Turrett AI

[Bladeriker]

It has been a while since I last made a suggestion.

Both of these suggestions relate to turrets AI and function.

1: Add an option that will allow the turret to prioritize larger or smaller targets (Much the same way it does high or low damage missiles. [this could be designated by block count or mass]). Thus larger turrets designed to engage capital ships would prioritize larger ships and turrets designed to engage drones and smaller craft would prioritize smaller ships.

2: Add an option that would allow the turret to run off of its own power source [Self Powered] and not the host ship. This would cause the turret to not pull power from the host ship. This would also need to be set up to ensure that if the turret reactor was damaged or destroyed, that it could not draw power from the host ship until it was repaired.

 

[NeonSturm]

1. I wait for the time target is accessible by logic and I can give turrets filtered lists to shoot at.
Regex is only a few blocks, but table would be difficult if it isn't like accessing a DB with SQL_Queries.


2. Disabled on purpose.
Docked shield power was bad for enforcing soft-limit and peoples built very laggy big builds.

If you re-enable it, peoples make 80% shields, 10% damage and put 10 ship-ship turrets on it + 20 AMS for every side of their titan.
That's about the optimum balance between defense and offense.

And shortly after, they complain about needing independent FTL on turrets and undock them for a fleet-jump, etc.

 

[Sachys]

snip

Id like to see Schine do something about all docked entities drawing power - its a damned pain for stations (yes you can make a massive power brick, but that doesnt make a good station, it makes a brick - forced design choices are poo!).

While I'd like to see self powered turrets return, I think too many people have a negative image due to docked armour and the likes. At the least if Schine could provide something to differentiate docked (inert, unpiloted, just docked because they arent in use and wont do anything) ships to turrets, we might be able to get some headway on improving turrets otherwise.

Of course, power draw is one of the least concerns given what can be done with docked things right now.

 

[MeRobo]

While I'd like to see self powered turrets return, I think too many people have a negative image due to docked armour and the likes

iirc the main issue with self powered turrets was ignoring the power cap. A self powered turret basically gave you up to 2 million power/s worth of dps without the drawback of having to go to the explosive fun that was aux so self powered turrets offered offensive and defensive power.
With the current power system self powered turrets would allow to circumvent stabilizers to some degree (afaik you can get the full power production of a 40 block reactor (not at full stabilization though) without placing any stabilizers). By outsourcing some of the reactor size to the turrets you'd allow for a smaller main reactor with smaller chambers and therefor less mass spent on supporting the not-turret mounted systems of the ship, which in turn would either increase the thrust to mass ratio of the ship or decrease the amount of thrusters (and therefor power) needed to reach the same tmr which in turn would allow more power to be spent on e.g. shield recharge. I hope you can see why these potential results of self powered turrets would be a pain for anyone trying to achieve a semblance of balance

TL;DR: self powered turrets would offer more power in a smaller package and therefor are really bad for balancing attempts.

While I'm not a fan of the second point of the OP, I'm in support of the first point, more AI target customization in general would be a nice thing, my favorite would probably be the option to set a priority list (e.g. 1st priority for target choice is highest mass, if two (or more) available targets are identical/within a tolerance of each other the next point in the priority list is checked, for example distance). However, I could imagine this getting to calculation intensive so I'd be fine with there "only" being specifications for the "any" setting based on mass, distance, maybe power output/consumption, maybe even two checkboxes whether turrets or docked entities should be targeted.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Prioritization would be a nice addition bit let's not put the cart before the horse.

What I mean by this is; I'd be happy if they'd just get turrets to work properly in the first place.

AI set to "any" does not take into consideration "line of sight". AI turrets waste firepower by trying to shoot through your own structure and can kill you if you happen to be caught outside during an attack; especially missile turrets.

AI turrets set to "Selected target" will often aim off to the side or flat out refuse to fire at your chosen target, even when it's sitting right in front of the barrel at less than 100 meters.

Regarding the OP:
+1 for prioritization. It's a common sense suggestion that will only improve combat in StarMade.
-1 for powered turrets due to the balancing concerns posed by MeRobo. It's not hard to build a powerful ship with power 2.0. Let's not fail back into lag-bombs and borderline exploits to squeeze more DPS out of a design that should have been built smarter or bigger in the first place.

 

[NeonSturm]

1st. I'd like if turrets only target directions in which they could reliably hit a block on the boundary box of a ship or a larger box where you have invisible block-regions which tell which turrets can fire into that region.


2nd. I want docked thrusters to work, but only in one direction if the docked entity faces that direction or <20° off when that direction is targeted. The lower the rail's rotation speed, the more efficient they become from 1x efficiency on 2 axis to 2x efficiency on 2 axis and a half.

I want everything to be able to be built modular. Not with copy+paste, but docking.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I want everything to be able to be built modular. Not with copy+paste, but docking.

So... you want lag?

 

[Edymnion]

What I mean by this is; I'd be happy if they'd just get turrets to work properly in the first place.

The universe roadmap specifically includes reworking ALL of the AI in the game.

Its always been nothing but a placeholder, just "good enough" to see if basic functionality was, well, functional.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I read you loud and clear. Just being Captain Obvious. ...for obvious reasons.

Schema says AI is part of "phase 2" and that he expects Phase 2 to be nearly done in the middle of the year. Hopefully they don't put that on the back burner.

 

[NeonSturm]

So... you want lag?

Not happening if docked things can copy over their stuff to the thing they are docked to and remember which things to take back when undocking + default to 0 rail speed (perhaps with a 0-speed rail docker that also distinguishes ships from moving platforms)

The system we have now is a placeholder for what is possible.