AI Torpedo Avoidance Disparity

[AdmiralObvious]

This if my first post on this forum, but I think I've had the game for a few months now, since Alpha 11 came out.

 

Anyways, the point of this thread is that the AI is too good at avoiding torpedoes, while the ships under player control set to be under the AI are effectively useless against torpedo armed craft.

 

After testing why this is the case for a short while, I've found out why.

 

The enemy AI appears to have a "preemptive avoidance" mechanic built into the AI for the ships under it's command. This is why once one ship detects a torpedo every single ship in the squadron moves to avoid the torpedo.

Player controlled AI ships simply don't have this AI. Instead what happens is that once a torpedo approaches the ship, the player AI switches the ship over into the collision avoidance AI, which is suboptimal at best for dodging a relatively fast moving torpedo at best, or at worst will actually cause the ship to turn into several torpedoes instead of just eating one.

 

It would be fantastic if the player AI ships got to have the same AI as the enemy does, but this may not ne viable. If that isn't possible, it would be nice to nerf the AI effectiveness of torpedo avoidance.

 

I'll have more threads coming up soon(ish) on other weird AI quirks and behavior too.

[Stormnet]

On 7/11/2021 at 9:09 PM, AdmiralObvious said:

This if my first post on this forum, but I think I've had the game for a few months now, since Alpha 11 came out.

 

Anyways, the point of this thread is that the AI is too good at avoiding torpedoes, while the ships under player control set to be under the AI are effectively useless against torpedo armed craft.

 

After testing why this is the case for a short while, I've found out why.

 

The enemy AI appears to have a "preemptive avoidance" mechanic built into the AI for the ships under it's command. This is why once one ship detects a torpedo every single ship in the squadron moves to avoid the torpedo.

Player controlled AI ships simply don't have this AI. Instead what happens is that once a torpedo approaches the ship, the player AI switches the ship over into the collision avoidance AI, which is suboptimal at best for dodging a relatively fast moving torpedo at best, or at worst will actually cause the ship to turn into several torpedoes instead of just eating one.

 

It would be fantastic if the player AI ships got to have the same AI as the enemy does, but this may not ne viable. If that isn't possible, it would be nice to nerf the AI effectiveness of torpedo avoidance.

 

I'll have more threads coming up soon(ish) on other weird AI quirks and behavior too.

Thanks for your work at researching this.

 

[Masonator]

 Friendly AI and torpedoes in general are buggy as hell.  Sometimes your ship dumps its entire load of torpedoes at 15km, sometimes they refuse to fire entirely at 2km, sometimes they only fire half-salvoes even if all launchers can bear on the target, sometimes they'll fire directly into the path of friendly ships at an enemy on the far side, sometimes they shoot at 0% solution, sometimes they never shoot at all, sometimes a single 18" torpedo will flash-fire a Barbette IV+TDS V battleship while a barely-armoured light cruiser eats multiple 24" hits.

 Meanwhile, the enemy AI gets sixth-sense torpedo awareness and knows exactly when you've fired and exactly when and where to maneuver to avoid them, while the friendly AI can't even maneuver around an incoming spread with a bloody destroyer, let alone spot them early enough for it to matter without hydrophone/sonar gear.  All that's assuming your ships even fire their torpedoes in the first place which, as discussed, is extremely inconsistent and sometimes just doesn't happen for no clear reason.

tl;dr, torpedo machine broke

[AdmiralObvious]

On 7/14/2021 at 9:09 AM, Masonator said:

 Friendly AI and torpedoes in general are buggy as hell.  Sometimes your ship dumps its entire load of torpedoes at 15km, sometimes they refuse to fire entirely at 2km, sometimes they only fire half-salvoes even if all launchers can bear on the target, sometimes they'll fire directly into the path of friendly ships at an enemy on the far side, sometimes they shoot at 0% solution, sometimes they never shoot at all, sometimes a single 18" torpedo will flash-fire a Barbette IV+TDS V battleship while a barely-armoured light cruiser eats multiple 24" hits.

 Meanwhile, the enemy AI gets sixth-sense torpedo awareness and knows exactly when you've fired and exactly when and where to maneuver to avoid them, while the friendly AI can't even maneuver around an incoming spread with a bloody destroyer, let alone spot them early enough for it to matter without hydrophone/sonar gear.  All that's assuming your ships even fire their torpedoes in the first place which, as discussed, is extremely inconsistent and sometimes just doesn't happen for no clear reason.

tl;dr, torpedo machine broke

The AI in my tests does not actually know when you fire your torpedoes. What it will do though is try to evade small ships like destroyers if they spot them. Most ships that aren't set to a screening or scouting order appear to do this. You can test this yourself with the Naval Academy missions where you can select small but range boosted electric torpedoes with torp tech.

 

The friendly AI when I was doing further tests last night wound up turning broadside and cutting power against a wave of four torpedoes, so the collision avoidance, again is to blame there.

Edited July 15, 2021 by AdmiralObvious