Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

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Flatcap
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Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by Flatcap » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 18:03

Seems like the AI went back to how it was at launch, followers just hanging 100km back and using regular engines to catch up. My defense team just kinda sits around while I get the crap beat out of me by defense drones. Trying to get my fleets to prioritize is really really difficult, and the attack multiple targets command doesn't seem to do anything anymore.

Laser towers seem to have double A batteries for power, they fire for like 10 seconds then just die and never fire again, in addition to never leaving the ships gravitational influence so they just drag along with it making steering nearly impossible because ships ragdoll when they touch ANYTHING and you lose complete control, nothing like your asgard getting hooked on a tower and just not being able to do anything until it drifts away from the tower.

Also, Xenon large batteries. What the ever loving crap. They do 5 times the damage of anything else. Killing an I takes like 5 asgards and one or two is guaranteed to die

dtpsprt
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by dtpsprt » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 19:06

I personally believe that many aspects of the game were rolled back to very early versions of it, to the point that I, personally, believe that CoH had started development probably at the time of V1.2 even before SV. This showed up in many "rollbacks" of bugs (in particular) that were dealt with and gone at V3.0. Most obviously development continued without incorporating the fixes of "previous" versions. This is most notable in the amount of resources needed for Terran products, which is in stark contrast of "reviewed" (read nerfed) levels and way slower replenishment rate.

CBJ
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by CBJ » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 19:15

dtpsprt wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 19:06
I personally believe that many aspects of the game were rolled back to very early versions of it, to the point that I, personally, believe that CoH had started development probably at the time of V1.2 even before SV. This showed up in many "rollbacks" of bugs (in particular) that were dealt with and gone at V3.0. Most obviously development continued without incorporating the fixes of "previous" versions.
You can believe that nonsense if you like, but it is entirely untrue. There may be new issues, but we have categorically not done any of the things you've claimed here.

gevers
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by gevers » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 20:07

@CBJ you always tell us that our assumptions are incorrect, but lacking an explanation from the devs all we can do is assume... And personally I prefer fake assumptions to discuss instead of cold silence.

aquatica
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by aquatica » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:16

CBJ wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 19:15
dtpsprt wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 19:06
I personally believe that many aspects of the game were rolled back to very early versions of it, to the point that I, personally, believe that CoH had started development probably at the time of V1.2 even before SV. This showed up in many "rollbacks" of bugs (in particular) that were dealt with and gone at V3.0. Most obviously development continued without incorporating the fixes of "previous" versions.
You can believe that nonsense if you like, but it is entirely untrue. There may be new issues, but we have categorically not done any of the things you've claimed here.
Sorry, not trying to be an butthole here but...

I thought someone with EGOSOFT on their avatar (might be only a voluntary mod?) told us that SOME fixes for PRE-COH were in fact NOT in POST-COH due to the fact that the COH developement started before those fixes were implemented and some of those were NOT revised for COH.
A lot of things worked better in 4.0 (without COH) than they do with COH; hard to imagine adding a species (TER/PIO) in game would magically ruin everyone's day and surmount to amazing, massive starvation of resources for Xenon.

I admit I could be totally wrong and it's of course completely possible that we've been told things that are untrue or the explanation had been unclear and we misunderstood. However: I had barely 0 issues before COH. With 4.0. Xenon were way, way stronger and they were active everywhere. Post-COH TEL takes care of them. Alone, with no Asgard help. AI's combat capabilities are pretty much 0 IS and OOS, when I remember complaining constantly pre-COH about pirates ruining my tradefleet all the time. Post-COH I don't recall much anything happening, anywhere, ever.

CBJ
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by CBJ » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:22

aquatica wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:16
I thought someone with EGOSOFT on their avatar (might be only a voluntary mod?) told us that SOME fixes for PRE-COH were in fact NOT in POST-COH due to the fact that the COH developement started before those fixes were implemented and some of those were NOT revised for COH.
I'm really not sure where you got that idea from. There are some fixes that have been worked out since 4.00 and CoH were released, but which didn't make it into the post-4.00 hotfixes, either because they weren't ready in time or weren't safe enough to include without a longer beta. But at no point have we reverted fixes because of some weird timeline involving CoH. :)

Very, very occasionally we might have to revert a change because it causes more problems than it solves, but we do make that clear in the release notes when we do so. It hasn't happened for a while, as far as I'm aware.

aquatica
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by aquatica » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:25

CBJ wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:22
aquatica wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:16
I thought someone with EGOSOFT on their avatar (might be only a voluntary mod?) told us that SOME fixes for PRE-COH were in fact NOT in POST-COH due to the fact that the COH developement started before those fixes were implemented and some of those were NOT revised for COH.
I'm really not sure where you got that idea from. There are some fixes that have been worked out since 4.00 and CoH were released, but which didn't make it into the post-4.00 hotfixes, either because they weren't ready in time or weren't safe enough to include without a longer beta. But at no point have we reverted fixes because of some weird timeline involving CoH. :)
It's possible that I have misunderstood exactly in that way; so there are some fixes that have been worked on, but are still not released.
All in all many issues seem to relate to balance, however there are some crucial ones that I don't recall seeing since 1.0.. Like ultra-passive AI. If the biggest threat a galaxy can have is an M or N, one should wonder what the heck is going on :mrgreen:

dtpsprt
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by dtpsprt » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:30

CBJ wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 19:15
dtpsprt wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 19:06
I personally believe that many aspects of the game were rolled back to very early versions of it, to the point that I, personally, believe that CoH had started development probably at the time of V1.2 even before SV. This showed up in many "rollbacks" of bugs (in particular) that were dealt with and gone at V3.0. Most obviously development continued without incorporating the fixes of "previous" versions.
You can believe that nonsense if you like, but it is entirely untrue. There may be new issues, but we have categorically not done any of the things you've claimed here.
Thanks for the insight (that there may be new issues) which, of course I totally accept. This, of course (and unfortunately) leaves out the resurfacing of old issues and the reason(s) both of the old issues resurfacing or, taking you at your word as I suppose we all have to, the new issues being so "close looking" to old ones...
And, no matter how annoying both for users and devs, lack of information/communication just leaves things to speculation. Of course there is only one truth and everything else is not true but which is which? This brings us back to "speculations" and need of dev answers and feedback....
I believe that the X Universe community (especially people who have been following the series from the early releases) love the game, have a soft spot for Egosoft in their hearts, do not mind the inevitable bugs but would be more than eager to give real feedback and ideas providing they were given enough information/explanation.

CBJ
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by CBJ » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:34

aquatica wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:25
It's possible that I have misunderstood exactly in that way; so there are some fixes that have been worked on, but are still not released.
All in all many issues seem to relate to balance, however there are some crucial ones that I don't recall seeing since 1.0.. Like ultra-passive AI. If the biggest threat a galaxy can have is an M or N, one should wonder what the heck is going on :mrgreen:
Yes, there are lots of fixes being worked on. In many cases developers reply in the Tech Support or Beta Feedback thread where a problem is reported, to indicate that a fix is on the way. What they don't generally do, however, is spend their time responding to every thread in the main forum in which someone demands an explanation or claims that they are reverting fixes randomly. :)

SunGod1
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by SunGod1 » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:35

No the AI got better, but there is still much work to be done.... It is shocking what kind of misinformation can get let loose on the internet.
Last edited by SunGod1 on Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:59, edited 1 time in total.
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CBJ
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by CBJ » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:38

SunGod1 wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:35
...but there is still much work to be done....
This is, and always will be, true. Between design, technical and performance limitations, and the fact that every player has different ideas about how the AI should and shouldn't behave in a given situation, I very much doubt there will ever be a time when the AI team put their feet up and say "Well, that's our work done then." :)

dtpsprt
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by dtpsprt » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:45

CBJ wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:38
SunGod1 wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:35
...but there is still much work to be done....
This is, and always will be, true. Between design, technical and performance limitations, and the fact that every player has different ideas about how the AI should and shouldn't behave in a given situation, I very much doubt there will ever be a time when the AI team put their feet up and say "Well, that's our work done then." :)
Totally agree that it is impossible to satisfy everyone. The best I so far in the series imho was in X3 TC, which got "dumped down" in X3 AP for unfathomable to me reasons. I believe that even he X3 AP level of AI would be a good "benchmark".

Another idea would be to work on a "code converter" between the code needed in the new engine and the old so the previous version successful source files which are surely kept can be implemented.

CBJ
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by CBJ » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:54

And here we have evidence of another problem: people often become absolutely convinced that something has changed when it hasn't! I can assure you that there was no "dumbing down" of the AI between X3TC and X3AP. Very little was changed in that area at all, in fact. I suspect it's a form of rose-tinted spectacles!

And no, "converting" old AI scripts is not even a remotely viable option. Even setting aside any technical issues, which would be surmountable but pointless over-engineering, they simply wouldn't be relevant to the much more complex environment of X4.

Raevyan
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by Raevyan » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 02:50

Maybe it would help if you shed some light on what problems you acknowledged during the last weeks (looking at all the mining posts for example) and how you gonna try to address them.

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Botschafter Von Den Glück
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by Botschafter Von Den Glück » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 05:15

i recently had a conflict, where I attacked a Station with an XL Zeus, 20 Thesus, and 10 nemesis(and 2 Oddysseus) to get a HOP Guiild Quest reward of 20.Mio for the station), and the small ships all got destroyed,
and could not defend themselves anymore against defense drones, nor did they shoot towers effectively, so i also have some impression,

that the AI is either more intelligent, or pimped up to Zero hits anymore.
i could have used more ships, but i know from 3.3, that this amount was sufficient without any losses, as the XL did shield all missiles and afterwards the Station was defenseless, and the Fighters ALONE did not get down like 20-50 defense drones (Equiped with both lasers /beam emitters and 1 plasma compoeńent) Just for question: can I equip different weapon groups for also KI controlled ships???)

feels wrongly tuned down here, either
Botschafter von den Glücksplaneten: Zu 100% Doktor. Die vertrauen mir!

arshiba
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by arshiba » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 09:18

aquatica wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:16
massive starvation of resources for Xenon
I think yesterday I figured out one of the reasons for resource sink (or maybe the main one). And, that is the lost build storages. After analyzing my 72h savegame, I got 123 of 261 total (i.e. 46%) xenon's build storages are lost (no station associated with them). But miners still deliver resources to them instead of wharf/shipyard!
This report gave me this idea. I have observed the behavior of xenon miners (quite strange) in their sectors. Now I made a bug workaround and want to check if my game will get better. Then maybe I'll add it to my mod.

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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by Vilmu » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 18:30

arshiba wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 09:18
I think yesterday I figured out one of the reasons for resource sink (or maybe the main one). And, that is the lost build storages. After analyzing my 72h savegame, I got 123 of 261 total (i.e. 46%) xenon's build storages are lost (no station associated with them). But miners still deliver resources to them instead of wharf/shipyard!
This report gave me this idea. I have observed the behavior of xenon miners (quite strange) in their sectors. Now I made a bug workaround and want to check if my game will get better. Then maybe I'll add it to my mod.
That could explain why I see Xenon stations waiting for build materials for around 70 hours and still not getting them, reported it here.

arshiba
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by arshiba » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 21:20

Vilmu wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 18:30
That could explain why I see Xenon stations waiting for build materials for around 70 hours and still not getting them, reported it here.
I used your save to check. Removed all lost build storages (all 1055 of 2637, xenon 181 of 208). Skipped 6 game hours. The result is not so impressive, but the xenons are clearly starting to recover.
Perhaps there was also a strong influence of other balancer mods I use, but there are no cheats among them, everything that xenons have had to be built.

Vilmu
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Re: Did the AI get really reaaly bad with 4.0?

Post by Vilmu » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 21:38

Just judging from the fact that in 6 hours after removing the storages, they actually build more in your game than they've in 70 hours in mine, it could indeed be the ghost build storages causing it.
Unless it's actually one of your balance mods that caused them to build those :P

edit: English.

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