About Fleet AI

[Promethor]

Hello there!

First I don`t want this topic to be seen as being negative about the game or the talent of the devs, I am no programmer and certainly making a game with this much simulation have its limitations, either be the engine, available processing power needed, optimisation reasons etc.

But for my own sanity, does ANYONE knows of anything I can do or mods that exist that would help with the player fleet AIs ? This is THE one thing that makes me not want to play the game past a certain point.

I feel like the AI is using some ''fuzzy logic'' from back in the 1980`s.
1 - They are slow, way way slow in their ability to follow orders and actually go anywhere or follow the player. Even having a few ships only in my fleet. They stay behind and are just not really useful.
2 - Combat behaviour seems strange, they don`t really fight in a formation or anything just go all over the place, often a few individuals will do nothing for a long time when an enemy is nearby and not because they are recharging shields.
3 - Small ships have no concept of danger or logic in their decisions. For example, It will fight and fire at any target even when its alone against a massively superior foe or fly right next to an enemy station to reach the fleet instead of going around it. Or wont wait until it has regrouped and fire at the enemy when I has enough numbers etc.

[techstepman]

is there a mod that fixes this? thats what i want to know.

[Promethor]

Originally posted by techstepman:

is there a mod that fixes this? thats what i want to know.

Same here techstepman. Its my one issue with the game. But I would be surprised if there are any mods like that. It would be a huge undertaking if its even possible. I found something that seems to have been made by a modder, now working for Egosoft?

Kuda AI tweaks :
https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/839

It seems to be about changing how ships behave when fighting superior foes. But I don`t think It helps with how slow the AI is. I haven`t tested this yet.

'' All ships acquire the "Avoid High-risk Enemies" and "Move To Engage Target" behaviours. Destroyers and larger ships acquire the "Step Forward" and "Withdraw (to regenerate shields)" behaviours. ''

I`m not sure if I need to micro manage them with orders or its an automatic behaviour with this mod. I`ll need to test it.

[Promethor]

Originally posted by Grumpy:

There is no AI in this game. This is just dumbed down basic commands because ships are not aware of whats going on around them since none of them use their radars. Its very basic way of moving objects (ships) around. Fly from here to here. If enemy station happens to be in ships way than apply the behavior setting. So If a ship has retaliate set it will retaliate because the player had it set when the ship was attacked by something much smaller earlier in the game, now this ship is about to die trying to fight the station. Its a stupidity of highest order. There is no way to fix it. Maybe there are some mods but in vanilla you wont get anything like what you want.

Its sad. I mean how hard would it be to create an AI (at least for the sector the player is in) that could work a bit like in Homeworld or something. Its known behaviour I would think people have been making RTS for ages. Again not sure if it was a Dev decision for the sake of optimisation or if they didn`t have the resource or time to make it happen.

[D3st]

Originally posted by Promethor:

Hello there!

First I don`t want this topic to be seen as being negative about the game or the talent of the devs, I am no programmer and certainly making a game with this much simulation have its limitations, either be the engine, available processing power needed, optimisation reasons etc.

But for my own sanity, does ANYONE knows of anything I can do or mods that exist that would help with the player fleet AIs ? This is THE one thing that makes me not want to play the game past a certain point.

I feel like the AI is using some ''fuzzy logic'' from back in the 1980`s.
1 - They are slow, way way slow in their ability to follow orders and actually go anywhere or follow the player. Even having a few ships only in my fleet. They stay behind and are just not really useful.
2 - Combat behaviour seems strange, they don`t really fight in a formation or anything just go all over the place, often a few individuals will do nothing for a long time when an enemy is nearby and not because they are recharging shields.
3 - Small ships have no concept of danger or logic in their decisions. For example, It will fight and fire at any target even when its alone against a massively superior foe or fly right next to an enemy station to reach the fleet instead of going around it. Or wont wait until it has regrouped and fire at the enemy when I has enough numbers etc.

Hi there,over the past few years that the game was released,this question was asked quite a lot of often and sadly you won't like the answer.....Unless dev changed thier mind on it back in time they were saying that unfortunatly due to pc limitation and the number of ship in the galaxy,its was not possible to have a proper AI aware of its surrounding or having a proper AI fighting in or out sector for the same reason.Even with the pc CPU out there and maybe for the next 10 years its won't happen unless world become smaller or they create instance when a battle start,evey other ship pause and player do his fight.


Keep in mind that while you do your thing ,the engine have to keep the economy going with all the trading ship and factory requesting pickup and trading ship calculating its way to it.I love this game but for the same reason ive stopped playing it a while ago because at some point the limitation of the fleet is kind of frustrating because of all the micro you gotta do.You can make pretty big fleet and send them into a fight but you gotta accept lost that could probably be evitable with a proper ai using front gun at distance instead of alway closing in on other ship(thinking about dest when saying it)

Have a good day

D3st

[Promethor]

Originally posted by D3st:

Originally posted by Promethor:

Hello there!

First I don`t want this topic to be seen as being negative about the game or the talent of the devs, I am no programmer and certainly making a game with this much simulation have its limitations, either be the engine, available processing power needed, optimisation reasons etc.

But for my own sanity, does ANYONE knows of anything I can do or mods that exist that would help with the player fleet AIs ? This is THE one thing that makes me not want to play the game past a certain point.

I feel like the AI is using some ''fuzzy logic'' from back in the 1980`s.
1 - They are slow, way way slow in their ability to follow orders and actually go anywhere or follow the player. Even having a few ships only in my fleet. They stay behind and are just not really useful.
2 - Combat behaviour seems strange, they don`t really fight in a formation or anything just go all over the place, often a few individuals will do nothing for a long time when an enemy is nearby and not because they are recharging shields.
3 - Small ships have no concept of danger or logic in their decisions. For example, It will fight and fire at any target even when its alone against a massively superior foe or fly right next to an enemy station to reach the fleet instead of going around it. Or wont wait until it has regrouped and fire at the enemy when I has enough numbers etc.

Hi there,over the past few years that the game was released,this question was asked quite a lot of often and sadly you won't like the answer.....Unless dev changed thier mind on it back in time they were saying that unfortunatly due to pc limitation and the number of ship in the galaxy,its was not possible to have a proper AI aware of its surrounding or having a proper AI fighting in or out sector for the same reason.Even with the pc CPU out there and maybe for the next 10 years its won't happen unless world become smaller or they create instance when a battle start,evey other ship pause and player do his fight.


Keep in mind that while you do your thing is fight the engine have to keep the economy going with all the trading ship and factory requesting pickup and trading ship calculating its way to it.I love this game but for the same reason ive stopped playing it a while ago because at some point the limitation of the fleet is kind of frustrating because of all the micro you gotta do.You can make pretty big fleet and send them into a fight but you gotta accept lost that could probably be evitable with a proper ai using front gun at distance instead of alway closing in on other ship(thinking about dest when saying it)

Have a good day

D3st

Thank you for the explanation. Its pretty much what I was thinking. Still I would have thought that for in the ''current sector'' the player is in, the AI would be a little better. I don`t need intelligent behaviour and proper combat for the other sectors, they can do with simple logic and estimations. But I would have liked at least the option to turn on/off more advanced AI for the sector the player is in for a better experience for the rigs that can handle it. I will not personally buy the next instalment of X games if its the same. I don`t care about graphics and clunky UI, Its the frustration that gets me haha.

But still I suppose I might have to ''adapt'' my mentality and just accept the losses and just play around it etc. Thats probably me the problem.

[D3st]

Originally posted by Promethor:

Originally posted by D3st:

Hi there,over the past few years that the game was released,this question was asked quite a lot of often and sadly you won't like the answer.....Unless dev changed thier mind on it back in time they were saying that unfortunatly due to pc limitation and the number of ship in the galaxy,its was not possible to have a proper AI aware of its surrounding or having a proper AI fighting in or out sector for the same reason.Even with the pc CPU out there and maybe for the next 10 years its won't happen unless world become smaller or they create instance when a battle start,evey other ship pause and player do his fight.


Keep in mind that while you do your thing is fight the engine have to keep the economy going with all the trading ship and factory requesting pickup and trading ship calculating its way to it.I love this game but for the same reason ive stopped playing it a while ago because at some point the limitation of the fleet is kind of frustrating because of all the micro you gotta do.You can make pretty big fleet and send them into a fight but you gotta accept lost that could probably be evitable with a proper ai using front gun at distance instead of alway closing in on other ship(thinking about dest when saying it)

Have a good day

D3st

Thank you for the explanation. Its pretty much what I was thinking. Still I would have thought that for in the ''current sector'' the player is in, the AI would be a little better. I don`t need intelligent behaviour and proper combat for the other sectors, they can do with simple logic and estimations. But I would have liked at least the option to turn on/off more advanced AI for the sector the player is in for a better experience for the rigs that can handle it. I will not personally buy the next instalment of X games if its the same. I don`t care about graphics and clunky UI, Its the frustration that gets me haha.

But still I suppose I might have to ''adapt'' my mentality and just accept the losses and just play around it etc. Thats probably me the problem.

In x3 we had some really nice script and mods that enchanced AI a LOT but at some point the game was getting really laggy and unplayable.The autotrader we got in x4 and later added in x3 came from a mod.Back in time in x3 auto trader were much more efficient then the one we got right now but once you reached around 50 universel trader(that how the script was called)the game was REALLY laggy.Basicaly each ship were scanning for best price via your sat network and then buy and sell it.X4 doesn't work like this since factory are pulling order from ship.So if only this was creating lag for x3 imagine now 50 or 100 ships fighting in sector calculating trajectory to advoid a bullet or share tactic with the rest of the fleet :P .

[D3st]

Originally posted by Grumpy:

Originally posted by D3st:

Hi there,over the past few years that the game was released,this question was asked quite a lot of often and sadly you won't like the answer.....Unless dev changed thier mind on it back in time they were saying that unfortunatly due to pc limitation and the number of ship in the galaxy,its was not possible to have a proper AI aware of its surrounding or having a proper AI fighting in or out sector for the same reason.Even with the pc CPU out there and maybe for the next 10 years its won't happen unless world become smaller or they create instance when a battle start,evey other ship pause and player do his fight.


Keep in mind that while you do your thing ,the engine have to keep the economy going with all the trading ship and factory requesting pickup and trading ship calculating its way to it.I love this game but for the same reason ive stopped playing it a while ago because at some point the limitation of the fleet is kind of frustrating because of all the micro you gotta do.You can make pretty big fleet and send them into a fight but you gotta accept lost that could probably be evitable with a proper ai using front gun at distance instead of alway closing in on other ship(thinking about dest when saying it)

Have a good day

D3st

All that about cpu is just an excuse. All they have to do is lower the amount of ships in the universe. My new game has thousands of them running around in every sector. I am not sure why there is a need for so many. Id be happy if the game had 1/4 of them. Game should not be so busy. Stations should be far from each other and 2-3-4 stations per sector.

well while ago a dev explained how the economy and ship behavour was working and its not like you think it is.If you search the forum you could probably find it but if there is an other way to reduce the lag due to a better ai they probably would have to rewrite of good chunck of the code about how goods transit in the universe.Your not the first one thinking like this unfortunatly but this story is old :P since its been an hot topics since the release of the game.

[winslm]

I feel the same way... Homeworld from 10+ years ago did it better. I the game is good at many things by fleet combat is not one of them. Yesterday there was a thread from a fanboy wondering why the negative reviews... I gave the game a negative review because of the fleet management AI.. It was a huge letdown after an investment of time building a fleet and shipyard just to have it be useless.

[Bozz 💀]

All those issues have workarounds, when you know the game well.

For exemple, I never put any ship in "my" fleet I rather make a fleet and then I stay with it.
Fleets tend to leave ships behind so like in real life, you need to make waypoints, they will gather at each way point and stay grouped.
When attacking you will gather next to target and then attack.

Have you ever tried to stay in formation while fighting with an S or M ship ? Yep it's just not possible to do so, you need to manoeuver to avoid danger, shots coming at you etc... there is no formation during combat because it would be far worser then it is.

Also the homeworld excuse is very bad to use here, that game and how combat works is completelly different from x4, there is no game coming to this scale when it comes to combat.

Now the AI is far from being good, don't think I'm defending it, they should work on it for sure and also on the whole factions AI.

But compare combat in x4 to other recent space sims like Elite dangerous, SC etc...
x4 has a far superior AI and the AI in x4 has to do a lot more things than in those games ^^

[D3st]

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

All those issues have workarounds, when you know the game well.

For exemple, I never put any ship in "my" fleet I rather make a fleet and then I stay with it.
Fleets tend to leave ships behind so like in real life, you need to make waypoints, they will gather at each way point and stay grouped.
When attacking you will gather next to target and then attack.

Have you ever tried to stay in formation while fighting with an S or M ship ? Yep it's just not possible to do so, you need to manoeuver to avoid danger, shots coming at you etc... there is no formation during combat because it would be far worser then it is.

Also the homeworld excuse is very bad to use here, that game and how combat works is completelly different from x4, there is no game coming to this scale when it comes to combat.

Now the AI is far from being good, don't think I'm defending it, they should work on it for sure and also on the whole factions AI.

But compare combat in x4 to other recent space sims like Elite dangerous, SC etc...
x4 has a far superior AI and the AI in x4 has to do a lot more things than in those games ^^

Well there a game coming into my mind which is distant world 2.Its not 3d like x4 and you manage an empire instead of piloting a ship but if we talk about the scale of computation needed+ battle its pretty close to x4 and sadly Erin the dev is facing the same kind of problem like he explained in a video.They have the skill to craft us a good AI but what they can archive vs the hardware we got right now is not possible.

I know there tricks but you know like me that we shouldn't have to do this.At the end for people like me who are really perfectionist you end up microing everything which become frustrating.

[Bozz 💀]

Originally posted by D3st:

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

All those issues have workarounds, when you know the game well.

For exemple, I never put any ship in "my" fleet I rather make a fleet and then I stay with it.
Fleets tend to leave ships behind so like in real life, you need to make waypoints, they will gather at each way point and stay grouped.
When attacking you will gather next to target and then attack.

Have you ever tried to stay in formation while fighting with an S or M ship ? Yep it's just not possible to do so, you need to manoeuver to avoid danger, shots coming at you etc... there is no formation during combat because it would be far worser then it is.

Also the homeworld excuse is very bad to use here, that game and how combat works is completelly different from x4, there is no game coming to this scale when it comes to combat.

Now the AI is far from being good, don't think I'm defending it, they should work on it for sure and also on the whole factions AI.

But compare combat in x4 to other recent space sims like Elite dangerous, SC etc...
x4 has a far superior AI and the AI in x4 has to do a lot more things than in those games ^^

Well there a game coming into my mind which is distant world 2.Its not 3d like x4 and you manage an empire instead of piloting a ship but if we talk about the scale of computation needed+ battle its pretty close to x4 and sadly Erin the dev is facing the same kind of problem like he explained in a video.They have the skill to craft us a good AI but what they can archive vs the hardware we got right now is not possible.

I know there tricks but you know like me that we shouldn't have to do this.At the end for people like me who are really perfectionist you end up microing everything which become frustrating.

same goes for firaxis and civilization games, a lot of people complaion about the AI and the AI is dumb as ♥♥♥♥ ^^ but like they said with a dumb aI most mid computers have problemes in late game, imagine if AI was thinking more and planning more, the end game turn processing would take an hour and not even those complaining would be happy or keep playing the game

[Shawn]

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

All those issues have workarounds, when you know the game well.

For exemple, I never put any ship in "my" fleet I rather make a fleet and then I stay with it.
Fleets tend to leave ships behind so like in real life, you need to make waypoints, they will gather at each way point and stay grouped.
When attacking you will gather next to target and then attack.

Have you ever tried to stay in formation while fighting with an S or M ship ? Yep it's just not possible to do so, you need to manoeuver to avoid danger, shots coming at you etc... there is no formation during combat because it would be far worser then it is.

Also the homeworld excuse is very bad to use here, that game and how combat works is completelly different from x4, there is no game coming to this scale when it comes to combat.

Now the AI is far from being good, don't think I'm defending it, they should work on it for sure and also on the whole factions AI.

But compare combat in x4 to other recent space sims like Elite dangerous, SC etc...
x4 has a far superior AI and the AI in x4 has to do a lot more things than in those games ^^

You know what the best work-around is?

For the devs to fix the GD code!

[D3st]

Originally posted by Shawn:

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

All those issues have workarounds, when you know the game well.

For exemple, I never put any ship in "my" fleet I rather make a fleet and then I stay with it.
Fleets tend to leave ships behind so like in real life, you need to make waypoints, they will gather at each way point and stay grouped.
When attacking you will gather next to target and then attack.

Have you ever tried to stay in formation while fighting with an S or M ship ? Yep it's just not possible to do so, you need to manoeuver to avoid danger, shots coming at you etc... there is no formation during combat because it would be far worser then it is.

Also the homeworld excuse is very bad to use here, that game and how combat works is completelly different from x4, there is no game coming to this scale when it comes to combat.

Now the AI is far from being good, don't think I'm defending it, they should work on it for sure and also on the whole factions AI.

But compare combat in x4 to other recent space sims like Elite dangerous, SC etc...
x4 has a far superior AI and the AI in x4 has to do a lot more things than in those games ^^

You know what the best work-around is?

For the devs to fix the GD code!

A good work around they could test internly would be the creation of battle instance inside a sector when player is there and everything else pause execpt the sector you are in where the fight is happening.The problem with this is the fact that some faction spam attack in some sector ingame which mean player passing by with 2 faction fighting would constanly pause the universe.They could probably tune it in a way that faction do more bigger attack but less often.Game could pop message of big battle event is about to beging if sector is explored to give player a chance to participate.

This way we could have both a big universe and a good AI since when in battle all the computation go directly for the AI in battle.Its would be doable and i talked a while ago with a dev of official forum about this idea,i got told its was a really good idea but won't be happening in x4 unless they changed thier mind.Maybe next title.

[Bozz 💀]

that would be a good solution only for a few people, I don't have any issues with performance and I would not be happy if they did something like that...

[D3st]

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

that would be a good solution only for a few people, I don't have any issues with performance and I would not be happy if they did something like that...

Yeah,would depend on how they implent the system.Like you said you don't have any problem with this which mean to me you have get used to it and you probably not alone.That why its won't happen in this title and maybe in the next.