22 replies to this topic

[FRAGTAST1C]

Jeffrey Dahmer The People Nommer, on 26 December 2019 - 09:09 PM, said:

the AI is more reliably positioning themselves effectively. I rarely see my Quickdraw IV using its SRMs, favoring its dual LB10s quite heavily.

I find this happening if I stay far away from the enemies, too. If I use my Black Widow loaded with 4x AC2s + MLs, then I can stay back and kill enemies making my AI teammates less prone to getting hit. If I go in to brawl with another mech, the AI lance-mates move in close to stay in formation instead of keeping to their own optimal range.

[Five by Five]

Koniving, on 24 December 2019 - 08:48 PM, said:

If anyone has ever seen the enemy AI overheat, let me know. But I doubt anyone ever has.

I've seen an enemy Warhammer shut down on a few occasions, maybe a Marauder as-well. But on other high heat builds I notice they don't fire as often.

[Koniving]

FRAGTAST1C, on 26 December 2019 - 07:36 PM, said:

I'd rather have AI pilots stay at optimal range of their most damage-oriented weapon than voting on how many close-ranged weapons it has vs long range. This way, the close range weapons can be used against targets that get close-and-personal, like the light mechs and Cicadas.

I wouldn't want something like a Black Knight with 3 PPCs and ML/SMLs or an Orion Protector with Gauss + PPC and some ML+SRMs to run close to the enemies instead of letting a few them come close to us.

Not entirely certain as to how the game decides what strategies to use, but most weapon systems seems to be what is going on. Could possibly change it. Could be using other things to make the decision like 'what range can I get the most damage out of'. PGI's logic hasn't exactly been sound during the development of MWO, so their AI's logic could be just as questionable.

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Following up on this post.

Koniving, on 26 December 2019 - 01:58 PM, said:

Spoiler

One of the prime examples of why my mod's gonna be pretty sweet for those that want it.
The base AI determines what it does by loadout range and prioritizes what it has more of (i.e. 2 MGs and 1 ML, it's gonna want to get up in someone's face because there's more MGs than ML).

Before I continue, we all know the 90 meter range gimmick on MGs, right?

Edit: had to fix the formatting.
This is a vehicle/mech MG used by infantry against infantry and low barrier armor rating vehicles (such as the J. Edgar Hovercraft and the Warrior VTOL).
Item:Machine Gun, Support^[2]
Equipment Rating: C/C-C-C/E
Armor Piercing/Base Damage: 5B/5B
Range: 45/100/250/625 meters
Shots: 100
Cost/Reload: 1750/50
Affiliation: -
Mass/Reload: 44kg/5kg
Notes: Burst 20; Recoil -2; Crew 2

And again note that ranges are just expected accurate ranges under combat conditions (where-as the AC's true range is around 2,000 meters)

Support Pulse Laser is a small pulse laser being used by infantry as a gun-emplacement against other infantry and lighter BAR vehicles.
Item: Support Pulse Laser^[3]
Equipment Rating: E/D-F-D/E
Armor Piercing/Base Damage: 5E/5B
Range: 85/310/725/1500 meters
Shots: 7 Power Points per volley
Cost/Reload: 16000/*
Affiliation: -
Mass/Reload: 150kg/*
Notes: Burst 15; Recoil 0; Crew: 2

Against a BAR of 8 or higher, i.e. heavier VTOLs, proper tanks, battlemechs... these ranges cut down to 90-to-120 meters effective range and their effects kinda degrade with distance.

Now what if MGs/Lasers were like this? Effective to much longer ranges but only against light targets (which would be much more important after infantry is implemented whether by PGI or by mods), while the ranges we're used to are the "against hard target" ranges.

So, AI using these could use them at much longer ranges without penalty against specific targets, and be told to opt-out of using them unless it has to against harder targets, and in theory I'd only have to change or modify one or two nodes in regards to how it chooses ideal range for those weapons so that it'll use "support weapons" as HBS BT called them. The change likely would be akin to "Shoot when targets are within range to be damaged by them, but never deliberately seek to get that close unless this is all the mech has."

The Heavy Support Laser, which is an infantry-use medium laser gun emplacement that is also sometimes mounted on heftier battlearmor, tells us the medium laser range against low Barrier Armor Ratings and infantry is...
150/500/950/1900 meters
Short/medium/long/extreme

And that's a medium laser.

Like all lasers under tac-ops it does more damage at short, expected at medium, reduced between medium and long, and half at extreme....against infantry/vehicles of less than 10 BAR.
The 270 long, 360(540 with certain traits) extreme range of the medium laser is against 10 BAR like tanks and 'Mechs.

What's also nice is this is getting me the power points used per shot, too, which can help me deal with another issue my mod is going to have.

Spoiler

In "unfrontloading" the damage, the heat, etc., 30 threshold is easier to handle for the un-front-loaded weapons (and making the front-loaded weaponry feel much more powerful as well as much hotter).

By adding weapon thermal limits, I have something that makes more sense than the cooldown timer that also can be used as a visible way to govern the jam/overheat/break system and take the RNG out of it (you hit a certain point, it stops working. You can skirt the heat enough to get in the extra damage by having more skill with your weapon use, but if you mess up and push it too hard you'll surpass that point, and you risk temporary or permanent [until repaired] damage to your weapon). This helps to mitigate some of the potential exploits of lasers that don't generate all the heat in one go

But then there are other issues, such as alpha strikes which are only easier to do all the time. For that and the Gauss Rifle issue, I had an energy draw plan in which I was going to have engines possess different traits in regard to this. That raised questions of how much energy for each weapon, what traits can weapons have with this mechanic, etc.

Different levels of energy draw for different weapon brands can help emphasize power differentials too, such as an Omicron 950 [the medium laser not the later pulse lasers derived from it including the one by the same name] is a glorified wimpy laser machine gun meant to be energy efficient with ICE-using VTOLs and even then, often for troop transports. Omicron 3000 ML has considerably more umph per trigger pull, and the Omicron 4000 ML has even more. All three still effectively do 5 damage total in under 5 seconds though some much faster than others. Given that Omicron lasers are named by the power output per shot, and from that, you can also derive a rough idea of how much power goes into each shot and perhaps a rough idea of the damage difference per shot for each, so naturally, it'd make sense that the Omicron 950 has extremely little energy draw compared to the Omicron 4000. So you could alpha a lot of Omicron 950 ML together without much if any consequence. But the significantly more powerful Omicron 4000 may see realistic [and non-magic] consequences for trying to fire a bunch at once.

Without this, all the medium lasers generally still only produce 3 heat, leaving all kinds of issues.

Edited by Koniving, 27 December 2019 - 02:08 PM.