There are already AI for NPC controlled ships and bases and I would love to have the same AI to be able to run a player's faction ship/base and run patrols along with small vessel fighters to repel enemy attacks. I love to play this game with a few of my friends but with the three of us there are only so many things we can do together even if we all want to take on a base or enemy vessel. Being able to control a fleet, for example, a player controlled capital ship, with npc fighters that the player can choose to deploy or not would be actually amazing adding on with adding a follow command for a fleet with multiple capital ships would add to the scenarios a player with or without friends. I know its not as simple as just copy pasta some code and it being done. However, the payoff would be huge. Adding a function to cockpits/control panels to turn on an AI mode (follow or patrol/attack mode) would definitely add to the single player experience as well as expand multiplayer to a whole new level. Being able to take and hold planets under your control and being able to encounter and enemy fleet with 3-4 capital vessels would be amazing. For servers/player hosted worlds there can be options to enable/disable fleets as to not overload the system loading and manifesting multiple AI units at a time. The player can also use the factory system to make AI specific controlled bases and AI controlled capital vessels that are AI controlled by default. This is a massive change that would drastically increase the grind to create ships that can house and maintain a group of small vessels as well as adding more customizations to play experience. The fact that I cannot take and hold entire systems is kind of annoying as well as making the replay ability of each play through much less interactive.
Agreed. After some time, there is not much to do with resources. I'd like to buld bases, for portal stations, or anything, but i'm afraid to leave anthing unsupervised, because of some random NPC attack, with the old "turrets disabled after player leave the zone" thing (not sure if its still in effect). With NPC help, i would leave any station/mothership safe. With fleet commands, i could fly more than one of my favourite ships too. Not to mention, the possibility to assault more complex enemy stations, other fleets, and the like. And there would be a lot of accomplishment feeling to have a mothership in survival mode (which most likely cost "tons" of resources). I can imagine, with NPCs, we could "own" any planet, with decent defenses. Finally, would have a meaning to build farms, and water destillation stations, to supply the NPCs, you have (with some automaic production settings). Playtime woud expand a lot with some NPC to use! Not to mention, with moving, "breathing", working NPCs around You, the game would feel much mor alive... But, as for programming complexity, i can imagine, it would be useful to include commands, like: - dock/refuel/resupply/repair at "location" (fly to, then position ship to cv/station, then dock "procedure") - selective "mine at location" - transport selectable resources from location X to location Y - follow/attack with kept distance - don't follow enemy out of patrol/hold position zone - formations/keeping distance to other "in fleet" ships or stations (collision avoidance) - selectable attacking (drones/SV/CV/Station/player) - needs UI to cusomize the whole thing As for already in game commands, the turrets have selective targetting. We have patrol ship AI, drone AI, and we have trader/security NPSs too... We already have stationary NPCs, like the traders (again), and the decor console NPCs. Random missions would be fun too, aside from story, with a max range from the mission giver NPC. Some require CV, some personal shooting (maybe with teleports), delivery, fleet, trading or production. And i know, there is always a lot of things to improve, or add to a program. Players always find something that they want other than what they already have. We have to keep in mind. I just hope, that the Team is open for such developement. Thise are just ideas. I'm already happy to have a game like Empyrion, with this kind of developer team. Keep up the good work!
I would love to see this. I would also love to see the ability to have npc controlled SV's attached to CV's that we can detach. (not sure the AI is smart enough to re-attach but could be handy in a heavy battle)
The AI can already return to their home ship because of the NPC vessels that patrol around systems and such. Also with heavy battle it could add a bigger strategy focus along with providing exhilarating fighting just on your own. Not to mention that with AI controlled SVs they would be able to have selective targeting on what type of ship to focus or if their main obj is to defend their capital ship.
agreed this is already 99% completed in code implementing a crude player ai by using a copy of the current ship ai for space NPC CV's (they even run at low sheild) all they need is a gui that can toggle a few copies of the hidden AI varaibles (the ai is basically fixed you just input a new set of "goto" coords or "fight this"/"don't fight this" and "partol radius min"/"patrol radius max") the logistics part is still an issue so my ai CV frieghter that has a fighter swarm dock onto it is not yet possible same with the OBVIOUS need to siphon "gas" from the parent vessel (Building a custom mega-mothership that will have so many fuel tanks but minimal thrust to act as a "home base" as soon as they add proper ai+logistics) I want my massive CV to carry all my mobile base stuff then use a cheap CV/SV lander to carry my hovers planetside and bonus once logistics+ai are added the bases become less stupidly arbitrarily limited as you can set up a few orbital stations that use excess solar to grow "biogas" automatically and send "fuel tankers" to grab all the fuel packs they can carry and then bring it to you I want to be a one man army on my "god's world" server(maybe cv ai is limited to people who can get say 10 trillion credits so you can't make a 100 cv fleet on the cheap, but sv/hv ai is a tad cheaper so fighter swarms(actually realistic in most sci-fi battles) are not impossible solo) yes balance will be tough but funny thing about balance is that once you balance low-end(player vs NPC and player ship vs NPC ship) it tends to remain the same all the way to massive space fights of 100+ small fighters swarming around a mothership the only real issue is that CV's will need a shield value tuning that makes them take beatings but be VERY slow to regen so as to make one hit from an sv rocket be less likely to kill you but a swarm will eat your shields and if they keep shooting the cooldown never expires and they blow up your guns and then "commandeer" your stuff
