Flawed AI makes Ravager an easy target

[flywlyx]

The Ravager, the latest KHA capital ship, is armed with eight 8km 800MW L Kyon turrets and a formidable 14km L weapon.
It's meant to pose a formidable challenge, with its L turrets capable of vaporizing S-class ships and severely damaging M-class vessels. With an 8° turning rate, it's designed for quick reactions to eliminate any nearby threats.
However, in practice, I have found that simply approaching within 6km of the Ravager renders it inactive, as it prioritizes relocation over combat. This makes the combat notably boring.
Video:https://youtu.be/8Ac9N5-pLf8

To compound the issue, the Xenon also benefit from this advantage.
In the midst of the crisis event, 1I and 3Ks are spawned alongside the Khaak. Although Boso contends that the Xenon are fleeing from the Khaak, the reality is that the 1I 3K Xenon fleet could effortlessly eliminate both Ravagers spawned alongside them, rendering Boso's script quite comical.

I've come to realize that implementing a minimum firing range for destroyers/battleships serves little purpose, as employing reverse maneuvering while firing proves to be a much more effective strategy.

[A5PECT]

The "turn around, fly away to regain distance" maneuver never works for NPC capital ships, in practical combat situations. Even a (relatively) fast-turning ship like the Ravager just ends up taking hits and not using its forward weapon - which is the majority of its damage output.

Ideally, NPC capital ships would use reverse thrusters to move away from their target while firing. The developers seem reticent implement this; I assume this is due to technical reasons/limitations regarding X4's AI scripting and physics engine.

If that isn't an option, NPC capital ships that rely on forward guns really must stop trying to regain distance when targeting a non-stationary object. If their target is a ship (i.e. not a station) and within range of their forward weapons, then they should simply aim at the target and fire until the target is destroyed or they're issued a new order.

[Axeface]

Ideally, NPC capital ships would use reverse thrusters to move away from their target while firing. The developers seem reticent implement this; I assume this is due to technical reasons/limitations regarding X4's AI scripting and physics engine.

Or we just desperately need to abandon this main-battery design philosophy for large ships Its a plague on the game in so many ways.

[Vovadrik]

Running away from the enemy that is already attacking you does not make any sense especially when enemy ships has comparable speed. I agree that it is a bad strategy, they should keep distance only if they have larger firing range AND are faster than enemy AND enemy is not in shooting range. What is the point of running away when you are 2 km away from K, it will destroy by the time you turn

Ideally, NPC capital ships would use reverse thrusters to move away from their target while firing. The developers seem reticent implement this; I assume this is due to technical reasons/limitations regarding X4's AI scripting and physics engine.

Or we just desperately need to abandon this main-battery design philosophy for large ships Its a plague on the game in so many ways.

What if big ships had some "main turrets" instead, some heavy anti-capital turrets, that turn slowly and are specific for different ships

[GCU Grey Area]

Or we just desperately need to abandon this main-battery design philosophy for large ships Its a plague on the game in so many ways.

At least it makes them a hell of a lot more fun to fly personally. Did not enjoy flying anything bigger than M6 in the old games, primarily because my trigger finger got exceptionally bored. Passively flying around while a bunch of automated turrets killed everything around me just wasn't something that I found remotely entertaining. Very much approve of X4's destroyers with their main guns.

[A5PECT]

Or we just desperately need to abandon this main-battery design philosophy for large ships Its a plague on the game in so many ways.

I really like the concept of X4's destroyer class, and would be very sad to see them go. I just wish the NPCs actually used them in a way that's actually conducive to how they're designed.

I certainly wouldn't mind the addition more - player-usable - capital ships designed to rely on turrets rather than forward guns as their primary source of damage, a la the Xenon K and I.

[flywlyx]

Or we just desperately need to abandon this main-battery design philosophy for large ships Its a plague on the game in so many ways.

It actually adds some tactical details to fleet combat, instead of circling the target all the time, players could turn to the enemy to increase the dps and then turn back to wait for cooling down.
Because X4 doesn't have settings like penetration and armor thickness, without this kind of detail, the fleet battle will be quite boring.

[xrogaan]

Or we just desperately need to abandon this main-battery design philosophy for large ships Its a plague on the game in so many ways.

At least it makes them a hell of a lot more fun to fly personally. Did not enjoy flying anything bigger than M6 in the old games, primarily because my trigger finger got exceptionally bored. Passively flying around while a bunch of automated turrets killed everything around me just wasn't something that I found remotely entertaining. Very much approve of X4's destroyers with their main guns.

You can solve that by allowing players to take over the turret system, War Thunder style. X4 ships share a lot of similarities with a tank. There's a turret and the player is an hivemind controlling the vehicle. The issue, though, is that it would require a specific UI for bigger ships, instead of the unified UI we have currently. Though it makes sense, a capital ship shouldn't be handled the same way as a fighter or corvette.

[Zloth2]

I think the Ravager should be beatable in this way. You've got the right sized ship attacking from a good angle. If the Ravager tried to turn to engage you, couldn't you stay roughly behind it and keep pounding away? A big ship should, IMHO, be beaten by a somewhat smaller ship in this way. Just like your Behemoth can be beaten by a corvette sitting behind the engines.

[adeine]

The weird vertical axis aversion of the flight AI and related alignment issues also don't help when it comes to ships using main guns. There have been a couple threads about the specific details, but apparently it's a design decision current devs working on the AI have no say over.

[A5PECT]

If, for whatever reason, there are AI design guidelines prohibiting it from pitching capital ships up and down, then fine. But there should be an additional design guideline to prohibit designing ships in a way that causes the AI to exploit that.

Many player complaints and balance issues regarding capital ship combat would be addressed - at least partially - by rearranging Xenon capital ships' turrets so the Ks and Is don't position themselves in places where other NPC-controlled ships can't target them consistently

[naisha]

Waaait. Ai ships can't target up and down with main guns or am I miss reading this?

[Imperial Good]

Honestly I am not a fan of the Khaak destroyer balancing. It looks like it takes the worst parts of XR capital ship balancing and puts them on a smaller Asgard. High damage L beam turrets, Plasma JET style, to making it impossible to approach as a player flown S or M ship due to the very high likely hood of you dying on approach or escape. A one-shot beam based L battery to instant kill the player in any ship smaller than an XL just because they approached it from the wrong angle. And this is all in contrast to the low threat Khaak S/M swarms. Not a fun ship to fight fairly, and a ship one pretty much has to either cheese, as seen in the video, or outclass.

I personally would have preferred it to have between 1/16 and 1/4 the damage but spawn in a large wave of 8 to 16 of them. This would suit the swarm like feel of the Khaak better, having a swarm of weaker ships attacking, but apparently this is not really lore friendly. Instead the Khaak apparently are meant to have very high damage, possibly the best, capital ship like ships, but tickling low threat S/M ships that most ships massively out class.

Waaait. Ai ships can't target up and down with main guns or am I miss reading this?

They can if the main guns support it. However they will still try to align their ship to point at the target if possible, which can interfere with capital ships trying to remain aligned to the X/Z plane.

Some main guns lack a gimble so can only be fired straight. Most noteable is the ATF XL Battery of the Asgard. The AI has a lot of difficulty using this weapon at times since it might fire it before the ship finishes aligning, wasting most of the shot.

[A5PECT]

Waaait. Ai ships can't target up and down with main guns or am I miss reading this?

NPC-controlled destroyers are prohibited from staying pitched up or down past a certain number of degrees from the ecliptic plane of a sector for extended periods of time. The AI scripts that control destroyers in combat require them to align themselves on roughly the same vertical plane with their target before attacking

AI control of ships has a number of enforced behaviors/limitations like this, e.g. all NPC ships are programmed to keep themselves "upright" as much as possible. The limitations are less noticeable with small ships, as they have much more room to play with relative to their size and the distances they engage targets at.

[naisha]

gotcha thank you

[flywlyx]

Waaait. Ai ships can't target up and down with main guns or am I miss reading this?

Code: Select all

<angular roll="20" pitch="60" />

All the capital ships are restricted to 20° in roll and 60° in pitch.

Honestly I am not a fan of the Khaak destroyer balancing. It looks like it takes the worst parts of XR capital ship balancing and puts them on a smaller Asgard. High damage L beam turrets, Plasma JET style, to making it impossible to approach as a player flown S or M ship due to the very high likely hood of you dying on approach or escape. A one-shot beam based L battery to instant kill the player in any ship smaller than an XL just because they approached it from the wrong angle. And this is all in contrast to the low threat Khaak S/M swarms. Not a fun ship to fight fairly, and a ship one pretty much has to either cheese, as seen in the video, or outclass.

I personally would have preferred it to have between 1/16 and 1/4 the damage but spawn in a large wave of 8 to 16 of them. This would suit the swarm like feel of the Khaak better, having a swarm of weaker ships attacking, but apparently this is not really lore friendly. Instead the Khaak apparently are meant to have very high damage, possibly the best, capital ship like ships, but tickling low threat S/M ships that most ships massively out class.

Ravager is a decent ship to solo if it has basic capabilities like using its main weapon against its enemy, I have tried to fight it properly by restricting myself from getting too close.
I have to move around it to find chances to fire my main weapon, a challenging 10-minute fight.
Current X4 AI simply doesn't have the capability to make challenging fleet combat, a single Rattlesnake/Syn could easily finish as many as developers throw onto their face if the ship is similar to the strength of the K or the I. It's more dull than it is stimulating.

[Axeface]

Or we just desperately need to abandon this main-battery design philosophy for large ships Its a plague on the game in so many ways.

I really like the concept of X4's destroyer class, and would be very sad to see them go. I just wish the NPCs actually used them in a way that's actually conducive to how they're designed.

I certainly wouldn't mind the addition more - player-usable - capital ships designed to rely on turrets rather than forward guns as their primary source of damage, a la the Xenon K and I.

We can talk about how nice it would be if they worked, but we need to face reality. The ships that use spinal weapons should be agile enough to use them effectively (in high attention), I would want to see smaller L ships with spinals (frigates like the one I made myself) and have the destroyers turret focused. I'm very shocked to see so many replies defending this fundamental decision. OOS/IS disparity, constant AI problems with positioning - this one choice negatively impacts the game in so many ways and all because it was deemed 'boring' because you arnt clicking your left mouse button? Turret gameplay is fun too and you can even have manual aiming of some turrets, that would still be 'cool' and rewarding, if it rewards well placed shots against capitals. There is a reason most other games have spinal weapon ships as frigates.
Edit: When I say frigates I mean proper frigates, I cant bring myself to accept x4 frigates like the cerberus as worthy of the name.