How good is the AI?

[𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲]

I'm concidering buying it now that it's on sale, but some of the reviews are a bit concerning.
I was drawn to the system where i can issue commands to NPC's and manage my own fleet that way. Feels a bit more relaxing and leaderly. However one of the reviews (gave it negative) said the Ai are very stupid and so this system ain't working. Is there truth to this, or is it possible to play it more management style than action style?

The review:
"It's like learning to play the piano... with your forehead. Everyone says the late game is all about fleet management, but the ship AI is sooo stupid it borders on willful, suicidal disobedience. Hours of credits can be lost if you don't micromanage every engagement. I just ragequit after leaving 5 destroyers bombarding a defence platform at range to have a new ship built. About a minute later I find that 2 of them randomly decided to rush in and joust the station. 30 seconds later I'm down 2 destroyers. What a frustrating waste of time."

[eMYNOCK]

1.) i'm not a dev, i'm a moderator, please disregard the tag.
2.) you've poked into a very controverse topic
3.) i'll leave it to the rest to the community to give examples, pro and contra.
4.) the game as a whole requires patience, not only to get a hang of it but also to plan everythng you want to achieve.

5.) if you want you can get a decent glimpse at what is waiting you can watch CaptainCollins YT Series about X4, he covers most of the basics, pros and contras.

heres the link to YT:
https://www.youtube.com/c/CaptainCollins

[Vali]

Hm, norwegian. Shortest answer, the game is like Brunost, some people love it, other people hate it.

It is for me one of the best games ever, but you need patience to get into it. Minimum 50 hours to get the basics, over 200 to understand about 80% of the game.

Maybe a bit faster if you watch youtube videos.

The AI is dumb, or with other words, there is no AI at all, the behavior of the NPC's is completely scripted. I think we need at least 10 years to get a good AI for such games.

Everything you do is up to you, its a huge sandbox and one of the best games I ever played. But its not for everyone.

[Bozz 💀]

it's more than capable of doing what it needs to do, some people want the AI to do everything which this game is not going to allow.

I would say they are 2 AIs, one for the player and one for the NPC factions.

The NPC factions have their own economy and ships, ships have to do a lot of stuff, mining, docking, trading, fighting, patrolling, invading... nothing is spawned in this game which means everything is being done in the background everywhere as you play the game even on the other side of the universe.

I have played almost all space sims that exist, elite dangerous, freelancer, star citizen.

This game has by far the best AI, and no it's far from perfect, but the AI does a lot more things than any other game I have played, ships don't just teleport to fight around you to make the universe feel "alive" they also don't teleport inside a station to dock, they actually have to fly to the station and dock physically to it. and then they have to do all other stuff like go mining, repair, buy and sell stuff etc...

The player AI is less good than faction AI, a lot of people complain because they have to actually play the game when they would just like to have an omniscient AI that does it for them, like those who want autotraders, just clic a button and have a ship trader and make incomes forever and never bother with it again, ain't gonna happen in x4.

Is it possible to do, yes, but it's not possible to do it for tens of ships in early game for sure.
but they are other ways to achieve it.

The player AI is perfectly capable of doing what it needs to do, it just needs some player input to do it properly, the UI being kinda bad doesn't help here, but if you have nothing against some micro management you will be able to get the best out of the AI, which doesn't mean it does'nt do some stupide things from time to time.
some mods also help here, liek mods that help with patrolling sectors (reaction force) etc...

[𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲]

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

it's more than capable of doing what it needs to do, some people want the AI to do everything which this game is not going to allow.

I would say they are 2 AIs, one for the player and one for the NPC factions.

The NPC factions have their own economy and ships, ships have to do a lot of stuff, mining, docking, trading, fighting, patrolling, invading... nothing is spawned in this game which means everything is being done in the background everywhere as you play the game even on the other side of the universe.

I have played almost all space sims that exist, elite dangerous, freelancer, star citizen.

This game has by far the best AI, and no it's far from perfect, but the AI does a lot more things than any other game I have played, ships don't just teleport to fight around you to make the universe feel "alive" they also don't teleport inside a station to dock, they actually have to fly to the station and dock physically to it. and then they have to do all other stuff like go mining, repair, buy and sell stuff etc...

The player AI is less good than faction AI, a lot of people complain because they have to actually play the game when they would just like to have an omniscient AI that does it for them, like those who want autotraders, just clic a button and have a ship trader and make incomes forever and never bother with it again, ain't gonna happen in x4.

Is it possible to do, yes, but it's not possible to do it for tens of ships in early game for sure.
but they are other ways to achieve it.

The player AI is perfectly capable of doing what it needs to do, it just needs some player input to do it properly, the UI being kinda bad doesn't help here, but if you have nothing against some micro management you will be able to get the best out of the AI, which doesn't mean it does'nt do some stupide things from time to time.
some mods also help here, liek mods that help with patrolling sectors (reaction force) etc...

So the review where he complained that the AI is just suicidal when it comes to combat, that was just bad luck? I don't mind having to micromanage a little, but for me it would kind of defeat the purpose if i for instance told a fleet to attack something, but they just ram into it instead so i would need to manually pilot the ship for combat anyway. I would just like the feeling where i can like, tell a fleet to do something, like attacking another ship, and they will then do it without me needing to micromanage the combat itself. Is the Ai capable of that? Again, i'm very interessted in the game, just this review kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on most of my reason to getting this game :/

[Bozz 💀]

Originally posted by 𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲:

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

it's more than capable of doing what it needs to do, some people want the AI to do everything which this game is not going to allow.

I would say they are 2 AIs, one for the player and one for the NPC factions.

The NPC factions have their own economy and ships, ships have to do a lot of stuff, mining, docking, trading, fighting, patrolling, invading... nothing is spawned in this game which means everything is being done in the background everywhere as you play the game even on the other side of the universe.

I have played almost all space sims that exist, elite dangerous, freelancer, star citizen.

This game has by far the best AI, and no it's far from perfect, but the AI does a lot more things than any other game I have played, ships don't just teleport to fight around you to make the universe feel "alive" they also don't teleport inside a station to dock, they actually have to fly to the station and dock physically to it. and then they have to do all other stuff like go mining, repair, buy and sell stuff etc...

The player AI is less good than faction AI, a lot of people complain because they have to actually play the game when they would just like to have an omniscient AI that does it for them, like those who want autotraders, just clic a button and have a ship trader and make incomes forever and never bother with it again, ain't gonna happen in x4.

Is it possible to do, yes, but it's not possible to do it for tens of ships in early game for sure.
but they are other ways to achieve it.

The player AI is perfectly capable of doing what it needs to do, it just needs some player input to do it properly, the UI being kinda bad doesn't help here, but if you have nothing against some micro management you will be able to get the best out of the AI, which doesn't mean it does'nt do some stupide things from time to time.
some mods also help here, liek mods that help with patrolling sectors (reaction force) etc...

So the review where he complained that the AI is just suicidal when it comes to combat, that was just bad luck? I don't mind having to micromanage a little, but for me it would kind of defeat the purpose if i for instance told a fleet to attack something, but they just ram into it instead so i would need to manually pilot the ship for combat anyway. I would just like the feeling where i can like, tell a fleet to do something, like attacking another ship, and they will then do it without me needing to micromanage the combat itself. Is the Ai capable of that? Again, i'm very interessted in the game, just this review kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on most of my reason to getting this game :/

Ships suicide into stations usually, I have never had a fleet suicide into another fleet in my 2.500 hours of playing, and even stations are easy to pick if you micro a little bit your ships to place them, I don't even tell them to engage to ddestroy the station.
It's just that people want to press a button and be done, that will work sometimes but not always specially against stations.

when it comes to fleet combat I've had little issues, and I play modded with a lot bigger fleets than vanilla game.
the worst in fleet combat is that ships tend to not stay grouped when they travel over long distances, the solution is to set waypoints so they can regroup.
also regroup before attacking.

if you order a fleet to attack a position that is like 5 sectors away without doing this, then yeah they will arrive in small groups and might get killed.

[theslay66]

The AI performs fine for most mundane tasks (travelling, trading, managing stations and miners, etc.)
However the piloting AI can be quite infuriating when engaging in complex tasks like, well combat. In short, if you let it engage a dangerous ennemy, you'd better be there to monitor and correct. It's not uncommon, for example when engaging a station, for a destroyer to go sit right above a bunch of turrets instead of shooting it safely from range. Although there have been some progress made there.
Or the pursuit AI is just is atrocious. Don't let it try to catch a fleeing pirate ship, it will never get to it unless extreme luck or the pirate get distracted by something.

You'll have to get used to it, and learn how work around its quirkyness. And the unintuitive UI doesn't help.
For example giving a direct order to a ship will place the order in a queue if the ship is already doing something, instead of executing it immediatly like in any rts.
And no, there is no shortcut for "immediate execution of order", you ever have to erase all the queue first, or give the order then open the information panel then go on the behavior panel then manually rise your order to the front of the queue by painstakly clicking on small arrows.... What's the big idea here Egosoft ? Can't we have click for immediate execution and shift+click for queuing orders like in any decent game ?

Erm. Sorry for the rambling.

Thankfully, all of this can be executed while the game is paused, so you can take your time to perform all these back-and-forth in the menus.
And these shortcomings can be compensated with good knowledge of how the AI reacts, and in the worst case you can (later in game) teleport to any ship in difficulty to take direct command.

Finally it's not that common that you need to go into baby-sitting mode, unless you're engaging in big military operations. And the best solution for that, is simply to save often.
Also there are mods, that can help to alleviate some of these problems while introducing new commands.

[ZeroAffex]

Just going to add. A lot of the "AI Suiciding" is due to people not understanding weapon ranges on their ships before sending them off. If you have active weapons with a range of 2.1 km, 4.5 km and 6.7 km. The AI will move into 2.1 km range which is awfully close for stations and if they have anti-capital weapons, is a sure bet your ship will probably go down pretty quick.

Anyways, just thought I'd add that the AI is actually not as dumb as some may make them out to be. I'd say the operators are somewhat responsible too :P It's just a very complex game but it really is worth taking the time to learn the little things.

[Peater]

One example: You have a capital ship with long and short range weapons and tell it to attack a target. All turrets are set to attack the target of the ship. It will fly very close to be in firing range for all weapons.
But if you set your short range weapons to defend against fighters/missiles instead, the ship will stay ranged and blow stuff up. - But I have also seen ships just flying into stations.

Imho it's a mix of the player not knowing what all those settings mean (as they are not explained) and pathfinding being a bit off sometimes.

So you rather have to micromanage you ship and fleet settings before battle than the battle itself, unless you want to.

[𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲]

Well... since most of the feedback here was that the AI suicides was due to user error, i have now bought the game and is very excited to try it out :D Thx for the good feedback with both good, negative and why/how it works :)

[eMYNOCK]

i am sadly unable to hand out welcome gifts.. but welcome to the community.


for any questions... and i am certain that you will have questions... just ask away and you will get tons of tips, tricks and hints.

[Vali]

Welcome to the community. The most of the people here are very friendly and helpfull.

BTW, loosing some destroyer in late game is trivial like loosing tanks in C&C.

I mean if your economy is strong enough, you dont cry anymore if some of your ships die. You can earn 200 millions per hour with a stable economy and blow the Xenon to the next galaxy.

An other day, I was busy and the xenons smashed one of my fleets, was a bit confused first, but my revange was charging into their sector. I killed all capitol ships and smashed all the ressource stocks from the shipyard without wiping out them. Xenons were disabled for some hours and I had a good fight.

[Bozz 💀]

Welcome to the party ! feel free to ask questions if you have any

[𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲]

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

Welcome to the party ! feel free to ask questions if you have any

Thanks, and i'd like to take you up on that offer!
When i was going to start a new game, i wanted to start with tutorial since the game seem very complex. However it seemed i would then get locked to human male. As i read the store site i assumed i would be able to chose my own race/gender regardless of starting point. So I'm just wondering, does race/gender matter beside RP reasons? Since i also haven't played this serie before i have no idea WHAT the other races are :P

[strask]

Originally posted by 𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲:

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

Welcome to the party ! feel free to ask questions if you have any

Thanks, and i'd like to take you up on that offer!
When i was going to start a new game, i wanted to start with tutorial since the game seem very complex. However it seemed i would then get locked to human male. As i read the store site i assumed i would be able to chose my own race/gender regardless of starting point. So I'm just wondering, does race/gender matter beside RP reasons? Since i also haven't played this serie before i have no idea WHAT the other races are :P

1) Tutorial is locked human male, but is short and not the main game. Chose one of the other starts after you have played the tutorial for however long.
2) Each start (except a couple newer ones which let you select gender) are pre-selected to a given species and gender; just pick one that you like they can all go any direction once in-game.

[𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲]

Originally posted by strask:

Originally posted by 𝓞𝓸𝓴𝓪𝓶𝓲:

Thanks, and i'd like to take you up on that offer!
When i was going to start a new game, i wanted to start with tutorial since the game seem very complex. However it seemed i would then get locked to human male. As i read the store site i assumed i would be able to chose my own race/gender regardless of starting point. So I'm just wondering, does race/gender matter beside RP reasons? Since i also haven't played this serie before i have no idea WHAT the other races are :P

1) Tutorial is locked human male, but is short and not the main game. Chose one of the other starts after you have played the tutorial for however long.
2) Each start (except a couple newer ones which let you select gender) are pre-selected to a given species and gender; just pick one that you like they can all go any direction once in-game.

So it doesn't really matter what race/gender i am then? Like will other faction hate/love me more based on race/gender, or is it just the same?