[X3AP] Odd turret behavior

[Scoob]

Hi,

Not sure if this is a genuine bug or just a quirk so thought I'd post here.

Basically the turret scripts in AP seem to have somewhat broken target priorities. I'll give an example of what's happening in my game now.

I have an AI Argon Titan Facing off against a Pirate Brigantine. Both ships are attacking the other mostly with HEAVY weapons just fine. Both ships are hurting each other, each has lost shields and is taking hull damage.

Enter three pirate fighters - no real threat to the Titan - however the Titan now IGNORES the Brigantine (yes, it's still in range) in favour of firing at the fighters with its HEAVY weapons. Needless to say it largely misses. Meanwhile the Brigantine continues to pound the Titan directly. The lack of fire from the Titan means the brigantines shields begin to charge.

After some manuevering a set of the Titans light (Flak) turrets decide to shoot at the Brigantine - obviously Flak isn't really appropriate for a capital ship. So, here's the Titan being hard pressed by a Brigantine yet it decides to shoot its HEAVY weapons at some low-threat fighters while shooting it's light - and perfect anti-fighter - weapons at the Brigantine, scoring minimal damage. The Titan could easily hit the Brigantine with it's heavy turrets, and it could easily hit the fighters with its Flak, it simply chooses not to.

I see this again and again across several game builds - both modded and Vanilla - and the Turret commands on big ships really get their priorities wrong.

Now I know I can create my own custom commands or ask turrets to specifically engage certain types of target, however these are AI ships I'm watching here and they're dumb!

Oddly MARS exhibits near identicle behaviour - I'm aware the new turret scripts for AP were based loosely on MARS.

This might seem trivial but I've been in my own M2 or other large ship, been under attack by another large ships and seen my turrets TOTALLY IGNORE my real enemy to shoot at a lone fighter that really poses no threat to me. It's not like the larger enemy is hard to hit or anything, but the turrets choose to ignore it until the fighter is dealt with - which can take ages as my turrets are shooting at it with large anti-capital weapons so miss a lot.

It does get hugely frustrating when you outmatch say a Pirate M7 in your M2, yet the Pirate M7 "wins" due to your turrets chosing to ignore it.

Like I said, I've tested this on numerous different AP builds, as has a friend of mine, and this odd target prioritisation and weapon choice is consistant.

I'd like to hear if others have noticed this. Note: I've ONLY seen in either in TC with MARS installed, or with AP and the new MARS-derived turret scripts running.

Cheers,

Scoob.

[Coreblimey]

There is an option when setting your turret priority that asks if to apply to your own (that is the capital ship) only or all your capitals. Make sure that the front turret is set to all capital ships (the type of ship to attack being your preference). Of course this only applies to some capitals as some have main turrets (M7s for example, an exception being the Panther Raider).

[Alan Phipps]

Sounds like one to ask Gazz.

[Scoob]

There is an option when setting your turret priority that asks if to apply to your own (that is the capital ship) only or all your capitals. Make sure that the front turret is set to all capital ships (the type of ship to attack being your preference). Of course this only applies to some capitals as some have main turrets (M7s for example, an exception being the Panther Raider).

Yes, but how do I change that setting on ships that I do not own? That's sorta my point. I can customise the behavior of my ships - and I do to help get around this issue - but when an AI ship is totally ignoring its biggest threat to attack a fast M5 with PPCs, rather than the ship that's about to kill it...well, I'm stuck. I do want my opponents and allies to play by the same rules ideally.

I have mentioned this previously on Gazz's thread in Scripts and Modding, though that was specifically for the issue in MARS. Now this issue is also present in vanilla AP I thought I'd ask here too.

Scoob.

[Scoob]

That's odd - I was just about to reply to your response to my post above Coreblimey and it just disappeared when I hit refresh. It looks like I double-posted now when I didn't! Weird!

Scoob.

[Gazz]

If you have a script called
!plugin.gz.misile.def.mk3.ai.men
(don't know if it made it into the public release),

then just run this script to edit all AI settings instead of the player settings.

If you don't have it, create one where the only line is

001 @ = [THIS] -> call script '!plugin.gz.missile.def.mk3.menu' : Mode='m1' Race or THIS=Boron Script=null Turret script array=null

Or launch it directly entering the 2 arguments.

Nothing about this script's configuration is hardcoded. It's even compatible with other scripts messing with the setting data.
Obviously, none of this can work in vanilla AP. It would be... odd... to give the player the ability to completely disable the AI's turrets. =)