Oolite Bulletins

phkb wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 9:44 am

In hindsight, it's probably better to only do the setParameter for oolite_flag_behaviourLogging on a single ship using the debug console. What you're probably seeing is the AI list from *every* freighter in the system. I don't have the exact code to paste in, but I'll track it down tomorrow if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

Too late, I've already scoured the logs and comparing it to the ai plists and scripts, I can see some problems.

This was never going to be simple, editing the AI was always the holy grail of balance. I'm approaching the black hole now. Tell my kids I lo-

Switeck wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 11:39 am

It almost seems like AI.plist files don't work anymore:
AI.plist fighting routines that used to work fine...act completely broken.

I think this is in fact the case. I've been prying and jimmying the AI plists and scripts on and off for a day and a bit now and I conclude that pirateAI.plist at least is dead in the water as far as I can tell. I look at the shipdata plists and I see a spider's web of AI referencing AI stacks and states which would be a nightmare to tree-chart to see what's what. Not to mention that OXPs overwrite AI's ... randomhits seems to opt AI's for some of spaer9's ships for example.

Bah. Bah, humbug!

szaumix wrote: ↑Thu Sep 14, 2023 1:28 pm

Switeck wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 11:39 am

It almost seems like AI.plist files don't work anymore:
AI.plist fighting routines that used to work fine...act completely broken.

I think this is in fact the case. I've been prying and jimmying the AI plists and scripts on and off for a day and a bit now and I conclude that pirateAI.plist at least is dead in the water as far as I can tell. I look at the shipdata plists and I see a spider's web of AI referencing AI stacks and states which would be a nightmare to tree-chart to see what's what. Not to mention that OXPs overwrite AI's ... randomhits seems to opt AI's for some of spaer9's ships for example.

Bah. Bah, humbug!

Maestro: is this simply a case of the javascript AI's "trumping" the AI.plists? Or is there more to it?

(And don't we already know that any AI's in the Vanilla game code will be trumped by whatever appears in an oxp?)



And if you are after better quality humbugs, I can recommend these!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Thu Sep 14, 2023 1:43 pm

Maestro: is this simply a case of the javascript AI's "trumping" the AI.plists?

That was my first conclusion. The problem with the conclusion was that scripts referenced by the NPC ships alone were not accounting for all observable behavior. I am aware that this is my first day lol.

Speaking of which I get the feeling that nobody around here is really an expert on the current state of vanilla AI, even cim last year came into the thread and seemed less than 100% confident about the AI.... and nobody is too keen on touching the subject. People can write AIs for OXP ships and extras -- which seems to be the favoured way to go. Looking at the plists, I see that I could write up my own with not too much difficulty and just have it referenced by the shipdata, which I probably will if I can't consolidate what I find in the /Resources vanilla folder.

Everyone being flooded with OXPs would also explain why nobody has seemed to notice the things that I point out in this thread. Perhaps your OXP ships aren't behaving the way the vanilla ships do, and your vanilla ships are so inconsequential in your ooniverses that you only register their supporting roles and the easy kills? Anyway in the last two years I have been trying to get my Oolite balance just write in all metrics which meant stripping OXPs and re-adding them one by one, meaning I've spent a lot of time with just vanilla AI.

I remember putting this in "suggestion box" instead of a request for an OXP patch because I had originally envisioned the fixes being useful for everybody, if they could be figured out

EDIT: No, it's really not just vanilla. The problem is the generic AI scripts that everyone uses and that auto_ai defaults to. *sigh*

Does no one else see a problem with the AI?

Just found out about this setting:

another_commander wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 5:10 am

There is also the not very well known reaction_time ship property (ship.reactionTime for the JS equivalent), which defaults to 1.5 sec. This is the time an NPC will need to make a decision when tracking its target. Reduce that enough and your NPCs get superhuman reflexes.

Thought it might be helpful.

phkb wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 6:31 am

Just found out about this setting:

another_commander wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 5:10 am

There is also the not very well known reaction_time ship property (ship.reactionTime for the JS equivalent), which defaults to 1.5 sec. This is the time an NPC will need to make a decision when tracking its target. Reduce that enough and your NPCs get superhuman reflexes.

Thought it might be helpful.

A few tests proved it to be extraordinary. AI is invariably lethal even at max range even with spiralling injector approach/evasion, with those low reaction times. That will prove useful indeed. Especially for the stalker pirates OXP I've been dreaming up for years

Instagib Krait's

I've got an update to Skilled NPC's that includes reaction time. I'll get it out later today.