Are AI Pilots aware of what thruster type they have?

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I'm wondering this because all my Combat ships use Combat Thrusters, meaning the are strong in Pitch and Roll, but weak in Yaw. However, despite this, I regularly see my AI pilots choosing to Yaw to track a target when a Roll and Pitch manoeuvre would be significantly faster.

Watching my ships right now, they often yaw for a bit, then do a slight pitch, then yaw a bit more, which is way too slow and means they rarely track their target properly if it's fairly nimble.

So, AI Pilots are obviously flying WRONG based on the ships load-out, that's quite clear, but do higher level Captains actually fly properly in this regard?

Surely the intent is to have the AI fly any ship they are in appropriately, right?

Scoob.

[radcapricorn]

Hull collision damage's been disabled because they can't fly, period. And you're talking thrusters?

[Scoob]

Hull collision damage's been disabled because they can't fly, period. And you're talking thrusters?

It's weird actually, I'd been watching my Combat Thruster equipped Cerberus Frigate try to yaw it's way towards enemies for about 20 minute - which is what triggered this post. I then play for a while as start noticing that it's actually flying properly, using roll and pitch to follow enemies. Looked like it was working well all of a sudden. My Captain doesn't appear to have levelled up in between, so not sure what's going on.

But yeah, this is the least of the AI's problems! lol.

Scoob.

[Falcrack]

The AI pilots, as far as I know, are not aware of anything, their own existence included.

[LameFox]

Hull collision damage's been disabled because they can't fly, period. And you're talking thrusters?

It's weird actually, I'd been watching my Combat Thruster equipped Cerberus Frigate try to yaw it's way towards enemies for about 20 minute - which is what triggered this post. I then play for a while as start noticing that it's actually flying properly, using roll and pitch to follow enemies. Looked like it was working well all of a sudden. My Captain doesn't appear to have levelled up in between, so not sure what's going on.

But yeah, this is the least of the AI's problems! lol.

Scoob.

I think that's a bug with the AI. Sometimes while flying somewhere the AI pilot will initiate a stupidly slow turn as if it was steering an oil tanker with a paddle, but it's not a limitation of the ship and if you take over and try to yaw that same turn manually it goes dozens of times faster.

[Scoob]

I think that's a bug with the AI. Sometimes while flying somewhere the AI pilot will initiate a stupidly slow turn as if it was steering an oil tanker with a paddle, but it's not a limitation of the ship and if you take over and try to yaw that same turn manually it goes dozens of times faster.

That was my point. It's not a limitation of the Ship - it responds as expected when flown manually - it's how the AI sometimes chooses to fly said ship that's the problem.

I think this might be, in part at least, a quirk of how Pilots get better with experience. I'm certainly seeing my pilots fly generally better as they level up - but they still do those weird slow yaw turns from time to time when a quick roll and pitch would be far far quicker.

While this post was specifically about the AI being aware of a ships capabilities, the navigation AI in general does seem to just break down at times. I.e. a ship of mine is showing an order to attack an object when it's on patrol, yet the ship keeps flying in a straight line, making no attempts to turn towards the target at all. I wonder if much of this is programmed dumbness to make the AI appear to improve? In my view, even a new pilot should be able to steer towards a target... It's like there are too many penalties falsely applied to the AI to make it dumber at lower levels that is reasonable.

Scoob.

[LameFox]

In the situation I'm thinking of it's not a matter of the AI choosing yaw vs roll and pitch (although they do that, too) it's that they are yawing at like 2% of how fast the ship itself can yaw. I'm fairly sure it's a bug and not them pretending to be new to flying, because if I delete and reissue the order they can suddenly remember how to aim the ship to the same place in just a couple of seconds. If I allow them to continue the order, they do as your frigate did and can take >5 minutes.

[Socratatus]

Some people expect far too much of the actual capabilities of the Human Race.

AI knows nothing. It`s just programmed to do the basics to fake Human players into thinking they know what they`re doing.