Placeable Directional Hint Block for the AI

[Mp70]

I spend an unusual amount of time watching my AI controlled ships mine/salvage/fight. It's apparent to anyone that spends any amount of time watching the AI do any of those things, that there is a fair amount of room for improvement.

I suggest a placeable block akin to the gyroscope block, except it 'points' in one of the six cardinal directions. The purpose of this block would be to give the AI a 'hint' as to which direction to face the ship while performing one of the above tasks. Indeed, there should be a separate block type for each of the three activities - mining - salvaging - fighting, allowing for more specialized ships, knowing the AI will point the rear of its ship at the wreck, because that's where the hint block is pointing, instead of contorting around like a drunk at an open bar.

Taking the idea a step further, scaling the block could give the AI a hint as to how far away this block should be from the target - possibly allowing some ship shapes not currently feasible.

[FuryoftheStars]

While nice, general AI edits that can just simply take into account turrets and their positions, etc, would be best.

[Mp70]

10 hours ago, FuryoftheStars said:

While nice, general AI edits that can just simply take into account turrets and their positions, etc, would be best.

I see at least two possibilities:

1) The turret position is already taken into account (a reasonable assumption), and I would still be making this suggestion, or

2) Determining how to position a ship based on the position of the turrets was considered, but the nightmare of math and edge cases brought us to its current 'generalized' AI

... VS ...

A single block that tells the AI everything it needs to know.

Programming wise, I'd be surprised if my suggestion was even a 1/10th as difficult as #2.

[Sathaerz]

One of the things about the AI ship is that the programming function to place turrets tries to spread turrets evenly over the entire hull. This, combined with the fact that the AI ships are kinda skinny, is why the AI ships never seem to have issues with aiming weapons while the player ships do, since players, generally speaking, prefer to place their turrets in an organized manner.

I've actually ended up talking with the devs about this and submitted a fairly detailed bug report about it. I've also dropped a few showcase videos on how poor the AI targeting is on player-designed ships with organized turret placements.

Believe it or not, things actually have gotten better over the last few patches, but I agree with the original poster that there is still significant room for improvement - especially when a larger ship simply stays in place, rotates, and doesn't effectively maneuver vs. smaller ships - you can see that quite clearly in the Baleful Katana behavior in this video: 

 

Note how the Baleful Katana - which is much larger than the ships it is fighting - simply rotates in place while the smaller ships maneuver around it. This sometimes causes it to be out of range of its primary target, which is something that I actually inadvertently end up taking advantage of during the 2nd fight. The Katana should try to push through the swarm of smaller ships and engage its primary target (me in the Euryale) or simply switch targets to one of its closer enemies that it can actually damage.

Koonschi mentioned that this was a pathfinding issue, so he seems to be aware of what might be causing the issue and how to fix it. I'm hoping that the AI is improved in 2.0. Otherwise it will continue to remain a significant problem with combat in this game.

I get why the AI tries to avoid ramming things, but it is far too cautious - especially in combat. If you are in a do-or-die combat situation, some minor hull damage from pushing through a number of smaller ships simply doesn't matter.