[2.51] OOZ combat issues

[CBJ]

Both of you need to stop making it personal, or you will both find your posts removed from the thread and formal warnings issued to you.

Lander1979, you do not get to tell people what to post or where, and Luke0086, if you have an issue with another poster, you don't drag a thread off-topic to discuss it, you contact a moderator.

[Luke0086]

Personally, I get the issue with whatever ship I use OOS.

I use Warning system extension and it came up with a warning that one of my stations (and construction vessels) were taking fire from a Xenon K.

I believe I have read elsewhere that the OOS combat system needs some work still anyway.

For example, if I issue any capship to the defence officer of a station whilst i'm not in the same zone as that station, the capship will NOT jump to the station's zone. It just goes to 'patrol'.

I've never had one of my ships destroy anything when I'm OOS. This includes a Taranis, Arrawn, and a Fulmikron. It just seems that combat went on and on and on until I got IS, with a warning every 5 mins or so that the ship or station was hit.


Edit: I also just remembered that sometimes when the ship is patrolling in zone, it was a matter of chance if the ship even came up "attacking Xenon K" instead of just patrolling still.

[Ruges]

If you question the Arawn being called a carrier. Then you need to question the Tranais being called a destroyer. Since a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable warship of long-endurance intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet. (stolen from wiki). They are also much smaller then carriers They are even smaller then cruisers.

The ingame destroyers don't match the traditional sense of a destroyer either. They act more like a cruiser. So if destroyers dont match destroyers, then why must carriers match carriers?

And then you realise that X ship clasifications dont match at all and are really there own.

I do wish they would have stuck with the M classification of prevous games. And I do feel the current carriers should loose there carrier classifcation and instead get a drone boat class of there own. Since they are not true carriers.

And I think if you are going to have a drone boat class ingame, they should have the ability to launch more drones at a time. And if they dont make it they can launch more then dont call them droneboats. They are just destroyers. And not even that. These ships should probably be considered M7 Frigates.

[bm01]

I noticed some oddities with OOZ / OOS combat too. According to the scripts and confirmed by my in-game observations, combat are MUCH slower. I don't know how "attackstrength" is calculated, it doesn't appear in the aiscripts. Maybe values are too low, I don't know (could we have some info on that from the devs?). What's certain however is that fight.attack.object.capital is quite slow while OOS, with a huge delay between each attack on each enemy:

Code: Select all

<wait min="500ms" max="10s" profile="decreasing" />

and even a 30% miss chance:

Code: Select all

<do_if value="$target.isoperational" chance="70" comment="chance of fail">

This, coupled to the fact that shield recharge rate and hull repair rate don't change while OOS (capital ships recharge and repair while fighting), drastically changes the balance of strength between ships. Ships with good shield and / or hull becomes much stronger.

I remember giving my Tanaris the order to fly to a sector having like 40 hostile fighters (and frequently respawning them). While OOS, it barely lost any hull, but once I entered the system it exploded after a few minutes.

And yes the Arawn can kill two Tanaris, yes there's no such classification as "carrier" or "destroyer" in game... But how is that relevant to OOS combat?

[Ruges]

And yes the Arawn can kill two Tanaris, yes there's no such classification as "carrier" or "destroyer" in game... But how is that relevant to OOS combat?

The relevence is asuming the Arawn should fight like a carrier in OOS combat since it is labeled as a carrier ingame. Even thow it is not a true carrier.

[bm01]

The relevence is asuming the Arawn should fight like a carrier in OOS combat since it is labeled as a carrier ingame. Even thow it is not a true carrier.

That is the encyclopedia description, the game doesn't make any difference between what should be a carrier and what should be a destroyer. There's only two meaningful categories, "Fight" and "Trade", and as far as I know it's only used to know when a ship should be attacked or not (a trading ship flying nearby a hostile station won't get attacked for example). Ship sizes (XS, S, M...) are also relevant at some points, notably to run the proper script when an attack is initiated.
There might be some hidden stuff related to "carriers" though, but from what we can see from AI scripts I doubt it, there's absolutely no trace of it.

[Sandalpocalypse]

If you question the Arawn being called a carrier. Then you need to question the Tranais being called a destroyer. Since a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable warship of long-endurance intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet. (stolen from wiki). They are also much smaller then carriers They are even smaller then cruisers.

Actually, in modern naval parlance, destroyers are the main line warships.

The game calls everything that has a launch bay-like area a carrier, from the Light Sul on up. It seems like it was that way in the design doc but for whatever reason they decided to stick to drones rather than have pilot carriers. It does make a certain amount of sense in setting since you can pack a hell of a lot of drones in where you put fighters.

The Arawn in particular seems like it was designed to actually carry fighters, given its voluminous launch and return bays.

The game does a poor job distinguishing between ships in drone capability, owing to the fixed 5x launch in the capital script. There should probably be a stat for # of drones launched per wave. Arawn 8, Stormvok 4, that sort of thing. I don't think they want drone zergs being launched for performance and player not getting obliterated reasons.

i do love the way the beam turrets look, I just wish the beams would animate when the camera can't see the source.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Combat tactics should be dictated by the types of weapons/drones/equipment installed and not some arbitrary ship classification.

Sucellus with the fixed direction IHC is primarily a stand-off vessel (c/f Artillery gun).

Balor with the missiles being the main source of damage delivery is another stand-off vessel (c/f MLRS Artillery or Aegis Cruiser).

Fulmekron/Olmekron/Taranis are the mainstream anti-capital vessels with their Plasma/JET lasers.

Most of the other capitals (even trade ships) are primarily stand-off drone deployment vessels where they have drone capability (even though some will give the main-stream anti-capital vessels a run for their money up close).

The Arawn is a bit of an oddity since it is more heavily shielded than most of the other vessels and has missile launchers coming out of it's ears (only the Xenon I has stronger shielding).

Similarly the Lyramekron is an oddity since it is extremely heavily armed for a trade ship.

The Hermod is another crazy oddity in some ways since it can carry 300 drones so can be considered a poor man's carrier (more so than the Sul's IMO).

Providing the AI behaves appropriately based on the capabilities of the ship and it's primary opponent I do not think any of us care if the vessels in question are classified as a dinghy or a dreadnought.

It sounds like Gazz should be consulted wrt OOZ behaviour/balancing (I believe it was his input that led to the OOS solution for X3:AP).

[Luke0086]

Combat tactics should be dictated by the types of weapons/drones/equipment installed and not some arbitrary ship classification.

Sucellus with the fixed direction IHC is primarily a stand-off vessel (c/f Artillery gun).

Balor with the missiles being the main source of damage delivery is another stand-off vessel (c/f MLRS Artillery or Aegis Cruiser).

Fulmekron/Olmekron/Taranis are the mainstream anti-capital vessels with their Plasma/JET lasers.

Most of the other capitals (even trade ships) are primarily stand-off drone deployment vessels where they have drone capability (even though some will give the main-stream anti-capital vessels a run for their money up close).

The Arawn is a bit of an oddity since it is more heavily shielded than most of the other vessels and has missile launchers coming out of it's ears (only the Xenon I has stronger shielding).

Similarly the Lyramekron is an oddity since it is extremely heavily armed for a trade ship.

The Hermod is another crazy oddity in some ways since it can carry 300 drones so can be considered a poor man's carrier (more so than the Sul's IMO).

Providing the AI behaves appropriately based on the capabilities of the ship and it's primary opponent I do not think any of us care if the vessels in question are classified as a dinghy or a dreadnought.

It sounds like Gazz should be consulted wrt OOZ behaviour/balancing (I believe it was his input that led to the OOS solution for X3:AP).

The Arrawn is actually an anti-capital ship. Regardless of drone capacity, it's damaged gained by the sheer amount of plasma weapons it has on board puts it way above the Taranis in terms of anti-capital capability. Working out the DPS gained from the Taranis having PLASMA/JET weapons suprisingly adds up to very little when taking into account the sheer volume of PLASMA/MA turrets of the Arrawn.

It's agreeable that the Succulus and Balor are both 'artillery' type ships, though the vanilla AI, if i'm not mistaken still makes them engage close range when IS, i'm not sure what it does when OOS.

@bm01 this explains why combat when OOS lasts pretty much forever. The above mentioned time when I was getting warnings my station was under attack with Warning System Extension, whilst having a Fulmikron as the station's patroller, i left the game running all night (i.e. 8 hours) and the battle wasn't finished the next day. I had to go in sector to finisht the fight and stop getting warnings about my assets being attacked.


The game mechanics themselves do not distinguish between carrier and destroyer, this is my whole point as to why the words 'carrier' and 'destroyer' should be ignored both IS/IZ and OOS/OOZ which I do feel is very much on topic. It's just that the game wording itself, is misleading certain people into thinking, and advising others that combat tactics should be different (though with OOS combat, we don't even have any control over such things). If you read the rest of the thread above, you'll see where the whole 'carrier' versus 'destroyer' debacle has spawned from.

With the delicateness of drones and their cost, I actually think it would be a bad idea to change any 'carrier' to using drones as it's main offence as it would be much more costly in the long run. When IS/IZ, I find the Arrawn, Fulmikron, and even the Taranis (for it's low price) performs absolutely fine.

I think for the future i'm going to pay closer attention to OOS combat in general, in particular my patrolling ships, to see what's going on. So far, it seems like not much, or combat is so slow that it's TOO slow to even make a permanent mark on any ship

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

@Luke0086: It is not about if the Arawn or any other ship should be coded to use drones primarily - it is about ships behaving appropriately given the match up of capability.

For example: If a given ship can take out a given enemy ship then it should (and use the appropriate tactics) otherwise it should steer clear of it. If the carried drones can take out the enemy, then they should be deployed otherwise they should perhaps be not launched. In damned if you do or damned if you don't situation then they should throw everything they have at it and hope for the best.

I have a Fulmekron in my squad and find that it can disengage the booster too late to give it's shields time to recharge if boosting in zone to assist me (the bug in that case is probably the shields being drained by the booster in the first place though).

bm01's earlier post sheds some light on the situation and indicates that PERHAPS the OOZ combat calculations can be modded.

[Sandalpocalypse]

For example: If a given ship can take out a given enemy ship then it should (and use the appropriate tactics) otherwise it should steer clear of it.

that would get incredibly annoying, and totally get in the way of me shootin' some spaceships

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

We are not talking in terms of avoiding the player per se, that would be stupid but in terms of AI v. AI type interactions. If the AI was a little smarter then survivability of some vessels should go up measurably - something I am sure you would not complain about if the ships were owned by you.

For example: trade ships should probably try to stay out of range of rampaging Ks for instance.

[Lander1979]

I am attempting to ask people who might know the answer on the Devnet chat. I will update as soon as I find out.

Edit: (preliminary) I have yet to speak to a scripter, but from speaking to a L5 beta tester, it looks as though EUIV is correct. All Cap ships appear to be using the same AI Script file.

Further Updates to come.

I have gotten an official response from Egosoft Regarding the AI;

13:11 egosimon: All Capital Ships use the same Script
13:12 egosimon: i asked our AI guy)

[Lander1979]

From what I gather, there is one type of attack used by all capital ships, close in and attack. Which is proving to be detrimental to Carriers, Sucellus, and Balor ships, which need to employ their primary attacks at a maximum range, as they themselves are support ships.

There needs to be a second attack which in essence is a "kiting" or "stand-off" attack mode, where the ship attempts to keep its closest target just within the maximum range of it's primary weapons, being drones, missiles, and artillery guns.

[Lander1979]

Does anyone have any conclusions or questions they would like to add to this topic before the discussion is wrapped up?

[Aerotaz]

Why don't the devs come up with few OOZ/OOS/IS set commands for the captains, rather than specific ship types..
Firstly, this could stay the same, if and when new ships where brought in, saving on unique or new coding.

Secondly, you could then decide on which ships YOU want charging in or holding back, maybe even telling captains what distance to keep between any given ship and the enemy..

Hopefully not too complex and would be great fun to learn what to do and what not to...

[Lander1979]

I have performed a few experiments using my plot Rahanas, Giving it various attack and defence orders in different circumstances.

My findings in zone (IZ);

1. When the Rahanas hasn't got any drones capable of attacking a target on-board, it will close in and attack. When it has a stock of drones (I gave it 3 of every form of attack drone, mk1 and mk2) It "appears" to hold it's position and launch shoals of drones and attack the targets.

2. When the Rahanas Defence Officer is set to "Attack all Enemies", every time a hostile ship is in radar range it will attack with a shoal of drones, there can be relatively high drone losses at times depending on the strength and # of targets, and sometimes friendly ships will be hit by the drones by accident-turn red, and be attacked as well.

3. When the Rahanas Defence Officer is set to "Defensive" and I am attacked (NOT the Rahanas), the Rahanas will react by launching a shoal of drones to aid me. This behaviour has yet to result in the loss of a single drone.

Next I will attempt these experiments OOZ to see what happens...

[Lander1979]

I have performed an Out Of Zone (OOZ) combat experiment with the plot Rahanas and a Fedhelm versus a Cartel Balor.

Save File
http://www.mediafire.com/view/u6aymtg4v ... ve_002.xml

This had a completely different result to the IZ experiments.

1. Both ships were ordered in to the combat zone (Sinister Poem), the Rahanas DO set to "defensive", the Fedhelm DO set to "Attack Enemies".

2. A "Cartel Boss Vulnerable" mission was accepted, and I briefly entered the zone (Sinister Poem) to trigger the spawn, then moved to the next zone via the local highway.

3. The Fedhelm was ordered to "Attack all Enemies in Zone", It began it's attack run against the Balor. The Rahanas did not react in any way.

4. The Rahanas DO was set to "Attack Enemies", there was no response from the Rahanas. The Fedhelm had closed in and was attacking the Balor.

5. The Rahanas was given the order to "Attack All Enemies in Zone", It began to close in and attack the Balor with it's onboard weapons, despite having a full compliment of drones, none were launched at any time.

Conclusion;
Despite having a full compliment of drones, the OOZ Carrier (the Rahanas in this example) did not use any of them, choosing to close in and attack with it's on-board weapons systems only.

When a friendly asset was attacked OOZ, the Carrier with it's DO set to defensive did not launch it's drones, as it did with the IZ combat experiment, but chose to remain neutral to the conflict.

In conclusion, it appears that the OOZ capital ship combat scripting does not take into account any drones the ships may be carrying, nor does it implement any stand-off tactics for the use of long range weaponry, nor does it implement any Defensive/Support tactics utilizing drones to support friendly units under attack whilst the DO has a "Defend" order.

I agree with the OP, this is definitely a bug/unintended behaviour.

As a temporary workaround, I would NOT use Carriers for Out Of Zone Combat, I would use only Destroyers with a sufficient fighter vanguard set as a subordinate under the Destroyer's command.

For In Zone combat, Carriers remain a potent stand-off weapons system, but If OOZ I would order them somewhere safe until they are needed.

[Lander1979]

It has been pointed out to me that a Fedhelm and Rahanas are not in a sense combat vessels.

In this instance I have used a Rahanas as a "poor man's Sul" Carrier. I think this is sufficient to outline the "bug" in Out Of Zone Combat, where all Capitals are using the same behavioural script, and the short-comings of that script.

However it may be beneficial if someone can confirm using an appropriately equipped Combat Carrier, just to make sure.

Thanks.

[Sandalpocalypse]

they won't use different scripts on say a Sul, it's all the same.

they arn't really supposed to attack things 'around' them - it saves cpu if they only run the captain and not the turrets/DO, as it were. OOZ combat is supposed to be simple like that for performance reasons.