can someone fully explain how the game's kiting algorithm works?

Mc2

Ha, bounding cicrle is reason why so many battles ends like this:

image https://i.imgur.com/Vlm51Hk.png

this means, that missile launcher is obligatory equipment, because ship with guns only, is unable to finish already death oponent.

keylocke I think, that create uniwersal kitter is not possible, because game compare both ships and then it decide who will be kiter and who will be perusading.
Like your testing ship, i came with tries to understand how the game behave with this:

image https://i.imgur.com/s6q0aFB.png

image https://i.imgur.com/glUgc1T.png

By the way, Manta ship was done only for the look purpose, but i tried it to other ships just in case and find out that it is doing so well so instead of understanding completely the strange behawiour, i just keep design only make it stronger, and when it stop behave like i want it, then i cam step back and try other way, horibly slow, but working designing way.

keylocke

Mc2 yea, but i couldn't find "polon" ship that won the tourney. and i recalled that your manta ship had similar frontal arc. so i'm trying to figure out if this has anything to do with kiting. ie : the AI tries to get the cannons further back of the arc, into range of the enemy kiter. the back cannons rarely get in range but the cannons in the apex of the arc will often be in range thanks to the AI's attempt to get the back cannons in range.

at least, that was one of the theories/myths i was having about kiting.

dieaready

One more thing that is wonky about AI is that it keeps on deciding to change the position of attack every 5s or so. While this is fine with small fighters, it causes a lot of issues with larger ships, especially those using ion beams or those which are especially slow as they never get into position before it changes, leading to the ship forever circling around the enemy ship. I'd recommend that they only change attack position every 10-20s after they get into position, or if they are unable to get into position within 30s, then it would try a different position.

Atarlost

dieaready One more thing that is wonky about AI is that it keeps on deciding to change the position of attack every 5s or so. While this is fine with small fighters, it causes a lot of issues with larger ships, especially those using ion beams or those which are especially slow as they never get into position before it changes, leading to the ship forever circling around the enemy ship. I'd recommend that they only change attack position every 10-20s after they get into position, or if they are unable to get into position within 30s, then it would try a different position.

Setting a position rather than just a distance and orientation is so rarely helpful that the AI should not do it at all except in fleets, and even there it's probably a bad idea against a human since it can't predict which ship a human will attack. The only cases I've found for it outside of taking apart something with all its turning thrusters destroyed involve exploiting the AI's own facing changes and would not work on a human.

keylocke

dieaready

yea, that part is strange. my ship goes back and forth, switching targets from left side to right side and vice versa.
this was actually relatively helpful. coz when my ship tries to switch targets, it usually takes a diagonal path which sometimes take it close enough to unleash a volley of cannon fire (although shots rarely hit kiting opponent anyway). unlike if it was only in a stationary and unable to get its cannons in range of the kiting opponent.

Mc2

keylocke i ended with cannons in the line, and launchers at the end of ship, this made ship kitting most of the time in the rocket range, but sometimes wild manuevering brig opponent to the cannon fire range, that was my key to win 😃
Now, with new AI and mulitiplayer, discusion will continue when we find out how the AI behave now.

keylocke

Walt If you're confused about the behavior of certain ships, post the ships here and I can probably explain.

ok, i tested it out again against this ship : Manta something (i keep forgetting, my bad). the opposing ship
image https://i.imgur.com/rMA3JL1.png
the ship below is the one i used for testing : ArcraiserMkI (this ship still tries to chase the enemy instead of kite) it has similar weight and price range as the opposing ship. (this one has 8 side missiles, the same amount of missiles as the opposing ship)
image https://i.imgur.com/JO4KVrY.png
i modified that ship and simply added another set of side missile modules. this is ArcraiserMkII (it also has similar weight and price range as the opposing ship. (this one has 12 side missiles)
image https://i.imgur.com/I8iRP6A.png
this ship actually kites against the manta ship, but i still have absolutely no idea why.

i mean, by adding another set of side missiles, shouldn't it be the other way around? (the ship should chase instead of kite) coz the new set of missiles would mean that the furthest missiles would have a shorter range compared to the missiles that are closer to the front?

also, i counted the number of side missiles for ArcraiserMkII (12 missiles, 16 large cannons) compared to my ArcraiserMkI (8 missiles, 16 large cannons). does this have something to do with the AIFirepowerRating? ie : having 12 missiles would make my missiles have a higher AIFirepowerRating compared to my large cannon's AIFirepowerRating? i assume that missiles have more "weighted" value than large cannons, is this why it starts to prioritize maintaining missile range instead?

and since ArcraiserMKII has 12 missiles compared to the opposing manta ship's 8 missiles, does this also factor in which ship kites or chase?

both of my ships still win, but ArcraiserMkII wins a LOT faster because it kites and receives range advantage, allowing majority of its large cannon shots to actually hit the opposing ship. compared to ArcraiserMkI which chases the enemy and mostly have to rely on the opposing ship's thrusters failing, to get a lucky shot to hit.

so this AI kiting mechanic is still very confusing. 🙁

Mc2

keylocke It is really confusing.
this is why is so hard to design universal ship capable to beat most of opponenets. and why it is so easy to design one purpose ship which is capable of beating jus one opponentl.

keylocke

Mc2 yea, it's frustratingly confusing. however, there must be some way to figure out your ship's "kiting ratio".

i assume kiting ratio is a combination of several factors, like weighted firepower/range/speed of your ship compared to the opponent's ship. which means that if both of your ship has the same price range, the ship that has a higher "kiting ratio" will likely to be the one that kites. which is why i think that it IS possible to create a "universal kiter" for ships within the same price range, as long as you can create a ship design with a higher "kiting ratio". problem is, i'm still confused how to figure out my ship's "kiting ratio". (i still don't even know where to find the AIFirepowerRating for each weapon that walt was talking about)

anyways. i tested out my arcraisers against tephra's badass missile nuker.
image https://i.imgur.com/L8sEK2x.png
and i found that my arc shaped front design is terrible against large scale missile salvos, coz the arc shape blocks the view of PDs, so it basically splits the PD frontal coverage into two.

tephra's missile kiting ship is the strongest missile nuker i found so far. i call it a "nuker" coz it has so much missile modules crammed up which makes its initial salvo crazy devastating. however, the crammed missile design tend to have horrible reload times, so as long as your ship is lucky enough to survive the initial salvo with enough PDs still active, then you'll probably be fine. which is why tephra's missile nuker is a good ship for testing if your defenses can actually survive a missile onslaught. (load both ships in battle helper, fight, unleash initial barrage, if your ship survives, then cool; if not, back to drawing board. PDs and missiles are too random)

since i occasionally get badly damaged by tephra's ship's initial salvo, i'm actually thinking about scrapping the arc shape of my ship. but doing that would probably affect my ship's kiting. 🙁

Mc2

keylocke With this ship I complained to Walt, i have several ship swhich shoot of this middle part(finger) but because the circle, ship does not aproach closer and do not finish him 😃

If you build very very large kitter, with extremly high "kiting ratio", then answer will be one launcher and 150 backward thrusters, im sure that the smaller one will be kitting.

keylocke

Mc2 If you build very very large kitter, with extremly high "kiting ratio", then answer will be one launcher and 150 backward thrusters, im sure that the smaller one will be kitting.

well kiting is just part of the equation to win, since kiting is just meant to provide your ship with the range advantage for your large cannons against enemy cannon fire, so your ship still needs to have enough firepower to break enemy defenses. kiting alone is not enough.

heck, my pure missile kiters have a tendency to kite against mixed-gun ships, but when fighting against other pure missile kiters, then it doesn't really matter who kites or chase. it only matters who has more missiles/PDs and who has faster reload speed. so pure missile kiters doesn't have problems about kiting.

though the problem with pure missile kiters is that it takes a really long time to win, so it's a long and boring fight. me no likey.

mixed-gun ships with large cannons on the other hand is where figuring out how kiting AI works, seem to be the most important.

Mc2

keylocke That is corect, kiting most matters in cannon , but even misile x misile ships kiting is advantage, your rockets are faster at enemy, so it means he has less time to shoot them by PD and this counts as well.

By the way, kitting i find very borring to ( but i have enough space to play more battles at the same time :
https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/2934-walt-the-public-enemy-d/8)
but be honest, i rather have boring winning ship which kite then the loosing one 😃