Oolite Bulletins

“Skilled NPC OXP” is my favorite OXP but I’ve noticed a strange behavior in ships.
I´m suspecting SKILLED NPC because I have two copies of the game and it is happening in the copy which skilled NPC is installed, but i´m not quite sure about this.
I have skilled SKILLED NPC With difficult level set to maximum.
This is what is happening:
If an enemy is chasing after my ship (shooting at me or not) and I slow down, stop my ship (speed 0) and I don`t shoot at my enemy, then it sometimes happens that when my enemy is less than o.5 km away from me, the ship remain still/immobile, doing nothing!!!.
The ship will not move until I have shot at it or I have accelerated my ship again.
The normal behavior would be that my enemy should turn left/right/around when he is too near, but it does not, the ship doesn’t move!!!
I can live with it but I would like to know if anyone knows what is happening and a possible solution.
Sorry, English is not my mother language so I’ve uploaded some videos on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPX2OEodViU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ksWQMTLrE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6LjKLvv6L4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNs-oKRHia8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uHRPUeVEY8
Thanks!!!!!!!

It could be skilled NPC's but perhaps not in the way your thinking. Skilled NPC's does not add any new ship AI. All it does is adjust the accuracy setting of NPC ships, which the standard ship AI picks up to (theoretically) improve the choices the NPC ship will make.

So, I think that Skilled NPC's is revealing a shortcoming in the standard Ship AI routines.

Given I'm a complete n00b when it comes to AI routines, I'll leave it to someone else to confirm this. In the meantime I'll have a look at the code and see if there's something nice and obvious I can fix.

I thought that bug, or something very similar, was squashed a couple of years ago.

I also remember that this bug was mentioned anno where NPCs matched speed to the target even it is stopped.
Which is your Oolite version? How about one from http://www.oolite.org/download/ ?

My oolite version (two copies) is 1.84 downloaded from Oolite.org.

They have very high skills and overconfidence that allows them to think we still destroy you .

I think that at some state the AI is set ship.desiredSpeed = 0.

It´s not only speed "0" but the ship keep doing nothing forever!, it's frozen!

Like this Ferdie from sometime around 1.77 (I think).

Are you using OXP ship sets? Please try to reproduce on a game install that has no OXPs installed and, if that works OK then add only Skilled NPCs and nothing else and repeat the test.

Yes, I’m using OXP ship sets but it is also happening to core ships ( gecko, fer de lance.. ..)
I only uninstalled SKILLED NPC and I was playing for about an hour, it was working ok but I will need more time to be sure.
I´m going to download another copy of the game and i will do as you advice.
I still think that it is due to skilled npc, I think the same as PHKB, the question is: why is it happening?
Thanks!!!!

Skilled NPCs raise accuracy to turn on low-speed dogfighting tactics. Without this NPCs too dumb to match the speed, probably this is why you can not see the problem.

Hi, “another_commander”.
I´ve done what you told me to do, and it happened as I thought it would.
The “bug” only appears when skilled NPC is installed.
I think that skilled NPC is revealing some problem in the core game when improved skills are required.
I also did another test (only for about an hour):
When I add accuracy parameters to OXP ships and these ships have a rear laser, then the problem seems to not be happening but if the ship has only forward laser it occurs as it can be watched in videos i´ve uploaded.
Thanks!

Hi!
People on this forum really do a great job improving/developing the game, but isn't there anyone who knows how to solve this "bug"????
I think that it is an important bug to fix.

Hi javirodriguez.

I'm currently looking at ship behaviour (but for a different version of the game - same AI, different situations).
While I don't have a solution for you I'm hoping that I will understand such things much better soon.

I expect there's a simple answer somewhere and if I make any relevant discoveries then I will let you know.

Hi!
I'm very pleased to read this.
I wouldn't like to see that a "blind eye" is turned to this serious problem!.
Thank you so much, redspear.