Open AI Question

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j.harshaw
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Open AI Question

Post by j.harshaw » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 16:29

Please keep in mind that this will primarily benefit X4, and that it's quite possible that nothing will come of this, so please don't expect anything to.

How dumb would it seem if you order a ship to attack something, and your ship moves away from that thing to outside of its own turret range, and keeps the target at that range?

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Post by UniTrader » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 16:46

depends..

if its outside the turret range of the enemy Ship, and this enemy Ship is occupied with keeping up with the current Ship its in my opinion a valid Distraction Maneuver. If it also uses Drones to do the actual Work then its probably brilliant.

if its outside the turret range of the enemy Ship, and this enemy Ship is busy with something else its a bit stupid (except it lets drones do all the Work, then its ok-ish)

If its outside of its own turret range, but still inside the Turret Range of the Enemy Ship and gets constantly hit i would blow up the Ship myself to get rid of the stupid Captain and make the X Univese a better place.
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Post by Ezarkal » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 17:31

It would be a fun manoeuver to see, and in some case it would make a lot of sense. But not in every scenario. It could be hard to balance, too.


-I can see a lot of cool fleet movements and formations naturally coming from this. Ships with weaker range would naturally become tanks, bullet sponges and/or cannon fodder, while ships with long range weapons (ie, sucellus) could be used more effectively as song range supports. It could give more structure to battles, and reward players who actually command their ships instead of just saying "Destroy everything in that general direction!"

-It could open the door to the design of some highly specialized combat ships.

-I think there should be some limits to that behavior, though. For example, XL ships, which are usually pillars in battles, shouldn't try to out-reach much smaller or weaker ships. Nobody wants to see a Fumelkron breaking away from the fight so it can skid around a Stromvok while it's allies are getting mashed by other ships. :)

-Moreover, some ships will get really overpowered. Balors, for example, with super good maneuverability, extreme range and high speed, could technically lay waste to anything if they abuse of this behavior.
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Post by Alan Phipps » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 18:57

It would sensible if some or all of the following apply:
  • The AI ship can fly faster than, or as fast as, the attacked target (even considering current damage effects).

    The AI ship has some usable form of longer range or remote attack mechanism or is relying on other assets or circumstances to do the actual attack/kill.

    The AI ship is significantly vulnerable to the target's close-in weapons/attacks or already has reduced hitpoints or surface elements going into the attack while the target is comparatively healthy.

    There is no secondary threat likely to intercept the AI ship's tactical pathing.

    The AI ship has a viable rapid escape mechanism for if it all goes wrong.
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Re: Open AI Question

Post by Lord Crc » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:15

j.harshaw wrote:How dumb would it seem if you order a ship to attack something, and your ship moves away from that thing to outside of its own turret range, and keeps the target at that range?
You just described exactly how the Balors should behave...

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Post by Nanook » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:28

Ezarkal wrote:... Balors, for example, with super good maneuverability, extreme range and high speed, could technically lay waste to anything if they abuse of this behavior.
Balors are very weak against fighters and drones so that's how another slower ship would deal with them. Besides, as Lord Orc just pointed out, that's how Balors are supposed to behave. :wink:
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Post by j.harshaw » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:32

Let's assume that:

- it has no long-ranged weaponry, so it can't shoot at the target from the range that it's trying to maintain,
- that it can affect things as long as it can see them,
- but that what it can do might not be immediately apparent.

Sorry for being vague. Not sure how much of this is going to make it in.

So you give an attack order, and what you see is that it moves away, and stops.

Thanks, everyone, for participating, by the way.

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Post by Nanook » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:35

So it moves away and stops, and launches drones or fighters, or perhaps initiates repairs. Something like that?
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Post by Lord Crc » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:42

j.harshaw wrote:Let's assume that:

- it has no long-ranged weaponry, so it can't shoot at the target from the range that it's trying to maintain,
- that it can affect things as long as it can see them,
- but that what it can do might not be immediately apparent.
Well to me that would only make sense if it moves out of the turret range of both ships, and it doesn't move into more danger, within firing range of an enemy station or similar.

But if it does that, it would indeed seem like a prudent move if it wants to concentrate firepower on taking down fighters and/or launch drones etc.

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Post by UniTrader » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:46

i think the most frustrating part about "stupid" behavior is that it is not clear what exactly the Ship tries to do currently and if the behavior itself is confusing by itself then include some status messages which explain what the Ship is doing. you already have a sufficient System in place (commands and commandactions) - especially the latter needs much more sates though. best would be an "custom" option where the text can be defined completely via param.

also one more Clarification wanted (in addition to nannooks; implied in my previous post):
does it also try to stay out of the weapons range of the Enemy Ship? because that should be the parameter for evasion, not the own Range.
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Post by RAVEN.myst » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:51

j.harshaw wrote:Let's assume that:

- it has no long-ranged weaponry, so it can't shoot at the target from the range that it's trying to maintain,
- that it can affect things as long as it can see them,
- but that what it can do might not be immediately apparent.
Ooo, but that sounds deliciously intriguing! I can envision all sort of "spellcaster" equivalents - support ships that bring something for their fleet-mates, electronic warfare ships that perhaps interfere with enemy targeting/sensor systems, command ships that increase the operational efficiency of friendly forces, simple resupply transports keeping themselves out of enemy range, carriers or drone carriers projecting their delegated firepower - and no doubt many more possibilities that haven't immediately sprung to mind. What have you got yourself in for, j.harshaw? :P Don't worry, I DID read your disclaimers... ;)

EDIT: Ah, I see Nanook already thought of some of the same things...

EDIT2: "Stupid behaviour" is a matter of context - what is stupid in one role may be optimal in another, so without more specifics, it's hard to judge the "IQ" (or lack thereof) of the proposition... ^^
Last edited by RAVEN.myst on Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:55, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Ezarkal » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:52

Nanook wrote:
Ezarkal wrote:... Balors, for example, with super good maneuverability, extreme range and high speed, could technically lay waste to anything if they abuse of this behavior.
Balors are very weak against fighters and drones so that's how another slower ship would deal with them. Besides, as Lord Orc just pointed out, that's how Balors are supposed to behave. :wink:
Fair enough to both you and Lord Crc. I barely ever use drones or S/M crafts, so I don't think about them much in term of firepower or tactical uses.
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Post by UniTrader » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 19:54

Ezarkal wrote:Fair enough to both you and Lord Crc. I barely ever use drones or S/M crafts, so I don't think about them much in term of firepower or tactical uses.
if used correctly (=en masse) they can be pretty powerful..
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Post by j.harshaw » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 20:03

UniTrader wrote:i think the most frustrating part about "stupid" behavior is that it is not clear what exactly the Ship tries to do currently
Yeah, that's mostly what i'm worried about.

With regard to moving out of opponents' weapon range, certainly doable since the AI can look up all sorts of absolutely correct and accurate information about their opponents, but i thought that would be cheating a bit, so not explicitly. They will hope to achieve that by moving close to the edge of their own radar range though. Only really important thing is that they see their target and don't break contact. So, yeah, if they had an opponent with weapon range greater than their own radar range, they're in trouble. But then, they can't do much if they can't see their opponents either.
Nanook wrote:So it moves away and stops, and launches drones or fighters, or perhaps initiates repairs. Something like that?
Something like that.

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Post by UniTrader » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 20:16

j.harshaw wrote:With regard to moving out of opponents' weapon range, certainly doable since the AI can look up all sorts of absolutely correct and accurate information about their opponents, but i thought that would be cheating a bit, so not explicitly.
i dont see looking up enemy weapons ranges as cheating because as player (and presumbly captain) you can look it up in the encyclopedia, also when fighting enough with an enemy you get feeling for their capabilities. If it were about looking up Weapon/Drone loadout and Cargo it would be a diffrent matter though..
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Post by Sinxar » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 20:40

my 2 cents if it means anything.

If you give a ship a 'keep at range X' order there would have to be other safeguards in place. On its own, yeah that would be dumb.

This could be easily exploited by other AI, even unintentionally. For example, if you have a drone platform with a slightly lower speed than the attacker, will it be smart enough to realize that there is no escape and will likely die if it continues unless action is taken?

This is actually a problem with real people as well in the game Eve Online. People tend to use the orbit and keep at range options and what happens is the attacker with a ship with similar or greater speed will simply approach the target causing them to just move in a straight line away making them a very easy to hit target.

In the context of an X game, telling a long range vessel to attack a target and it wants to keep at range or orbit (assuming this will be the default behavior) would likely be just as problematic. Lets say you have a long range missile boat like an M7M. Should it attempt to move to a specific distance? If so, how will it handle an unexpected event such as the target AI moving to attack as well? What if the target does the same thing? What if a different AI moves in and attacks the M7M?

There is another case where something like this could be problematic. Imagine a repair vessel of some sort that needs to be within some range of the ships it is healing to be of any use. If it tries to keep distance, will it move away from the group? Can it heal others while running? Is there any point to running since you would presumably be in a group of friendlies?

I understand this doesn't really help in the context of your original question but just some things to consider when you guys write the AI in general. Please be careful of easily exploitable AI (by players and other AI's).

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Post by Nikola515 » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 20:58

This sounds like perfect AI for ships like Light/Heavy Sul or Stromwork.... They don't have any heavy/long range weapons and they can deal damage with drones form safe distance. Also this would be ideal AI for X3 TM ships as well.

It would be interesting to see if specialized boarding ships could do something similar as well ;)
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Post by UniTrader » Wed, 12. Jul 17, 21:34

just a thought which crossed my mind: if you keep the Enemy Ship just inside Radar Range check before that its not fhe Fallback Radar, but the primary one. because if that one is destroyed the Radar Range oc them comes dangerously close to the Weapons range of most other Objects..
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Re: Open AI Question

Post by RodentofDoom » Thu, 13. Jul 17, 00:26

Lord Crc wrote:
j.harshaw wrote:How dumb would it seem if you order a ship to attack something, and your ship moves away from that thing to outside of its own turret range, and keeps the target at that range?
You just described exactly how the Balors should behave...
and any ship fitted with a HIC
j.harshaw wrote:Let's assume that:

- it has no long-ranged weaponry, so it can't shoot at the target from the range that it's trying to maintain,
- that it can affect things as long as it can see them,
- but that what it can do might not be immediately apparent.

Sorry for being vague. Not sure how much of this is going to make it in.

So you give an attack order, and what you see is that it moves away, and stops.

Thanks, everyone, for participating, by the way.
If i've given an attack order, i expect exactly that to occur
id like to be able to choose alternatives myself as, no offense intended, the auto-scripting usually struggles to perform

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Post by Huillam » Thu, 13. Jul 17, 02:18

j.harshaw wrote:Something like that.
Could we get a something like that order then?
If I issue an attack order and then my ship ends up doing something else because you were trying to guess what I meant by "attack" then the command is misleading.

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