What are the AI issues, specifically?

[Khugan]

Some times when you live stream a destroyer battle involving the player's ships, they will not use their weapons, like at all. I watched a single pirate destroyer kill three of my destroyers. My ships just maneuvered over and over, I though that maybe they were not in firing distance, but pirate ship was clearly firing successfully and destroying my ships. For the record, my ships never used the main guns or turrets the whole time.

[Khugan]

S ships, drones, laser towers (Mk2) get stuck near or in a destroyer. They are 'attached' some how in the case of laser towers. If the player is piloting the destroyer, you can no longer turn, pitch, roll, accelerate, decelerate, stop (if moving)

Example: I'm flying my destroyer to within gun range of a K and I launch laser towers and suddenly my speed drops by about 10% and my path is now fixed. I can do nothing to change my course. I cannot stop or speedup/slow down.


Maybe a slightly separate issue. Some times after launching laser towers I notice that one is either directly attached to the hull or at a fixed distance from the hull, but moving in tandem with the movements of the destroyers. When I try to deactivate and retrieve the LT using 'o', it moves away from the ship instead of getting nearer. It continues to move away up until a max distance (I'm guessing 20km or less) then just remains there. I can only teleport out of the ship at this point and back again to actually retrieve it. I said "slightly separate issue" because these instances don't effect my ability to control the ship.

[Khugan]

I can't speak for all drone boats, but specifically the Cerberus has issues with launching drones. It's simply not functional as a 'drone boat'.

Set to attack all enemies and armed. Fight starts and the dock doors slowly open and the drone slowly comes to a hover, it doesn't finish in time to participate at all, and now the dock opens and closes repeatedly and slowly. Sometimes theirs a done present and other times not. Sometimes a done will land and simply vanish. It's as if an order was given for them to launch and nothing can happen until it goes through all the motions, but there are no drones. Fight's are essentially fouled by non or slow motion launching drones. I've seen stations launch drones in a hurry. Doors open and close rapidly and drones launch with their full animations, no glitching in and out of existence.

The only time I can use drones from a Cerberus successfully is pre launched on escort, having done this out of combat completely. They now function in a pleasing manner. But when it's time to move on, I give my ship a move order, to another sector and the pilot tries to recall the drones. They all just hang there in space like each is waiting for the other to go first.

None of this is fun and leads to quitting the game in frustration.

[capitalduty]

One of the biggest missing features for me is the lack of move attack command for capital ships. This could be described as attack order and maneuver command at the same time. For example, I need a rattlesnake to fire its frontal weapons while using its side thrusters to evade fire from a plasma turret. Maybe I need to use the reverse thruster of my paranid oddiseus to fly bacwards while keep firing its main forward cannons at a capital ship that has shorter range weapons and is closing in etc. This basic concept was already acomplished by HW 1, this old game AI did it masterfully compared to today's new "complex commands" that basically tell ships to do random things that the player didn't actually order them to do. Imagine what wonders could do this command to nowdays X4, basically you could solve front gun capital ships missbehaviours in one go and making a huge improvement in capital ship warfare in the entire game.

[ajime]

My issues with Capital ships
issue:Slowboating
observation:Slowboating happens especially if a ship is in Low attention crosses the 40km player view into high attention. Sometimes intentionally not at 100% throttle.
workaround: drag waypoint manually to force recalculation and travel drive will be re-triggered
Conclusion: It does not recalculate the current waypoint upon breaching High attention zone. This issue also applies to smaller ships to a lesser extent.

issue:rogue movements
observation: during battle they are moving like fighters. questionable turn, twist and run, showing vulnerable backside.
workaround: manual plotting.
conclusion: during attack, drop the evasion script completely. or implement broadside/fore attack script
during retreat, mark threat in front, keep reverse until out of range or dead.

[Gnorp]

The "Hold Position" command for capital ships should make them hold their position and not move at all! This should include rotation, too.
During my Xenon sector sieges I often have an Asgard and/or a carrier facing the jump gate to the Xenon sector. But every few minutes I have to check on them to correct the rotation and position because for whatever reason they have moved to a random place and facing 180 degrees away from the gate...

[Khugan]

Large freighters can't transfer wares with small traders if they have any type of other order, even non trade related. Small traders will land on the capital and just sit there instead of transferring wares and continuing with their orders. I can only assume that the Large freighter has to be a a dead-stop with zero orders for a transfer of wares to take place.

Example: should be able to buy lots of wares with the capital ship and it's assigned small traders 'should' be able to distribute those wares at any point. Ware availability in the hold should be accounted for in the code. If the large ship has orders to sell 50% of it's capacity, their is 50% left for small traders to scoop up and trade. I should not have to stand-still while the transfer takes place.

Example: I should be able to move my carrier/aux fleet around and manually tell an m/s trader to land on the aux and transfer wares regardless of what the aux orders are. Yes I know there is auto resupply, but that is not the point.

Frustration: Why can't I tell a smaller ship to land on a larger ship and simple transfer wares and leave? Why can't this be a thing?

Please address this.