Ship behavior, 4.30

[dholmstr]

I'm still getting this weird movement by the Sucellus (and abit with Balor too). As my old post long time ago, I did again some tests at different location and against different ships. Mostly tried locations that a free of bumby targets an so fort.
The Sucellus still does that akward move starting the boostdrive and pretty much ramming the enemy vessel. This is odd becouse I've never seen a Tanaris do it for example. The Sucellus never stops doing it..even at 5km from an enemy it does it, goes past it, breaks badly, some turning, boost again just missing target from ramming. The few Tanaris ships I followed when a target appears near them, they jsut slowboat over there and starts shooting (wich function very well for them with their gun setup). Then again the Tanaris dronebay ALWAYS goes first .
I'm just wondering if anyone else has similar experience. Note no addon/mods to AI.

[j.harshaw]

Thanks for the report. It sounds like:

- your Sucellus has a captain with at least 4/4/4 skills,
- your captain has judged that the ship is too close to the target and wants to do a big movement to get to a more comfortable position,
- and the captain has plotted a course to a point on the opposite side of their target.

It can then happen that by the time your Sucellus gets to what was an optimal position and turns to fire, the target moves either too close or too far away.

Should be able to improve that by tweaking the thresholds for when they decide to move and/or the distance tolerances determining where they could decide to move to. Time is rather scarce at the moment, but i'll add a note to look into this the next time we do a patch with a round of testing. No idea when that might be, unfortunately.

Question: did it ever, in your experience, get to a position where it got off a decent number of shots from its main gun?

[dholmstr]

Thanks for the reply.

-yes the captain (or captains, did many tests but different Sucellus') was always 5/5/5
-I can go along with that it judged it needed a better position
-opposite side...hmm ok, but why when so many times it was at 5-6km and could have used maingun

For all tests target ship was a sitting duck, no engines. And very few cases it got to shoot its main gun. Mostly it could do that when it somehow got stuck and didn't know how to move anymore but the ship was pointed directly at enemy ship.

[Alan Phipps]

If it helps, I have noticed the NPC vanilla 4.30 Balor (Freedom Frigate in DV) approaches a large enemy target (often by then immobilised by the player attempting to board) by heading straight for a close pass by the target.

When still approaching, it launches few missile salvos just as it enters gun turret range. Then it passes by the target using gun turrets only and continues straight past the target until out of gun range again. Further missile launches are rare to none during the close pass.

The Balor next does a U turn while out of gun range and then heads straight back in again doing the same as in the last pass but now from the other side. Does that sound similar to the Sucellus behaviour?

I don't know what stats the NPC Balor crew have though.

[dholmstr]

Yes Alan, it does sound abit like the Sucellus movement. Only that the Sucellus seems to push the boost on (shows the engineglow).