Oolite Bulletins

When you get close to your opponent they seem to psychically know which side of the screen to veer into, which means that you can't really get into a close up chase without it becoming more of a chore rather than a twisty turny fur ball. Dog fighting should be fun.
Any chance of more random maneuvering, it would seem more like there's a living mind piloting the enemy vessels.
I take it getting too close triggers this automatic behavour, can this AI be tweaked to seem more like a pilot fighting for his/her/its life and less like a psychic droid?

In short, no.

This is one of those “we can’t keep piling on features or we’ll never be done” decisions.

Hi Ahruman, is this do-able as an OXP?

Perhaps, but I don’t think it would work well. Neither the AI scripts nor the ship script system are designed for that sort of detailed control. The actual maneuvering logic is hard-coded.

Thanks for replying, wasn't sure if I was being annoying asking questions about things I don't really understand, I'm always a bit inquisitive.
I wasn't thinking of full on maneuvers like a flight simulator, I was wondering if it was possible to cause fleeing enemy vessels to take more random direction choices rather than always away from the center of your screen?
Would a random number generator do it if say 1- 12 represented directions by the hours facing a clock, every few seconds it picks one of those instead of the instructions it normally follows?



If that can be done then also a secondary number, say 1-10 (The hypothetical 11+12 being where you probably are, but leaving it open to accidents, probably better to be unevenly spread) sideways on to you, representing angle of depth.



Sorry for the crude scribbles, P being player and E enemy.

It certainly could be done, the question is rather if, when, and who could do it.

As I understand it Ahruman was simply stating that it isnt a high enough priority right now.

I think the jinking code is relatively simple, and it could probably be improved.

Evening Cmdr James, thanks for replying.
I'm aware that this is very low priority and everyone is busy, it's just I wanted to prod the idea and see how plausible it was.
I'm glad you think it might be fairly easy compared to other coding tasks as I was wondering about learning some basic scripting, I'm bound to want to put together some sort of OXP at some point.
I like a bit of the old this ways and that dog fighting so maybe this might be ideal for me to fiddle with and pick it up, it might take me six months mind seeing as I'm not even sure where to start

ZygoUgo wrote:

I wasn't thinking of full on maneuvers like a flight simulator, I was wondering if it was possible to cause fleeing enemy vessels to take more random direction choices rather than always away from the center of your screen?

Download the superCobra.oxp. This one has better flee tactics. During a flee it checks periodically the angle between him and the attacker. When this drops below the 5 degr. the ship makes a 90 degr flight manoeuvre.

Cmdr James wrote:

It certainly could be done, the question is rather if, when, and who could do it.

Attacking is not possible in oxp stuff, but in fleeing something could be done. To do it well JS should be able to set the destination or at least the coordinates to make these kind of fleeing manoeuvres.

All the supercobra's I've encountered in the game (usually fugutive's near the station) just hung there limply while I pounded the snot out of them...

Eric Walch wrote:

Cmdr James wrote:

It certainly could be done, the question is rather if, when, and who could do it.

Attacking is not possible in oxp stuff, but in fleeing something could be done. To do it well JS should be able to set the destination or at least the coordinates to make these kind of fleeing manoeuvres.

I meant it would be possible to change the underlying code in oolite. I dont think it would be easy to well in an oxp.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

All the supercobra's I've encountered in the game (usually fugutive's near the station) just hung there limply while I pounded the snot out of them...

Ditto.
For an ubership, a Supercobra is surprisingly easy to defeat.

Thargoid wrote:

Is this before or after Eric worked his magic on their AI to make them a little less like target practice?

I guess so. Therefore the advice would be to download and use the latest version.

Commander McLane wrote:

Thargoid wrote:

Is this before or after Eric worked his magic on their AI to make them a little less like target practice?

I guess so. Therefore the advice would be to download and use the latest version.

I always have a hard time defeating the current version of super cobras and often I don't succeed. It is impossible to script a single ship to withstand a good player without giving it an unrealistic strength. That leaved only one other way to survive: FLEE. My main addition to the ship is on its flee behaviour. When it sees it will loose the battle in the long run (energy drops to much), it starts with its special flee and will occasionally also drop a mine to shy the player off. You can still get him but the pursue will cost a lot of fuel you don't always have.

Docking is a different issue. I choose to give it the default dockingAI. And that one never reacted on attacks until 1.71. With 1.72 it will in some occasions react on an attack. Currently a new dockingAI is being tested that almost always react on an attack. I could have given the cobra a custom dockingAI to always react, but changing the default docking is a better option according to me.

I always thought it stupid that ships were sitting ducks while docking and the police launches never had a good answer to attacks. They always came to late.

With NPC-NPC fighting the situation is different. Yesterday I watched a docking SC and a police that was in attacking mode for prolonged time against the ship. Still the SC docked without the police firing a single shot. As soon as the SB docked the police presumed its patrol.

Will download the new Supercobra then...