Pirates waves - how they scale, how they are triggered, do they work at all?

[Lord_Greyscale]

have no idea what difficulty numbers should be.

Is 1 easy or hard?
Is 100 hard or easy?
Is 100 even an option? What are the difficulty number ranges?

All I know is we have 4 difficulty options on the launcher, Easy, Medium, Hard and now Mean
Does this mean we should set difficulty in the waves list as 1-4?

Excellent points on the work-arounds, but for the quoted bits, I'll answer them in order.

The "difficulty" numbers are a rating system, but since the waves are built by the server admin, the numbers only really hold meaning to the admins.
The numbers can go as high as the admin bloody well wants 'em to.

The "reinforcement" wave that gets called by a starbase will be whatever wave is set as 1, normally, or, if you have more than 5 waves designed, it'll be the one with the cheapest total credit cost.

The "dificulty options" affect how well ALL, repeat, ALL AI entities aim.
Easy is supposed to be that at 10 meters, they have a 99% hit-chance with all their weapons.
This chance grows Exponentially worse the farther away the AI gets from it's target, untill it basically can't hit you.
Medium is 100 meters.
Hard is 1,000 meters.
and MEAN is supposedly 10,000 meters, but good luck getting a weapon to even reach that far without making sector size MUCH bigger.
(at the moment, all weapon ranges are a percentage of Sector size, so bigger sectors mean longer ranged weaons.)

And those difficulties? They can be edited in the "settings" ini/txt file in the main game directory.
Sector size is found in "server settings" ini/txt, and is, by default, a piddly-ass 2Kilometers (2,000 meters)

Experiment to see what combination best suits your Average playerbase.
EX: they love pirate stompin, and want the Ultra challenge? make it a Mean difficulty, and build yer pirates with sniper-cannons. (Cannon master with Beam slave)

They Don't want it quite that bad? turn down the difficulty.

Still too hard? switch back to non-sniper cannon.
Etc, etc, etc...

Have At!

 

[RabidBat]

The "dificulty options" affect how well ALL, repeat, ALL AI entities aim.
Easy is supposed to be that at 10 meters, they have a 99% hit-chance with all their weapons.
This chance grows Exponentially worse the farther away the AI gets from it's target, untill it basically can't hit you.
Medium is 100 meters.
Hard is 1,000 meters.
and MEAN is supposedly 10,000 meters, but good luck getting a weapon to even reach that far without making sector size MUCH bigger.
(at the moment, all weapon ranges are a percentage of Sector size, so bigger sectors mean longer ranged weaons.)

Weird, thought the setting AI_WEAPON_AIMING_ACCURACY = was what determined accuracy, guess it makes sense difficulty will also affect it, I was hoping difficulty would affect how smart or aggressive AI was, e.g Easy they give up after a short distance and Mean they would relentlessly pursue you. (kind of moot for lockons altogether I guess lol), kind of have seen AI ships behave that way, giving up when you get 3km away while others still attack you at up to 10km.
So I'd assume setting AI_WEAPON_AIMING_ACCURACY = 500 would mean that Hard would then make the distance 1500m?

And we'd be okay with 10km, our sectors are a bout 11km across, and we have A.I turrets with 24km range that will easily hit across a couple of sectors as long as the start and end sector have players in them.

Would of been nice to have an actual number scale for difficulty. I mean I make 10 waves from 1-10 still going to be hard to tell what wave level is meant to spawn with what player ship size, not that it matters if only one wave ever appears atm, but while it seems only the one wave spawns for each faction, I have heard rumours you can get more if the ships in the wave have the same/similar mass as each other. Ah rumours, they're always fun. Guess I'll have to experiment with that and see if there is any truth to it.
Just read somewhere around here someone claim they can get up to 3 wave types appearing on their server.

Here's hoping Schine fixes it spawns and very soon.

Now to get back to finding out why the heck Universe AI simulation isn't working on our server. Nobodies seen any random fleets for a while now, but others are saying they get them in their games no problems.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Ah, I'd forgotten to mention it.

To the best of my knowledge, via repetitive testing, the "size" and/or "lethality" of the player ship is not currently used at all when pirate bases call for reinforcements.

A pity, really, as a Battleship SHOULD garner a bigger, or at least "better" response fleet than a starfighter.

EDIT:

This means that "most" of your bigger, better, meaner pirate waves are basically restricted to Admin run events, where the Admin controls what waves spawn, when they spawn, and where they spawn.

 

[Reilly Reese]

We've found a work around for this. Currently doing a pirate building competition on our server and have restricted ships to one main weapon type. As the ships will withdraw to the furthest range of it's weapons, e.g if it has a 5km Beam and a 10km Missile, it will retreat to 10km making the beams essentially useless. Plus their habit of continuously firing weapons drains them of power often leaving them dead in the water, so we've made it so they must be able to sustain power. Another solution is to put a short range weapon on the ships as their main weapon so they close the gap, e.g beam/cannon gives a 2.5km beam, and any secondary weapons like missiles are equipped to turrets as the ship will ignore them when it comes to it's attack range.

My main concern now though is AI ships are not spawning for us at random like they should be for Universe Simulation being enabled, and we have no idea what difficulty numbers should be.

Is 1 easy or hard?
Is 100 hard or easy?
Is 100 even an option? What are the difficulty number ranges?

All I know is we have 4 difficulty options on the launcher, Easy, Medium, Hard and now Mean
Does this mean we should set difficulty in the waves list as 1-4?

Just be nice if the devs or Schine staff would chime in and set us all straight and give us 100% facts on the matter.

schema Bench Criss AndyP or any one else can we get some info on this please?

I've found that 7 puts out things you might consider corvettes to frigates (eg. 60-140m) when they are available. 100 would start dropping titans or hundreds of frigates!

 

[RabidBat]

I've found that 7 puts out things you might consider corvettes to frigates (eg. 60-140m) when they are available. 100 would start dropping titans or hundreds of frigates!

Would it not be determined by the actual wave? e.g I make a wave of corvettes, set them to 7 then corvettes are what will spawn because that is what in the list? Or are you talking about Universe simulation and or admin spawned.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Would it not be determined by the actual wave? e.g I make a wave of corvettes, set them to 7 then corvettes are what will spawn because that is what in the list? Or are you talking about Universe simulation and or admin spawned.

I found that through the initiate_wave command. It should be the same for spawn lists however since I doubt they have two different difficulty systems in place.

 

[RabidBat]

I found that through the initiate_wave command. It should be the same for spawn lists however since I doubt they have two different difficulty systems in place.

Yeah I think the /initiate_wave command will pick the wave with the closest difficulty to the level selected, so if you say set difficulty to 10, and only had difficulty waves from 1-7 then it would default to 7 or the closest difficulty.

I'll test it out tomorrow if I get a chance to and remember to confirm. Did mess with it earlier today but the weekends been long and I cannot recall how it all went.

I don't know in all honestly, all I keep seeing is we players giving our opinions or experiences on how it works all over the place. Have looked and looked and cannot for the life of me find any official word on AI and the difficulty etc and what it is we should actually expect at the moment from it. Every one seems to have conflicting facts and many people seem to be as confused or more so than I am on the subject.

It'd be nice if one of the devs who actually knows what is what can come and explain it all properly.

Waves, Difficulty, and if the Universe Simulation AI is working or not atm.

Only thing I am 100% sure of right now is how to adjust their accuracy, that you can pretty much only get one wave for each faction spawning through attacking shops and stations and any others via manually spawning them via admin commands, and that is about it.

We had universe simulation working when the pirate spawned by station were seriously broken, now they're working it seems Universe Simulation is broken, but then I have people tell me it's working for them, well at least in single player.

I am kind of worried we'll never know what is what and Schine will wait until the new AI system is in before anything gets explained if even then. In the mean time server admins have to just guess and experiment and hope we can keep players interested in StarMade until then.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Yeah I think the /initiate_wave command will pick the wave with the closest difficulty to the level selected, so if you say set difficulty to 10, and only had difficulty waves from 1-7 then it would default to 7 or the closest difficulty.

I'll test it out tomorrow if I get a chance to and remember to confirm. Did mess with it earlier today but the weekends been long and I cannot recall how it all went.

I don't know in all honestly, all I keep seeing is we players giving our opinions or experiences on how it works all over the place. Have looked and looked and cannot for the life of me find any official word on AI and the difficulty etc and what it is we should actually expect at the moment from it. Every one seems to have conflicting facts and many people seem to be as confused or more so than I am on the subject.

It'd be nice if one of the devs who actually knows what is what can come and explain it all properly.

Waves, Difficulty, and if the Universe Simulation AI is working or not atm.

Only thing I am 100% sure of right now is how to adjust their accuracy, that you can pretty much only get one wave for each faction spawning through attacking shops and stations and any others via manually spawning them via admin commands, and that is about it.

We had universe simulation working when the pirate spawned by station were seriously broken, now they're working it seems Universe Simulation is broken, but then I have people tell me it's working for them, well at least in single player.

I am kind of worried we'll never know what is what and Schine will wait until the new AI system is in before anything gets explained if even then. In the mean time server admins have to just guess and experiment and hope we can keep players interested in StarMade until then.

This makes you wish we had MC command blocks to spawn AI doesn't it. xD

 

[RabidBat]

This makes you wish we had MC command blocks to spawn AI doesn't it. xD

Master Chief? Hell yes!!!!

Oh I guess you mean Minecraft. I suppose so? Not really played that game. Not my cup of tea. But if it is a consistent stable form of spawning AI, then yes, most definitely

 

[TFlok]

We've found a work around for this. Currently doing a pirate building competition on our server and have restricted ships to one main weapon type. As the ships will withdraw to the furthest range of it's weapons, e.g if it has a 5km Beam and a 10km Missile, it will retreat to 10km making the beams essentially useless. Plus their habit of continuously firing weapons drains them of power often leaving them dead in the water, so we've made it so they must be able to sustain power. Another solution is to put a short range weapon on the ships as their main weapon so they close the gap, e.g beam/cannon gives a 2.5km beam, and any secondary weapons like missiles are equipped to turrets as the ship will ignore them when it comes to it's attack range.

My main concern now though is AI ships are not spawning for us at random like they should be for Universe Simulation being enabled, and we have no idea what difficulty numbers should be.

Is 1 easy or hard?
Is 100 hard or easy?
Is 100 even an option? What are the difficulty number ranges?

All I know is we have 4 difficulty options on the launcher, Easy, Medium, Hard and now Mean
Does this mean we should set difficulty in the waves list as 1-4?

Just be nice if the devs or Schine staff would chime in and set us all straight and give us 100% facts on the matter.

schema Bench Criss AndyP or any one else can we get some info on this please?

Yup, it has all the makings of a bare-bones AI thus proving what I've said earlier. Wish it was a lot smarter and by smarter I mean actually fly about and use it's ship to its fullest extent like for example: If your ship has a lot of shields then the pirate should try to use shield draining methods if it has them and if it doesn't or the weaponry is inadequate then it should just retreat to call the rest of the pirates to come and try to take you down. That sort of thing.

 

[Ithirahad]

So, here's what I know about the current state of AI:

• AI waves are currently supposed to be randomly selected. Eventually they will send waves based on the size of the attacking ship, but the ship rating system is incredibly broken, so understandably, it isn't being used until someone goes and gets the formulas ironed out. Somebody needs to look into this more.
• There was a bug where only one of the set-up waves would be spawned. Current status of the bug is unknown; I wasn't able to find a bug report on it (save for one that got closed because the reporting person didn't understand the intended behaviour of the system)
• Launcher difficulty options probably only change AI accuracy. This is not confirmed as I haven't messed with it, but I suspect that they're just presets for AI accuracy and maybe one or two other AI behaviour variables. I doubt it has anything to do with what AI waves get spawned.
• AI updates are coming very soon... We'll see what happens.

 

[RabidBat]

Yup, it has all the makings of a bare-bones AI thus proving what I've said earlier. Wish it was a lot smarter and by smarter I mean actually fly about and use it's ship to its fullest extent like for example: If your ship has a lot of shields then the pirate should try to use shield draining methods if it has them and if it doesn't or the weaponry is inadequate then it should just retreat to call the rest of the pirates to come and try to take you down. That sort of thing.

You can do this by making a wave containing ships with these variable, e.g a ship that has ION beams for shield drain. This is what we're attempting on our server instead of the typical ships with AMC and missiles. Seems to work. But yes it would be nice in future if the pirayes could select some weapons if it has multiples instead of blindly firing them all. But yeah making them have a single weapon and turrets for secondary weapons is the work around for now.