Realistic Fighters

[Invasion captain]

There shoud be a fighter AI mode to chose wann making a ship.

[Slayer0019]

Why bother when it's not a hard thing to do manually?

[Cycerin]

An AI range of less than 0 isn't even necessary. Just using Flanking AI works just as well if not better, largely.

...what does Flanking AI do exactly? Gosh we really need an AI guide here on the forums... or is there already one?

How about you take a stock ship, set it to a few AI modes and just SEE what they do?

[Invasion captain]

Realy if you don't know something just test it .What's the worst that can hapen.

[VictimOfPepperoni]

I tried flanking AI to create "realistic" fighters, but all they did was closing in on the enemy ship, standing right inside it, and attacking only each 10 seconds, thereby obviously getting blasted to death.

[Slayer0019]

Set acceleration to something like .01, and speed around 6. Try it then.

[Cycerin]

I tried flanking AI to create "realistic" fighters, but all they did was closing in on the enemy ship, standing right inside it, and attacking only each 10 seconds, thereby obviously getting blasted to death.

That mostly reveals tons of other game design issues with your ships, rather than the nature and utility of Flanking AI. Sounds like unconvincing weapons, too low AI range, and untuned accel/maxspeed/turning.

[VictimOfPepperoni]

In my experience, flanking AI doesn't really cause fighter-like movement. Fighters make passes on their target and swing around. Flanking AI sits in a spot, shoots, then moves side ways left or right, maybe 300 pixels, and repeats.

That's why you combine it with low accel and high speed. It results n random flanking passes.

Maybe, but when i use low acceleration the ships take forever to get to an enemy ship, which is not in any way movement a fighter would apply.

[Cycerin]

No, they don't. You either have a ridicolously low accel or ridicolously low speed. Creating fighters is a process of tweaking, saving, sandboxing, as with much in this game. It's tedious, and you'll have to settle for it.

[Raul]

to give you an idea of realism, i think stock Demeters have a speed of 8. So you can then give them acceleration of well over 1; eventhree behaves pretty well and is well over stock or most player made ships. Other important thing is turning at that point, which on fighters can be rather high. I've gotten fighters to behave identicly to demeters, it just takes some work.

[Slayer0019]

False. Higher acceleration gives us the opposite of what we want. An Accel of 3 will result is the fighters stopping dead and shooting off in the other direction An acceleration of .01 or something low like that will havethe fighters swooping around continually.

[Blue-Rex]

If so why not put thrusters to get acceleration, but leave decel low. That should allow for the fighters to take off at start but act like fighters once they get to their target.

[SHAD0Wdump]

If so why not put thrusters to get acceleration, but leave decel low. That should allow for the fighters to take off at start but act like fighters once they get to their target.

There is no 'decel' acceleration represents both its namesake and braking.

[Raul]

False.

nay sir, we just want different things. As I said, i was trying to emulate demeters, which makes sharp turns. I'm not sure what settings you use but I have had no trouble with mine sitting in the center of their target, especially if its moving at all. Perhaps this was because they were on flanking and so didn't sit still regardless, or because their speed was so high that most of the acceleration was used up countering it. Not sure how the game physics deal with such things. Not disagreeing with anyone, just reporting the results I had.

[Slayer0019]

I see. I was under the impression that you were attempting to replicate our scenario, not the motion of demeters. In that case yeah, your settings work for demeter-style movement.