Fear

[Dinosawer]

I was jumping around more outer sectors yesterday, looking for the AI, and thought of something to make the NPC ships a bit more believable: fear.

Currently the pirates attack you with no regard for their own life, even if their firepower is 40 and mine was about 16000, which meant they couldn't make a dent in my shields while I could one-shot them.Now, I know pirates aren't the cleverest (never seeing the flaw of ambushing people who are jumping into a system to help against a pirate attack and somehow not expecting those people to be able to fend off a pirate attack :V ), but that's kind of silly.

It would be fun to see them flee when they realise they're fighting a losing battle.  :D 

[Dinosawer]

edit: accidentally used quote instead of modify, ignore

[Volken]

Not much to say really, good idea and would love to see it in game +1  :)

[gn_leugim]

tottaly in favor. have always wondered this too.

[Aki]

Or just move more to softcode. As far as I remember currently "being aggresive" means only ShipAI():setAggressive(). Giving us (and yourself) some more tools on this matter could give interesting results later as modders would allow different fleets use different tactics.

[RandomCommander]

Or just move more to softcode. As far as I remember currently "being aggresive" means only ShipAI():setAggressive(). Giving us (and yourself) some more tools on this mater could give interesting results later as modders would allow different fleets use different tactics.

 

Exactly. I can see "Very Dumb Very Aggressive Sadistic" factions attack without regard of their own life, but "Very Smart Passive Aggressive" factions would stand off until your shields are down and then take you by surprise. Would require a great deal of coding, but also make the game lots more interesting.

 

Alternatively, there could be descriptors that modify combat behavior. Masochistic/Cowardly could be a good example of how likely ships are to flee instead of fight, for instance.

[gn_leugim]

The situation I like this the most is when you go to a sctor with a distress code, and it is a fake one, and they say: "ah ah our decoy worked, you are as good as a dead maggot", or something like it. Then you look at them, and they are just pathetic compared to you, and still, they attack you as if they had a chance... honestly, if it was realistic, when they would see me, ans specially taking one of them in one second or so, they would hyperdrive out. that's what I would do at least if I was one of those pirates XD

[Ethentianknight]

Enemies warping out because of your attacks should still give relations if implemented.

[gn_leugim]

Enemies warping out because of your attacks should still give relations if implemented.

 

Agreed, not as much as destroying them, but, nonetheless, still improved relations.

[koonschi]

Or just move more to softcode. As far as I remember currently "being aggresive" means only ShipAI():setAggressive(). Giving us (and yourself) some more tools on this matter could give interesting results later as modders would allow different fleets use different tactics.

The setAggressive() state is actually a meta-state that make the unit attack whatever comes its way, choosing new targets once the old one was destroyed. It has a more fine-grained tree of states inside. Enemies that have no other purpose than mindlessly attacking usually get this state.

 

There are more fine-grained states, for example for attacking a single target, following, escorting or flying (with and without evasion). In addtion, you'll actually be able to completely control a ship via scripts, down to every control flag. If you're hardcore you can even completely reprogram the AI.

 

The main purpose for these states is that some calculations have to be fast, and they have internal states that will be saved into the database. I felt like the more fine-grained states should be sufficient for AI. Patrolling, docking, trade and all these are already written in lua, or soft code.

 

Edit: To stay on topic: Yes, fear and enemies fleeing is something that we want as well. Not for all of them though, since otherwise, in the end, you won't have a single fight since everybody just runs.