[Droid803]

The game only seems to target an enemy with 4 turrets per target, no more. I have no idea why this happens, or why such a stupid limit exists anyway. I would actually be fine with it, if only the AI wasn't so retarded about it.

I have this ship with 2 BGreens and 3 TerSlashes facing the enemy, as well as a few blobs (THT's), but the enemy is out of blob range. Anyone with half a mind can know to shoot at the other ship with beams, not useless blob turrets, especially when out of blob range. However, the AI enjoys being absolutely retarded and tries to shoot at the enemy using its blob turrets, leaving its beams (which are freed), deactivated for 99% of the time, and occasionally firing a shot with a TerSlash. (the wait in between beam fires is like...2-3 minutes). This is absurd. This is also a problem that plagues several good custom ships - mostly in broadside action. Notably, the Raynor likes using its deck and missile turrets over its beams...that pisses me off to no end. Its got 10 heavy beam cannons, and it wants to shoot the enemy with its blobs, when they are out of range >.>

Why didn't I put this is FRED discussion? I know I can use fire-beam, but its rather retarded to have to do that every single time I want my ship to shoot the enemy (even with looping functions). What I'm asking is - is there a way to make the AI prefer using beams, not blob turrets to shoot at the enemy? Do any of the weapon flags handle this? (ie. Big Ship, Huge). The wiki isn't very helpful on this aspect.

Even better, is there a way to remove the stupid 4-turret limit?

[blowfish]

Move it a little farther.  Turrets tend to be not quite sure what "out of range" means (they use the model's bounding box or radius or something, not the actual model geometry).

[Droid803]

That's hardly a fix... I guesst hat would work in scripted battles...but urr, that would mean the fire-beam is more reliable anyway.
Even when they're up close, they still try and blob each other...which results in pointlessly long and exhausting battles.

maybe i should take this up with the SCP people?

[blowfish]

If there are no fighters around, you could use turret-lock, but no interesting mission has no fighters around.

[Flaming_Sword]

You also have to consider the firing arcs of the weapons involved (they're in the pof and you can check/edit with PCS2). I've also had far more than 4 turrets targetting capital ships.

[Droid803]

If there's more than one target, yes, more than 4 will fire...
I would know, since I have the SCa Shiamak mounting 6 beams per side. Only 4 ever fire at one target (and its a different 4 every time). The limit is 4 per target.

Turret lock...would work for a cinematic battle, definitely but then, so would fire-beam.

Editing firing arcs? That would hamper the blob's ability to intercept bombs, the only reason they're there. *sigh* so there's no fix...darn.

[Flaming_Sword]

Hmm, I'm seeing it with a reskinned Iceni and a reskinned Shiamak with widened firing arcs (160 instead of 90). The new weapons I have make it much more obvious, it seems. I wonder why it was done this way?

[Backslash]

The range thing may well be a bug.  But do double-check the tables to make sure +Range is not a strange number that doesn't correspond to $Lifetime * $Velocity .  Because if it's higher, the AI thinks it can hit when it can't.  Or are you using just FS2 table weapons?

Have you tried different difficulties?  I know that affects how many turrets can target the player, but I don't know if that applies for everyone else.

I agree that the current behavior is not good.  Problem is, it's hard to track down something like this in the complicated AI turret code.  I'm hoping somebody who knows the code a bit better will weigh in here.

[WMCoolmon]

Look up "same turret cooldown". That will prevent scaling of the cooldown time (based on difficulty, etc) between shots for the weapon when it's mounted on a turret.

The turret code, IIRC, uses a dot product to determine whether a given target can be fired upon. There was code that used more advance collision detection to determine the same, but it was removed as it broke backwards compatibility and was never reimplemented. At least, as far as I know, it hasn't been reimplemented; there was some talk about doing it not too long ago (~3-6 months I'd guess)

[Flaming_Sword]

Difficulty is definitely affecting the number of turrets targetting something. It'll be something to think about when designing missions, I guess. I'm also very tempted to grab the source, but I've got plenty to do as it is.

[Akalabeth Angel]

      I encountered the same problem when I was trying to make some Renegade Legion test ship. I put 6 turrets on one side, but only four of them would ever fire at the target ship. I thought the problem was that my model was screwed up, but by this thread I guess that's not the case. (well, my model's screwed up alright . .. but the 4 turrets thing ain't my fault  )

      Hmmn, and I just noticed that if you look at the FS2 ships . ..  4 turrets is usually a design decision. Think. . . Sathanas has 4 BFReds, Ravana has 2 LReds, 2 SReds . . . Deimos doesnt have more than 3 at any one target. The Orion I think can only bear 4 or so beam turrets to any one side. Seems [V] sure knew about that darn limit

[Wanderer]

On a brief glance at the code there is this...

Code: [Select]

00635: int max_turrets = 3 + Game_skill_level * Game_skill_level;Basically translates to 3, 4, 7, 12, or 19 as the maximum amount of turrets targeting the same target (according to set difficulty level... very easy, easy, normal, hard, insane respectively). Assuming it is in use and not commented away...

[Akalabeth Angel]

On a brief glance at the code there is this...

Code: [Select]

00635: int max_turrets = 3 + Game_skill_level * Game_skill_level;Basically translates to 3, 4, 7, 12, or 19 as the maximum amount of turrets targeting the same target (according to set difficulty level... very easy, easy, normal, hard, insane respectively). Assuming it is in use and not commented away...

     I just tried it out and it works that way with my test ship. Very Easy I guess = 0, Easy = 1 and Medium = 2 since my ship fired 3, 4 and all 6 turrets respectively.

     That's kinda . . .wierd. Not sure how it affects uh, gameplay really. I mean, If that's a limit vs the player, makes sense . . but versus other ships? What's the problem if two ships kill eachother faster on harder difficulties than easier? And I guess the Sathanas only fires 3 beams in very easy? (or does the fire-beam override it. Don't think I ever played bear baiting on Veasy).

[Wanderer]

No idea.. But that is hard coded setting and unless it is modified in the sourcecode (like made an option to the ai_profiles.tbl) then you may just need to bump the difficulty level to get the turrets firing they way you like.

[Nuke]

i see this in the ragnarok class as well, ive yet to see the ship firing all of its 4 forward beam cannons all at once (possibly because the 10 or so long range missile turrets eat up all the slots for active turrets on a target).

[Zoltan]

On a brief glance at the code there is this...

Code: [Select]

00635: int max_turrets = 3 + Game_skill_level * Game_skill_level;Basically translates to 3, 4, 7, 12, or 19 as the maximum amount of turrets targeting the same target (according to set difficulty level... very easy, easy, normal, hard, insane respectively). Assuming it is in use and not commented away...

     I just tried it out and it works that way with my test ship. Very Easy I guess = 0, Easy = 1 and Medium = 2 since my ship fired 3, 4 and all 6 turrets respectively.

     That's kinda . . .wierd. Not sure how it affects uh, gameplay really. I mean, If that's a limit vs the player, makes sense . . but versus other ships? What's the problem if two ships kill eachother faster on harder difficulties than easier? And I guess the Sathanas only fires 3 beams in very easy? (or does the fire-beam override it. Don't think I ever played bear baiting on Veasy).

There is no fire-beam in Bearbaiting just beam-free-all, and the Sathanas does only fire three beams on very easy.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Seems to me that there should really be an override for this in Fred, since there are definitely instances where you might not want that limitation imposed on the ships in the mission, such as the one in Nukes example.

[TrashMan]

Agreed.
Can the code monkeys externalize this limit?

[Woolie Wool]

Even better would be an extra setting for the maximum turrets which can target the player, allowing huge broadsides on easy difficulty levels without worrying about Alpha 1 being raped.

[Droid803]

Argh, so that's why its four. Difficulty.
This limit needs extermination, or at least a way to easily modify... well, thanks for figuring this out
Now I can eagerly await a fix.