Suicidal Autopilot

[Hedganian]

Having had a brief look around the forum, it looks like I'm not the only one experiencing this, so I assume it's a fault/bug/annoyance with the game itself rather than a fault with my system.

Why, oh why, did Egosoft give Marvin the Paranoid Android control of my ships????

You target a ship, you engage the autopilot, and it flies towards the ship, it pulls in behind it at about 200m (WAY too close, by the way, Egosoft!) matches speed, chugs along for a while, then decides that perhaps today *IS* a good day to die, engages ramming speed and that's the end of at least one of the ships, usually mine (because I'm early in the campaign and only have a little fighter).


Not to mention the fact that my wingmen can't seem to fly their way into, out of, or even close to, a space station without kamikazeing into the side of it.




Can Patch 1.5 PLEASE give the autopilot a girlfriend or something so it has something worth living for?

[frymaster]

what ships are involved? I personally don't have recurring issues (exception: if I turn SETA factor up from default and engage SETA then issues sometimes occur in crowded areas, but that's to be expected)

[Hedganian]

Currently I'm trumdling around in a Terran Rapier, and have 3 more following me around. Max speed is 458m/s.

I don't see why it should be a problem, to be honest, regardless of the ships involved. Getting one ship to follow another should be pretty easy, the computer should be able to react fast enough to avoid hitting the lead ship if it slows down. It would help if the autopilot didn't follow so closely - 200m is far too close.

My problem seems to be that my ship will just suddenly speed up for no reason I can understand, and then it's game over. And there's really no excuse for wingmen crashing into an unmoving space station just because my ship is docking with it. And this is WITHOUT SETA.

Speaking of which, when you put ships on "protect" another ship, why can't they sit still? They fly around like a swarm of buzzing insects, rather than just tucking into formation until something happens.

[nielsw]

Can Patch 1.5 PLEASE give the autopilot a girlfriend or something so it has something worth living for?

best way to put it yet.

What you're talking about is a very old problem in the X games, and afaik, Egosoft has had a couple of passes at fixing some parts of that.

Wingmen (as well as your transport ships) crashing into stuff like stations, gates and other ships has been a long standing problem that gets even worse, once you activate S.E.T.A..

The autopilot also has been suicidal since at least Xtension.

I really would like it fixed too, although, I sort of took it as a hint from Egosoft, that I should play the game myself when it comes to combat, instead of letting it completely play itself.

After all, it is possible to turn X games pretty much into a TV show, lean back and just watch. The most you'd have to do is flip channels from ship cam to ship cam...


But seriously, I wonder if the autopilot AI was also done in script language, and could therefore be fixed / improved by players with scripting skillz..?

[Hedganian]

I'm sure the autopilot in X2 and X3: Reunion wasn't as bad as the one in TC. At least, that's my recollection, anyway.

I'm sure I did lengthy autopilot runs with my ship following another ship, like a freighter or TL, often through several Gates, without incident, even on SETA. After all, how hard can it really be for one ship to follow another at a safe distance?

I can sort of understand how there can be problems with wingman collisions and things in high SETA, especially during combat (who in their right mind would be on SETA during combat?) but I'm having collisions issues in realtime.

I've just taken to hand-flying the ship for almost eveything, but it gets tedious and frustrating, since I can't use SETA very much then and a lot of the missions involve travelling through several systems.

[pjknibbs]

I'm reasonably sure the autopilot is the same on both X3R and X3TC. What tends to cause problems in my experience is low frame rates, because it gives the autopilot much less time to react when it only gets to make changes a few times a second, and since X3TC frame rates are generally lower than X3R on identical hardware, it might explain why you're seeing issues with it now that you never did on the old game.

[samsonice]

I'm reasonably sure the autopilot is the same on both X3R and X3TC. What tends to cause problems in my experience is low frame rates, because it gives the autopilot much less time to react when it only gets to make changes a few times a second, and since X3TC frame rates are generally lower than X3R on identical hardware, it might explain why you're seeing issues with it now that you never did on the old game.

I am sure it is not the same with X3R...

I have a pretty good system with a geforce gtx260 and even in busy sectors my frame rate is never below 50 and cpu is never maxed out.

Right now i am in Heretics End (not the busiest sector around) flying a Xenon L and as wingman I have a Kestrel (with max speed, steering and acceleration) - a fast little devil which will fly 605 m/s.

The problem is that when I activate SETA it only takes a few seconds and sometimes I don't even get to 1000 % of SETA before SETA is deactivated due to the Kestrel flying to close. And if I continue to try to activate SETA the Kestrel will eventually colide with me...

I am just flying in a straigth line and keeping my speed, but the kestrel is crawling all over me all the time. It does not stay neatly behind me. It is like it goes a bit too fast and then repositions itself when it finds out it has flown past me - this happens SETA or not.

It seems when you max out speed and steering of a wingman the problem will get worse.

As Hedganian mentioned I also have a problem with my own autopilot. It is not to be trusted, as it might hit the sides og objects an stations and it cannot follow other ships in a safe way.

There is something flawed with the autopilot, and it is quite annoying.

I tried to reduce the SETA speed from 10x to 2x, but it did not resolve anything... It just took a bit longer before the Kestrel came too close and shut of SETA.

And as mentioned before - it is not a performance lack, and I have not noticed this problem in X3 Reunion. - It must be a bug which several people in here have reported.

[Hedganian]

I think it's probably some kind of quiet Robot Rebellion, these computer programs are tired of ferrying lazy-ass space pilots around the universe and seek to punish them by flying into something they ought to be following meekly behind, or ramming random objects.


Had another good example just now. I was sitting in space, totally stationary, while I messed about with setting up a couple of freighters to supply a new ore mine I'd just built. Suddenly - BOOM - there goes my ship, game over. Why? Because one of my wingmen rammed me for no reason whatsoever.

If *I* am sitting still, why can't THEY sit still also?

[samsonice]

Hmm.. My wingmen seems to sit still, when I am sitting still. But when I move he flies after me... flies past me... turns... flies back... turns again... flies after me... flies past me... turns...

And this keeps repeating until my wingman hits me. I have tried running without SETA and the same happens, so it is not a SETA problem.

I flew from Heritics End to Omicron Lyrae to buy a Discoverer at the shipyard there. During the flight somewhere in Circle of labour my Kestrel was lost due to collision with me...Stupid autopilot...

I bought the Discoverer and made this ship my wingman - without upgrading steering or speed. The Discoverer can then only fly 108 m/s. I set my Xenon L to fly straight with 90 m/s and observed how the discoverer did the follow me-order. And there were no difference from the Kestrel earlier. It still flies like an entire beehive is trying to catch it... Back and forth until it hits me...

Please Egosoft. This is a serious bug, that needs to be adressed. The concept of having wingmen following you is not working.

[Hedganian]

It does cost a lot of money and waste a lot of time when the autopilot rams something. Either your wingman is destroyed - which presumably cost you time and money to buy/capture/outfit, etc or YOU are destroyed, which means you have to load your last save and lose anything you did since that time.


It's quite frustrating...

[timhunt72]

this is a problem in big ships. i was flying a elephant with my new ore mine. it was set on move to position. no up grades on the elephant excpt 10 rudders. and as it flew through empor mines it hit just about every asteroid inits way. i have also had a hired mamoth destroy its self with my shiny new wheat fam in a high trafic area as it danced around moving from one sector. i have a new top end system that far exceedes the reccomended on the packet. i can never remeber X3R losing ships to silly impacts. occasionaly i would lose a small fighter to an impact during fights, but never just moving under auto poilot

[Stargazer2893]

had that problem a lot while playing Terran campaign.
Ordered my Nova to follow the TS/TP and lent back relaxing a bit when suddenly the autopilot gets epileptic, speeds up and ramms the ship(resultign in death for both of us).
ok i thought, lets try it another way, loaded the save and flew behind the ship. Then ordered the "almighty" Autopilot to protect my target.

It just flew even closer and totally irratic, accelerating then deccelerating and all while yawing and rolling like crazy.

Same with landing on Stations, sometimes my Springblossom decellerates to 100 while 10km away from the destined Station and sometimes it completely forgets about decelerating and flys nearly straight into it.

Since i´ve been playing the X-Series since the Beginning and i never encountered such strange behaviour from the Autopilot(in X3R I had 1 M6 on SP and 3 protecting, no Problems at all, IS i mean ), my guess is they changed something and thats causing the irratic behaviour of the KI.

This definitively has to be fixed, since the follow and protect cannot be used IS!

[Arraamis]

I totally agree ...... Autopilot is awful in every circumstance.

* On Patrols --- Terrible
* Following ships --- Terrible
* Dock at target --- The worst ..... will ram the ship right into an asteroid instead.
* During firefights --- Terrible



Other than the new interface, new sectors and plots .... Egosoft got a little lazy with overall performance, ship variety {Soo little variety in ship design and options} and the freakin autopilot.

[Spikend]

I've only had a couple of problems with the autopilat. Once it killed me when it went straight up into one of the parts of the gate sticking out. But several other times it has hit the ships it's following. Almost like it doesn't remember to brake when they slow down fast But I've only once died of hitting another ship, luckily the shields has saved me Other than that, no real problems..

[Wolf-R1]

Yeah I lost a recently fully kitted Boreas due to poor autopilot. If I hadn't done a ton to my game prior to a more recent save I would have just reloaded.

[strude]

I agree, it's a royal pain in the bastu. It's as if the wingmen are trying to keep an exact distance from the player ship, and if they fall behind slightly, they go to max speed to catch up. This obviously overshoots, so they need to loop back which puts them behind again. Then they use max speed to get back into position and overshoot.

Generally this motion causes the SETA to switch off. So many times I've just told my wingmen to stand by and let them catch up after I'm half way across the sector. The follow distance of what seems around 200-300 metres is too close both for wingmen following/protecting a target ship, and for the player ship to follow a target. However, I assume such a short distance was chosen because a ship that stays within that distance may not activate the proximity SETA deactivation, and that the reason the SETA deactivates is because the ship is overshooting all the time, ducking in and out of this distance.

Perhaps they need some limits, for example maximum speed when more than 1km from the target ship, +/-30m/s of target ship speed when between 600m to 1km, and +/- 10m/s of target ship speed when within 600m of target ship for adjusting the follow distance. These limits might have to be relaxed or ignored completely if the wingman ship is actively attacking a target. The ships could use the built in match target speed function to adjust their speed to that of the target ship, which from my experience when I've used it on my ship, seems to be responsive enough that if they front ship stops suddenly, it can track and slow down with the other ship. Coupled with the limited adjustment speeds for distance and a slightly increased follow distance, I think that would reduce the scratch and dents on many ships.

[EmperorJon]

Why, oh why, did Egosoft give Marvin the Paranoid Android control of my ships????

Same happened with me... *Entering Sector: Argon Prime* (Immediately turns left and bangs into the gates rim continually until my ship blows up)

As Jeff, the multiplayer announcer on Halo3 would say: Suicide!

[zephoid]

ah, yes i love when that happens. you jump into a sector, the autopilot turns right, and smashes RIGHT into the ring. WTF?

and whats up with some of the ships avoid patters? i run around in my vaidar a lot and i keep ramming ships i dont even see.

i also had a funny instance where, right as i jumped into a sector, i got instantly run over by a boron orca and we both blew up. i couldnt even see the game over because the screen was so white.

what we need are for ships to go below the plane of most objects (where the hell did my ecliptic projector go? i keep getting lost in maelstrom) when they are moving around a sector. that keeps the ships out of the way of objects until they need to go somewhere.

i havent had any bad luck with the patrol command (currently had a ship running around aldrin for about 10 days or something like that) but dock at target constantly runs into solar power plants. often times it will pass strait through the solid ring on its way to the dock. since when could we phase ships out? inversion ftw!