RyMarq They are definitely failing at it in some way.
My guess is that because the target ship is usually accelerating and decelerating, it's having a hard matching the exact velocity. Ships of course don't accelerate/decelerate instantly and there's going to be some lag time due to that.
If you have a saved game you can send me that demonstrates the problem, I can look into it to verify.
dieaready I've seen cannons fire off shots that are way off their target by a good 20+ degrees indicating that something seems to be wrong
I've seen some unusually large misses as well, could be a bug. I've made a note to look into that.
dieaready The issue is I think the AI sets the range based on the middle of each ship to each other so kites are closer than intended. I am not sure if this is intended or not, but on large ships vs ion kites, cannon fire from large ships can potentially hit ion kites despite there is supposed to be a difference in ranges.
The AI picks the longest range at which the most weapons can hit the target. It measures distance from each weapon to a point 1/4 of the enemy's radius inside its hull, starting from the maximum range in 5-meter increments. Note that it uses the weapons IdealRange
and not its actual range. IdealRange
is typically a bit shorter than the actual range (and much shorter in the case of cannons). Large cannons have an idea/actual range or 75/150, and Ion Beams have 130/150. So yes, a ship sitting at 130 meters from an enemy will be within range of its large cannons.
Not saying this isn't a problem, just that if it is a problem, I think it's more a problem of weapon range balance than it is an issue with the AI.
dieaready Oh, I thought the PD was aiming at the predicted path of the missile rather than the current missile position.
It does, but the prediction isn't perfect and fails worst when the target is constantly changing direction, as missiles are almost always doing. It's still certainly better than having no prediction, though.
dieaready You can balance that by making them massively weaker and have a very high energy drain.
It's not an issue of balance, it's an issue of making ship design less interesting. With the current directional shields, you have to think carefully about exactly how you position and angle it. Bubble shields don't require as much careful thought.
RyMarq Missiles would hit several different shields with their blast, and Electro could be given AoE to have the same effect, so it would be much weaker against a stray shield and stronger vs stacked shields.
This is a very interesting idea and I like it a lot! Having AOEs hit other shield arcs is a very nice, clean, understandable rule that could solve the shield stacking.
Not sure if electro-bolts should have a general energy-drain AOE, or just an anti-shield AOE. (Assume for now that we can only have one type of electro bolt. I'm not against adding more, but adding weapons takes time and I'd rather add different, more unique weapons first.)