AI War Beta 4.049, "Firepower," Released!

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, looks like 10k is too low

[Echo35]

Unrelated, but I noticed some funny things with Kiting behavior, like force field bearing ships running away because their range is too high (I'm looking at you Spire Force Field Bearer). Can ships with Force Fields be excluded from kiting, or at least a control option to do so?

[keith.lamothe]

Unrelated, but I noticed some funny things with Kiting behavior, like force field bearing ships running away because their range is too high (I'm looking at you Spire Force Field Bearer). Can ships with Force Fields be excluded from kiting, or at least a control option to do so?

I'm looking at you guys to tell me what you want this thing to do   Does this include stuff with modules that generate forcefields? Do you _ever_ want them to kite? Etc.

[Echo35]

Unrelated, but I noticed some funny things with Kiting behavior, like force field bearing ships running away because their range is too high (I'm looking at you Spire Force Field Bearer). Can ships with Force Fields be excluded from kiting, or at least a control option to do so?

I'm looking at you guys to tell me what you want this thing to do   Does this include stuff with modules that generate forcefields? Do you _ever_ want them to kite? Etc.

For now, the only thing I've had this problem with is the Spire Ship that has force fields. The Riot Ships are generally small enough and hsort range enough that it wasn't causing a problem in my fleet engagements, but more testing will let you know for sure. I was thinking maybe a control node that said something like "Ships that generate forcefields ignore auto kite behavior" but I think that may be too restrictive.

[Giegue]

where did the ingame cheat menu go?

[Suzera]

Unrelated, but I noticed some funny things with Kiting behavior, like force field bearing ships running away because their range is too high (I'm looking at you Spire Force Field Bearer). Can ships with Force Fields be excluded from kiting, or at least a control option to do so?

If you have force fields, the old blobbing way is going to be better than almost anything without some specific formation setting and microing changing it since that keeps everything under them. Just turn off the autokite if you have shield bearers.

Alternately, set the range above the SB range.

[keith.lamothe]

To clarify, I'm certainly happy to extend the auto-kiting controls with exclusion controls for forcefield-gen-type-stuff, but I don't want to just rush off and do that without some more player feedback that indicates it's actually a good solution.  Honestly, still waiting on a bit more player feedback that the auto-kiting is actually genuinely useful to begin with, though I get the impression some of you at least really like the look of it.

[Suzera]

It could stand be more responsive to changes, but it looks cool and probably is more optimal when not in transit than straight up blobs. It's looks pretty funny when the ships moving look like they are just chewing incoming streams of ships too. Funny in a cool way.

SBs you probably want to turn it off entirely though so everything is under FFs. If you exclude them from autokiting, they still won't be covering everything.

If you could find a way to remove that "ignore target range for a fraction of a second after a command" thing it would be better though. Where things will move for a part of a second regardless of if they are in range or not. Hopefully I'm being descriptive enough.

[Echo35]

Unrelated, but I noticed some funny things with Kiting behavior, like force field bearing ships running away because their range is too high (I'm looking at you Spire Force Field Bearer). Can ships with Force Fields be excluded from kiting, or at least a control option to do so?

If you have force fields, the old blobbing way is going to be better than almost anything without some specific formation setting and microing changing it since that keeps everything under them. Just turn off the autokite if you have shield bearers.

Alternately, set the range above the SB range.

Except when they kite in the completely opposite direction of any ships . Also the SB's range is quite a bit longer than most of my ships at over 11,000, so setting the range that high will make most of my entire fleet not kite, which is kind of not the point.

[TechSY730]

The auto-kiting can be useful, but it has also hurt me. The thing is that frequently, the stuff you want to "kite" with are your fragile artillery. When you are roaming around the the planet in a non "blob-like" way to target various things, then this works great. However, when you are blobbing around a specific area, particularly around a wormhole, the artillery starts running away from the safety of your blob, thus not only getting picked off earlier, but frequently getting further away from where they can retreat (the wormhole).

So basically, you do not always want it on. The most common case in my experience is that you do not want auto-kiting when moving your units around as a big blob. Maybe have a unit ignore auto-kiting if they are group moving or "group idling", (not group attack-move or group FRD though) or if they are in a "sticky formation" (which would include all sticky versions of all of the move modes, or even "sticky formation" idling), as these are the two most common ways to force a bunch of units to act like a blob.

Also, I thumbs up the suggestion for FF bearing units to always ignore kiting.

[Echo35]

The auto-kiting can be useful, but it has also hurt me.

I just had 35 Mk. I Bombers vs my Threat 5,000 Fleet take out my command station, because despite the fact my Kite range is only 3,000, nobody seemed to want to move in and attack even though they were in FRD, and when I clicked to order an attack they ran in, shot one volley, and then flew off again. I'm turning off Kiting for now until it becomes less silly.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm turning off Kiting for now until it becomes less silly.

It's also quite possible that it will simply become unimplemented, it's not yet clear that it really has a sufficiently viable use to warrant refinement, etc.

[Suzera]

Unrelated, but I noticed some funny things with Kiting behavior, like force field bearing ships running away because their range is too high (I'm looking at you Spire Force Field Bearer). Can ships with Force Fields be excluded from kiting, or at least a control option to do so?

If you have force fields, the old blobbing way is going to be better than almost anything without some specific formation setting and microing changing it since that keeps everything under them. Just turn off the autokite if you have shield bearers.

Alternately, set the range above the SB range.

Except when they kite in the completely opposite direction of any ships . Also the SB's range is quite a bit longer than most of my ships at over 11,000, so setting the range that high will make most of my entire fleet not kite, which is kind of not the point.

You should REALLY just TURN IT OFF IF YOU GET SHIELD BEARERS though. It's really only useful for the other most-of-the-time (unless you always pick them) when you DO NOT HAVE SHIELD BEARERS. They're also SUPPOSED to move in the opposite direction of enemy ships, specifically what they have targeted. That's what kiting is. FRD is the "every ship go attack stuff regardless" order.

However, when you are blobbing around a specific area, particularly around a wormhole, the artillery starts running away from the safety of your blob, thus not only getting picked off earlier, but frequently getting further away from where they can retreat (the wormhole).

Unless you have ships like SBs or decoy drones that actually take fire in place of other ships (or marginally for the type of ships we are talking about, the armor booster), the blob will never offer additional protection. Them being outside the blob or not makes no difference when things shoot them. Inside the blob is worse for long range unit survivability actually because then more things can hit them. Don't be deceived by the blob's false safety.

It would be nice if they ignored the kiting for regular moving though. It does disrupt the formation when going between wormholes because they'll randomly overshoot the WH a bit then go back to go through it. I haven't seen it be an issue in regular moving when not going between wormholes.

I just had 35 Mk. I Bombers vs my Threat 5,000 Fleet take out my command station, because despite the fact my Kite range is only 3,000, nobody seemed to want to move in and attack even though they were in FRD, and when I clicked to order an attack they ran in, shot one volley, and then flew off again. I'm turning off Kiting for now until it becomes less silly.

They are still always within firing distance when I play. I have not noticed them running out of firing distance yet unless it's a bug in the most recent version.

[Suzera]

I'm turning off Kiting for now until it becomes less silly.

It's also quite possible that it will simply become unimplemented, it's not yet clear that it really has a sufficiently viable use to warrant refinement, etc.

You snuck this in while I was posting!

I think it is fine enough right now for what I personally need it to do. If it were made into a move modifier type like group move (so you could do like G+X+autokite) that would probably be the only other thing I really want from it right now.

Unless you want to get into making it REALLY perfect so that it can do ideal triangle conflicts and stuff.

As is, it really really helps frigates vs fighters without having to micro their kiting.

[Suzera]

Just in case, here's why kiting is awesome. This is ideal triangles, which the current autokiting only does part of, but here it is:







Notice that at no point are friendly units exposed to their counter's attacks. This kind of thing works for many units in the game.