Allow AI to use radar jamming and cloaking

[CoolDog3]

So I have a fleet of AI fighters, but I am kind of a power freak and always put way more than I need for the ship to function. So recently I decided to try putting radar jam on them and they work! But unfortunately the AI system right now does not support radar jamming and cloaking, so there was really no point putting them on. And there have also been many other occasions where a cloaked or radar jammed ship would have helped me a lot!

 

[CyberTao]

I would have to say no, Due to... well, Imagine a rather annoying Player on a server who drops swarms of Drones around spawn and such. Now imagine those drones were Invisible 99% of the time. If the drones were given weapons with High reload they would be impossible to track. And since AI is instant, Cloak and Jammers would go back up almost immediately.

There's also an Issue with that with Jammers, the Target Icon is removed. Server Admins need to select it to Delete Ships that are causing Problems. If a Player was in the ship, an Admin could just teleport them away, but a AI with Jammer would be untouchable. And since Single-player is just a Local Server, it couldn't be added to just one and not the other.

-Opinion Below-
Another concern is the upcoming NPC fleet system-thingie, where you could have up to 5 NPCs following you in ships. I dunno, Things like Jammers and Cloakers (And by Extension, Passive effects) Should be a Player-only option. It would mean that AI instead of Players, but as a Substitute incase you cant find players. AI Bringing Extra Damage, Players doing More tactical things.

 

[CoolDog3]

I understand your point

 

[Lecic]

Given the points Cyber has given, Cloaking and Jamming should be human only, but other effects like Overdrive, Ion, etc, should be able to be used defensively by AI.

 

[CoolDog3]

I agree that AI should have the abilities to use effects defensively.

 

[NeonSturm]

I agree that tactical things should be player-only, but:

Why not just hide icons of AI-owned radar jammed ships only if they are >500m away? Then amdins can still select them.

Or admins could have a button/option to make names visible (or maybe IDs for the case in which trolls make names very similar to existing objects and hope for admins deleting the wrong thing) which would then be an additional parameter in commands.


The problems with cloaking and jamming are (or were, dunno) that if you uncloak very close to an AI-Turret but remain jammed, they don't attack you.
You can fire 1 second into the turrets very weak spot on the rear before this - and only this turret - started attacking you.


Now imagine AI abusing this bug!!!


The thing I worry the most about is that my ship's turrets don't help me against a jammed attacker at >1k range and I lose a 2mille mass ship to every small 100k mass attacker or similar.
Now jammers only cost 5 instead of 50 per block per default :/ 15 would have been ok too.

 

[Green-Knight-44]

why not allow jamming on drones with an exception that no weapons are allowed to be added to the drone? so that the drone is strictly for surveillance purposes and can still be seen by the human eye

 

[Az14el]

Eventually sure, i think the current scanning/jamming dynamic is a bit shallow but I'd like to see AI capable of more advanced mechanics than "hold down all gun computers and orbit left". As scanning/jamming is now it'd be pretty obnoxious.

 

[Green-Knight-44]

True, that being said, a little "imperial probe droid" sans cannon, wouldn't be hard to make floating in space, the AI would just need to exist in space and send notifications of presences in that sector. Heck, I wouldn't even put thrusters on it, just toss it and pick it up in a stealth ship whenever i want to spy on another sector.

 

[Az14el]

can pretty much do that now with regular old fleet menu, you'll be able to tell whether or not your fleet is loaded by checking its status (engage range will be N/A for an unloaded vessel) and if you cause some damage to your probe before sending it out you can even get a notification ("<fleet name here> is taking damage" pop up message every time the damaged ship is loaded)

Bit of a roundabout method but works in the meantime :p

 

[Green-Knight-44]

can pretty much do that now with regular old fleet menu, you'll be able to tell whether or not your fleet is loaded by checking its status (engage range will be N/A for an unloaded vessel) and if you cause some damage to your probe before sending it out you can even get a notification ("<fleet name here> is taking damage" pop up message every time the damaged ship is loaded)

Bit of a roundabout method but works in the meantime :p

Super Nifty! I'll do that whence I get a hang of fleet controls. Been too busy building, ironically enough. It's drone time though . Thanks for the tip

 

[StormWing0]

Could get around the issue of Jammers and Cloaks rendering AI ships untouchable to admins by making it so admins never lose the marker or by giving them a command to turn it back on. That said AI use of these two things as much as I want it would be trouble waiting for a place to take a dump at to say the least.

 

[NeonSturm]

Do you realize that my last post was from 2014, 3 years ago?

 

[StormWing0]

lol so totally bringing a logical discussion back from the dead. XD