[Fury]

This is the AI used on the WiH trailer right? I'm trying out Into The Lion's Den on Medium and there is some slightly higher aggression here and there but I still see a lot of "clueless" Shivans.

In the Lion's Den there were a bunch of Shivan fighters who used "Coward" AI originally, I only changed it to "Rookie" custom AI and didn't touch their orders. It is quite likely that behavior is by mission design. A lot depends on mission design since AI operates on set orders.

[Fury]

BP staffers had complained time and time again about how ineffective missiles were against custom AI pilots. I brought up the issue on #scp which revealed countermeasures had been broken past four years.

<Wanderer>: countermeasures have been broken for past 4 years
<Wanderer>: pheaks countermeasure commit r2531 made all countermeasures better than they should be
<Wanderer>: actually.. if a missile is within countermeasures range it will be decoyed instead of there being a chance for a missile to be decoyed

Which basically means that countermeasures were 100% effective.

Wanderer fixed this four years old bug and the first .11 build to have this fix would be Zacam's test build available here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67028.0
If you have Radeon card, the shaders linked in the topic may not work but can safely be ignored.

[QuantumDelta]

I wonder if that's another one to be struck off this list then;
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=65213.msg1297427#msg1297427

;D
Awesome work.

[Wanderer]

I wonder if that's another one to be struck off this list then;
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=65213.msg1297427#msg1297427

;D
Awesome work.

Could you either update the first post on that thread or then post a new one so that the remaining issues would be easier to sort out?

[Commander Zane]

BP staffers had complained time and time again about how ineffective missiles were against custom AI pilots. I brought up the issue on #scp which revealed countermeasures had been broken past four years.

<Wanderer>: countermeasures have been broken for past 4 years
<Wanderer>: pheaks countermeasure commit r2531 made all countermeasures better than they should be
<Wanderer>: actually.. if a missile is within countermeasures range it will be decoyed instead of there being a chance for a missile to be decoyed

Which basically means that countermeasures were 100% effective.

Wanderer fixed this four years old bug and the first .11 build to have this fix would be Zacam's test build available here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67028.0
If you have Radeon card, the shaders linked in the topic may not work but can safely be ignored.

No wonder I stopped using Harpoons. So they'll be USEFUL against Interceptors again now?

[pecenipicek]

question, did anyone happen to experience massive slowdowns after starting to use the modified AI?


not GPU related, of course.

[Fury]

If AI would cause slowdowns, BP staffers would have complained about it long time ago. Besides, I see no way for custom AI to cause any slowdown whatsoever.

[pecenipicek]

okay then. i have to test out thing more thoroughly then. no reports of slowdowns at all in any scenario?

[Fury]

There is very easy way for you to confirm whether it is caused by custom AI. Change mission to use retail AI profile, in ai.tbl delete everything after $patience in each class.

Edit: I Just realized there is indeed one factor that may cause slowdowns; AI Fire Delay Scale. If you have weak CPU which cannot handle significant increase in weapons effects on-screen, you might have issues. This would only be an issue if you use custom AI on capital ships or any weapon with really high rate of fire. However, The E who is also a BP staffer, has fairly weak (by modern standards) 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo does not receive heavy slowdowns in WiH which is largely unoptimized in terms of model and texture efficiency, so performance in plain mediavps is even better.

[pecenipicek]

There is very easy way for you to confirm whether it is caused by custom AI. Change mission to use retail AI profile, in ai.tbl delete everything after $patience in each class.

Edit: I Just realized there is indeed one factor that may cause slowdowns; AI Fire Delay Scale. If you have weak CPU which cannot handle significant increase in weapons effects on-screen, you might have issues. This would only be an issue if you use custom AI on capital ships or any weapon with really high rate of fire. However, The E who is also a BP staffer, has fairly weak (by modern standards) 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo does not receive heavy slowdowns in WiH which is largely unoptimized in terms of model and texture efficiency, so performance in plain mediavps is even better.

i will test it soon, TAP internal stuff was rather unoptimised, so i tought it might have been that but isnt at all. i'll test out the ai fire delay scale, but whats bothering me is the fact that it only crawls to a halt when you're especially near it all (200-300 meters).

Intel C2D E7500 2.93GHz, 2x2GB DDR2 800 ram, XFX 260GTX (nvidia 260 gtx, 216sp version, aka teh beef)...

it could be the fire delay scale tho, as our weapons already had a bit of an insane refire rates...

[Sushi]

A secondary effect to watch out for is collision detection. More projectiles mean more collision checks, and those are the most computationally expensive things in the engine right now.

But yeah, it's important to know if this is a change due to switching tables or switching builds.

[Aardwolf]

I think this may have already been pointed out, but I just want to make sure...

Enemies seem to like to get very close and then stay very close... so circle fights with other enemies able to jump in are not fun at all.

[QuantumDelta]

I think this may have already been pointed out, but I just want to make sure...

Enemies seem to like to get very close and then stay very close... so circle fights with other enemies able to jump in are not fun at all.

Tip;
Treat this AI like you're fighting another player, if you do end up in a deadlock-ish fight, whilst you're chasing your current target be scanning in the extreme for incoming threats, break and attack said threats to pull both into a deadlock repeat until your enemies die from collision damage with eachother, or your squad mates kill them.

[Fury]

Semi-newtonian flight model with gliding now available to retail FS2 ships. This should be used together with custom AI for AI to make proper use of it. Based on SushiGlide mod by Sushi. To use gliding, please see control config in-game.
http://www.mediafire.com/?w25j5zytndj

[Aardwolf]

I think this may have already been pointed out, but I just want to make sure...

Enemies seem to like to get very close and then stay very close... so circle fights with other enemies able to jump in are not fun at all.

Tip;
Treat this AI like you're fighting another player, if you do end up in a deadlock-ish fight, whilst you're chasing your current target be scanning in the extreme for incoming threats, break and attack said threats to pull both into a deadlock repeat until your enemies die from collision damage with eachother, or your squad mates kill them.

Heheh... Collision damage with each other? Are human players that bad?

[MatthTheGeek]

Yeah, collisions avoidance are one of the things that sucks the most on the FS engine, but I don't think we can do a lot about it anyway.

[QuantumDelta]

I think this may have already been pointed out, but I just want to make sure...

Enemies seem to like to get very close and then stay very close... so circle fights with other enemies able to jump in are not fun at all.

Tip;
Treat this AI like you're fighting another player, if you do end up in a deadlock-ish fight, whilst you're chasing your current target be scanning in the extreme for incoming threats, break and attack said threats to pull both into a deadlock repeat until your enemies die from collision damage with eachother, or your squad mates kill them.

Heheh... Collision damage with each other? Are human players that bad?

Well it was actually a case of them being that good, by the time the final squadwar season closed people's average dogfight distance wasn't that much bigger than my own (so, about 90-150m), the more skilled a pilot is the more predictable they are because they'll only ever make the "most correct" decision, which means if you can stay a step ahead bringing them in to hit eachother when you're being chased by two or more of them isn't actually that hard (since they all wanna occupy the same space at the same time to chase you).
Sounds dumb, but in the heat of battle it can happen quite a bit when you're turning at those distances.

[Fury]

I have yet to receive sufficient amount of feedback from people who usually play FS2 on very easy and easy difficulties. I really need to be sure that these AI settings are lenient enough at these two difficulties. Thanks in advance.

[Commander Zane]

I guess everyone's just too good for those difficulties.

[Dilmah G]

Andro plays on Very Easy, IIRC. Throw the new AI at him and see what he thinks.