What are the AI issues, specifically?

[Falcrack]

I'd like a thread where players can state, hopefully in clear terms, what specific AI shortfalls X4 still suffers from. I'll start with what I think are most obvious to me. Save games demonstrating the issues would be ideal, though I don't have them right now to show issues.

1. AI controlled ships not always using travel drive when far from their target or destination. Some have mentioned failing to use travel drive when given an attack order from a different sector.

2. AI ships sometimes boosting towards the boarding target, draining their shields.

[mr.WHO]

Fleets unable to keep formation when moving or worse when travel drive.

Destroyer captains unable to decide if they want to use main guns or large turrets.

S/M ships often unable to launch missiles from long range.

Ships not able to automatically launch all drones, while stations casually dump 100+ drones at you.

Coordinate attack using all ships in fleet even if it makes no sence (E.G defend, intercept, auxilary).

Absolute meltdown and metal breakdown when any ship try to attack xenon asteroid station.

[vvvvvvvv]

I'd like a thread where players can state, hopefully in clear terms, what specific AI shortfalls X4 still suffers from. I'll start with what I think are most obvious to me. Save games demonstrating the issues would be ideal, though I don't have them right now to show issues.

1. AI controlled ships not always using travel drive when far from their target or destination. Some have mentioned failing to use travel drive when given an attack order from a different sector.

2. AI ships sometimes boosting towards the boarding target, draining their shields.

There's a thread on steam forums. You could scroll through it....

Off the t op of my head...

1. Fleets do not keep formation, unless you assemble them in specific way. Faster units do not wait for slower ones.
2. If you order capitals to attack station they sometimes try to hug them and bathe in incoming xenon projectiles as a result. Quickly kills even an asgard.
3. After passing through a gate, L ships stop, take 180 degree turn, fly in that direction, then take another turn to resume course.
4. Ships cannot turn while using travel drive.
5. Fleets cannot auto-replenish.
6. If a station mines multiple wares, miners will sometimes try to mine multiple wares at once, which will effectively cripple their capacity until you manually drop cardo. When instead of 1500 units miner mines 5, this is a ton of fun.
7. Issuing attack orders in another sector will result in a ship travelling without use of travel drive. Lots of fun.
8. Sector patrols do not respond to distress calls from own pilots.
9. Sector patrols do not see the sector's map and are restricted to their own radar only.
10. Generally poor collision avoidance. IS ships will boldy try to go through HQ's rock and smash into it, and also ram into AUX ships once they're done repairing.
11. Large ships have difficulty using main cannons. Basically in Asgard vs K, asgard will win only if it is player controller most of the time.

[Insects]

What aren't the issues?
It is terrible in general. It really needs a whole new reimplementation from scratch because almost nothing works correctly.

It would be good to see it redone as a stand alone server process, which would then allow the AI sim CPU load to go on another PC and would be good groundwork for multiplayer and always running shared universes.

[LameFox]

Personal gripes that come to mind, sorted by ship class. Tried to keep it to the most recurring ones.

All ships:

- dropping out of travel drive too soon.
- being reluctant to engage travel drive.

S/M ships:

- landing, especially on enclosed decks, without getting stuck colliding with things and each other.
- ramming large targets during enthusiastic attack runs.

M ships:

- destroying own shields with boost, returning to combat before they can regenerate.

L/XL ships:

- manoeuvring to bring forward guns to bear, especially in close range.
- collision with each other making it harder to bring forward guns to bear.
- insistence on adhering to 2D plane in 3D target environment making it harder to bring forward guns to bear.
- station modules being obscured by other station modules, or station module wreckage, baiting ships into close quarters.
- dawdling outside gates they have just passed through before moving on.
- boosting under any circumstances, ever.

Fleets:

- zero logic for retreating from active conflict to use the fleet's repair services, leading to needless losses.

[Submarine]

M ships:

- destroying own shields with boost, returning to combat before they can regenerate.

This is my particular pet gripe plus the fact that the strategic level AI generates attack orders with an option to disable boost but no way to set it for individual ships for all attack orders, so you have to do it for each individual attack order, or lose ships, or quit which is what I ended up doing.

Now I play Aurora 4X rather than X4, KSP2, Dyson SP, anything but X4 and its mindless AI.

[BigBANGtheory]

So I think what has happened (my opinion if you like) is X4 has levelled up so many area's of game over the years its left 'NPC AI and decision making' exposed as being the weakest link. So naturally every time there is an update players want to know how its progressed...

For me personally its the suicidal nature that bothers me most so things like not using weapons effectively or simply sending large assets into certain destruction with no care.

[LameFox]

So I think what has happened (my opinion if you like) is X4 has levelled up so many area's of game over the years its left 'NPC AI and decision making' exposed as being the weakest link. So naturally every time there is an update players want to know how its progressed...

For me personally its the suicidal nature that bothers me most so things like not using weapons effectively or simply sending large assets into certain destruction with no care.

To be honest, the AI is better than it has ever been. The problem IMO is that they didn't design the game around its abilities, and now the AI feels worse because it's trying to do more.

Consider for instance the issue with M ships I mentioned. Their suicidal tendency could be thought of as an AI issue, but it doesn't have to be. If their shields recharged faster (or constantly) they'd fare better. If boost didn't drain their shields to begin with, they'd fare better. They are stuck in the worst of both worlds: bigger and less agile than a fighter, subject to both heavy and light weapons, but with slow and interruptible shield regen. It's an AI issue now because they've made those choices, and left it to the AI to deal with trying to keep a ship both in combat, but not taking fire, long enough to very slowly recharge its shields.

Again with the L ships. It wasn't necessary to tie up most of the damage output of a large and sluggish ship in forward guns with a limited range of motion. But they did that, and now they need an AI that can handle positioning and keeping the nose toward the enemy at the same time. Xenon capital ships, meanwhile, work pretty well... not because their AI is better, because their ship design is better for it.

[adeine]

Adding to what has been said:

• Flee behaviour does not work properly, is actively worse than ignoring threats altogether and often actively detrimental
• Escort/protect behaviour does not work properly, ships will lag behind and not respond to their assigned ships being targeted or attacked until it's too late
• Faction AI does not work with non-contiguous territories properly, most notably preventing the Xenon from having more than one fully functional, active area at a time. They'll suicide all their miners and other assets into hostile territory trying to get from one Xenon area to another.
• The transition of low attention into high attention in combat tends to wildly teleport ships around because of the broken Jolt collision update. This resets ship positioning and even if it doesn't directly teleport ships into enemy lines/fire to be instantly annihilated, given how awkward it is for larger ships to manoeuvre it is a major headache. It wouldn't be so bad if the automated messages (like "we're taking hits") didn't now trigger the transition into high attention, as you could just have the fight be entirely in low attention or high attention and avoid this issue. But as it is now it really is out of your control and makes large or positional engagements very painful.

[ranOutOfNames]

Wow that's a lot of issues.
I see a thread like this and i think that maybe I should stop playing.

[Falcrack]

What aren't the issues?
It is terrible in general. It really needs a whole new reimplementation from scratch because almost nothing works correctly.

This is the type of unhelpful feedback which pollutes the forums, and why I am asking for specific issues. Clearly stated and ideally with save games illustrating the issues, so the devs can take actions to correct it. Just saying the AI is terrible does nothing to help address specific issues. Asking for a whole new AI from scratch is asking for a whole new set of issues from scratch.

Wow that's a lot of issues.
I see a thread like this and i think that maybe I should stop playing.

Why stop playing unless you personally are not having fun? I can have fun with games that have issues, depending on the severity and whether or not I can find workarounds.

[ranOutOfNames]

Why stop playing unless you personally are not having fun? I can have fun with games that have issues, depending on the severity and whether or not I can find workarounds.

Fair point.
So I can assume that these issues for you are not severe and/or you have workarounds?

[NeoBahamutZERO]

What I glean from LameFox is that the AI needs to be retailored. It does work fine for certain ship designs, like the Xenon K, but other ships need other mentalities. Somehow, the Xenon K knows to treat it like it's a Ford Truck and run you over like it's the highway, but... Well, I haven't looked into what, exactly, the existing AI looks like. Obviously you wouldn't want to use the same tactic in a Colossus or Behemoth.

[vvvvvvvv]

Why stop playing unless you personally are not having fun? I can have fun with games that have issues, depending on the severity and whether or not I can find workarounds.

Fair point.
So I can assume that these issues for you are not severe and/or you have workarounds?

You can overpower many of extremely irritating problems through brute force.

L trader takes eternity going through gates? Use more L traders.
Miner does not use full cargo? Use more miners.
Fleets do not auto-replenish? Use bigger fleet to vaporize anything before a single wingman dies.
You lost an asagrd to a station hugging? Use more asgards.

More asgards. Send a hundred asgards to deal with that Xenon Solar Plant, because sometimes you just need to make a point.

[Insects]

. Asking for a whole new AI from scratch is asking for a whole new set of issues from scratch.

Replacing broken code is better than chasing bugs. They demonstrated it is spaghetti mess last patch when a hack to reduce large ships yoloing into stations came with a bug of them not engaging travel when given attack orders, it was such a mess they couldn't even hotfix something which should be easy if the code wasn't spaghetti. Fixes breaking things is a sign of code becoming an unmaintainable mess.

You have to know when to abandon old code, plan out a template for what it has to achieve and do it from scratch.

They don't need a list of practically every aspect of AI not working.
The main tactic is to get out of system so the simplified logic can let things work.

[Ragnos28]

On of my viewers provided the best way to summarize the issues with X4 AI, imo:
"My feeling is that the AI is kinda just copied and pasted across the board. Like, the Captain AI for a destroyer is essentially the same as the fighters and that makes sense considering you can shuffle them around and they all level on the same stats. But a destroyer is a VERY different kind of vessel from a fighter. A carrier is a very different vessel from a destroyer. These things can't really operate on the same kind of AI and rely on the same tactics. There has to be a little bit of a underlying code to determine these things, otherwise you get your expensive ships just smashing their faces into everything"

[j.harshaw]

a thread where players can state, hopefully in clear terms, what specific AI shortfalls X4 still suffers from.

This is much appreciated, Falcrack, thanks.

[charlie1024]

For travel drive issue, sometimes they use travel drive successfully, sometimes they fail to maintain travel drive.

Anyway, Egosoft seems tolerant with complains. Even, they don't 'delete' critical posts, which means they try to listen something from users.

However, in my thought, they don't have many many times to have all the QC based on each player does. They're developers, so they know how to play the game. Players aren't devs, so some procedures needed to play the game without bugs can be omitted or changed.

Bugs generally start from 'playing somewhat different to the devs' thoughts'. So, each player MUST prove bug him/herself. No other way to resolve this. With reports, they will do better communication indeed. I'm not a game developer, but they'll want to make better game, aren't?

Egosoft is a key. Then, how to smartly use the key is determined by users, I think.

[RainerPrem]

Why stop playing unless you personally are not having fun? I can have fun with games that have issues, depending on the severity and whether or not I can find workarounds.

Fair point.
So I can assume that these issues for you are not severe and/or you have workarounds?

As an example: I personally have encountered none of these issues for at least one thousand hours of game time. I never had big fleets to begin with. And when finally my small groups became big fleets (starting to eradicate Xenon sectors), I never had any small ships with them. I don't use carriers or S/M bomber groups. I did encounter the problem of "station hugging" and could reduce it massively by reorganizing my fleets to only contain ships of a single class and only use PAR L Plasma cannons.

Since most of my destroyers are donated courtesy of SCA I finally had one fleet for each of the four variants I got from them. I then added another fleet made up from Rattlesnakes to deal with I- and K-groups.

I use "Coordinated attack" on Xenon stations, keep out of sector and supervise the battles to avoid having late comers use travel drive to pass by all others and land too close to the station. After some training I didn't lose ships during these attacks any longer.

[Ragnos28]

keep out of sector

So, you have reduced the X4 experience to watching green dots duke it out with red dots?
That would not look that good on a X4 promotional trailer or, lets say, a Steam review. How would that be? All works, just be out of sector?