A Manifesto on the Relationship Between Fighters, Titans and AI

[starhaiden]

yes just get missile and missile combo with 100% and with a powerful enough one you should destroy all enemies within 1000ms

 

[Gerion]

yes just get missile and missile combo with 100% and with a powerful enough one you should destroy all enemies within 1000ms

1. Make it bigger, it has less reload speed and lower number of missiles. Make it small, you dont have enough damage to kill more then a fighter.
2. You can not focus with swarm missiles (should have excluded them in my last post), they might go after the fighters like you indended, they might just crash into the shields of the dreadnought over there. Or they might go all after the same fighter. Other weapons would be better suited for killing fighters, as long as there is something else then fighters around.

 

[Yetimania]

yes just get missile and missile combo with 100% and with a powerful enough one you should destroy all enemies within 1000ms

True. But, think about it. Your capital ship has, built in, a very large, dedicated, anti-fighter weapon. That's all space that could have been dedicated to anti-cap ship weapons. So it should be able to massacre fighters, because it's a very big, very powerful, very expensive ship purpose-built to do that. And it's comparatively weaker in a cap-ship fight than an equivalent cap-ship that put, say, cannons there.

 

[Keptick]

1. Make it bigger, it has less reload speed and lower number of missiles. Make it small, you dont have enough damage to kill more then a fighter.

That is 100% false. The size of a weapon system won't change the reload time or the amount of missiles fired at all, assuming that you're also scaling up the slave system at the same time (for the missile count). But apart from slaving cannons or damage pulse to the missiles, there's absolutely no way of changing the reload time.

 

[Gerion]

That is 100% false. The size of a weapon system won't change the reload time or the amount of missiles fired at all, assuming that you're also scaling up the slave system at the same time (for the missile count). But apart from slaving cannons or damage pulse to the missiles, there's absolutely no way of changing the reload time.

It is false under the current system, yes.

 

[Keptick]

It is false under the current system, yes.

Oh, you were suggesting that this is how it could work? Sorry, I missed that part.

 

[Loadout]

As I am reading this a thought occurs to me regarding AI swarms. As the AI becomes smarter it becomes more and more apparent that swarms are a valuable offensive/defensive measure. Therefore, have a variable attached to the player which limits the number of active AIs they may control at any one time.

Example:

Limit of 50 Bobby's per player

I have a drone ship with 48 drones in it, hence I have space for basically one more AI turret or drone on this ship. Were I to change my vessel and enter say, a Destroyer class ship, the cores I have used are then reset to say 37 which is the number of turrets + the central core. This change occurs when entering a new ship core, so just leaving and coming back to the ship wouldn't change anything if you're at limit you'd be unable to place another AI block.

Regardless of how big the ship is, I'm limited in the number of turrets or otherwise AI controlled entities available to me. This could be changed in the config file and would otherwise keep a tight leash on swarms in general.

Even without superior AI this would probably help a great deal with lag in general.

Lastly, I agree AI must be feasibly less accurate than a player but still be able to hit reasonably. 10% is pathetic, but 65% is more manageable. Less lag on the player end means of course that with the higher accuracy the AI still won't get the edge unless your computer sucks. Because hopefully you can hit more often than 65% of the time...

 

[Keptick]

As I am reading this a thought occurs to me regarding AI swarms. As the AI becomes smarter it becomes more and more apparent that swarms are a valuable offensive/defensive measure. Therefore, have a variable attached to the player which limits the number of active AIs they may control at any one time.

Example:

Limit of 50 Bobby's per player

I have a drone ship with 48 drones in it, hence I have space for basically one more AI turret or drone on this ship. Were I to change my vessel and enter say, a Destroyer class ship, the cores I have used are then reset to say 37 which is the number of turrets + the central core. This change occurs when entering a new ship core, so just leaving and coming back to the ship wouldn't change anything if you're at limit you'd be unable to place another AI block.

Regardless of how big the ship is, I'm limited in the number of turrets or otherwise AI controlled entities available to me. This could be changed in the config file and would otherwise keep a tight leash on swarms in general.

Even without superior AI this would probably help a great deal with lag in general.

Lastly, I agree AI must be feasibly less accurate than a player but still be able to hit reasonably. 10% is pathetic, but 65% is more manageable. Less lag on the player end means of course that with the higher accuracy the AI still won't get the edge unless your computer sucks. Because hopefully you can hit more often than 65% of the time...

I personally dislike the idea of artificial limitations. While I don't have an idea of how a potential system could work, I believe that players shouldn't be limited to the amount of bobby AIs they can use for the simple reason that using more might be necessary.

Something like a control system with enhancers would be a better idea imo. We could even have a system that has the "control ship" be controlled by AI, in case the player want to have fun and fly a fighter (with a range limit ofc). Just throwing ideas out there.

 

[derblauefalke]

if no one has whrite what i mean i wane do now.

if we dont need the homebast invincible guard and the fact that on ships can use factorys than we have more fun than anyone. i think guard is good and needed but not for ever mor than for week oder smaller as week.

but i agree too

 

[Loadout]

I personally dislike the idea of artificial limitations. While I don't have an idea of how a potential system could work, I believe that players shouldn't be limited to the amount of bobby AIs they can use for the simple reason that using more might be necessary.

Something like a control system with enhancers would be a better idea imo. We could even have a system that has the "control ship" be controlled by AI, in case the player want to have fun and fly a fighter (with a range limit ofc). Just throwing ideas out there.

I'm not (generally) a fan of limitations either, however in the context of a game limitations can be quite fun in themselves if not add to the fun.

Take monopoly for instance, you're only allowed 2 hotels per square... if you could have say, 80 hotels per square what's to stop someone from taking every square after the go space and adding such ridiculous amounts of hotels? It'd be instant game over come the next round, not to mention horribly unfair.

I'm not saying having no limits on the AI's available to us would be unfair, however limiting them does have the advantages as follows;

• Less potential lag
• Smaller swarms
• Strategic thought and initiative placed on design of turrets/ AI ships (have as many non AI player controlled ones as you want)
• Fewer OMG 5000 turret Titans. Lets be honest most of those look cool but will crash a server if they start fighting each other.

As far as disadvantages I can only see a couple really;

• You have a limit on Bobby AI's you can place.
• No more AI spamming 200+ drones. (unless you change the setting in the config file)

 

[Yetimania]

Has anyone ever actually spammed 200+ drones? I've never seen it. Even on the Drone R&D thread, they generally only use up to 24 or so.
I don't approve of artificial limitations, but I would tentatively be in favour of some sort of AI control block needing to be put on the command ship, draining power and taking up space. Ships with lots of turrets would need lots of AI blocks on them, maybe.

Still, I don't really think it's necessary. Turrets have so many problems right now to balance them (laughably weak shields, slow turn speed, dumb targetting AI, inability to use defensive effects) that means I don't think we need to give them any nerfs. Quite the opposite, honestly.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Has anyone ever actually spammed 200+ drones? I've never seen it. Even on the Drone R&D thread, they generally only use up to 24 or so.
I don't approve of artificial limitations, but I would tentatively be in favour of some sort of AI control block needing to be put on the command ship, draining power and taking up space. Ships with lots of turrets would need lots of AI blocks on them, maybe.

Still, I don't really think it's necessary. Turrets have so many problems right now to balance them (laughably weak shields, slow turn speed, dumb targetting AI, inability to use defensive effects) that means I don't think we need to give them any nerfs. Quite the opposite, honestly.

The only ship I know that might unleash more drones would be my 2.2K carrier, which is designed to carry more than 2200 drones. Unleashing them all would mean a server death, and if the server for some reason survives whatever opposed it is going down.(Which isn't quite surprising seeing 1 ship vs. 2200 drones)

Spoiler: Image if anyone is interested in seing this ridiculus thing

 

[Glutton]

This has been an amazing thread to go through. I'm loving these ideas and thinking to make my server much harder to get to those titans. There is a lot we need to make it a viable option though.

Thanks!

 

[Loadout]

Has anyone ever actually spammed 200+ drones? I've never seen it. Even on the Drone R&D thread, they generally only use up to 24 or so.
I don't approve of artificial limitations, but I would tentatively be in favour of some sort of AI control block needing to be put on the command ship, draining power and taking up space. Ships with lots of turrets would need lots of AI blocks on them, maybe.

Still, I don't really think it's necessary. Turrets have so many problems right now to balance them (laughably weak shields, slow turn speed, dumb targetting AI, inability to use defensive effects) that means I don't think we need to give them any nerfs. Quite the opposite, honestly.

At the moment I agree, artificially limiting turrets as is would be pointless. However once those issues are theoretically resolved. As the poster above mentioned, 2.2k drones. Yah.

The problem with AI blocks is that now you've still got the same ridiculous turret spam except with better AI making it even more powerful. Power is such a weak limitation when regen can go into the hundreds of millions easily and storage is potentially infinite. In addition to this smaller vessels can no longer mount any serious turret based defenses now because of that additional drain on their systems. What you're proposing is just another limitation, just less blunt than having an AI limit.

To be clear, i'm not saying limit the total number of turrets, just those with AI capacity. You could have 100+ turrets on your titan, just so long as only XXX (set in the config file) have an AI attached. It could even potentially be your proposed on board AI block.

There's a reason for it too, turrets even with crummy AI still have an easier time hitting things than a giant ship mounted weapon. The only real advantage of a ship mounted weapon is protection (which can be mitigated by recessing turrets) and size, not that it matters when you have a couple dozen turrets each of which is the size of a small frigate. Honestly there's no reason aside from aesthetics not to include turrets on every surface of a titan class vessel.

50 is a pretty reasonable limit, even if it's artificial as you said most drone ships would never hit that (crazy awesome exception above @Megacrafter127 ), then again most Titan's I've seen lately would probably be double or triple that in turrets alone.

 

[SilentRider_14]

Planned fleet control makes future AI more intelligent and better organized; making mass drone spam even more desirable; the only counter to which is a far dumber and therefore crippled turret system - which may in the future lose their turning speed advantage.

I think that it would be more desirable in limiting /capping advance intelligent fleet control of ships individual/ groups . Fleets are a function of factions and this should be a limitation implemented at the faction level. Limit a faction to ( just throwing out random numbers) 6 slots to a squad, 3 squads to a battle group, 2 battle groups for the fleet:

gives 36 assignable AI slots

AI fleet positions are physically/manually assigned at their faction computer to squads and battle group by authorized/ ranking individual

turrets and the Unassigned fighters, drones, torpedoes, mines etc. do not count toward fleet command numbers

Assign the relevant human player officers to pass on orders within the chain of command.
If no other human players assigned -> fleet commander orders are auto accepted by the AI, human Battle Group officer can pass along or ignore fleet command orders to their group, human Squad Leader can pass along or ignore order.

EX: Human piloted carrier/Battle Group officer has 24 fighter drones 12 of which are assigned to squadron 1&2 and the remaining 12 are unassigned. Squad 3 is a Human led Escort. As the fighter drones are eliminated/die the carrier can assign the remaining drones to the squads to replenish numbers or just release them as uncontrollable rampaging beasts.

Turrets are a extension of a ship and not under fleet but ship command
give turrets a separate command tab for better management:

--assign rotating and fixed turrets of ships to groupings for quick reorganization

-- Activity state - on/off

-- function change- Anti missile, selected target , shoot any

--firing style - focused unfocused

 

[PizzaPress]

SilentRider_14 I think it should be a function of how many players you have. A single player and DFN shouldn't have the same AI ability, or they'll just split into 100 subfactions and clog up the list. :p

 

[metalsynkk]

I haven't been playing the game for so long, but I have been inside fighters, bombers, frigates, cruisers, and even a large ship (not a titan-class I think, but large enough to take out pirate base after pirate base without a single scratch. It literally melts a number of pirates down to 2 burning wing segments in a single hit). Nonetheless, I actually do want to be able to partake in larger multi-player engagements. A cruiser would do fine, but I would also love a specializes fighter for a particaular element of the fight, like taking out turrets, or harassing the enemy fighters.

I totally agree with this, and even tho I haven't played the game that long, the economy is the largest part of the ship acquiring business. I am not sure if this was written before the update where crafting/manufacturing is actually viable for larger builds, but it sill needs a lot of balancing.

Totally worth the read.

 

[JonasWalker]

Having read the opening post I mostly have to agree as it sums up quite well the feelings I've had towards StarMade since I first picked it some time ago. I like the idea of leveraging AI to help fill in roles that others may need occupied for a severs given theme but that may lack sufficient interested players to fill. However as others have pointed out it could also create more issues that it promised to solve. As such I would like to toss some minor suggestions of my own that I felt were missing from both it and the following posts in attempt to fill in perceived gaps.

1. What is an AI?

To start with if we add such an AI capability, what do we actually mean by the term? Is it something akin to a revamped Bobby or an actual physical NPC that's been recruited and is currently manning the item in question in the same way a PC would?

Every player, faction and server admin is going to have a different theme they want to go for and as a result such things are fairly important. Some people will want them to be 'flesh and blood' NPC's who can be recruited while others will want to go the death robot swarm. Others may even want a mix of the two. At first they may seem to be mutually exclusive idea's however I feel that both could exist side by side and actually compliment each other quite well.

Block AIs (BAI's from here on out) could have the advantages of not requiring a physical cockpit or (if added) life support requirements thus being more compact, along with being quite willing to be suicidally single minded in their orders if programmed to be as such. However secure comms would be required to give updated commands in the field so lacking that (more on this later) they'd be limited to whatever programed targets and routines were set before launch. Perhaps it may even have some limited bit of enlightened self interest and initiative, so you don't have to babysit their every action, but still should be less than NPCs.

NPC AI's on the other hand could have the downsides of requiring a cockpit (and possibly life support) for the operator and likely some self preservation instincts. While a BAI might continue fighting with only a single cannon and weapon computer to its name I'd expect a manned item to have long ago attempted a withdrawal if possible. So why use them at all if BAI's would be more obedient and loyal AI's? Because by being technically manned they'd be much less reliant on secure communications. It may also be reasonable to give them more enlightened self interest and initiative so they don't need as much babysitting eand oversight in comparison to BAI's

2. Electronic Warfare

Whats the big deal about secure communications anyway? Well with the system OP described with a master remotely ordering about a slave system in response to data sent back and changing conditions it would be vital. If you can't securely talk to your drones then they quickly lose effectiveness as at best they end up relying on a fallback operational behavior between intermittent updates and at worst are subverted by the very enemy they were attacking. Which is where PC/NPC operated craft would still shine as while in-game communications might be disrupted at least its much harder to reprogram a 'living' pilot with false orders to attack their own side or otherwise perform some very unproductive act.

So what I propose is a fleshing out of what we already have with the Jammer/Scanner/Cloaker blocks, combined with a simplified LoS/Range based check for in-game comms regarding AI's, and the addition of a Command blocks (refereed from here on to as a Master) to represent dedicated C3 hardware used to give remote orders to both NPC's and SAI's or subvert those of your enemies. Basically if an NPC or BAI controlled item has a reasonably clear view of a Master and is within range and/or is in direct physical contact (docking would work) then everything works fine. However if an enemy were able to slip between the controller and the slaved units it could attempt to block or even subvert the established communications link. However in response the Master could try repositioning itself to remove the enemy unit from the LoS link, attempt to bounce the LoS link through a nearby friendly to bypass the enemy, hand off control to another friendly that's not currently being intercepted, or try to brute force the enemies EW attempt with ECW measures of their own (possibly based on how the two Command systems compare along with other linked effects), assuming they just didn't try blasting them into scrap. NPC's and PC's would be more resistant to EW effects and immune to total subversion while drones could be cheaper and more efficient but more vulnerable to partial or even total subversion to the enemy.

This also makes the choice of where you would place your Master system(s) critically important. If you leave them on board a carrier they are fairly secure from direct harm and can be larger (thus more capable) but the resultant comm link will be more vulnerable by virtue of having to cover more area between it and the enemy. Mounting them onboard smaller command ships, including PC manned 'fighters' leading a flight of NPC/BAI controlled ships, leaves less room for an extensive suit but also means the resultant LoS link is much shorter and thus harder to intercept. Placing it inside a turret or your engine room would make the link impossible to subvert as its in direct physical contact with its Master, thus the shortest possible range, but also is the most limited as it only retains that immunity as long as a direct block path exists.


Anyway, its rough and likely flawed but that is my proverbial two cents.


*Addition*

On a side note regarding the whole issue of why bring two smaller ships instead of one DOOMship? A simple answer is as has been mentioned based on a functional economy and practical logistics. Not everyone may have the resources to field an entire fleet of DOOMships in the sufficient numbers required (see Tiger vs T34 problem in WW2), and most critically two SmallShips can be in two places at once by virtue of being two separate ships. If you have more places to be than you have assets then at least some locations will have to go without a response and that could be potentially quite fatal in the long run. Thus I feel it would be a fairly self correcting issue. A faction that makes nothing but DOOMships may look impressive at first but isn't going to have a very secure hold on its own territory nor have very great endurance in a prolonged struggle when faced with a faction that keeps in mind that any weapon, no matter how great, you cannot produce in sufficient quantity nor afford to replace in a timely manner is an inefficient one.

 

[petlahk]

Conclusion One: A Functional AI is necessary to allow for swarms of fighters
One issue when people discuss balance is they compare one ship to one other ship. "This titan can generate shields faster than that fighter can do damage! Shields are OP." And that's true--fighters, even damage-specialized ones, currently cannot plausibly harm capital ships.
But maybe they shouldn't be able to by themselves. In most people's imaginations, it is a swarm of bombers that takes down a dreadnaught, not a single bomber challenging the titan and winning. The combined mass of a titan and a horde of bombers have comparable DPS presently, and would be a really interesting battle to take part in, but, presently, it can't happen. The reason for this is that you would need a group of dozens or hundreds of players able to sign in at the same time, in the same faction, and each willing to only fly a measly bomber and not show up to the party in their biggest ship they personally own.
So, in my opinion, the factor fundamentally limiting the usefulness of fighters is not so much math currently (except perhaps some easily-tweakable numbers here and there) but the lack of finding hundreds of pilots willing to be redshirts in someone else's story.
This problem is nullified if a practical ship-controlling AI is implemented. If you, from a carrier, are able to give commands to a large group of bombers (attack that titan, attack that turret, return to the carrier, etc.) then we get the swarms of strikecraft we all want without having to play the game as an extra. Until we have AI, we'll still be dealing with trying to balance unrealistic, 1 on 1 scenarios.

If you haven't already seen this. Here's my take on it. The main bit is the AI bit,, that other bit I put in without much thought, and without knowledge that the HP system is already fully planned.

http://starmadedock.net/threads/ai-command-ship-death-suggestions.4890/

 

[Coskateer]

A hard limit to the number of A.I. you can field per character would be a strong incentive to make each A.I. controlled entity be as large and as powerful as is possible. I'd be interested to see two main mechanics in place to control the numbers and ways that drones can be deployed- centered on Faction Points and territory and how they affect a dedicated Drone Control computer/brick type.

If a Drone System Control computer and support brick were implemented, each block added to the system could total to values representing the total hosted A.I. number and range of A.I. function around the host ship/station. Turret A.I. could possibly be omitted from this system, if the distance between the host entity and the turret (might?) equal zero. In friendly faction space a Drone System might be given twice the "points" towards drone count and range per block in a system, allowing Drones to be used to help patrol faction space and provide security.

For drones fielded in hostile terrain they may begin costing faction points, this would encourage faction members to think carefully about whether it is an efficient use of their points to make constant automated attacks on enemy territory, when they could instead deploy their carriers and manned ships together in a more effective attack.