AI Following ships.

[Linksees]

Let me start off by saying how much I hate seeing a 1 person faction battling a 10 person faction like mine and getting the floor mopped with them, because of the shear number of ship difference. It's 1 ship to 10 ships its way to unfair, so I think I found a solution so even the lone wolves of StarMade can have a great of time as me and my faction.

AI ship followers, instead of just having to have 1 ship in your fleet why not 10 or 20? Yes this can be possible here is how, Schema would have to add in an option on the Bobbi AI module that would be follow until enemy is found. What this would do is make it so you can put all your larger ships to this, they would be kinda spaced out so they wouldn't all follow you in a line.

What this would do:

• It would even out ship to ship combat making it so any one person can control a fleet of ships.
• It could also pave the way for boarding if it is ever implemented, so that AI ships can be battling while say you take a squad of npc's with a boarding/drop ship to be able to take over there ship.
• That feeling you have always wanted with the giant space war, but don't have enough people this would now be possible, with just 2 people.

I for one think this is the perfect solution to make it so people are equal in space battle's in StarMade. I would love to hear your thoughts below.​

 

[jstenholt]

This is already being worked on for the upcoming Fleet AI update that will follow sometime after the universe update.

 

[Linksees]

Thank you for letting me know I much look forward to this!

 

[BiGEdge]

In singleplayer you have allready the option to make a NPC Fleer that follows you or fires on everything you shoot at.
build a Ship, jump in the core. spawn some other ships and mark them with F.
Then press Tab+F8. the ship will be in your fleet.
Dunno if its changed yet and it only work for admins or in singleplayer.

 

[AtraUnam]

I'd like it if AI ships would either always be slightly worse than a player or make it so that you have to build the logic yourself so making them better than a player would be very hard.

 

[Ithirahad]

In singleplayer you have allready the option to make a NPC Fleer that follows you or fires on everything you shoot at.
build a Ship, jump in the core. spawn some other ships and mark them with F.
Then press Tab+F8. the ship will be in your fleet.
Dunno if its changed yet and it only work for admins or in singleplayer.

This is actually a rather odd bug that has to do with how the Force Enter command (Tab-F8) works. It also doesn't give you much control over where things shoot and whatnot. I don't recommend using it, honestly, due to the fact that it sometimes forces you to relog to be able to reenter a ship when you exit it (and other possible issues), but it is a somewhat fun bug, and yes, it does allow you to appear to control a fleet.

 

[Voldrath]

While I like the idea of fleet AI, it is not going to solve your balance problem by its self. Instead of one player verses ten, You'll have one player and nine drones V ten players and ninety drones.

 

[Linksees]

While I like the idea of fleet AI, it is not going to solve your balance problem by its self. Instead of one player verses ten, You'll have one player and nine drones V ten players and ninety drones.

Yes however I may be wrong, but most factions would just separate into everyone making there own faction, because you can now have your own fleet, instead of relying on others. (at least that's what I will do with my faction when I'm able to do this, idk what everyone else will do)

 

[lupoCani]

As with almost any AI functionality I see suggested- yes, it would be useful, but it really should be implemented as a possibility of a programmable system, not as a distinct functionaliity from a limited, preprogrammed set.

 

[jstenholt]

Which completely fucks over those of us with no programming skills for no reason, obviously they wouldn't do that and alienate a large portion of their playerbase, so get that idea right out of your head. Just guessing here: it will be programmable and there will probably be plenty of easy to use presets.

 

[lupoCani]

Which completely fucks over those of us with no programming skills for no reason, obviously they wouldn't do that and alienate a large portion of their playerbase, so get that idea right out of your head. Just guessing here: it will be programmable and there will probably be plenty of easy to use presets.

Well, of course there would have to be easy-to-use alternatives, I'm just opposed to putting a hard cap on how creative players can get with their control systems.

 

[Ithirahad]

My vote for this is essentially to be able to hire AI people and have them fly other ships... Depending on your ship size, you might need a lot of those crew members to fly those ships, and they should be fairly expensive to hire.

 

[Ret0rus]

nice idea! i think an ,,follow,, or ,,escort,, selection on the bobby ai will be really nice for multiplayer and singleplayer too!
so i think ,,more options,, for the bobby ai can be:
-follow & escort
-defensive & protect (only in 1 sector)

and a new option:
-fly control (who allows to dock in and out from an exciting or primary docking modul)


aahh before i forget it, for the npc ai more commands so how ,,groups,, or ,,make a fleet,, will
not be bad

 

[Jananton]

Hmm, when thinking about this I feel a construct like in the X-Universe would be nice where you can have wings or squadrons of assigned ships.
In StarMade terms this could be implied by for instance a wing control computer that can handle 2 additional ships. This amount could be upgraded with additional linked control module blocks. In that way squadrons of ridiculous sizes could be avoided unless one builds really big ships.
Oh well, just a thought...

Greets,

Jan

 

[jstenholt]

I like that idea, so much... Probably not feasible, but would be awesome if that's how they decided to do it.

 

[EricBlank]

I think that would actually be feasible for controlling ships running on a bobby ai module. Reprogram bobby modules to take a "parent" input which the bobby treats as a target that it needs to keep within a certain range of (and a variable to change that range.) The bobby can then receive orders from that parent that trigger additional behaviors.

The mother ship needs a control computer onboard, the control computer behaves like a defensive effect system. The computer itself grants you one possible bobby link, and each additional 1% of effect strength from the computer's module blocks grants an additional bobby link. This allows a dedicated command ship to link up with up to 101 additional vessels. What percent of ship mass is necessary for 100% effect strength can be decided in server configs, then.


I'm not sure if there's any way to prevent a big faction from simply fielding 10 player-controlled command ships to defeat a single player's 1 command ship. That's going to be a difficult problem to solve, and the reality of the thing is that more friends is always better. If you impose arbitrary limits depending on faction size, you'd just end up with alliances of many tiny factions attacking individuals. Many tiny factions have more home bases to boot.

I like the idea of being able to hire mercenaries as well. It would still give bigger factions, who can pay more, an advantage. The best bet for little guys is to have big friends.

 

[wakko151]

wouldn't the bigger factions just hire there own AI followers? That seems like a pretty big hole in your logic. Not trying to be offensive but I think most would agree that if a one man faction can hire AI followers, then everyone could, and the bigger factions could hire more. Leading to the same problem.

The only way to really balance this would maybe to ally with the smaller factions
OR the smaller factions to join another bigger faction
OR the smaller factions could recruit

This is a problem with alot of multi-player games. Not just this one. While I do like the idea of being able to hire a ship to follow you around.. It does not in anyway address your original problem.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Fleet control is planed, as far as I know you will be limited to 5 ships like you are limited to 5 away team members. I also do not wish to be required to have a complicated control system in order to use wing-men as flying around with a fighter squadron raiding pirates sounds fun. I personally prefer flying smaller ships over big ones but it's currently not a viable option being a single pilot.

In singleplayer you have allready the option to make a NPC Fleer that follows you or fires on everything you shoot at.
build a Ship, jump in the core. spawn some other ships and mark them with F.
Then press Tab+F8. the ship will be in your fleet.
Dunno if its changed yet and it only work for admins or in singleplayer.

You can suicide to fix this "bug" as well