How does AI targetting work?

[S-Array 03]

At first I thought it was completely random but (playing classic edition most of the time) I feel like my O2 takes a ton of hits, and that boarders tend to teleport in an empty room next to doors or cameras and such.

What are the actual AI patterns?

Burst weapons can target different rooms with each individual projectiles, that is known and easily observable. I'd like to know about the rest.

[SYSTEM GLITCH]

Based on my own passive observations, I tend to agree with you.

[Arpente Reves]

They have some basic targetting over RNG checks. Easy and Normal difficulties have a low chance to hit "this room" over the other, but Hard difficulty will make it so they aim at system and subsystem rooms much more

[Ray Robertson]

IIRC They target a random system 33% of the time on easy, 50% of the time on normal, 25% of the time and 25% of the time from a priority list on hard.

The priority list is weapons when powered, shields when powered, cloaking when available, o2 lower than 50%, piloting and engines when evasion is over 25%, drone control if you have a drone out, hacking when it is active, doors when you have fires or intruders, artillery 4 seconds from firing, clonebay when someone is cloning and maybe some I missed.

[mehrad hiddan]

holy cow that almost made ...

[S-Array 03]

Originally posted by Ray Robertson:

IIRC They target a random system 33% of the time on easy, 50% of the time on normal, 25% of the time and 25% of the time from a priority list on hard.

The priority list is weapons when powered, shields when powered, cloaking when available, o2 lower than 50%, piloting and engines when evasion is over 25%, drone control if you have a drone out, hacking when it is active, doors when you have fires or intruders, artillery 4 seconds from firing, clonebay when someone is cloning and maybe some I missed.

Do you have a source for that?

[Ray Robertson]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comments/7pmz3j/hard_mode_ai_targeting_mechanics_some_stuff_for/

[Ray Robertson]

Oh, I see I remembered incorrectly it is 20% on easy for a random system to be targeted and 33% on normal.

[No One]

So the rest of the time they target a random empty room?

[Ray Robertson]

Originally posted by No One:

So the rest of the time they target a random empty room?

No, a random room.

[No One]

I see, thanks.

[Icedfate]

i always suspected the ai targeting was not random. had no idea that the ai was "smarter" in hard mode. I thought hard mode just reduced scraps and made enemies better equipped sooner.

but then, i always said that if the enemy played "smart", the player would have no chance,
usually, in games, ai is designed to be super smart and unbeatable and then they have to design artificial "stupidity " in there to make it beatable. like the ai is set to play perfect, but then has an rng component where a certain % of the time, it makes "mistakes" and then they can adjust difficulty by modifying that %.
like the person above says on normal, the ai only has a 50% chance to play smart and other times, it targets random rooms and on hard mode, it's 75.

i mean, really, all they would have to do to make this game impossibe is to tell the ai "target player weapons 100% of the time, all the time" and bam, you made an impossible game.

I recently saw a video where a pro player was manipulating the ai by purposefully keeping their oxygen below 50% so the ai would prioritize that instead of weapons and while thats clever play, i think that if a player is forced to do that, just so the computer plays fair, then that's bad ai design.

[Ray Robertson]

The target picked from the priority list is still random, unless there is only one system on the list. So, most of the time, having o2 <50% won't make the enemy prioritise o2 over weapons. It will only add o2 to the list, making weapons a little less likely to be targeted.