Oolite Bulletins

Please, can someone tweak the NPC AI? this "fight at full injection speed" is really REALLY hacking me off. the amount of times i've had long hard fought battles, scooped a belly full of cargo then been blatted out of existence by some Asp/FdL tw@ who runs the entire battle at full burn is just not funny - it's idiotic, and it's completely unrealistic. You might make one or two strafing runs, or burn towards a pack before they break up, but no one sensibly tried doing the entire fight at full burn, and unless you got a mega huge heavy bugger, you'd never burn AT a ship like these do.
sorry for the rant, but i've had some great battles completely ruined by this trick.

Set Fuel to 5. It seems to be hardwired behaviour depending on how much fuel the NPC has. Loads of fuel makes them zip around annoyingly on injectors without actually acttacing much other than a lighting fast pass. When writing badass combat ships for missions I set the fuel to level 5. This makes them only use injectors if a q-mine is deployed (fair enough) in order to escape. With this fuel value they dogfight all the time (unless running away from a q-mine).

LittleBear wrote:

Set Fuel to 5. It seems to be hardwired behaviour depending on how much fuel the NPC has. Loads of fuel makes them zip around annoyingly on injectors without actually acttacing much other than a lighting fast pass. When writing badass combat ships for missions I set the fuel to level 5. This makes them only use injectors if a q-mine is deployed (fair enough) in order to escape. With this fuel value they dogfight all the time (unless running away from a q-mine).

The trick is lining up with them and as they come in, hacking away with the laser. When they get to about 5km, drop a Headhead and watch 'em go 'pop'. At that range they, rarely have chance to evade and I've regularly slapped Fdl's and Asps to the sidelines in my old mPak Python.

Captain Hesperus
- now rated Competnet, but still illiterate.

Killer Wolf wrote:

Please, can someone tweak the NPC AI? this "fight at full injection speed" is really REALLY hacking me off. the amount of times i've had long hard fought battles, scooped a belly full of cargo then been blatted out of existence by some Asp/FdL tw@ who runs the entire battle at full burn is just not funny - it's idiotic, and it's completely unrealistic. You might make one or two strafing runs, or burn towards a pack before they break up, but no one sensibly tried doing the entire fight at full burn, and unless you got a mega huge heavy bugger, you'd never burn AT a ship like these do.
sorry for the rant, but i've had some great battles completely ruined by this trick.

Yeah; I hear what you're saying. I really like this game. However there are a couple of AI element clean-ups that wouldn't hurt. This is certainly one of them. How is it these ships seem to go on forever on fuel burn?

There's another point that is related to this. When the user uses fuel injection, it doesn't appear to be real. It's like there is a shift in how time passes. This is what I mean:

If some ship ignites the fuel injection then it becomes truly difficult for the user to hit that ship. It is one of the main reasons an enemy uses fuel injection.

My observation is that when I use fuel injection and I'm heading towards pirates (all the while weaving) they have no trouble at all in locking on to my ship and hitting it repeatedly. It's as if I'm not really going any faster, but that time has just sped up. Either that or AI ships just have no difficulty aiming at ships that use fuel injection.

I can understand if I'm heading directly toward a ship that's got a bead on me. That's obvious. But as I head toward the center of a cluster of enemy ships their aim suddenly improves and the number of hits on my ship increases dramatically.

BobSongs wrote:

Yeah; I hear what you're saying. I really like this game. However there are a couple of AI element clean-ups that wouldn't hurt. This is certainly one of them. How is it these ships seem to go on forever on fuel burn?

It’s your imagination. They burn fuel at the same rate you do. However, they generally start with full tanks.

BobSongs wrote:

There's another point that is related to this. When the user uses fuel injection, it doesn't appear to be real. It's like there is a shift in how time passes.

Also an illusion. They’re just better than you. ;-)

Killer Wolf wrote:

Please, can someone tweak the NPC AI? this "fight at full injection speed" is really REALLY hacking me off. the amount of times i've had long hard fought battles, scooped a belly full of cargo then been blatted out of existence by some Asp/FdL tw@ who runs the entire battle at full burn is just not funny - it's idiotic, and it's completely unrealistic. You might make one or two strafing runs, or burn towards a pack before they break up, but no one sensibly tried doing the entire fight at full burn, and unless you got a mega huge heavy bugger, you'd never burn AT a ship like these do.
sorry for the rant, but i've had some great battles completely ruined by this trick.

I think most people have a very dark screen, which makes ships at 20 km+ hard to spot there are two ways of countering this..

with your target memory system exspansion and scanner target enhancement Equipment. Lock all ships before engaging in battle... and use the + key to cycle through all availeble targets..

the bracket will show you at long distance where the culprit is at..

The other way is turning up the brightness of your screen or turning up the Gamma setting for your Vidio card...

Cheers Frame....

As far as I have understood, the AI ships automatically roll to remain on the same plane as the opponents , so they can keep up whenever they pitch. Well, I think this is a bit unrealistic as it gives all pilots the same (very high) ability level.

Ahruman, could you add the Elite rank for the AIs on a next version, influencing a time delay for their responses and the amount of tactical errors they make? I'd really like to see the difference between a "Mostly Harmless" and a "Deadly"...

While I know there are a lot of aspects of AI that need improvement, I can’t realistically say I expect to do any of them any time soon. It’s just not an area of the code I’m familiar with or interested in.

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

As far as I have understood, the AI ships automatically roll to remain on the same plane as the opponents , so they can keep up whenever they pitch. Well, I think this is a bit unrealistic as it gives all pilots the same (very high) ability level.

Ahruman, could you add the Elite rank for the AIs on a next version, influencing a time delay for their responses and the amount of tactical errors they make? I'd really like to see the difference between a "Mostly Harmless" and a "Deadly"...

I agree. I find the staying-on-the-same-plane issue extremely unrealistic. The player would in most cases not be able to do that simply because the enemy ship is too dark to recognize on which plane it is. So the staying-on-the-same-plane-ability of NPCs leads to the conclusion that they (undiscriminately, all of them) have a far better vision than the player. And this is highly unlikely. Why should the player have the worst vision of all ships in the Ooniverse?

As for different styles of NPC responses, time delays, tactical errors, their general ability, I would even be happy with a random element, not necessarily bound to an Elite ranking (if that would be easier to code). Hmm, thinking about it, also the attributing of an Elite rank to a specific NPC would be randomized, so there would be no difference. Anyway, I would go for a not-so-clinical approach in AI fighting tactics.