Npc AI performance

[mohawk]

I am just reporting something that I noticed recently in npc behaviour.
I am not really sure if I am right but it seems to me that the npcs are being dumbed down when attacking the player compared to their behaviour to the other npcs.

the incident that I have noticed 2 times was as follows:
A pirate was duelling with a police viper, and I decided to join in the fight, attacking the pirate.
but they were both looping around banging banking heavily in full injection speed, and although I consider myself very competent pilot, and my ship was faster, and quite manoeuvrable, I could not for the life of me, manage to get a shot to the pirate.
The pirate was ignoring me, minding only the viper and I was really straggling to keep up on his tail to manage to get a shot.
from a distance it was very difficult to lock the sniperlock (I am using sniperlock.oxp) and up close it was almost impossible to get it in my sites long enough for me to shoot it. talking about a very challenging foe!!
but when I made a single shot. and my condition turned to red, the pirate became a lame noob flying slowly and I killed it in a few seconds with a few easy shots with my side lasers.
of course I understand that when it is trying to aim at me it has to keep a straight line, just as I have to do, but my question is,
Are the npcs being dumbed down for the player? or is it just my imagination?

[another_commander]

No they should not be. If they are then it is a bug, but we need a more representative sample of encounters to be sure.

Edit: Could it be that the pirate's fuel run out at about the time you shot? Or his laser overheated?

[mohawk]

Could it be that the pirate's fuel run out at about the time you shot? Or his laser overheated?

I have noticed it in 2 occasions, but I can not be sure about it.
I will try to reproduce it, but it is not very easy because I must find 2 ships with fuel injection already fighting and join in the fight.
But the times that it happened, it was more difficult than any enemy that I have ever encountered in the game so far. I think it has to do with the fact that it was not trying to evade me, but the Viper. It was like trying to shoot a fly with a bb gun.
I have fought many ships that I know that have accuracy 10 with fuel injection and none of them ever αποτέλεσε constituted that challenging target.

The theory that I came up with, is that it is not a bag, but it has to do with the player behaviour also. When a ship is targeting me, most of the times it performs cycles around me giving me a relatively easy target when I stop in the middle and take aim. But when it is fighting some other npc, it's enemy doesn't stop, and thus making both their manoeuvres more unpredictable.
usually We can not observe (well at least I didn't) this because in the furball we usually manage to make a shot before we approach in dogfighting range, and thus the npc is already hostile and attacking us in the usual manner.

Anyway I will try to cause this again and I will come back to you, If I have any more thoughts about it.
I was just wondering if anybody else have noticed this, Or if it is deliberate.
thanks for the reply

[another_commander]

You can use the Debug Console and the developer release of Oolite to create the test environment for this, if you are interested in investigating. Launch console, launch Oolite, then go into space and issue console commands such as:

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:spawn pirate (or something like [cobra3-pirate] if you want more specific ships)
:spawn [viper] (or [viper-nterceptor] for the hardcore cops)

then let them have at it and join into the battle whenever you feel like. You can target any ship any time and issue commands like

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player.ship.target.fuel
or
player.ship.target.laserHeatLevel

to monitor what it's doing. Certainly easier than waiting for the right conditions to occur under normal play.

[cim]

Probably this is a consequence of:
1) the NPC combat AI trying to roughly match speed with its target and save injector fuel - and therefore not use injectors much if you don't, when attacking you
2) the NPC needing to fly straight towards/away from you at least some of the time to be able to try to shoot you at all, making itself a much easier target for return fire