Any way to permanently disable "use boosters in combat"?

[Toshis8]

Here is the scenario:

My medium ship is exploring and encounters enemy small ship. Default response is attack (which is good), it immediately starts unnecessarily jumping around and burning all of its shield (which is bad). It does more damage to himself, than enemy does. Is there a way to disable boost in combat permanently without having to do it every single time manually on each engagement?

[Falcrack]

Keep making threads like this to bug the devs about it, maybe some day they'll listen.

[user1679]

There's a mod called Disable Boost which permanently disables boost for all ships by modifying
the boost property for all engines (macro XML files). But this means you and your AI will have no boost even out of combat.

The only way to disable it strictly for combat would be to modify the actual AI files to remove the choice to use boost in the first place. A much more difficult task.

[Submarine]

Makes perfect sense OP and you are not alone. I have tried asking nicely for three years but you can see where that got us, nowhere.

It undermines the whole game and stands out like a sore thumb if you actually play it but they wont fix it.

I cant understand that. All the effort on graphics and yet the core gameplay is neglected. There is something wrong about that.

For the record this is what I tried to tell them and when.

Please provide global and ship setting to disallow boost in attack.

That's it.

... the game constantly obliges me to untick the boost toggle PER ATTACK ORDER or see ships lose hull or even die ... and its a PITA ... sets you up to fail

Please fix. It needs a global setting as per other activity like what to do when attacked or searched, which needs to differentiate between attack vs escape (i.e. flee orders) and allow me to set up attack order defaults. It also needs for ships to have individual settings.

Its just a couple of radio buttons, the global and individual ship settings pages already exist.

Please correct me if I am missing something new intended to fix this problem but the boost allow button is still per attack order, which is not making sense to me as a player because the setting is per ship depending on their shields and speed.

So the boost setting really needs to ba a default behaviour per ship, with per attack modifications allowed. Ever since release I found using boost gets ships killed so I need to disable boost for every attack order which is unnecessary micro when the boost setting applies per ship. I would also like to disable boost for boarding operations, which also does not make sense.

e.g. I have several fighters but in particular an entertaining captured Dragon raider, which is armed to the teeth but it loses badly to Ms if allowed to use boost because the hull value is very low. It has absolutely no need to use boost because it is very fast but uses it anyway and gets its hull damaged because it used up its own shield which is a flaw in the default settings for combat AI. So I have to micro it for every attack which is not necessary.

Please relieve my micro burden with this happy and simple functionality, thanks.

I noticed my precious Nemesis and other ships waste their shields using boost, then I noticed you could modify an attack order to disallow boost.

This prompts two thoughts.

First am I missing something? I want default behaviour to be to disallow boost not allow it, because it is a recipe for disaster.

As it stands I have to manually modify every single attack order to stop my dear Nemesis from blowing 10Mj in shields before it even engages the target.

Second shouldnt the default be a permanent setting for the ship in question? I should be able to look in the ship info behaviour panel and toggle a boost checkbox to set the default per attack order so I dont have to micro every move it makes.

[Toshis8]

Its a shame that developers have been ignoring this for so long. I imagine we could have a global order like this:

"use boosters in combat only if shield is above X%" (X between 1-100 ofc). For example, i could set my ships globally to use boosters only if shield is above 70% and not use it if drops bellow 70% (except flee command).

Funny story, my ships burns almost all of its shield boosting in combat and then comms me to ask for permission to flee, because shield is too low

[j.harshaw]

The only way to disable it strictly for combat would be to modify the actual AI files to remove the choice to use boost in the first place. A much more difficult task.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<diff>
  <replace sel="//param[@name='allowboost']/@default">false</replace>
</diff>

For example, i could set my ships globally to use boosters only if shield is above 70% and not use it if drops bellow 70% (except flee command).

They already only use boost in combat if their shields are at or above 50%.

Funny story, my ships burns almost all of its shield boosting in combat and then comms me to ask for permission to flee, because shield is too low

They should only ever call you to ask for permission to flee if they are not in combat. Save and repro to me if you see them do otherwise.

[Submarine]

For example, i could set my ships globally to use boosters only if shield is above 70% and not use it if drops bellow 70% (except flee command).

They already only use boost in combat if their shields are at or above 50%.

Unfortunately this does not work in real play. Possibly because even if they boost at >50% they seem to end up at well below 50% after the boost and then get blown up.

If you think about it, 50% is not a safe threshold value for this behaviour, when a boost can use 20-30% of the shield or more.

[A5PECT]

I don't think it's feasible to program npcs to make reasonable, effective judgement calls on when to spend shields on boosting in combat. That level of sophistication would simply be too resource heavy to run on the potential number of actors involved in an X4 combat scenario.

I'll keep banging this drum: boosting should not be tied to shielding. Ships should have a boost capacity value that is spent and recharges independently.

If you want create, an engine/shield mod that does tie boosting and shields together, so the player can opt into that dynamic on ships they select

[Toshis8]

Here are the videos (latest beta, no mods):

Before i made video showing how boosting in combat and asking to flee works, there were other AI combat behavior issues i stumbled upon. If you don't mind, I'll share it.

1st video: https://youtu.be/c6rOKwsemSk
In this video you can see that, when ordering ship to attack enemy (out of sector), it barely moves and when ordering to "attack all targets in range" it bugs out and drops all orders.

2nd video: https://youtu.be/7W1tI5d8xt4
After encountering problems in the first video, i've decided to take a closer look and jumped in to ship. As you can see, when attacking, it flies only 50m/s speed (although max cruise speed of this Katana as about 1400 m/s). When simply telling to "Fly and wait" it works fine.

3rd video: https://youtu.be/VGQ4sQZB79c
After changing the sector, combat started to work properly. Now here is the real test. As you can see, Katana pilot kept burning its shield way below 50%, at one point it dropped to 25%. Most of the shield lost was not due to enemy attacks, but because of her own actions. And then she asked for permission to flee while under direct attack command.

Maybe, what you had in mind, is that AI doesnt initiate booster while under 50% shield and that seems to be the case. BUT it doesnt stop burning shield at 50%.

Edit:
I've just now noticed a potential culprit of odd behavior in 2nd video - landing gear is out.

[Toshis8]

Oh, sorry, in the 2nd video "fly and wait" didnt work fine. It kept dropping out of travel speed.

Landing two shots and then burning 30-40% of your shield doesnt seem like an effective tactic.

[Falcrack]

I'll keep banging this drum: boosting should not be tied to shielding. Ships should have a boost capacity value that is spent and recharges independently.

Absolutely this.

[GCU Grey Area]

Found j.harshaw's comment about the 50% threshold quite interesting. That's pretty much the point at which I start thinking 'this isn't going quite as planned' & often decide a swift exit might be appropriate. Sometimes it works, other times it just makes things a lot worse. As for shield draining, very much in favour. It makes that decision of whether to activate boosters or not much more significant than draining an auxiliary fuel source.

[user1679]

The only way to disable it strictly for combat would be to modify the actual AI files to remove the choice to use boost in the first place. A much more difficult task.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<diff>
  <replace sel="//param[@name='allowboost']/@default">false</replace>
</diff>

Thanks for the code snippet, I was poking around in the base files yesterday when I noticed it was a simple param in most of the 'attack' xml files. When I wrote
my original reply I was thinking about editing the logic of when the boost value is actually checked. But setting it to default false still allows people to turn it on
for certain ships.

[Submarine]

Found j.harshaw's comment about the 50% threshold quite interesting. That's pretty much the point at which I start thinking 'this isn't going quite as planned' & often decide a swift exit might be appropriate. Sometimes it works, other times it just makes things a lot worse. As for shield draining, very much in favour. It makes that decision of whether to activate boosters or not much more significant than draining an auxiliary fuel source.

Ideally the AI needs to distinguish between boost to attack and boost to flee. At 50% in a fighter it should only boost to flee, engage travel drive and recharge shields before returning. What they are doing is boosting in combat until they run out of shield and then unsurprisingly dying.

Shield<>Boost coupling is tactical for the player, doesnt work with AI because it is poorly implemented. This impacts the player's properties adversely and can only be rectified with excessive micro because the boost defaults are not remembered and are automatically reapplied per autogenerated attack order.

All I am saying for three years is players need access to set default boost orders per ship like all the other default orders. At a minimum, just remember if boost is disallowed for future attack orders.

That really is egosoft's responsibility.

If they wanted to do a better job than sub-beta level placeholder as it is now, then there ought to be distinct player set % thresholds for stopping attack boosts and for starting flee boosts, as above, per ship. There also ought to be player set global defaults per ship class SML subdivided for civilian and military, meaning 6 global threshold settings for 2 types of behaviour.

I am not modding it, I have had ME CFIDS for 36 years and beta testing feedback since X2 is the best I can do. Coding is a non starter.

If egosoft dont like it then I can play Factorio instead, no problem, where there are almost zero bugs to fix and being a "lazy bastard" is an actual achievement.

[Submarine]

Of course not using mods is also part of the selfless discipline of the truly dedicated beta tester, I hope you folks realise that!

I liked the list of fixes in beta 6 btw.

But no mention of boost behaviour.

Hope devs can do something about it in another patch.

Currently not playing because ... mmm

But am keeping an eye on things. When this boost thing is fixed I will try again.

So, be careful what you wish for!

[Netbox]

The only way to disable it strictly for combat would be to modify the actual AI files to remove the choice to use boost in the first place. A much more difficult task.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<diff>
  <replace sel="//param[@name='allowboost']/@default">false</replace>
</diff>

For example, i could set my ships globally to use boosters only if shield is above 70% and not use it if drops bellow 70% (except flee command).

They already only use boost in combat if their shields are at or above 50%.

Funny story, my ships burns almost all of its shield boosting in combat and then comms me to ask for permission to flee, because shield is too low

They should only ever call you to ask for permission to flee if they are not in combat. Save and repro to me if you see them do otherwise.

I tried to make a mod incorporating your code snippet but I am not able to get it to work. Some assistance would be greatly appreciated.

• I followed the instructions on the 'Getting Started' page and managed to unpack all the game files.

• I then created a folder under \X4 Foundations\extensions\ called DefaultBoostOff.

• Next I created a content.xml file with the following code:

  Code: Select all

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <content id="DefaultBoostOff" version="001" name="DefaultBoostOff" description="Disable Boosting while attacking for all ships" author="Netbox" date="2023-07-19" enabled="1" save="1">
  </content>
  

• In the DefaultBoostOff folder I created another folder called aiscripts.

• In the aiscripts folder I placed three files: fight.attack.object.bigtarget.xml, fight.attack.object.fighter.xml and move.attack.object.capital.xml. These files contain the allowboost part mentioned in your post with 'true' being the default setting.

• In each of the three files I copy pasted your code.

• I started the game and confirmed that the mod was active. When I loaded into my game and gave an attack order, Allow Boost was still enabled by default (box was marked under the attack order) and the ship attacking would still use boost.

• I then tried to change the code in the three files to:

  Code: Select all

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
  <diff>
    <replace sel="//params/param[@name='allowboost']/@default">false</replace>
  </diff>

• This does not work either.

[Baddieus]

I would vote for no boost if shields are less than 50% ... it can be a lifesaver if used for a short time as opposed until the shields are empty.

[user1679]

They already only use boost in combat if their shields are at or above 50%.

I think the problem isn't that they use it if above 50% but rather that the AI doesn't seem to have extended logic to deal with the shield drain after using it. Often I will see my pilot use boost to get away from an enemy and then turn around to resume her fleet position with the commander. When the commander is still under attack, she is now heading back into the swarm with 0% shields because she wasted the remaining 50% to get away. Another frequent situation is the AI will boost to get away from a scout ship that is fast enough to give chase. Once the boost wears off, the scout can decimate the ship's hull because every hit prevents travel drive from being activated.

Honestly, I think boost tied to shields is the frustrating part. I would rather see it tied to its own resource with a slow recharge to prevent overuse. Either that or make the AI smarter so that they boost until travel drive becomes available and then activate it. Then they stay away from combat until their shields have recharged. Boosting away from a threat is useless if the AI is just going to turn around and go back with no shield because "Attack with commander" pops another "attack" on the order queue.

[THE_TrashMan]

I'll keep banging this drum: boosting should not be tied to shielding. Ships should have a boost capacity value that is spent and recharges independently.

Yes. That's what I've been saying from the start.
The system as is is just BAD.

Either remove boost completely (but increase ships speeds a bit) OR make boost not use shields.

[flywlyx]

I think the problem isn't that they use it if above 50% but rather that the AI doesn't seem to have extended logic to deal with the shield drain after using it. Often I will see my pilot use boost to get away from an enemy and then turn around to resume her fleet position with the commander. When the commander is still under attack, she is now heading back into the swarm with 0% shields because she wasted the remaining 50% to get away. Another frequent situation is the AI will boost to get away from a scout ship that is fast enough to give chase. Once the boost wears off, the scout can decimate the ship's hull because every hit prevents travel drive from being activated.

Honestly, I think boost tied to shields is the frustrating part. I would rather see it tied to its own resource with a slow recharge to prevent overuse. Either that or make the AI smarter so that they boost until travel drive becomes available and then activate it. Then they stay away from combat until their shields have recharged. Boosting away from a threat is useless if the AI is just going to turn around and go back with no shield because "Attack with commander" pops another "attack" on the order queue.

I believe that incorporating a boost with the shield is actually a good idea.
The real problem lies in implementing a system that surpasses the capabilities of AI.
In the current X4 game, most the complaints stem from the AI's limitations and overly ambitious features.
I concur that a more straightforward system for AI should be the preferred approach.