Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: TopAce on May 31, 2003, 08:43:11 am
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What is your opinion about the Ai(Artifical Intelligence) in FS? Mine is ... so weak, and they are cheating everywhere they can, they have no'lock time' while using a warhead, and can immediatly fire its missiles with acquired lock, they are not disturbed inside the nebula due to the lack of sight of vision etc. The most nerve-killing is that most of my damages of are taken by the stupid wingmen's collisions, who are always 0.000001 mm close to me, when I give them the 'form on my wing', or 'protect me' order. I think my wingmen always have the 'collide the human player' order to make FS harder.
Please vote!
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Meh, your wingmen are useless. Don't use 'm. Though they can be used to take out AAA turrets (usually getting themselves killed in the proces but MEH).
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Yes, the AI does cheat in certain ways, but you can also run rings around it. Basically, even with all the advantages it has, you can still wipe out dozens of enemy fighters in nothing but half a Loki.
Go have a look around the SCP forum, a lot of people arepushing for the coders to give the AI a serious beating with regards to collsions and what have you :nod:
Semper Fidelis
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Wingmen exist to be sent to draw AAAF. They have no other purpose. Do not tell them to protect you. Do not tell them to form on your wing. DO tell them to to "attack my target' after selecting the biggest, most heavily armed hostile in the area.
As for the hostile AI cheating... not likely. They're as pathetic as your wingmen.
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Originally posted by mikhael
blah blah blah
In other words, AIs are just stupid. There, see how simple that was mik? :p
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lol. I remember the time i had problems with the AI. i order them to one thing and they fly of and killed in a matter of minutes
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My two cents:
FS2: Always press C-3-9 immediately unless you have a reason otherwise. let them go in in front of you, but never stay more than 300m behind them. they'll split up the fighter groups in front of you so they have to fly furthur to reach you, and distract beams. you can go one-on-one with anyone left coming at you.
FS1: order your wingmen t engage enemy only after the enemy have reached 1000m. that way they are close to you for protection, but are close to the enemy also. then press C-3-9 so they break off and pursue, keeping the fighters occupied. in case of cruisers, order them all to attack so it dies faster...
-Hippo
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Go and play other space sims, and you'll apologize to the Freespace's AI for thinking such bad things about them.
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Hey, at least the AI in most other space sims knows how to dogfight around capships. I've never seen Wing Commander, I-war2, or Starlancer AIs try to fly THROUGH THE HULL OF A CAPSHIP to get to the other side.
Freespace AI is some of (but not the absolute) worst there is.
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Yeah, the FS2 AI is pretty crappy. There are ways to make the AI somewhat acceptable by using appropriate combinations of mission scripts and table edits though. As for the cheating, I have noticed one or two instances where the computers do things a human cannot do but it does not really give them any advantage. I guess if you are playing on insane then they fire their primaries really fast, but that's about it; I have seen much worse games on that front.
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I suddenly feel the need to defend FS2's AI. For a start it'll never be as intelligent and flexiable as a human player. Games like TIE-fighter X-wing Alliance in reviews always say that they have great AI, but I don't think this is the case (persoanlly I think it is your own targeting reticule which makes they hard to hit and therefore makes the Ai better.
Secondly compared wingmen will die. The enemy will be sending in fresh waves of fighters and bombers against your own fighters etc which will gradually take more and more damage.
As too the enemy ships 'cheating' I've never noticed it (which I suppose is a gooding thing).
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Here's a paradox for you - one of the very best games of all time had some of the worst AI cheating of all time: Mario Kart for the SNES. The computer would cheat like a good'un to catch up with you when you pulled away from the pack...
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Originally posted by Tar-Palantir
I suddenly feel the need to defend FS2's AI. For a start it'll never be as intelligent and flexiable as a human player. Games like TIE-fighter X-wing Alliance in reviews always say that they have great AI, but I don't think this is the case (persoanlly I think it is your own targeting reticule which makes they hard to hit and therefore makes the Ai better.
No one is comparing the AI to humans. I'm comparing it to other games' AI models. Trying to fly through capships to get to the other side is a BAD THING, not matter what game. You just don't see that sort of garbage in other games (well some, but none of the ones I used in my examples).
Secondly compared wingmen will die. The enemy will be sending in fresh waves of fighters and bombers against your own fighters etc which will gradually take more and more damage.
Yes, wingmen die. Generally in the first wave of combat against other AI craft. Not on second and third waves. The first.
Maybe that has more to do with the fact that I let them be slaughtered whilst I take all the signifigant kills (where possible) myself. ;)
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Originally posted by mikhael
Hey, at least the AI in most other space sims knows how to dogfight around capships. I've never seen Wing Commander, I-war2, or Starlancer AIs try to fly THROUGH THE HULL OF A CAPSHIP to get to the other side.
Don't even compare the SL AI to the FS AI. It's a complete joke. At least the FS AI is persistent. Despite being in a bunch of more heavily armed and armored craft, the coalition pilots will A) break off runs before you even shoot at them and B) probably fail to hurt you anyhow unless you actively ignore them.
You give the AI in SL far too much credit.
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Originally posted by Shrike
Don't even compare the SL AI to the FS AI. It's a complete joke. At least the FS AI is persistent. Despite being in a bunch of more heavily armed and armored craft, the coalition pilots will A) break off runs before you even shoot at them and B) probably fail to hurt you anyhow unless you actively ignore them.
You give the AI in SL far too much credit.
Oh its crap in SL too, Shrike, have no doubt, but at least it doesn't run into the 1.5km capship trying to get to the fighter on the other side. It DOES at least manage to go AROUND. Not dodging capships is bad AI. Dodging capships, I'm betting is the LEAST complex behavior you can give the AI. None of the situational guessing of "should I dodge those cannons" or "i'll take the missile hit and line up on a volley of my own". No: running into a capship is always bad. If I overestimate SL AI, you overestimate FS AI equally.
Side note:
Are the Coalition craft in SL more heavily armored? I never noticed. One of Starlancer's worst failings, in my opinion was the weapons balance: there was no need to take anything but Screamers and AB fuel on missions (except when a mission goal required a Jackhammer). Between the Screamers and your main guns, not one single ship smaller than a capship could stand up to you. Armor?
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Originally posted by mikhael
Oh its crap in SL too, Shrike, have no doubt, but at least it doesn't run into the 1.5km capship trying to get to the fighter on the other side. It DOES at least manage to go AROUND. Not dodging capships is bad AI. Dodging capships, I'm betting is the LEAST complex behavior you can give the AI. None of the situational guessing of "should I dodge those cannons" or "i'll take the missile hit and line up on a volley of my own". No: running into a capship is always bad. If I overestimate SL AI, you overestimate FS AI equally.
Side note:
Are the Coalition craft in SL more heavily armored? I never noticed. One of Starlancer's worst failings, in my opinion was the weapons balance: there was no need to take anything but Screamers and AB fuel on missions (except when a mission goal required a Jackhammer). Between the Screamers and your main guns, not one single ship smaller than a capship could stand up to you. Armor?
I can stand the poor performance around capital ships because not all missions have you fighting in close proximity to a capital ship. It's a less important flaw than SL's piss-poor dogfight AI which lacks any determination to actually kill you.
And yes, Coalition ships were tougher and normally had more guns.
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I actually never noticed that capital ship thing in the game for years and only found out that it was an issue when it was brought up here some time ago. In most cases this can be remedied by just setting better waypoint paths while designing missions. Much more of a problem with the AI is its terrible close-range dogfight tactics, which I have talked about around here before.
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Shrike, I've never really found any AI that has a real determination to kill you. They all seem to have a determination to fly around and shoot and basically make things look interesting. When it comes down to it, we're shooting monkeys in a barrel, for all the good the AI can do. In dogfighting, AI (especially in SL, I'll grant you) just doesn't last long. Its only in the other stuff that we get to see genuine behaviors, hence my carping about capships. Also, capship battles are (for me anyway) the most memorable bits of the game. Random dogfights in the inky blackness of space don't stick in my head very well. They're a dime a dozen.
Heck, even Iwar2, for all my love of the game, the AI doesn't handle combat terribly well--though they do coordinate pretty good (unless they're on your side, then they're pathetic). ;)
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Originally posted by mikhael
Hey, at least the AI in most other space sims knows how to dogfight around capships. I've never seen Wing Commander, I-war2, or Starlancer AIs try to fly THROUGH THE HULL OF A CAPSHIP to get to the other side.
Freespace AI is some of (but not the absolute) worst there is.
REALLY? No...REALLY? Open your eyes while playing, that tends to help :D
Seriously....all the way from WC1 through WC:Prophecy both Privateers, and so on...fighters have tried to ram themselves through capital ships on a semi-regular basis. WCP's AI attempts to break off but other AI commands send them crashing into the hull.
FS2's AI isn't that bad...many times they manage to get out before blowing themselves up.
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I never played either Privateer game, but no where in WC1 thru 3 and Prophecy did I see the strange, almost gravitational attraction that capships have for fighters the way even corvettes in Freespace do.
Besides, IceFire, if I had my eyes closed, I wouldn't have see the crap that goes on Freespace, would I? Give me a break.
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FS AI = Too st00ped to cheat :D
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Originally posted by mikhael
I never played either Privateer game, but no where in WC1 thru 3 and Prophecy did I see the strange, almost gravitational attraction that capships have for fighters the way even corvettes in Freespace do.
You also have to remember that most capital ships in FS are much bigger than the ones in WC, and I don't think are nearly as common in WC either.
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Originally posted by Shrike
You also have to remember that most capital ships in FS are much bigger than the ones in WC, and I don't think are nearly as common in WC either.
Agreed on both counts. Bigger means they should be easier to see and avoid, yes?
I think Prophecy was the first space sim I played that had so much activity around capships, followed by Freespace2, then Freespace1. Prophecy didn't have the problem though... or maybe it did. I seem to recall Prophecy furballs being really really intense for some reason. Maybe I should reinstall that and see how it feels now, so many years later...
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The AI sucks. I can't believe how easy it is to shake a pursuing Ai fighter. They have to see you directly to track you, so I just swerve out of the enemy's field of view and I lose him (the Shivans don't have the sophisticated GTVA HUDs with the little red triangles indicating which direction your target went and a radar). And then I end up right on his ass and ram Kayser blasts and Tempests up his thruster nozzles.
As for your wingmen, I find them quite useful. They draw the enemies' fire quite well. While the Shivans are busy shooting at my wingmen, I can pick the overgrown bugs off at my leisure.
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Originally posted by Shrike
You also have to remember that most capital ships in FS are much bigger than the ones in WC, and I don't think are nearly as common in WC either.
For example, the largest ship in WC1, the Tiger's Claw, was the size of a Sobek and had only eight turrets.
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I am always against the Ai, I think it is even more important than graphics or sound effects, it makes the game more enjoyable if you feel you are working for a team, with no IQ -5 wingman.
Making good graphics slowen the game's FPS(Framerate) and that only requires better machine speed. During a dogfight, a pernamently good speed is the way of survival.
As Tar-Palantir told before, the Ai in XWA is cheating anotherhow than in FS2. Lucasarts' heart of making a game difficult was always the method of disabling certain things for the Ai. For example if you are hit, all your systems are immediatly disabled, despite you were hit by standard laser. The Ai's systems go down only when they reach 0%(using ion cannons) if they have 1% system strength, all their systems are operational. N engine wash for them, tractor beams have no effect on them etc.
FS2 Ai is good to decoy the enemy's attention, so if we are at 8 to 4 rate for the enemy, not all 8 are attacking me, only two or three. It's true that by the end of the dogfight, all my wingmen will have been eliminated, but at least I could survive and that is the most important.:D
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I have made a mission, in which there are eight suns with the scale of 16(extremely large) and I had to realize what I suspected... the Ai is not interrupted by the 'white flashing effect' which occurs while you are flying towards a sun. They could shoot at me without any accuracy decrease. But at least I could find one 'positive' thing in the Ai(which should have been a minimal always), that if I give only one Rockeye to a ship, it has no unlimited number of shoots. Next, I am gonna to test if they have limited laser energy etc. Tricking with TBL.
I always like to use the editors to 'examine' the Ai, and discover its cheating tricks. I am the master of that.
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Originally posted by TopAce
FS2 Ai is good to decoy the enemy's attention, so if we are at 8 to 4 rate for the enemy, not all 8 are attacking me, only two or three. It's true that by the end of the dogfight, all my wingmen will have been eliminated, but at least I could survive and that is the most important.:D
I've made a mission for the FSPort mod for FS2 where you and your buddies pilot Apollos. I armed myself with dual Prometheus S, a bank of Harpoons, and a bank of Interceptors and gave my wingmen Disruptors with no secondaries. (you can choose between Subachs, ML-16s, Disruptors, Prometheus R, and Prometheus S as your primaries and between MX-50s, Rockeyes, Furies, Tempests, Harpoons, Interceptors, Hornets, Phoenix Vs, and Trebuchets as your secondaries in the weapon loadout screen. Default armament is a Subach and a Prometheus R with two banks of Rockeyes). The first opponents were a wing of six Anubises with Avengers and MX-50s (Cancer). My wingmen drew the Anubises' fire while I blew the Zods up one by one but the friendlies took minimal damage (Anubises SUCK:D ). Then two wings of four Serapis fighters each, all of them armed with Kaysers and Harpoons and a wing of three Myrmidons with Subach, Prometheus R, and Hornets, and an Anuket gas miner at 25% hull integrity warped in and my wingmen survived the first wave of them but were destroyed by the second. One of the Serapis wings (Aries) was not set to respawn and so is gone after the first wave of new arrivals is eliminated. The other two wings respawn four times. I eventually blew up all the Zods and Zod sympathizers and returned to base with around 10% of my hull left.
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We allready knew the player can defeat half an armada!:doubt:
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I just have to say that I agree with Mike on that. not being able to avoid a capship is... damn! that's space, you're in a 60*60km playground! you have a few capships in a huge void! and they can't avoid them.
I wonder what's from Descent in FS2 if you ask me. not the AI, that's for sure.
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Originally posted by Venom
I just have to say that I agree with Mike on that. not being able to avoid a capship is... damn! that's space, you're in a 60*60km playground! you have a few capships in a huge void! and they can't avoid them.
I wonder what's from Descent in FS2 if you ask me. not the AI, that's for sure.
They are usually stationed at key positions (nodes, planets etc) And since those are prime targets for any super power or rebel faction or whatever, you'll have a hard time avoiding them.
Unless ofcourse you wish to wonder into the dark cold space of nothingness and worthlessness... :p
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Originally posted by TrashMan
We allready knew the player can defeat half an armada!:doubt:
Once my mission is out... set difficulty to max, play it and say that again :D:drevil::D
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Originally posted by Tiara
They are usually stationed at key positions (nodes, planets etc) And since those are prime targets for any super power or rebel faction or whatever, you'll have a hard time avoiding them.
Unless ofcourse you wish to wonder into the dark cold space of nothingness and worthlessness... :p
what? I'm talking technics here, not fluff.
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Originally posted by Tiara
Once my mission is out... set difficulty to max, play it and say that again :D:drevil::D
You're talking to a triple ace!
Bring em on!:mad2:
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Originally posted by TrashMan
You're talking to a triple ace!
Bring em on!:mad2:
:D
I will, don't worry :drevil:
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Originally posted by TrashMan
You're talking to a triple ace!
Bring em on!:mad2:
I think all of us around here are TRIPLE Ace
But there is only one TOP Ace and one simple ACE :D
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UPS - wromg thread..DELETE THIS POST!
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Well, it looks as 'No' won, but may I suggest those who voted 'no' to try the following things:
1. Collide enemy fighters as often as possbile, and see who damaged more.
2. Hurt enemy fighters down seriously and run through its subsystem strengths. You will note it has all subsystems operational. While you know when you are hit, it is certain one of your subsystems will have been gone. This is the weapons system nine times from ten chances.
3. Give a slow locking warhead to the Ai, like Hornets and note how much time did the Ai take to target your ship and how quickly you were maneuvering.
4. Watch the hull! Your hull suffers damage regardless of your shields strength, and this is only rarely occurs at the Ai.
5. Stay close to an exploding ship with an Ai who is flying at the same distance from the exploding ship and the ship has the same strength. Note who damaged more.
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Originally posted by TopAce
2. Hurt enemy fighters down seriously and run through its subsystem strengths. You will note it has all subsystems operational. While you know when you are hit, it is certain one of your subsystems will have been gone. This is the weapons system nine times from ten chances
Most of the time when I get killed my subsystems are all still intact or only very lightly damaged. Subsystems are actually very small on a fighter. You'll only hit them if you actually try.
I found while playing R1 of TBP that about 1/3 to 1/2 of my Nial kills were from ships that had been disabled first which pretty much proves that the game isn't cheating, enemy subsystems do get damaged if they are easily hit.
When your subsystems get damaged you notice it quickly and you don't think about the thousends of times you got shot and didn't get disabled or end up weaponless.
Lastly an enemy fighter whose weapon or engine subsystem is destroyed will self destruct after 30-60 seconds. That doesn't happen to your wingmen so there appears to be plenty of cheating on both sides :D
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actually the ai does cheat. the last two functions in aicode.cpp show that it is
// Actually go ahead and fire the synaptics.
void cheat_fire_synaptic(object *objp, ship *shipp, ai_info *aip)
{
ship_weapon *swp;
swp = &shipp->weapons;
int current_bank = swp->current_secondary_bank;
ai_select_secondary_weapon(objp, swp, WIF_SPAWN, 0);
if (timestamp_elapsed(swp->next_secondary_fire_stamp[current_bank])) {
if (ship_fire_secondary(objp)) {
nprintf(("AI", "ship %s cheat fired synaptic!\n", shipp->ship_name));
swp->next_secondary_fire_stamp[current_bank] = timestamp(2500);
}
}
}
// For the subspace mission (sm3-09a)
// for delta wing
// if they're sufficiently far into the mission
// if they're near one or more enemies
// every so often
// fire a synaptic if they have one.
void maybe_cheat_fire_synaptic(object *objp, ai_info *aip)
{
// Only do in subspace missions.
if ( The_mission.flags & MISSION_FLAG_SUBSPACE ) {
ship *shipp;
int num, time;
shipp = &Ships[objp->instance];
if (!(strnicmp(shipp->ship_name, NOX("delta"), 5))) {
num = shipp->ship_name[6] - '1';
if ((num >= 0) && (num <= 3)) {
time = Missiontime >> 16; // Convert to seconds.
time -= 2*60; // Subtract off two minutes.
if (time > 0) {
int modulus = 17 + num*3;
if ((time % modulus) < 2) {
int count = num_nearby_fighters(get_enemy_team_mask(OBJ_INDEX(objp)), &objp->pos, 1500.0f);
if (count > 0) {
cheat_fire_synaptic(objp, shipp, aip);
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
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I think the cheats of the Ai is quite apparent regardless of the post above.
Thanks for the source code clue, Phreak, anyway.
I hope those are convienced now who had voted 'No'