The Great Kaltor Race

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The Great Kaltor Race - 5/6/2010 1:39:05 AM

Joram

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I engaged a Kaltor with a Cruiser and it started running away which is fine, my cruiser was way stronger than it and slower too so it escaped. So I thought I'd get smart and throw a frigate into the chase too which is faster. Well, my frigate refuses to get within firing range. As soon as it's close enough, it slows down so as not to catch up. I've chased this damn Kaltor halfway across the solar system now. If I order the frigate to close, I would expect it to close.

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/6/2010 1:46:54 AM

Erik Rutins

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Could you please upload a save with the chase scene in progress?

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/6/2010 3:06:08 AM

Joram

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I will have to try to recreate it, sorry. I forgot Ctrl-S overwrote the latest.

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/6/2010 5:13:43 AM

Fishman

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Double the playback speed, set it to Yakety Sax, and post it on Youtube.

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/6/2010 8:45:22 AM

Canute0

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Try next time: Open the design of that ship At Stronger opponent switch from "All weapon" to "Point blank"

at All Weapon the ship will stay at maximum range of all weapons, but when the target is running away it will happen what you got.

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/6/2010 1:01:13 PM

Joram

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That's not the point Canute. Put plainly, If I order a ship to do something, I expect it to do it. I would expect the AI behaviour to take over only when I am not directly ordering it.

With that said, the ship was set to 'standoff' for stronger opponents and perhaps standoff means something different to the developer but to me it means it engages at max range. Not stay beyond range. That's just retreat. This isn't the only behaviour I've noticed of military ships not doing quite what I am expecting. I also couldn't get an individual ship to switch targets even though it was in no immediate danger from what was firing on it. I tried several times and it wouldn't do it. I wasn't expecting to have so little control on my military ships. I would want to be able to tell my ships to concentrate their fire. I'm not sure if this is a change from a previous version or if I just didn't notice it before. Fishman, that's exactly what I was thinking except perhaps with Benny Hill music. :)

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/6/2010 4:55:17 PM

Canute0

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ah ok, the problem is, the Ship AI can override your manual commands.

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/7/2010 6:35:51 AM

Fishman

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

Fishman, that's exactly what I was thinking except perhaps with Benny Hill music. :)

Yakety Sax *IS* the Benny Hill music.

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/7/2010 1:11:57 PM

Joram

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Oh, learn something new every day!

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/9/2010 3:41:28 AM

Phez

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I've seen the same problem when ships that are damaged / out of fuel chase a planet 'from behind'.

It has to do with the fact that only three speeds are allowed, and the ships are trying to hit the edge of weapons range.

State: too far -> increase speed within range -> drop one speed level -> falls behind target If it could 'match target' instead everything would work.

Assuming the target speed is between your Cruise and Max, you'll hit this problem. I've seen it chasing refueling stations on gas giants - Impulse isn't always fast enough.

Another problem is 'flee when': I have a Cruiser with 1000 shields fighting 4 weaker pirates. Each individual pirate has say 250 shields. I route all of them (shields down), but my shields are below 200 so I bug out instead of chasing them down and killing them. If I manually attack one of the cowards, after a few seconds my ship will start to run away again. I can modify the design to 'Never flee' and then I can hunt stragglers.

Another one is ship don't engage hyperdrive and when running. This was the beginning of the game and no one had anti hyperspace fields - I lost my first destroyer because it wouldn't run away properly. I saw I was outmatched and ordered a retreat (one ship, using the menu) It's max speed was equivalent to its pursuers and I had plenty of fuel, so I figured no problem. The ship managed to turn and run, but after a getting a bit out of enemy weapons range it dropped to cruise speed and the enemy caught up.

The ship never entered hyperspace so I tried a move order on a far away planet. The move was replaced by evade a few seconds later... After a minute or so the ship died.

I was Quameno (Nexus Reactor) and the ship had enough power to Max engines and Hyperdrive...

That one might have something to do with Get to distance from target -> multiple attackers -> new evade orders for new attacker -> repeat

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/9/2010 4:17:12 AM

ceyan

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

That's not the point Canute.� Put plainly, If I order a ship to do something, I expect it to do it.� I would expect the AI behaviour to take over only when I am not directly ordering it.�

With that said, the ship was set to 'standoff' for stronger opponents and perhaps standoff means something different to the developer but to me it means it engages at max range.� Not stay beyond range.� That's just retreat.�

This isn't the only behaviour I've noticed of military ships not doing quite what I am expecting.� I also couldn't get an�individual ship�to switch targets even though it was in no immediate danger from what was firing on it.� I tried several times and it wouldn't do it.� I wasn't expecting to have so little control on my military ships.� I would want to be able to tell my ships to concentrate their fire.� I'm not sure if this is a change from a previous version or if I just didn't notice it before.

Fishman, that's exactly what I was thinking except perhaps with Benny Hill music.� :)

Your "Standoff" definition may not match with the developers, but unfortunately the developers version fits with the English definition. One guess which takes precedence. Not even sure how you got confused, consider you seem to imply Standoff should mean what the current "All Weapons" means.

Furthermore, you have full control of your ships behavior, via the design interface. Or at least as much control as you're looking for in this situation. While you could argue there should be an over-ride to the design, you were still the one that approved the design with that setting (or didn't change the initial design at the start of the game if its one of your starting designs).

Stuff like the being unable to change a ships target is probably worthy of a bug report post to see if its an actual issue, but this particular issue is (without further detail) an obvious case of user error.

< Message edited by ceyan -- 5/9/2010 4:18:57 AM >

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/10/2010 8:17:17 PM

Fishman

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I think it's more a side effect of the non-relative weapon speeds, resulting in your weapon envelope being a kind of oblate ellipsoid rather than a circle. Weapons fired forward have a shorter range than weapons fired backwards, but the game treats it as a single range and does not account for this, so any weapons fired forward during a stand-off attack against a moving target will always miss. This particular effect makes buttorping very deadly because even given two ships with identical range, the buttorping ship will annihilate the pursuing ship. Anyone who's ever played Netrek knows not to chase buttorpers.

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RE: The Great Kaltor Race - 5/11/2010 12:38:01 AM

Joram

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I doubt if it's that sophisticated Fishman though I get your point. I think there is essentially little functional difference betwen standoff and retreat. However even that still isn't the point. I think manual control of military ships should override any AI behaviour. I want the AI to affect the ships I can't control.

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Post #: 13