The AI combat system is terrible

[CEO of Inmarsat Global Ltd.]

I just witnessed something that annoyed me, and in a way disappointed me as well.
Let me start from the beginning;
I started a new game, and decided to go full salvager, as that is the way I found to be most profitable in the early game.
I explored the gate network around my home sector, and discovered a whole other empire bordering the one I started in.
I was very lucky, as both empires had good relations with me, however they hated each other. That resulted in frequent fights in the border sector, a perfect opportunity for me as the master salvager to get rich.
However, what followed made me change my view.
A group of just four weak pirates was able to completely devastate a sector in which several huge corvettes and stations were positioned.
It started with the pirates warping in next to a group of merchants. Despite the fact that the merchants were armed and very likely much more powerful than the pirates, they did not defend themselves. No. Couple of the merchants just straight up stopped moving, providing a very easy target for the pirates.
A small fleet of corvettes and the smaller stuff soon gathered around the pirates, but upon inspection I noticed that instead of attacking them, the ships were just spinning in random directions, sometimes firing a shot or two. Once again, an easy target for the pirates.
The pirates then went to attack a defenseless shipyard. Given how weak the pirates were, I was sure that they will not have enough time to destroy it before the rest of the armed ships arrive.
Well, I had a look at the defending ships, and of course, they were stationary.
I really wanted to see how the whole situation plays out, and I knew that on my own I would not be able to deal with the pirates, so I switched to mining turrets and went to a further part of the sector to gather resources.
To my surprise, the pirates managed to destroy the shipyard, and changed their focus to other ships. They destroyed one after another, until the only armed thing in the entire sector (besides the pirates themselves) was a mobile turret merchant that just arrived.
The merchant was soon attacked, but decided not to waste any ammunition so it just somewhat lumbered around until it blew up as well.
At that point, there was nothing to stop or even slow down the pirates' rampage.
That was, until a group of Xsotans warped in and ♥♥♥♥ing vaporized the pirates in couple shots, something any corvette could do much sooner.
How can something like that happen...
I understand that this is an early-access game in making, and that the AI might get stuck while pathfinding, but why not implement some bodged solutiones, e.g. if a ship can not really find a way to get to its target, and that target is threatening the entire sector, it will just go forwards no matter if any asteroids are in the way.
Or it could detect if collision damage is turned off, and save itself a lot of hassle navigating the asteroid field.
A work-in-progress game requires work-in-progress solutions.
Avorion is one of those games that RELIES on good AI.
There is almost a million sectors in each galaxy, and one is lucky to find a server with more than ten people online. The AI is responsible for 99% of the in-game interactions, so it should be treated accordingly.
And now is the most crucial time in this game's life, that is the time when people discover it and formulate their first impressions of the game.
And I am not even talking about the civil AI.
Why does a mining ship that has a clear shot at its target asteroid with all of its turrets keep changing its position? It could just stop moving and only use the turrets to aim.
It is good that the turret AI can predict a position of a moving target, but couldn't that feature turn off when the AI is using beam weapons? Independent salvaging turrets almost never hit a moving target, albeit a piece of hull moving at 2 m/s, which is a very common occurance during salvaging (and the main reason why I wanted independent salvaging turrets in the first place, so I did not have to deal with the small debris).
I was completely blown away when I bought this game; so many fetures, so many possibilities, so many places to explore, so many things to do, that sure had to take a lot of time.
Time that could, and should, be invested in important things like the AI.
Don't get me wrong though, I understand that AI is one of the most challenging tasks of game development, and AI that has to navigate in a completely 3D environment (no floor to generate 2D paths on) is even harder to get right, and I admire what the developers were able to do.
I am just afraid that the AI will not receive the treatment it deserves, and will end up bottlenecking the entire game experience, like it happened to many games I played before.

[RegalKain]

So I've felt this is an issue with this game for some time. The go-to strategy for this game is to mount rail guns, and be able to move faster then 200 m/S with really good point defense weaponry, cause you literally are never in danger at this point. As at around 200 M/s nothing except fighters and torps can catch up to you (The AI moves very, very slowly.) point defense weaponry guards against Torps and Fighters and from there you are pretty much fine to do whatever you want. Just keep distance with rail guns.

A few potential fixes-

Straight up just design better ships, make it so the engine kicks back anything that has under 80M/s brake thrust and under 200M/s max speed. The reason enemy ships move so slowly, is because they won't move faster then their brake thrust can stop them. Basically just make better ships.

Empty sectors. I understand to some degree why NPC sectors are in asteroid fields, after all that's where you have your mines and what not set up, but you'd think with having to manually drive around them, they'd have cleared out all the asteroids that have no resources in them at all by now. And having nothing in the sectors except stations and ships (With a very few asteroids here and there.) would make allied ships move way more smoothly, save the asteroid field dog-fighting for the asteroid fields the players find.

Arm the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stations, for christ sake. What's that, that Shipyard has 12 billion hull, and 19 trillion shields. Man it must be super terrif- wait it has 0 fire power? Great let me shoot it for 45 minutes because it literally can't do anything to defend itself. 10/10 super fun. Make it so that al shipyards either spawn in Fighters to defend themselves, or they are equipped with heat seeker missile launchers set to auto target- auto fire. Player created Stations can do whatever they want, but NPC stations should absolutely defend themselves, and fairly competently as well.

Merchants-

So this is another one that bugs me, a merchant in the Ogonite/Avorion sector can have 10K omnicron and won't actually fight back half the time, against pirates that have 2000-3000 fire power. And it really bugs me, they should understand they have an overwhelming fire power advantage, but this is just a failing of the AI in general.


In closing-

I also understand and agree, that an AI that can intelligently path in a fully 3d environment with omni-directional movement, is super, super difficult. I won't deny that at all. And the AI does a decent job of what it's there for, but especially where in most of the game's interaction comes from PvE and not PvP related stuff (Due to the sheer size of the play area) the AI should be way, way more challenging then it is. It doesn't need to have massive, massive numbers (Like some of the Avorion weapons you can create if you make a Turret Factory in Avorion space) that the game has, if the numbers are more impactful, but this is a deep balancing issue, that honestly, doesn't NEED to be address yet. Why doesn't it? Because they are actively changing combat at it's core, and how the guns work. Which is smart, they have the barebones, and they are updating and altering combat, once combat is smoothed, they can make the AI lethal and deadly within that framework, and then fix pathing and balance from there.

For now I'd just like the AI to be challenging or play "intelligently" if you have long range weapons equipped.

[CEO of Inmarsat Global Ltd.]

Exactly. I love how the game handles multiplayer, but it is not optimized for PvP, but rather for co-op. It would not be fun to chase my friend around the huge galaxy trying to destroy him, it would be much more fun to have him as one of my escort ships or a co-pilot of my battleship and together go against huge alien fleets

[Teralitha]

AI ships not shooting back at other AI ships I believe is a bug with a recent update. They used to fight back if they had weapons.