[SCR] Smart Turrets v4.7.2 (AP, 05-04-14), v2.6 (TC, 21-08-13)

[Shimrod]

Smart 2.0 has no option for disabling laser switching. If there aren't enough lasers available for efficient switching it'd be best to use a stock script, or run stock scripts on the majority of turrets from which Smart won't rob any lasers (it should only switch from those available in cargobay). The hotkey only cycles Smart modes on the turrets running Smart so it won't mess with those other turret commands.

I started a fresh XTC game with the Yokahoma yesterday. Running Smart on it with the default set of lasers means I often get squeezed down to 1 beta EMP in the main guns when shooting fighters. Its actually given me a goal to work towards, earning enough to buy enough guns to efficiently run Smart. I'm playing legit - no script editor enabled

Re cease fire, check out the following hotkey:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=224456

I should point out Smart isn't optimized for capping. It'll stop shooting right when a target turns blue, which generally works fine when shooting PBE's at them but tends to be a bloodbath when a backlog of PPCs are inbound to it. MARS has a more sophisticated cap mode where it stops shooting at a certain hull percentage for a time, allowing the pilot time for his spiel before bailing.

Personally I always edit all laser ware volumes to 1 before starting a game so its possible to achieve a full loadout with any ship. Makes the fireworks prettier, Tyr becomes viable, no downside.

[garrry34]

founds me a bug, smart is shooting down my own missile that I have launched...

...ok did a bit of experimenting, its not a bug as such, it was shooting down missiles if I had one of my ships targeted, its fine for enemy ships, so I apologise false alarm...

[Shimrod]

I noticed the same when trying to destroy one of my own ships with missiles. Its the missile interception feature - all ships of a race intercept missiles incoming to any other ship of the same race, even if its your own missile

[deca.death]

.

Possible request: add option 'turrets: off' to 'smart' configuration key -or even add new key just for that. When I want to capp some ship and it bails, your effective turrets often destroy it.

[Gazz]

Try the Turret On/Off Hotkey script.

I won't ruin the suspense by telling you what it does, though.

[primvirlaux]

Just dropping in to say thanks for an excellent script. Made a great game even better, IMO.

[deca.death]

Just dropping in to say thanks for an excellent script. Made a great game even better, IMO.

I agree, this script is awesome and I discovered that just recently (although I have it installed) because of stupidest reason possible: it has bad "presentation" : ) you virtually are not sure is it even installed, it has same look'n'feel as in vanilla.

now something like "Missile defense Improved"
or " "Missile defense Mk.2" would be much more attractive.

It's stupid, I know but that is how human stupid mind works : ) Makes thing more special somehow.

[HotSake]

This is the thread for Smart Turrets, which do a whole lot more than just missile defense and don't use the vanilla turret commands. Are you sure you're not thinking of Gazz's Missile Defense Mk. 2, which is purely an improved replacement for the vanilla script and looks the same in the command menu?

[deca.death]

.

Ahhh, yes, I follow both threads, so i mixed up things a little I guess :) Btw I use smart turrets mostly, they are extremely effective. Best thing is when my target freighter launches fight drones and they like all explode in a same time around his ship : )

Only thing I dislike about them is that they mix up my weapon selections and take weapons which they want : ) I actually don't like this at all although it can be useful in some situations.

Btw gazz's Md Mk2 is also very effective script.

[Shimrod]

Thanks guys.

I had been considering options to optimize for low laser availability scenarios, and for disabling laser switching.

I haven't been doing much gaming at all at the moment though, maybe when XTC 2.0 comes along I'll fire it up again.

Its not a problem that usually affects me however as I always play with laser volumes modified to 1. I can then fully outfit any ship with every combination of lasers, and have yet to find a downside to that

[primvirlaux]

quick question (sorry if I you answered it already, but I didn't find it in the thread):

does the script work if you collect your ships into wings? What I mean is, if I put ships into wings (gold, blue, etc), I get a new option "set turret command for all ships" (or something similar), but the sript commands ("smart defense" etc) don't show up there. However, maybe the ships continue their old commands before they were put into wings (in which case I would just have to avoid giving them a new turret command once they're in a wing)

[Gazz]

AFAIK, there *are* no custom wing turret commands so noone can create new ones.

[Shimrod]

Wing ships still use normal turret commands. That 'set turret command for all ships' is a builtin convenience menu for broadcasting to all the ships in the wing. Unfortunately that menu isn't extensible with custom turret commands, so its not all that convenient for custom turret scripts.

I worked around this limitation as follows. Under Smart's menu there's an option to broadcast turret commands. The menu can be found under Combat commands -> Smart -> Broadcast, and is present in ship and wing menus as long as fight cmd mk2 is available. I also added a station command to open the menu.

Depending on where the menu is launched from (a wing, a ship, a station) the broadcast operates relative to that object (wing ships, a specific ship, ships owned by the station). It can also broadcast to all player ships, all ships in sector, ships owned/docked at the specific ship, and has options to limit broadcast by ship class.

This works out more powerful than the builtin wing broadcast as you can broadcast to various scopes of player ships not just wings. You can also broadcast the Smart mainguns additional ship command, the train lasers command, and also broadcast that Smart should terminate.

[deca.death]

.

Now help me to determine guilty party in this case, a shameless criminal!

I'm using both Gazz's MD mk2 and Shimrod' Smart Turrets, (both recommended by XRM, couldn't decide what to use so I took both) so I'll post in both threads.

Here is the case;
My boarding pods have been shot down regularly with highest possible prioritizing and uncanny robot like precision. When you combine some of your script logic with beam weaponry and improved speed guns XRM uses, it makes life of every wannabee future pirate hellish nightmare. I know what you must think now "this noob wants his easy vanilla boarding back" but that's not the case. I am boarding vet and have hundreds of extremely difficult boardings behind. I have no problem with making boardings more difficult /as long as they are possible. But some of your turret logic makes boarding effectively impossible in most of scenarios. I don't mind having higher priority in shooting down pods, but make those guys miss once in a while for God's sake! I prepare my target and saturate the sky with dozens of drones and hundreds of swarm warheads and damn turrets are picked every time in every scenario, whatever I do or try. Whatever the distance to target, position of M7M, me, asteroids in between, I tried everything, I am unnaturally persistent in games, (unlike in real life ), and too many of ships remain virtually unboardable. All beam weapon capital warships, every multi turreted sentinel ships, every PRG mounted M7 ... list goes on and on.


They should be nerfed. One way or the other. Difficult I don't mind, I want possible. Is it realistic that small and fast thing such as boarding pod to be noted every Goddamn time in a highly hostile and warzone-hazy environment?

[Shimrod]

Do you have Smart enabled for NPC ships? If so it may well be responsible. This isn't enabled by default, and can be checked in the AL menu.

Even without Smart I do recall the default missile defence capabilities in XRM are very hard to penetrate, suspect thats the baseline MD mk2 behaviour.

Some thoughts on how to mitigate missile defence:

. Try getting up really close before shooting the pod
. Simpler turret scripts will often not retarget so drawing the fire on the quadrant the pod is launched to might help mitigate.
. Sending in a bunch of drones could might help confound the targetting, if it is a retargetting script.
. Attacking from a quadrant where the target ship can only bring slow firing guns to bear and drawing its fire might help.
. Making the target use up all its laser energy (e.g. dodging PPCs) might help throttle its defense.
. I gather ionD's can help destroy lasers albeit slowly

Smart has 2 modes of operation depending on whether fast refire lasers are available to a turret.
. If slow lasers only are available it'll prioritize missiles along with normal targets. In this case boarding pods should in theory be rated as less of a threat than other targets (missiles or ships) so it should be possible to slip pods through.
. If fast refire lasers are available Smart's antimissile mode kicks in where it'll shoot individual gun barrels for each incoming missile. It divides each script iteration between shooting missiles and shooting the primary target. It'll prioritize shooting nearest missile first.

[deca.death]

. If fast refire lasers are available Smart's antimissile mode kicks in where it'll shoot individual gun barrels for each incoming missile. It divides each script iteration between shooting missiles and shooting the primary target. It'll prioritize shooting nearest missile first.

So you are saying that pod is not higher priority then common missile? All missiles including pods are treated alike? That doesn't sound right. As I've said, I regularly launch 20+ wasps, that's x8 warheads = 160+ missiles in the air, surrounding target ship, plus 20 drones minimum. That's fair chance of selecting other missile then your pod. I wouldn't mind shot down pod on occasion, but to automatically slaughter all of them as soon as they are in range ...

I will try turning smart off for AI. Then we'll see what happens. Last night i cornered agron patrol cyclops alone in hatikva's (I wisely waited till his accompanying Colossus enters jumpage ; ) and no way in hell that thing could be boarded. But I even have to be exceptionally resourceful even with common TL. I regularly loosing pods on this low priority target as well. All of them. And all that he has is pair of HEPT at one side.

[Shimrod]

Under Smart, when a turret has a laser qualifying for antimissile (e.g. PALC, PBE) Smart's antimissile routine shoots missiles beginning from the nearest one to the ship working outwards. Pods are treated as other missiles. So it's increasingly likely the pod would get shot the nearer it gets to the ship. Relative threat levels of missiles is ignored, only proximity is factored in.

When the turret has no qualifying antimissile lasers (eg a turret that only has PPCs) it doesn't use the antimissile mode. It'll instead generate threat levels for missiles and prioritize them alongside ships as regular targets. The turret will shoot at the highest threat in its target list.

For missiles the threat value is based on 'get missile max damage', divided by 10 to bring it roughly in line with ship laser strength, which ship threats are evaluated by. Unless the missile might seriously harm the ship then its not divided by 10. Threat levels are modified based on range and shield dmg. I never tried antimissile vs boarding pods but unless they have some massively bugged max damage number they should get a priority level 1 and be least preferred targets.

So... assuming Smart NPCs are enabled here, it sounds like the cyclops has qualifying lasers available and the antimissile mode is shooting everything down. As the name suggests I designed this to be highly effective vs incoming missiles, and pods are classed as missiles.

Yeah, best advice is to disable Smart NPCs when boarding.

Just to add though, beams are extremely nasty in whatever script vs missiles. They insta destroy the missile so that every subsequent shot is likely to be seeking out a new missile, unlike projectiles which will usually generate overkill before the first bullet hits, before moving to the next target.

PALC also suffer no handicap vs torpedo detonations. For projectiles the detonation destroys other bullets in the air that might be heading for other missiles, so that the barrage overwhelms the defence as its unable to shoot missiles due to explosions. This isn't a problem with beams, where the only downside is the detonation destroys the beam 'bullet' which means the laser appears to be invisible when it shoots down the missile!

[deca.death]

.

Alright alright, now we're getting somewhere. I've learned much in our little conversation gentlemen, thank you. I can't wait to put my findings in practice. I'll inform you if my conclusions were of any interest, and remember, goal is to keep boarding challenging, definitely more difficult then in vanilla /but ultimately possible.


One way would be to increase health of boarding pod, it's a little spaceship, after all, not some common mosquito. When it would endure two or three hits it would improve boarding chances significantly. We'll see.

[Gazz]

One way would be to increase health of boarding pod, it's a little spaceship, after all, not some common mosquito. When it would endure two or three hits it would improve boarding chances significantly. We'll see.

Has been tried. Has failed.

[Kuugen]

I don't think this was mentioned but I noticed that ships with smart fire in volleys. It is a petty request but would you consider putting an option to fire when an individual gun turret is ready to fire?