New flight model wasn't ready for high attention NPC AI combat

[solardawning]

Last night I started playing with fleets of fighters- the auto replacement feature is great!
Fighter flight, however... yikes. The new flight model wasn't ready for this.

I went into a Xenon sector with an escort of 100 Cutlasses. Target a Xenon K, and order an attack... all my Cutlasses travel drive and smack into the side of the K at max speed, losing most of their shields as they bounce off.
A few got stuck inside the K's geometry. They recover and blast it to bits, yay! Two cutlasses are stuck inside the geometry of the K's corpse.

Target another nearby (~30km) K and repeat. They ram it again. Another gets stuck inside the K.

Next, an I: Again, they all ram into it.

It's a little hilarious to watch, but also frustrating that my fighters are all losing their shields by ramming into their targets, and have some recovery time bouncing off before they start effectively attacking.
It just looks and feels... unready?

[BitByte]

If you still have unmodified savefile from that situation and it's possible to reproduce then I would recommend you could create bug report in Tech Support section.
Provide to devs specs of your game (version, dlcs etc), description of the problem, how to reproduce it and your savefile.

That does not sound good thing and definately needs finetuning.

[Slashman]

It is odd that nobody actually noticed that through beta testing either.

Yeah an unmodified save would be really helpful for the devs.

[LameFox]

Fighter ramming isn't a new issue tbh. Now they do it faster, but they were just as willing to fly into capitals and stations when they moved slow. The distance from the target at which they break off their attack run is just too near.

[user1679]

This actually sounds pretty entertaining, some of my fighters still just sit by the gate and don't move.

[OutThere88]

Unfortunately, I have observed this as well.

I took a year or so break from the series, and was excited to jump back in, buy all the new DLC and start a new run. Before doing that, I loaded up one of my old saves to check out the flight model.

In said save, I had built a Raptor with 50 Chimera fighters for station assault. I've always enjoyed flying/using the small ships and carrier fleets. After flying around in a fighter for a bit, I had the fleet attack a Split shipyard.

Now a year ago, everything still had a little bit of that X4 'creative flying' but I thought by in large, the AI was able to fly around mostly without ramming anything, and acceptably dock.

I watched the fight take place...pretty poor like OP observed. Most of the fighters spent their time ramming the station at full speed, depleting their shields. Several got stuck in the geometry. It seems like they would be trying to line up attack runs while at full speed, and be drifting by the time they 'pointed' at their target. While on the attack run, there was no chance they were going to slow down in time to turn and would just end up 'drift-turning' into the station until they crashed.

Eventually, the station went boom. Unfortunately, watching them all cluster around the Raptor, crashing into each other and getting stuck in/around the carrier while they tried to dock was just as bad.

I'm all for new features, but this flight model has me scratching my head. If it improves the experience for X4 and HOTAS stuff, great! But if it prevents the AI from being able to navigate, fly and dock in high attention...is this really a net positive?

I was very disappointed and won't be making any new purchases / new runs until this is *hopefully* fixed, if it even can be at all. An obvious solution is just to go OS, but what fun is that? I want to be in the thick of things, or at least watch my ships do something (high attention), not just stare at a map.

[Sorasil]

Unfortunately, I have observed this as well.

I took a year or so break from the series, and was excited to jump back in, buy all the new DLC and start a new run. Before doing that, I loaded up one of my old saves to check out the flight model.

In said save, I had built a Raptor with 50 Chimera fighters for station assault. I've always enjoyed flying/using the small ships and carrier fleets. After flying around in a fighter for a bit, I had the fleet attack a Split shipyard.

Now a year ago, everything still had a little bit of that X4 'creative flying' but I thought by in large, the AI was able to fly around mostly without ramming anything, and acceptably dock.

I watched the fight take place...pretty poor like OP observed. Most of the fighters spent their time ramming the station at full speed, depleting their shields. Several got stuck in the geometry. It seems like they would be trying to line up attack runs while at full speed, and be drifting by the time they 'pointed' at their target. While on the attack run, there was no chance they were going to slow down in time to turn and would just end up 'drift-turning' into the station until they crashed.

Eventually, the station went boom. Unfortunately, watching them all cluster around the Raptor, crashing into each other and getting stuck in/around the carrier while they tried to dock was just as bad.

I'm all for new features, but this flight model has me scratching my head. If it improves the experience for X4 and HOTAS stuff, great! But if it prevents the AI from being able to navigate, fly and dock in high attention...is this really a net positive?

I was very disappointed and won't be making any new purchases / new runs until this is *hopefully* fixed, if it even can be at all. An obvious solution is just to go OS, but what fun is that? I want to be in the thick of things, or at least watch my ships do something (high attention), not just stare at a map.

The different engine types handle the new flight model differently. Split ships/engines are very slippery as it is right now. Have you tried the above scenario with none split engines/ships?

[alt3rn1ty]

Some of this topic does beg the question what engines are in use.
From the following topic ..

viewtopic.php?t=469745
..

Paranid: Fastest travel drives, and ships that fly almost like they are on rails, but much reduced manoeuvrability at high velocity.
Terran: Quickest travel drive charge-up time, very fast travel drive acceleration. Their ships are generally easy to use.
Split: Fastest regular engines, and just enough travel drive performance to intercept most targets. Their ill-controlled drifting is a challenge for rookie pilots though.
Argon: Very aggressive boosting that can offset their poor travel drive acceleration. Their combat ships benefit a lot from improved thrusters.
Teladi: Designed to outlast opponents in combat and haul efficiently at any distance.
Boron: The weakness of their regular engines can be offset by considered use of boosting and their pre-charged travel drives.

[solardawning]

Some of this topic does beg the question what engines are in use.

As I mentioned, I was using Cutlass fighters. They don't get an engine choice.

[Baconnaise]

I've been running shield collision damage off mod that's my cope. Kinda used to running a mod or two to offset some updates after X3 Rebirth X4. Such is life.

[LameFox]

I see the same thing using Argon M ships with their own equipment. Either they pull away too late and hit, or they do a kind of very tight U turn right next to the surface that makes them stop in the perfect place to take turret fire. Just today I watched a Minotaur get stuck in an SCA Heron E because its U turn carried it into the protruding geometry of the ship.

To me it does not seem like a matter of what you equip them with. The behaviour itself is ill-conceived. They should not fly like that no matter what they have on them.

[Gergin]

The different engine types handle the new flight model differently. Split ships/engines are very slippery as it is right now. Have you tried the above scenario with none split engines/ships?

I really do not like or agree with Split ships being the slippery archetype. It doesn't make sense for their ethos or their weapons. All their racial weapons (Boson Lance excepted) are intended for close range dogfighting but their new physics are so slippery that it is extremely difficult to make use of their weapons.

Split and Paranid should be swapped when it comes to how much they drift.

[LameFox]

Reduced manoeuvrability at high speeds doesn't really sound great for close-range weapons either tbh. Especially in AI hands. I think they really just need to up the projectile velocity (and maybe reduce spread) of weapons in general and essentially push "close range" out a bit further to reflect how ships handle now.

But, I don't think that would solve the ramming. Their weapons don't and have never required them to fly that way, they just do.

[alt3rn1ty]

As I mentioned, I was using Cutlass fighters. They don't get an engine choice.

Ah sorry, I have never used them so didn't know they were restricted.
I also just realised, I have been missing a ship from Timelines

So anyway I brought up the mention of new engine qualities in case these were ships which for example had Split engines making them drifty aswell as fast, and maybe slipped the net in new flight model development tweaking of individual ships, causing them to smack into stations .. But thats obviously not the case if they are Terran ..

.. So, I guess Egosoft may be reading this, but has the behaviour been brought up in the Tech forum as a bug report ?

I wonder if this is one of those cases where too many ships in a fleet causes the game with your machine spec to lose the plot on controlling them all, in a busy battle situation.

I once had a Raptor with IIRC 100 Chimera onboard, if I was in sector when they all launched, they would starburst out in straight lines from the Raptor in all 3D directions (on the map it looked like the Raptor was the sun, and the fighters were stars expanding outwards from a big bang), go out of sector and the fighters got back on track heading towards the target - For me it was just a case of too much for the laptop CPU at the time to handle in an already very busy sector.
I dont think thats the case here, but it could be similar, too many last minute collision avoidance calculations in an attack run = Flys on a stationary windscreen.

[LameFox]

I reported ramming in M ships recently, but I haven't made any reports for S ship ramming since 7.10. However it did get a tracking number this time whereas my last two threads about S ships ramming didn't. So maybe if someone sees it happening now it would be worth trying again.

[OutThere88]

Regarding the different engine types, and Split types causing this issue, I think the main point is that the AI should be able to fly their ships well enough to at a *minimum*, be able to not crash into stationary objects and/or dock successfully without damage, getting stuck in geometry, clumping and crashing into each other, etc. For my part, the particular playthrough I had referenced is a vanilla Split playthrough, so all of the AI ships I was watching had full high grade SPL equipment and the pilots were a mix of stars. I long ago made my peace with the X universe AI's piloting limitations, so I don't expect perfection at all. Base level functioning, at least enough to provide a bit of a challenge to player piloted ships, and a show for high attention activities, has been my expectation. Watching craft slam into stations, unable to dock with carriers and M ships banging around stations trying to dock is tough to swallow in this space-opera game.

I think different engine characteristics is great for the player experience, but if the AI can't function with it's own races' equipment, that is a huge and significant issue. Given that people here have observed it happening with different race ships, I unfortunately don't think this is a case of SPL engines = crashy AI, all other engines = quality flight etc. To me, this flight change in AI was not worth it to increase the player enjoyment of flight (lets say by 25%) with a new feature, as it seems to have crippled the piloting and function of high attention AI in all other areas, and that is so much of the game.

I reported ramming in M ships recently, but I haven't made any reports for S ship ramming since 7.10. However it did get a tracking number this time whereas my last two threads about S ships ramming didn't. So maybe if someone sees it happening now it would be worth trying again.

I am very hopeful this is receiving some developer attention. I'm sure we could all provide saves, but this is a situation where I don't even think specific saves are needed...it is observable in nearly any similar situation, and in my opinion it is a sign that the AI just can't make this flight model work regardless of specific locations/ships/scenarios that a save is needed to reproduce.

[EGO_Aut]

I reported ramming in M ships recently, but I haven't made any reports for S ship ramming since 7.10. However it did get a tracking number this time whereas my last two threads about S ships ramming didn't. So maybe if someone sees it happening now it would be worth trying again.

I think EGOSOFT can not fix high attention combat to make it work correctly.
Beta7.5 was unplayable in high attention with the first few versions, at least they managed to make it kind of playable.