Single Player: Any way to get a more "hands on" experience?

[Benzin]

Hello all. I been playing the game a lot more, and even though i do enjoy it, the thing that bores me is that most of the time (Remember, from a single player perspective) i feel like an observer or a passenger rather than a captain.
Most of the time, the AI bots do everything by themselves, without me having to issue barely any orders. Let me give you a classical /typical example:

- I enter a system. There is a hostile ship there. "oh man, i better order my guys to raise my shields! oh, they allready did.
- Ok i better tell them to target that ship and fire at BOOOOOOOM! eh, they allready blew it up. mhhh
- Oh well, i guess we better go looking for scrap to collect. Oh, pibot is allready doing it.
-heh, allright gonna mark the next sector we should go to on the map. Now ill just give the order to enter warp - oh ffs! we allready jumped.
- base in this new sector, we have some damage we should repair. sigh.... where allready entering the repair thing.

See what i mean? rather than "captain", im the "Select mission" and "point next navpoint on the map" guy.

This was just a simple example of course. But It seems there is nothing for me to do most of the time, because the crew does everything themselves. I wish i could order "raise shields", "full speed ahead", "full stop" (instead of pibot eternally going god knows where), fire missiles, DONT fire missiles, transfer power to guns, etc.
But i never get to do that. It seems all i do as "captain", is to set waypoints on the navmap. I dont even get to give the warp order LOL.

I recently played Star Trek: Bridge crew. wich i sadly had to refund due to countless technical issues (good ol ubicrap). But for the brief time i played it (in single player), i absolutely LOVED how i really felt like the captain, ordering my crew to arm torpedoes, raise shields, fire phasers, go to impulse speed, scan the target, approach the target, etc. And i couldnt stop thinking just HOW MUCH FUN would i have in this game wich i love (PULSAR), if i were able to do those things.
I sincerely consider PULSAR a FAR, FAR, superior game to Star Trek Bridge crew (fancy graphics and all). But the thing that immediatelly got me interested in Bridge crew, is how i really felt like a captain.

Does anyone know of a MOD, or AI script, or some way in wich i can have more control of what happens aboard the ship, instead of the bots doing everything by themselves?
I had considered just creating custom orders for most things, and have the bots DONT do them unless i order them to. But since there are only 8 (i think?) custom order slots, i dont think its possible.
Any ideas?

Thanks a lot for reading this far. And please dont take it as a "flaming" or critisism of the game. I love the game! im just pointing out what i feel it needs to be a better single player experience.

[obvious]

Hello again Benzin,
The single player experience is mainly shaped by the captain tweaking and programming the bots to make them work more smoothly and more to their liking. The added them rather late, cause the game was aimed at actual crew experience. The AI is admittedly limited, but keep in mind, it is just two people. They don't have the resources and expertise that Ubi has to make high end AI.
I think you maybe overlooked some things that make your game more exciting:
- Named systems have planets. Go explore them! There is lots of cool stuff on them.
- Do the missions. The game REALLY lives from the missions, not from random space fights.
- Really try multiplayer. If you host a game, I am totally willing to hop on and read some science news when you need to go AFK to care for the crying baby. Or I'd chat with the rest of the crew. Give it a shot :D If you advertise your game as "needs baby breaks sometimes" you still will find people willing to join. And many captains will also accept crew members that go on baby breaks. You find the majority of the community here: https://discord.gg/NFayN2e

[SapphireSage]

I know what you mean. Most of the orders you give to AI are in the form of adjustments you make to their priorities for different situations. Its a sort of silent order that always happens in the background if done correctly, but like you said leads to a silent and very consistent game where you don't have to do much personally. You can set custom orders for things, for example my warp command has the bots drop everything and only focus on warping and they only warp when given the command but its not the same as commanding a group and asking the pilot to line us up and engineer to charge the warp drive.

[Malleus]

Originally posted by obvious:

expertise that Ubi has to make high end AI.

LMAO

[obvious]

Originally posted by Malleus:

Originally posted by obvious:

expertise that Ubi has to make high end AI.

LMAO

*for the game Benzin refered to where the AI was very much to his liking. But still, it is a very difficult thing for a game to make the AI behave not totally bonkers. And even tripple A studios struggle with that.

[Benzin]

Originally posted by Malleus:

Originally posted by obvious:

expertise that Ubi has to make high end AI.

LMAO

huh?
The AI in Star trek bridge crew Doesnt exsist. You have to order them to do everything. So im not sure what you are talking about.

The AI in Pulsar is outstanding. In fact the only other AI that ibe seen is on par with this one, is that of Rimworld. But thats exactly the thing. The AI is so good, that it does everything by itself, leaving little for me (the player) to do.

What i mean is that i wish there was a way to create more (a LOT more) custom commands in pulsar. So that i could set the bots to just do basic stuff (e.g. put out fires, repair, etc.) and have me (the captain) issuing orders for important stuff. Like moving, firing, scanning, divert power to X, etc.

[obvious]

I haven't played bridge crew yet. So no AI at all, huh? Curious.
Anyhow, you can definitely decide when your bots fire and when not. Remove the Auto target tic from the tab menu. Then you need to manually target enemy ships for your bots to fire on them. You do that by holding down space and clicking the enemy name on the top of your screen.
Also the alarm levels and basic commands have influence on the AI. There really are too few programmable commands though, maybe suggest to the devs to add another row? Or ask on the discord server if that was something that could be modded in? In the meantime I can only offer my solution: I made my custom commands fit specific situations and trigger more than one action. E.g. "align and warp" instead of having both separate commands. Also my bots never warp OR align without command. So they really do nothing on their own.
And the AI really isn't that good. Real players are way, way better with a bit of experience. :)

[Benzin]

Hi, yes of course. No AI can ever be as good as a human player. I think the solution for my "issue" with pulsar, would be to be able to define a LOT more custom commands.
It would be great if for example, the orders menu (pressing "Z") would be divided into 4 sections, one of engineer, one for weapons, one for pilot, etc. Where you could define commands for each of them. That way i could define orders for e.g. pibot, to collect scrap, line for jump, evade target, approach target, collect scrap, etc. Then for weapons bot, target X subsystem, hold fire, arm / disarm missiles / nukes, etc.

Dont get me wrong, i still love pulsar. and the universe & options it provides to the player is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE bigger (and better) than the one star trek bridge crew offers, wich is fairly limited.
I just wish i had the opportunity to be more of a Captain issuing orders all the time based on the current situation, instead of just tweaking AI scripts every now & then.

EDIT:
I took some screenshots (re-bought the game), to better ilustrate what i mean.
As you can see, every crew member / station has its own set of commands, and you can even take over that station.

Helm
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2532329840

Crew wide
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2532329527

Tactical
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2532329269

Engineering
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2532329072

I can (and actually MUST) issue orders to my crew all the time. Wich makes for a more engaging single player experience.
I would give my right arm for Pulsar, with is vast, interesting universe & mechanics to give me this kind of options in single player. :)

[obvious]

This looks like extreme micromanagement o_o I understand now what you mean, sorry for misunderstanding before. Thanks for showing me! Would break my immersion, because there really is no crew, everything needs to be done by yourself via command-wheel. I think that would not really work in pulsar, because too many things need to happen at once. But I agree more custom commands would be cool and allow for better single player. Please do write the suggestion in the dev forum or via mail! It would be cool if they implement that.
Until then I recommend to dethrone pibot and fly the ship as captain :) Many single players do that, cause Pibot is not really good. And it gives you more to do.

[Aaron]

they ruined the game basically c r ap