odd threatfleet behaviour?

[zoutzakje]

first game in a while, I'm seeing something weird I've never seen before. I get an incoming wave. The wave spends the first 10 seconds trying to destroy a grav turret. Then it decides to retreat through a different wormhole than where it came from (causing it's ships to take dmg from the exact same turrets for a longer period of time). 2 seconds later it pops back in and tries to rush my command station (and fails miserably of course). Seen this happen whenever a wave tries to retreat, even the stronger ones that actually do kill some turrets.
Why don't they rush my command station (or any important target for that matter) right away? Why do they sometimes retreat into a different wormhole further away than where they came from (causing them to lose more ships)?
And why don't they wander off when they retreat and join another threatfleet somewhere else? They come back almost immediately only to get obliterated even faster.
Could the nomads somehow have anything to do with this? maybe screws up their pathfinding logic or something?
The only wave I've seen behave normally was the counter attack I received on my homeworld. they retreated in to the wormholes that were closest to each ship and have been stalking me ever since.

I might just be missing some logic here, but I'd really like some detailed insight on the subject.

[Kahuna]

Is the AI Cowardly? I've noticed Cowardly AI type does that.

[zoutzakje]

no cowardly here. Golemite/tech sledge and scorched earth/fortress king. It only seems to be happening with regular waves. Counter attacks and threat accumulated at AI worlds seems to behave normally.

[Toranth]

If I remember correctly, regular waves have a certain minimum time they will attack the target system.  After than time (30 seconds?), if the Human strength is too high, they will attempt to retreat.  I think the problem is that they are attempting to retreat along the shortest path to their final destination (threat-like?) rather than through the nearest wormhole.
Don't know why they're returning, though, unless it's actually other Threat units trying to join the party, but showing up too late.

Either way, it doesn't seem like a correct behavior.

[zoutzakje]

ok I suppose the 30 second rule makes sense. 20-30 seconds it's all it takes for them to retreat. A fix would be to have them go into the nearest wormhole and then take the shortest path to their final destination without crossing any more human worlds.
Their almost immediate return still makes no sense. Any other threat is not even close. I did notice some odd behaviour with other threat that's already stalking me as well. I think they're trying to catch up with the retreating wave but for some reason they can't. They move for 1 second, then they stop. They move for 1 second then they stop. it's hard to tell if this behaviour only happens when a wave somewhere else is retreating though, as they continue this laggy movement long after the wave has died. If I send my ships in to destroy the lag moving threat, their movement returns to normal.

Really odd behaviour. Makes threatfleet less of a threat than they're supposed to be. I can completely ignore any threat in this game until they start building a warp relay.

[Toranth]

Their almost immediate return still makes no sense. Any other threat is not even close. I did notice some odd behaviour with other threat that's already stalking me as well. I think they're trying to catch up with the retreating wave but for some reason they can't. They move for 1 second, then they stop. They move for 1 second then they stop. it's hard to tell if this behaviour only happens when a wave somewhere else is retreating though, as they continue this laggy movement long after the wave has died. If I send my ships in to destroy the lag moving threat, their movement returns to normal.

I assume you're running a recent version?  This sounds a lot like the old "dancing AI" bug back from 6.x and early 7.x days.  Have you tried flipping into debug mode (F3) and checking what orders they are following?  You may need to slow the game down below x1 to get a good look.

[CaptainTaz]

Their almost immediate return still makes no sense. Any other threat is not even close. I did notice some odd behaviour with other threat that's already stalking me as well. I think they're trying to catch up with the retreating wave but for some reason they can't. They move for 1 second, then they stop. They move for 1 second then they stop. it's hard to tell if this behaviour only happens when a wave somewhere else is retreating though, as they continue this laggy movement long after the wave has died. If I send my ships in to destroy the lag moving threat, their movement returns to normal.

I assume you're running a recent version?  This sounds a lot like the old "dancing AI" bug back from 6.x and early 7.x days.  Have you tried flipping into debug mode (F3) and checking what orders they are following?  You may need to slow the game down below x1 to get a good look.

Sorry to pop-in off-topic, but what does f3 show, and is it to any strategical advantage without being cheap?

[zoutzakje]

yeah I remember something being iffy similar to this in the old days. The retreat and immediate return is new to me, but I've heard of the laggy movement issue before. hmmm. Game says I'm running 8.023 but installing the game recently gave me a lot of issues and errors. Maybe something is missing from the files. More investigation is required.
I have no experience with debug mode whatsoever. I suppose I'll give it a try.

[TechSY730]

On the topic of not always retreating through the nearest wormhole, IIRC, it was stated in an FAQ on the wiki that this was a deliberate decision. Chris knows that players are really good at exploiting any source of deterministic bahavior, even those that seem optimal.
Yea, this particular behavior could likely use a tweak (like 75% chance of nearest wormhole that leads to AI system, 25% chance random choice like today, on a per ship basis), but I think some non-determinism is good.

The coming right back in right after retreat...yea, that sounds like a straight up bug.


Hmm, I wonder if I should start a new thread to compile a list of "high priority" bugs and "quick" balance tweaks...

[Imago]

Randomly coming back immediately can be effective as well. I once followed a big wave to its retreat wormhole with my fleet to pick off as many stragglers as possible and got a nasty surprise when the bulk of the wave turned around and came back.

[Amitiel]

I've been seeing similar behaviour in my current game, although I kinda just attributed it to one of the AIs being Cowardly. Threat will build up against my chokepoint until it obviously thinks it's able to attack/win and then proceeds to dance back and forth between about 1/3 in and the wormholes, never fully retreating, but never actually going for the jugular (when it really should be capable of popping my command station). End result tends to be all but 5-10k threat being wiped out.

Attached save to see it in practice - threat of ~60k should wander through the wormhole at Cauar in ~1 minute.

[Deltaway]

I have the same thing happening in one of my games. The AI types are Exotic and Grav Driller.