, if you create a waypoint by dragging the attack order - effectively creating a fly to position - near the target, it'll engage travel mode right away.

It was speculated that low-skill pilots might influence this behaviour, but when the above "trick" sees them instantly engage travel mode, it suggests that's not the case.

When it comes to Fighters, the issue can clearly be seen when you compare Carrier-launched Fighters - which work BRILLIANTLY - and just an independent group of Fighters in a Wing. The Carrier-launched fighters deploy and IMMEDIATELY travel drive right to the target. Perfect. The Fighter Group, will sorta wander over casually. Even "Intercept" subordinates of that Fighter Group only engage travel mode when very close.

Ships not engaging their Travel Drives appropriately is a pain. I lose so many ships that way, as ships simply arrive too late due to incompetence. If I can see the issue, I'll do the move order trick to ensure they arrive on time. With larger ships it can be more frustrating as they take longer to spool up their travel drives. So, are they spooling or are they just planning to slow-boat the entire way?

Understanding how Pilot level might influence travel drive use with certain orders would be useful.

[DustBunny]

I was just coming here to post exactly this.

This didn't seem to be a problem before the 6.2 beta, or if it was I just somehow never noticed it before.

Pilot level is not the cause, as I've got some 4-5* pilots captaining several of the capital ships this is happening with. They act no differently in this regard than ships with 2-3* pilot captains. The only difference with pilot level seems to be how far away from a destination point they drop out of travel drive.

This is especially an issue when I'm trying to send ships to another sector to engage a rampaging Xenon. Without a move order preceding an attack order, they will happily chug along at normal non-travel speed the entire distance to the ship they were ordered to attack.

There are a lot of little travel/movement issues this beta that weren't issues before.

[rudi_pioneer]

Makes sense!

Reporting this as a bug since ships are at scale plate green and attack target is at Sol (other side of universe!) and some pilots are 5 stars

[Scoob]

While this post is about Larger ships of course, the same is certainly true of smaller ones too.

I did an experiment. Having seen how well my Carrier-launched fighters performed on Intercept duty - always using their travel drive appropriately - I assigned those same fighters to a separate group, protecting an area. Whether they spotted a target themselves, or were ordered by me to attack, they'd NOT use travel drives properly. Often just slow-boating most of the distance. When Carrier-launched, they'd travel drive even short distances.

This has been an issue since launch. Improvements have been made, certainly, but I still see ships either not engaging travel drive, or exiting travel drive way too soon.

Another thing that can really upset travel drive - even if it's used well - is when a target is moving. Ships will usually fly to where a target WAS when travel drive was engaged. It's like there's no destination update since a ship is in travel drive. I'll often see ships stopping short of where a target IS, because they're now where it WAS. Particularly bad with Capitals as their drives take a while to spool up. Ships can even fly right past a target, if said target moves towards them, as they're still aiming for where it was. This is a problem. Previously, if the target was moving away, a ship simply would not engage travel drives at all.

Lots of feedback has been given on this since the game's launch, I don't know what more the devs need to show the issue? I get that the simple act of doing a save / reload, does NOT capture the game state as observed by the player "live" so to speak. In that a player might save, witness the issue play out perfectly, save, reload observe again and it's different. It's like the act of reloading "wakes up" whatever wasn't engaging travel drives correctly.

Here's the thing, as I mentioned previously, Carrier-launched Fighters show how things should be done, they work brilliantly. So much so, rather than having Wings of Fighters Protecting / defending areas, I'll station a few Carriers loaded with Fighters (I can build both now). I can imagine it's easy for Players to write-off the utility of a Carrier, when seeing how poorly individual Fighter groups perform. However, it's a different experience entirely.

I do think Pilot skill has an influence on certain aspects of what we see. Not the failing to use travel drive at all but, perhaps, the issue of overshooting a target that's moved. The thing is, when there's a delay to engaging travel drives, it exaggerates the issue as the target has moved even further. With those Carrier-launched Fighters, they're literally out of the tubes / off the launch pad and engaging travel drives in moments, it's very very effective.

There's something "special" about ships Controlled by a Carrier - irrespective of them being total Rookies, right out of the Shipyard or not.

For longer-distance travel, traversing multiple gates, things are better. However, larger ships have a habit of going through a gate, turning to a random, INCORRECT vector, flying along that for a bit, prior to actually heading where they're supposed to. That really slows things down. Once they are on-vector though, they do seem to use their travel drives ok for the most part. It's in-sector engagements where the issue is really obvious.

[rudi_pioneer]

I want to clarify that this bug report is for specific bug: ships don’t engage travel drive when ordered to attack, even when many gates away, regardless of pilot level. Switching order to “fly to” works correctly.

[Pimpace]

This is a bug I see since game came out. I don't know why devs don't care of this, maybe there is a reason we don't understand. I saw so many report with this behavior, but never corrected. I don't think that this is something "core" mechanic problem due to I used mods (KUDA AI tweaks for some interest) to overdue this problem. However I don't want to use mods, due to this whole beta test is for the new online features which wont enabled if your game is modified by mods.
It is very frustrating when you see your ships stop their travel engine half sector away before the target, as peeps said before especially capital ships, and slowly drifting to their target. Imagine when a capital ship initiates attack from half sector away with 120 speed, it takes eons when it reaches its target.

I don't understand why devs "keep" this bad behavior, and force us to make this "little tricks" to prevent this behavior, such as: "use fly to next to target first, then attack", or "move the waypoint on map to force ships use their travel engine", etc

No misunderstanding, I don't want to inflame against devs, I just would like to understand why the game use this mechanic since game came out.

[rudi_pioneer]

Bug I’m mentioning started with 6.20 beta, and involves ships in different sectors.

[frickenmoron]

I can vouch for this, if you give a direct attack order to something the ship will just use the normal drive all the way to get to the target. If you given an order like "attack targets in range" it will fly there with travel drive before attacking enemies in range. It's incredibly odd behavior especially since AI ships can chase you down with travel drive before attacking you.

[atsmith66]

This happens to me all the time too. It's not been just since 6.20 either but has been this way for some time.

This is, and has been, my number one biggest frustration with the game. With all the other wonderful fixes Egosoft are adding to X4 I don't personally understand why this one is left alone.

[dvyjns]

This happens to me all the time too. It's not been just since 6.20 either but has been this way for some time.

This is, and has been, my number one biggest frustration with the game. With all the other wonderful fixes Egosoft are adding to X4 I don't personally understand why this one is left alone.

I was directed to this thread after submitting a bug report for it myself. Egosoft should definitely address this one. I was ready to quit the game over this but now that I know what is causing it I can at least work around it for now.

[Gimbutz]

Hi everyone, and sorry for the radio silence. We are aware of the issue and have made improvements but unfortunately this was too late in the beta process to be included. It will be included in a future update.

[j.harshaw]

This should be fixed in the 7.0 beta, by the way.

[Pimpace]

This should be fixed in the 7.0 beta, by the way.

This is good news, will check out, thanks for the info. This bug was the biggest bottleneck of this game, IMHO.

[A5PECT]

Tested ordering a group of 16 Nova fighters to attack a target KHK ship about 100km away.

Save, created in 7.00 beta 2: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Multiple videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdU_ ... GPtmL2RvMf

Video 1: Attack from long range, in high attention

• Novas engage travel drives immediately, but deactivate them about 35km from the target. Some of the Novas reactivate their travel drives after this, others don't.

Video 2: Fly and Wait, then Attack from close range, in high attention

• Novas engage their travel drives immediately, and deactivate them after reaching the designated position designated in the "Fly and Wait" command, then execute the attack order

Video 3: Attack from long range, in low attention

• Novas engage travel drives immediately, but deactivate them about 35km from the target. None of the Novas reactivate their travel drives.

Video 4: Fly and Wait, then Attack from close range, in low attention

• Novas engage their travel drives immediately, and deactivate them after reaching the designated position designated in the "Fly and Wait" command, then execute the attack order

In all instances, the KHK ship targets the closest Nova when it comes within 40km, and the KHK ship then activates its travel drive move toward that Nova. In both high attention scenarios, the KHK ship deactivates its travel drive before reaching the Nova it is targeting. In both low attention scenarios, the KHK deactivates its travel drive too late and overshoots its target.

[A5PECT]

In all, there seems to be a "wall" that AI travel drive logic hits at 40km. I'm guessing this may be an intentional checkpoint for NPC ships to verify and reevaluate the necessity of continuing to use their travel drives.

But having NPC ships stop like this causes issues, such as making pursuit of moving targets inconsistent - or in some cases, impossible.

[A5PECT]

I'll have to do another round of tests to get more concrete evidence, but in my experience, fighters seem to be fairly intelligent and consistent when it comes to using their travel drives for attack orders within this 40km margin.

[Pimpace]

This should be fixed in the 7.0 beta, by the way.

However, sadly (I know this is a bit off topic) if you initiate "collect drops", if there is(are) container(s) at the other side of zone, ship will not use travel drive, slowly drift to the other side which could take 10 mins... Dear devs, could you implement this in proper way, every aspect of acting? No matter what order take in, just use that damn travel drive if target is more than x distance away.

[Arisaya]

I wonder if the fix for this is why capships are traveldriving away from the station that they are ordered to defend when a target gets in range and they get ordered to attack?

[A5PECT]

Is this line from the beta 3 changelog referring to this issue?

[Beta 3] Fixed excessive travel-drive dropouts for small/medium ships during dogfights.

In preliminary testing, I'm getting the same results in beta 3 that I did in beta 2. But I'm not sure if that's what this patch note is about.