How fleet combat needs to improve

This forum is the ideal place for all discussion relating to X4. You will also find additional information from developers here.

Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum

Post Reply
Falcrack
Posts: 4927
Joined: Wed, 29. Jul 09, 00:46
x4

How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Falcrack » Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25

Here are a number of scenarios in a 2.5 100% vanilla game, where I have a fleet with a carrier with a full wing of fighters, and several battleships. I will describe what I did, what the observed result is, and what the desired result would be if it was working properly, IMO. I really, really hope Egosoft reads this, and considers carefully ways that they could improve fleet combat in general.

What I did:
-I click on the wing leader (carrier with docked fighters), and give an attack order to a non-hostile destroyer that is travelling through sector
What I observed:
-Wing engages travel drive and flies directly towards where target was at the time I gave the order. When it reaches the location, it then turns toward where the target is now (halfway across the sector) and begins travelling at normal (non-travel) speed towards the target, even though it is now half a sector away from the target. Ships in wing travel at different speeds, and become widely dispersed en route to the target.
What I would like to happen:
-Wing engages travel drive and flies toward the current target, changing course continuously to head directly towards the target without disengaging travel drive, until it arrives at the target. Ships in the wing attempt to maintain formation or at least close proximity to other ships in the wing, so that the entire group flies at the speed of the slowest member.

What I did:
-A wing of 4 fighters is subordinate to a carrier. I order the wing leader to fly to a position. I then issue a recall all subordinates command on the carrier.
What I observed:
-Fighter wing takes off from carrier, all 4 travel to the designated position. When they arrive and I issue the recall subordinate command, only the wing leader returns to the carrier, the other 3 fighters in the wing remain stationary. I try to give manual orders to the remaining fighters to dock, and it works, somewhat, but they are extremely unresponsive, sometimes seem to forget or ignore the order to dock. Takes a very long time and a lot of fiddling to get all my fighters back on board. Even worse, sometimes issuing "recall subordinates" caused all the subordinate fighters (not the wing leaders) on board the carrier to take off instead of remaining on the carrier, undoing all my work trying to make them land. In short, ships are very unresponsive to recall subordinates.
What I would like to happen:
-When issuing the recall subordinates command on the carrier, all fighters in the wing, not just the wing leader, respond and return to the carrier. Fighters do not need to be told multiple times to land, they do not forget their orders. "Recall subordinates" does not cause fighters within a wing to take off from the carrier.

What I did:
-Carrier with 40 fighters containing 10 subordinate wings of 4 fighters each, plus 7 destroyers directly subordinate to the carrier, is ordered to attack an enemy destroyer. All fighters were landed at the time the order was given
What I observed:
-Carrier moved towards target, and when it got close, each of the flight leaders for the 10 wings launched and attacked. But the subordinates to each of these wings stayed on board the carrier. 1 of the 7 destroyers moves forward to attack, but for unknown reasons, the remaining 6 destroyers stay stationary and do not move in to attack, and I had to remove them from the group and reassign them to defend the carrier to get them to join in the attack
What I would like to happen:
-All fighters within a wing, and not just the wing leaders, respond to the attack command given to the carrier. The order to attack a target given to the wing leaders is propagated down to the subordinates of the wing leader. Subordinates should be much more responsive to a direct attack command given to the wing leader, so the 6 stationary destroyers should have started to move in to attack when the command was given.

What I did:
-Tried to disband the 10 fighter wings of 4 fighters each, which were in turn subordinate to the carrier.
What I observed:
-When selecting all 40 fighters, the option to remove assignment, or remove orders and wait, was not available. I had to go through each wing, one by one, to remove the assignment, which left me with 10 wings of fighters unassigned to the carrier. But I wanted to disband each of the fighter wings as well. Unfortunately, when I select all the fighters within the wing, I still do not have the option to remove the assignment, or remove orders and wait. The only way I can accomplish what I want is to click on each fighter, individually, and remove the assignment. So to fully disband all 40 fighters, I have to click on each one, select remove assignment, go to the next one, and reapt for all 40 fighters. Such a pain!
What I would like to happen:
-When selecting multiple ships, the option to remove assignment is available. So I could disband all the wings of fighters by simply selecting all fighters, right click, and having the option to "remove assignment" for all of them at once.

What I did:
-Gave attack order to a carrier group to an enemy station in sector with carrier groups full of fighters plus destroyers
What I observed:
-Plasma shots from destroyers missed their stationary target most of the time. Shots were slow an unimpressive looking.
What I would like to happen:
-Better aiming for plasma turrets, faster shots for plasma turrets, longer range for plasma turrets, better impact effects for plasma turrets. See the VRO mod for a good example of how it should look.

What I did:
-Murder HOP assets continuously for a long time, starting with a faction rep of 30
What I observed:
-After about an hour of murder, my rep had gone down from 30, to 26
What I would expect:
-Murdering ships, deliberately, should be an act of war, and would immediately lower my rep to enemy status, especially at the rate at which I was killing their ships.

What I did:
-Try to order defense drones from a ship to do any command (ie attack a specific target, return to dock,
What I observed:
-No such commands for giving direct orders to defense drone exists
What I would like to happen:
-Options to order drones to launch, drones to return to dock at the ship, order them to attack specific targets.

I think I'll stop here. What I hope Egosoft realizes, is that fleet operations, especially with carriers and their assigned fighter wings, could use a lot of work.

User avatar
mr.WHO
Posts: 8547
Joined: Thu, 12. Oct 06, 17:19
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by mr.WHO » Sat, 17. Aug 19, 20:58

Leader-subordinate logic really need some fixes and updates - I really hate taht many things, like docking to carrier is ignored by subordinates and only leader is doing what I actually asked them to do.

pref
Posts: 5589
Joined: Sat, 10. Nov 12, 17:55
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by pref » Sat, 17. Aug 19, 21:05

Funny how "follow" doesn't exist in the game due to travel drive.
Got the impression one couldn't even script such a command, needs some engine level support otherwise there is too much maths and no possibility to time the actions well from an aiscript.

As long as this command is missing, or a p2p jumpdrive is not implemented coordinated fleet action seems so far away.

The rest could probably be fixed via scripting only, maybe except the plasma aim.

Xcaliber
Posts: 59
Joined: Wed, 6. Nov 02, 20:31
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Xcaliber » Sun, 18. Aug 19, 13:41

Falcrack wrote: What I did:
-I click on the wing leader (carrier with docked fighters), and give an attack order to a non-hostile destroyer that is travelling through sector
What I observed:
-Wing engages travel drive and flies directly towards where target was at the time I gave the order. When it reaches the location, it then turns toward where the target is now (halfway across the sector) and begins travelling at normal (non-travel) speed towards the target, even though it is now half a sector away from the target. Ships in wing travel at different speeds, and become widely dispersed en route to the target.
After turning towards where the target is now they would then head towards that position then if the target had kept moving it would be rinse and repeat and they may never actually catch the target. If the target flies past them they won't engage as they are still flying to it's previous position. This is one of the worst examples of artificial intelligence I have ever come across and it's not just in fleet combat.

I'm sure that the programmers cannot be this poor so the problem must be with the constraints of the game engine.

I gave a wing command (Carrier, Destroyers and fighters) to fly across a number of sectors to a particular station. They all set off with some fighters and the destroyers arriving well before the Carrier. Checking their status they had the command "fly and wait" active. When the Carrier entered the final sector all the subordinates then left their position to fly towards the Carrier with the command "escort ship" active. The Carrier proceeded to the target station on it's own whilst the defending fleet flew past it to the gate where the Carrier entered the sector. when the Carrier arrived at the station on it's own it's defenders reached the gate before turning back to head for the station. Fleet command has been worthless since day one in X4 yet it was so much better in x3TC and earlier versions.

sh1pman
Posts: 590
Joined: Wed, 10. Aug 16, 13:28
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by sh1pman » Sun, 18. Aug 19, 14:05

I gave a wing command (Carrier, Destroyers and fighters) to fly across a number of sectors to a particular station. They all set off with some fighters and the destroyers arriving well before the Carrier. Checking their status they had the command "fly and wait" active. When the Carrier entered the final sector all the subordinates then left their position to fly towards the Carrier with the command "escort ship" active. The Carrier proceeded to the target station on it's own whilst the defending fleet flew past it to the gate where the Carrier entered the sector. when the Carrier arrived at the station on it's own it's defenders reached the gate before turning back to head for the station. Fleet command has been worthless since day one in X4 yet it was so much better in x3TC and earlier versions.
Yup. It’s one of the things preventing me from going back to X4 after I stoped playing a month after release. Here’s my own example:

Ordered a wing of 4 Perseus and a Nemesis to protect the Xenon gate area. Xenon comes through the gate, defenders start moving to it. Xenon engages travel drive. My guys keep flying to where the Xenon was. After they reach the spot, they turn towards the Xenon, where it is now, and start flying to it. WITHOUT THE TRAVEL DRIVE. Some time later (5-10 minutes) they may randomly engage their travel drive. Even if they get close enough to start firing, after one hit the Xenon boosts away and starts its travel drive and flees away. My guys, of course, forget they have travel drives themselves, and this whole stupid “chase” starts all over again. Meanwhile, more Xenon come through the gate. Very rarely do they manage to actually kill something, and most of the time it’s because I hop into the Nemesis myself out of frustration and lock the Xenon in combat. Disaster of an AI. They should just remove it and replace it with neural networks or something.

Falcrack
Posts: 4927
Joined: Wed, 29. Jul 09, 00:46
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Falcrack » Sun, 18. Aug 19, 19:43

sh1pman wrote:
Sun, 18. Aug 19, 14:05
I gave a wing command (Carrier, Destroyers and fighters) to fly across a number of sectors to a particular station. They all set off with some fighters and the destroyers arriving well before the Carrier. Checking their status they had the command "fly and wait" active. When the Carrier entered the final sector all the subordinates then left their position to fly towards the Carrier with the command "escort ship" active. The Carrier proceeded to the target station on it's own whilst the defending fleet flew past it to the gate where the Carrier entered the sector. when the Carrier arrived at the station on it's own it's defenders reached the gate before turning back to head for the station. Fleet command has been worthless since day one in X4 yet it was so much better in x3TC and earlier versions.
Yup. It’s one of the things preventing me from going back to X4 after I stoped playing a month after release. Here’s my own example:

Ordered a wing of 4 Perseus and a Nemesis to protect the Xenon gate area. Xenon comes through the gate, defenders start moving to it. Xenon engages travel drive. My guys keep flying to where the Xenon was. After they reach the spot, they turn towards the Xenon, where it is now, and start flying to it. WITHOUT THE TRAVEL DRIVE. Some time later (5-10 minutes) they may randomly engage their travel drive. Even if they get close enough to start firing, after one hit the Xenon boosts away and starts its travel drive and flees away. My guys, of course, forget they have travel drives themselves, and this whole stupid “chase” starts all over again. Meanwhile, more Xenon come through the gate. Very rarely do they manage to actually kill something, and most of the time it’s because I hop into the Nemesis myself out of frustration and lock the Xenon in combat. Disaster of an AI. They should just remove it and replace it with neural networks or something.
This is a prime example of what I am talking about, and what desperately needs improvement.

brevi
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat, 2. Jun 12, 00:06
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by brevi » Sun, 18. Aug 19, 21:26

Falcrack wrote:
Sun, 18. Aug 19, 19:43
sh1pman wrote:
Sun, 18. Aug 19, 14:05
I gave a wing command (Carrier, Destroyers and fighters) to fly across a number of sectors to a particular station. They all set off with some fighters and the destroyers arriving well before the Carrier. Checking their status they had the command "fly and wait" active. When the Carrier entered the final sector all the subordinates then left their position to fly towards the Carrier with the command "escort ship" active. The Carrier proceeded to the target station on it's own whilst the defending fleet flew past it to the gate where the Carrier entered the sector. when the Carrier arrived at the station on it's own it's defenders reached the gate before turning back to head for the station. Fleet command has been worthless since day one in X4 yet it was so much better in x3TC and earlier versions.
Yup. It’s one of the things preventing me from going back to X4 after I stoped playing a month after release. Here’s my own example:

Ordered a wing of 4 Perseus and a Nemesis to protect the Xenon gate area. Xenon comes through the gate, defenders start moving to it. Xenon engages travel drive. My guys keep flying to where the Xenon was. After they reach the spot, they turn towards the Xenon, where it is now, and start flying to it. WITHOUT THE TRAVEL DRIVE. Some time later (5-10 minutes) they may randomly engage their travel drive. Even if they get close enough to start firing, after one hit the Xenon boosts away and starts its travel drive and flees away. My guys, of course, forget they have travel drives themselves, and this whole stupid “chase” starts all over again. Meanwhile, more Xenon come through the gate. Very rarely do they manage to actually kill something, and most of the time it’s because I hop into the Nemesis myself out of frustration and lock the Xenon in combat. Disaster of an AI. They should just remove it and replace it with neural networks or something.
This is a prime example of what I am talking about, and what desperately needs improvement.
From what I understand AI issues has always been a problem for almost all X series games on release (among other things).

My first X game was x3TC and I got into it pretty late (3 or 4 yrs after release) and it was almost perfect. Rebirth started off with horrible AI issues and they were mostly fixed later. Now here we go again with X4.

What boggles my mind is how does this same issue keep happening? How do they not learn from their past releases?

The only thing I've learned now is not to buy Ego games on release... I'll need to wait a minimum of 2.5 years.

Karmaticdamage
Posts: 715
Joined: Fri, 16. Sep 11, 00:15
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Karmaticdamage » Mon, 19. Aug 19, 03:18

Being able to disable order queuing on certain ships would be a huge benefit to controlling large fleets. Right now if you tell a group of ships to attack a target, but then need them to attack another target, you have to cancel the previous order before assigning the next. I find this very tedious and I'd like to be able to change my ships orders without canceling the previous. The game becomes an RTS once your grow large enough, so we need more RTS like controls for ordering our ships around.

brevi
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat, 2. Jun 12, 00:06
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by brevi » Mon, 19. Aug 19, 05:08

Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 19. Aug 19, 03:18
Being able to disable order queuing on certain ships would be a huge benefit to controlling large fleets. Right now if you tell a group of ships to attack a target, but then need them to attack another target, you have to cancel the previous order before assigning the next. I find this very tedious and I'd like to be able to change my ships orders without canceling the previous. The game becomes an RTS once your grow large enough, so we need more RTS like controls for ordering our ships around.
Order queuing should be disabled by default. It should only be enabled by the player for specific tasks. Or make it a toggle for those that need it as default. I can't tell you how many times my ship left me stranded on a station just because I forgot to cancel the "fly and wait" order from 3 hours ago.

adeine
Posts: 1087
Joined: Thu, 31. Aug 17, 17:34
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by adeine » Mon, 19. Aug 19, 07:57

brevi wrote:
Mon, 19. Aug 19, 05:08
Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 19. Aug 19, 03:18
Being able to disable order queuing on certain ships would be a huge benefit to controlling large fleets. Right now if you tell a group of ships to attack a target, but then need them to attack another target, you have to cancel the previous order before assigning the next. I find this very tedious and I'd like to be able to change my ships orders without canceling the previous. The game becomes an RTS once your grow large enough, so we need more RTS like controls for ordering our ships around.
Order queuing should be disabled by default. It should only be enabled by the player for specific tasks. Or make it a toggle for those that need it as default. I can't tell you how many times my ship left me stranded on a station just because I forgot to cancel the "fly and wait" order from 3 hours ago.
What I think the obvious solution they should do/have done is look at how RTS games handle things and implement a version of that, e.g.:
  • Select ship individually or by click drag, have bindable control groups (ctrl-#, # to recall) OR the ability to set a keybinding on a per wing basis (e.g. set 0-9 for a wing, then hitting the number will select it).
  • Have common commands bound to a key or key combination, such as (ctrl)A for attack/patrol, (ctrl)M for fly to, (ctrl)D for dock, etc. These will change the cursor to a "target" icon when friendly ships are selected
  • Click on a point on the map to have ships move (fly to area ignoring hostiles)/patrol (if on "attack", fly to and engage hostiles on the way and at destination) to said area. (The distinction between move command and attack move command is vital)
  • Click on a target to attack a specific target (focus fire and ignore other threats) or dock at a location
  • Holding shift while either setting the order or target will add the command to the command queue
  • If shift is not pressed, any new command issued this way will suspend or clear the command queue and override it with the current command. If you want to be fancy, have an option in the menu to the effect of "resume previous queue", where it will pick up where it had left off before you gave it new orders.
For extra points:
  • Wing/Control group shortcuts can also work (perhaps with a modifier) from outside the map screen, allowing you to easily issue wing commands without leaving your cockpit. Have the pilot(s) or wing leaders pop up on comms as you do so it feels like you're actually giving people commands and having them respond.
  • Target for commands is your currently selected target if applicable; if a command needs more input than the cockpit can provide you can always pop up the map screen already in "select target" mode
  • Have a good selection of contextual generic command shortcuts such as "Protect" (protect me if nothing or hostile target selected, protect my current target if friendly or neutral target selected), "Disarm", "Return home", etc.

Gregorovitch
Posts: 629
Joined: Mon, 5. Sep 11, 21:18
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Gregorovitch » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 18:35

I'm meeting a lot of these sort of issues since obtaining a sizable fleet for the first time. I'm posting issues with save files to reproduce them in situ on the tech forum. There appear to be a never ending list of them.

What I would like to know is what have Egosoft said they are going to do about this with respect to 2.6 and especially 3.0/Split DLC?

Lord Crc
Posts: 529
Joined: Sun, 29. Jan 12, 13:28
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Lord Crc » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 20:47

brevi wrote:
Mon, 19. Aug 19, 05:08
Order queuing should be disabled by default. It should only be enabled by the player for specific tasks. Or make it a toggle for those that need it as default. I can't tell you how many times my ship left me stranded on a station just because I forgot to cancel the "fly and wait" order from 3 hours ago.
Indeed. Quick fix would be to split the order window into two submenus, queued commands and immediate commands (which would replace the queued ones).

User avatar
grapedog
Posts: 2398
Joined: Sat, 21. Feb 04, 20:17
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by grapedog » Sat, 31. Aug 19, 21:58

Yeah, I'm completely baffled by some fleet behavior.

I have 1 wing with 4 destroyers, 10 corvettes, and about 60 small figthers. 1 destroyer will actively get into the mix and attack my target, the other 3 (behemoths stolen from SCA) just kind of fly around, far away from the fight. I had them clearing out Matrix 451 last night, every so slowly, and it is taking forever to take down the defense stations and regular stations of the xenon because 3 destroyers, of my 4 destroyer fleet, are not engaging. If I manually just fly them close to it, and then tell them to attack, they end up just drifting/actively flying away from the target I give them.

I have another quad destroyer fleet, with 20 corvettes and 40 small fighters, and they're constantly recalling the smaller ships. Any time I remove all their orders, it's like a default setting that they're recalled and docked. It's making it really difficult to do any kind of mid battle adjustments to targets or strategy because most of the fleet tries to go home and dock, then they have to undock again.

just baffled and a little frustrated.

j.harshaw
EGOSOFT
EGOSOFT
Posts: 1847
Joined: Mon, 23. Nov 15, 18:02

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by j.harshaw » Thu, 5. Sep 19, 10:27

@Falcrack, Thank you very much for the very detailed post. Very often, when reading "The AI sucks" posts, these are the questions i wish they answer which, to be fair, they sometimes do.

That said, i have to admit that i haven't yet had time to go over it in as much detail, and reply in as much detail, as i would like. But just wanted to let you know that i have my eye on this thread and will read and reply in detail when there's time.

Falcrack
Posts: 4927
Joined: Wed, 29. Jul 09, 00:46
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Falcrack » Thu, 5. Sep 19, 13:27

j.harshaw wrote:
Thu, 5. Sep 19, 10:27
@Falcrack, Thank you very much for the very detailed post. Very often, when reading "The AI sucks" posts, these are the questions i wish they answer which, to be fair, they sometimes do.

That said, i have to admit that i haven't yet had time to go over it in as much detail, and reply in as much detail, as i would like. But just wanted to let you know that i have my eye on this thread and will read and reply in detail when there's time.
Thanks for taking a look. I know it is not easy to digest such a wall of text. I wanted to post something that gives details on how to improve the game, and doing so in a concise manner is tricky. It is much easier, and much less informative, to simply say "game sucks, fix it".

The main issue I have is that wings within wings (ie fighter wings that are subordinate to a carrier) do not seem to function properly. These issues are magnified when you have a carrier full of the maximum number of fighters that can dock on it.

One more point, I notice that when a large number of fighters are queued to dock with their home carrier, the ones not docking yet will stay completely stationary and not attempt to either fly close to the carrier while waiting (so they could be close by when their turn for docking comes), or respond to an attack they are sittings ducks which do not try to evade or fight back while they are patiently waiting for their turn to dock.

tomchk
Posts: 1294
Joined: Mon, 26. Jan 15, 19:55
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve - Explained and improvements coming in a future build.

Post by tomchk » Thu, 5. Sep 19, 23:18

j.harshaw wrote:
Thu, 5. Sep 19, 10:27
@Falcrack, Thank you very much for the very detailed post. Very often, when reading "The AI sucks" posts, these are the questions i wish they answer which, to be fair, they sometimes do.

That said, i have to admit that i haven't yet had time to go over it in as much detail, and reply in as much detail, as i would like. But just wanted to let you know that i have my eye on this thread and will read and reply in detail when there's time.
We appreciate the response! I believe some of these will be addressed in 2.6/3.0, but it's always great to have that confirmed by the developers.
Care to see what I've been creating? https://www.youtube.com/user/ytubrute

j.harshaw
EGOSOFT
EGOSOFT
Posts: 1847
Joined: Mon, 23. Nov 15, 18:02

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by j.harshaw » Sat, 7. Sep 19, 14:05

Please keep in mind that i'm doing this from home so some of the details may be inaccurate.

Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-I click on the wing leader (carrier with docked fighters), and give an attack order to a non-hostile destroyer that is travelling through sector
What I observed:
-Wing engages travel drive and flies directly towards where target was at the time I gave the order. When it reaches the location, it then turns toward where the target is now (halfway across the sector) and begins travelling at normal (non-travel) speed towards the target, even though it is now half a sector away from the target. Ships in wing travel at different speeds, and become widely dispersed en route to the target.
What I would like to happen:
-Wing engages travel drive and flies toward the current target, changing course continuously to head directly towards the target without disengaging travel drive, until it arrives at the target. Ships in the wing attempt to maintain formation or at least close proximity to other ships in the wing, so that the entire group flies at the speed of the slowest member.
Improvements for this are on the way. That said, when approaching a moving object from a large distance, ships still won't quite zero in on the target, but they will periodically update their paths, particularly if their target is itself moving rapidly over a large distance. Event-based, not time-based. 3.0

Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-A wing of 4 fighters is subordinate to a carrier. I order the wing leader to fly to a position. I then issue a recall all subordinates command on the carrier.
What I observed:
-Fighter wing takes off from carrier, all 4 travel to the designated position. When they arrive and I issue the recall subordinate command, only the wing leader returns to the carrier, the other 3 fighters in the wing remain stationary. I try to give manual orders to the remaining fighters to dock, and it works, somewhat, but they are extremely unresponsive, sometimes seem to forget or ignore the order to dock. Takes a very long time and a lot of fiddling to get all my fighters back on board. Even worse, sometimes issuing "recall subordinates" caused all the subordinate fighters (not the wing leaders) on board the carrier to take off instead of remaining on the carrier, undoing all my work trying to make them land. In short, ships are very unresponsive to recall subordinates.
What I would like to happen:
-When issuing the recall subordinates command on the carrier, all fighters in the wing, not just the wing leader, respond and return to the carrier. Fighters do not need to be told multiple times to land, they do not forget their orders. "Recall subordinates" does not cause fighters within a wing to take off from the carrier.
Done. 3.0

From this:
Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-Carrier with 40 fighters containing 10 subordinate wings of 4 fighters each, plus 7 destroyers directly subordinate to the carrier, is ordered to attack an enemy destroyer. All fighters were landed at the time the order was given
What I observed:
-Carrier moved towards target, and when it got close, each of the flight leaders for the 10 wings launched and attacked. But the subordinates to each of these wings stayed on board the carrier. 1 of the 7 destroyers moves forward to attack, but for unknown reasons, the remaining 6 destroyers stay stationary and do not move in to attack, and I had to remove them from the group and reassign them to defend the carrier to get them to join in the attack
What I would like to happen:
-All fighters within a wing, and not just the wing leaders, respond to the attack command given to the carrier. The order to attack a target given to the wing leaders is propagated down to the subordinates of the wing leader. Subordinates should be much more responsive to a direct attack command given to the wing leader, so the 6 stationary destroyers should have started to move in to attack when the command was given.
Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
Carrier moved towards target, and when it got close, each of the flight leaders for the 10 wings launched and attacked. But the subordinates to each of these wings stayed on board the carrier.
Wings subordinate to carriers (including fighters subordinate to direct subordinates to carriers) should launch to attack when their immediate commander does with latest internal code, but will test this specific scenario to be sure.

Also recently spotted and fixed a bug that prevents fighters subordinate to a ship they can dock at from launching when they ought to after the commander had done a movement over a large distance that caused them to dock. Fix for that's in 3.0. Would've liked it to be in 2.60, but it's mixed in with changes that are still too dangerous for public.
Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
1 of the 7 destroyers moves forward to attack, but for unknown reasons, the remaining 6 destroyers stay stationary and do not move in to attack
This is intentional. When a fleet is ordered to attack, by default, not all subordinates are sent to attack so as to not leave their commander defenceless. Technically, some ships are sent to attack, roughly matching target class to that of the ships sent, and, if they think they need it, the ships sent call for reinforcements.

Exception to this is if a hostile gets too close to a carrier for comfort. In that case, the carrier scrambles all subordinates and directs them to that target.

Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-Tried to disband the 10 fighter wings of 4 fighters each, which were in turn subordinate to the carrier.
What I observed:
-When selecting all 40 fighters, the option to remove assignment, or remove orders and wait, was not available. I had to go through each wing, one by one, to remove the assignment, which left me with 10 wings of fighters unassigned to the carrier. But I wanted to disband each of the fighter wings as well. Unfortunately, when I select all the fighters within the wing, I still do not have the option to remove the assignment, or remove orders and wait. The only way I can accomplish what I want is to click on each fighter, individually, and remove the assignment. So to fully disband all 40 fighters, I have to click on each one, select remove assignment, go to the next one, and reapt for all 40 fighters. Such a pain!
What I would like to happen:
-When selecting multiple ships, the option to remove assignment is available. So I could disband all the wings of fighters by simply selecting all fighters, right click, and having the option to "remove assignment" for all of them at once.
UI question. Forwarded.

Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-Gave attack order to a carrier group to an enemy station in sector with carrier groups full of fighters plus destroyers
What I observed:
-Plasma shots from destroyers missed their stationary target most of the time. Shots were slow an unimpressive looking.
What I would like to happen:
-Better aiming for plasma turrets, faster shots for plasma turrets, longer range for plasma turrets, better impact effects for plasma turrets. See the VRO mod for a good example of how it should look.
Agree that aiming in general could take some work, especially if guns consistently miss large, immobile targets. That said, I strongly disagree that plasma should have longer range and that the projectiles should be faster. Plasma already has the longest range of the weapons in its class barring missile launchers and does the most damage, its primary disadvantage being that the projectile is slow thereby limiting its utility to large, slow targets. If range is made even longer and projectile speed were increased, why use anything else? Personally, i actually think they're too powerful as is.

Another salient point in this regard is that, if all bullets were absolutely accurate, starting out would be extremely difficult since games usually start in small, agile ships and it would be impossible to dodge.

Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-Murder HOP assets continuously for a long time, starting with a faction rep of 30
What I observed:
-After about an hour of murder, my rep had gone down from 30, to 26
What I would expect:
-Murdering ships, deliberately, should be an act of war, and would immediately lower my rep to enemy status, especially at the rate at which I was killing their ships.
Was this in HOP space? Will check. Suspect this is working as designed, however. Faction relations are designed such that it gets increasingly harder to change in either direction the farther from 0 you get.

Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-Try to order defense drones from a ship to do any command (ie attack a specific target, return to dock,
What I observed:
-No such commands for giving direct orders to defense drone exists
What I would like to happen:
-Options to order drones to launch, drones to return to dock at the ship, order them to attack specific targets.
On purpose. Drones aren't ships. They're simple automatons that are programmed to do one objective and be fired off. That said, better drone control for drones attached to the ship that you're personally flying is on the way, 3.0.

Falcrack wrote:
Thu, 5. Sep 19, 13:27
One more point, I notice that when a large number of fighters are queued to dock with their home carrier, the ones not docking yet will stay completely stationary and not attempt to either fly close to the carrier while waiting (so they could be close by when their turn for docking comes), or respond to an attack they are sittings ducks which do not try to evade or fight back while they are patiently waiting for their turn to dock.
This is tricky. Solutions that pop into mind are either for docking ships to periodically move to keep up, temporarily join formation with the ship that they're docking with, or force the ship that they're docking with to stop. First is clumsy and not always safe. Second will affect other ships that are in formation. Third won't work in all cases, especially if it's the player flying the ship to be docked at. Will give it some thought.

A recurring problem with interpreting AI feedback is that an action very rarely means the exact same thing to everyone. Again, your detailed feedback is very much appreciated. Apologies for the delayed response.

User avatar
mr.WHO
Posts: 8547
Joined: Thu, 12. Oct 06, 17:19
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by mr.WHO » Sat, 7. Sep 19, 22:33

j.harshaw wrote:
Sat, 7. Sep 19, 14:05
Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-Gave attack order to a carrier group to an enemy station in sector with carrier groups full of fighters plus destroyers
What I observed:
-Plasma shots from destroyers missed their stationary target most of the time. Shots were slow an unimpressive looking.
What I would like to happen:
-Better aiming for plasma turrets, faster shots for plasma turrets, longer range for plasma turrets, better impact effects for plasma turrets. See the VRO mod for a good example of how it should look.
Agree that aiming in general could take some work, especially if guns consistently miss large, immobile targets. That said, I strongly disagree that plasma should have longer range and that the projectiles should be faster. Plasma already has the longest range of the weapons in its class barring missile launchers and does the most damage, its primary disadvantage being that the projectile is slow thereby limiting its utility to large, slow targets. If range is made even longer and projectile speed were increased, why use anything else? Personally, i actually think they're too powerful as is.

Another salient point in this regard is that, if all bullets were absolutely accurate, starting out would be extremely difficult since games usually start in small, agile ships and it would be impossible to dodge.
The problem with the plasma is that they have too many frustrating issues:
- slow bullets
- accuracy problems
- rather big rate of fire that cause to spam them all over the place...except into their god damn target - I swear I saw couple times that plasma turrets failed to hit STATIONARY Xenon I.
- because all above they feel like lack of actual power even comparing to standard pulse laser - I find Large turret pulse laser much more effetive and intimidating that plasma turret. Hell even beam turrets are more intimidating and they just gigle the target with their low dammage.


You should use X-Rebirth as a reference as it had two good plasma turrets:
- basic plasma turret - had (comapring to X4) lower fire rate, but faster bullet speed and dammage per bullet.
- huge plasma turret - very low fire rate, had problem hitting anything that moves (same as X4 plasma), but man they pack a punch and had intimidating bullet and hit effect.


X-Rebirth plasma turrets are palasma done well. X4 plasma is just going straight back to "X3 pew pew pew bullet stream" spam that doesn't hit anything.

xWolfzx
Posts: 181
Joined: Fri, 14. Aug 09, 07:46
x4

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by xWolfzx » Sun, 8. Sep 19, 03:18

mr.WHO wrote:
Sat, 7. Sep 19, 22:33
j.harshaw wrote:
Sat, 7. Sep 19, 14:05
Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 17. Aug 19, 19:25
What I did:
-Gave attack order to a carrier group to an enemy station in sector with carrier groups full of fighters plus destroyers
What I observed:
-Plasma shots from destroyers missed their stationary target most of the time. Shots were slow an unimpressive looking.
What I would like to happen:
-Better aiming for plasma turrets, faster shots for plasma turrets, longer range for plasma turrets, better impact effects for plasma turrets. See the VRO mod for a good example of how it should look.
Agree that aiming in general could take some work, especially if guns consistently miss large, immobile targets. That said, I strongly disagree that plasma should have longer range and that the projectiles should be faster. Plasma already has the longest range of the weapons in its class barring missile launchers and does the most damage, its primary disadvantage being that the projectile is slow thereby limiting its utility to large, slow targets. If range is made even longer and projectile speed were increased, why use anything else? Personally, i actually think they're too powerful as is.

Another salient point in this regard is that, if all bullets were absolutely accurate, starting out would be extremely difficult since games usually start in small, agile ships and it would be impossible to dodge.
The problem with the plasma is that they have too many frustrating issues:
- slow bullets
- accuracy problems
- rather big rate of fire that cause to spam them all over the place...except into their god damn target - I swear I saw couple times that plasma turrets failed to hit STATIONARY Xenon I.
- because all above they feel like lack of actual power even comparing to standard pulse laser - I find Large turret pulse laser much more effetive and intimidating that plasma turret. Hell even beam turrets are more intimidating and they just gigle the target with their low dammage.


You should use X-Rebirth as a reference as it had two good plasma turrets:
- basic plasma turret - had (comapring to X4) lower fire rate, but faster bullet speed and dammage per bullet.
- huge plasma turret - very low fire rate, had problem hitting anything that moves (same as X4 plasma), but man they pack a punch and had intimidating bullet and hit effect.


X-Rebirth plasma turrets are palasma done well. X4 plasma is just going straight back to "X3 pew pew pew bullet stream" spam that doesn't hit anything.
I have to agree with Falcrack in some respeck, the projectile speed do not have to be increased by a ridiculous level ala as fast as a pulse laser, would you consider as a test:
increasing the bullet speed to be as fast as its fixed variant? The ROF I would suggest to half it while increasing the damage by 50% to make up for the dpm loss? This increase in projectile speed would not cause too much of a threat to fighters and even corvette, and even if it did, the lower rate of fire will allow the ship to move away from the turret range. And give the range is around 6km (? been awhile since I looked at the xml) I have to say that range is not an issue. This might also have an added benefit of making combat more aesthetically more pleasing at least in my opinion as currently the almost machine gun rate of fire couple with the slow bullet speed makes feel like it is a super soaker rather than a turreted cannon.

Speaking of turrets though, may I request if you could also consider the balancing of turrets in general, to be specific,

M turrets Pulse vs Beams and Gatling:
-Right now in terms of anti fighter/corvette, it feels like the pulse laser is king, it has the most dpm capability compared to the beam and gatling variants. Is my understanding correct that beam turrets is envisioned more as an anti missile system rather then an anti fighter system? If so might I suggest a small increase to the damage and the turret turn speed? That would not make it so that it is a threat to a fighter as much as a pulse laser is but more effective at picking at missiles. But in that case I am not sure what is the place for gatling turrets, it cannot hit missiles at all unlike beams and does anti fighter/corvette roles much worse then pulse lasers. I do not really have a good suggestion for gatling other than to bring up gatling's dpm to be pulse turret's current level, the differentiation would be the rate of fire, so per bullet gatling would be weaker than pulse laser but it makes up for it with a hail of fire.

- To add to the above point. Correct me if I am wrong, pulse laser turrets are the cheapest as well as the most easily accessible turret, so why would I as a character in game would want to use beam laser and gatling compared to pulse? It does not feel balance in terms of cost and availability in my opinion. I would assume beam and gatling be more of a civilian grade weapon at their current iteration versus the pulse laser, which currently if I am a character ingame would use over the other two.

Xenon Turrets:
-In the current game, Xenon Large turret is the most powerful weapon pound for pound, but it is way too powerful. It has projectile speed on par with Pulse laser, yet it has almost 6 to 7 times stronger than a Plasma turret? Speaking of which does that not contradict your below point.
"Another salient point in this regard is that, if all bullets were absolutely accurate, starting out would be extremely difficult since games usually start in small, agile ships and it would be impossible to dodge."

-While I completely agree that Xenon should be a threat and should be the most powerful ship in-game, the current damage output of the L turret simply makes capital ship battle too fast (not even saying how it melts fighters and corvette), racial battle take much longer comparatively. So I would suggest to reduce the rate of fire by 30-40% and have the overall dps reduced to perhaps 3 times of what Plasmas can currently bring out, this would one, make it so that it is still the preeminent weapon in the game, two, when a Xenon K check up with a destroyer it does not melt it down before it can do anything to escape. The reduced rate of fire brings me to the below point.

-A stark contrast is the Xenon Medium turret, it is comparatively weaker than a Pulse laser, heck the rate of fire is worse than the Xenon Large turret? Just why??? Apologies, anyway I would suggest to improve the overall dps to equal or even slightly higher than that of the Pulse turret, (I say slightly so it does not melt fighters immediately but is still quite threatening to them). This would also help to offset the above nerf to the Large variant by bring the Medium variant up to par.

Turrets Shield and Hull:
-Nothing much to say other then the fact that currently it still only take one run from a Discoverer to destroy a turret, I would suggest to double or tripe the turret shield and the hull, or increase the turret hull to 5 times so that if I am piloting a weaker ship that is not a nemesis, it would make sense for me to target the sub system shield generators first to make it more efficient to destroy the turret.


Side note:
I do have other point in regards to OOS combat in general especially based on what the forums has extrapolated, but I do not have any actual number so I would simply like to ask on the side that, do different turret types have different chance to hit or is it the same? If it is than Plasma turrets is king when fighting just about anything, is that what it is supposed to be? Also turrets seem to be stripped away much easier compared to IS, could this be tweaked so that Xenon Ks and Is do not lose their ability to fight OOS when dealing with destroyers or anything with fixed weapons?

Warnoise
Posts: 674
Joined: Mon, 7. Mar 16, 23:47

Re: How fleet combat needs to improve

Post by Warnoise » Thu, 12. Sep 19, 06:10

Please make for AI ships the top priority to target defence modules when fighting capital ships and especially stations.

I always get very frustrated when i see my ships dropping like flies because nobody is targeting the enemy's station defense modules, but instead they waste their torpedoes on the hull doing like almost no damage at all...

Post Reply

Return to “X4: Foundations”