Are we close to the AI being able to Pilot HVs and SVs?

Hey all,

Years ago, when Planetary Patrol vessels were a new thing, it gave hope when it came to one day having both SVs and HVs under AI control. Be it enemies that will assault your Base, or AI Allies than can help protect it or aid in assaulting someone else's base or a POI. However, this never seems to have materialised.

From what I can tell purely through observation, the AI of Patrol Vessels hasn't really evolved much. They seem less buggy and I've not seen one crash - unless damaged - for a long time now. They just cruise around causing problems for any enemies. I'd suggest they work ok in their current form.

With SVs also being a flying vessel class, I'd hoped that development of the PV's (CV class of course) AI would lend its self to AI-controlled SVs. A combination of logic used for PVs and that used by Drones might make for a viable SV AI. Of course, ensuring said SV had sufficient thrust to stay in the air based on planetary gravity is a must. However, with little or no collision damage, if they're a bit clunky at first it'd not be a problem.

When it comes to HV AI, I can see why that's more of a challenge. Going over water or relatively flat terrain, not an issue. When there are cliffs and crevasses however, the AI needs to be aware of that. I know I have trouble in HVs on some planets due to terrain. Giving them excessive thrust capability certainly helps. With AI-controlled HVs however, the game would be allowed to "cheat" a little. After all, it knows all in regards to terrain and part of the terrain generation process could be some sort of pathing to aid ground vessels.

Finally, oceans. A long time a go now, it looked like the Devs had plans to develop oceans further. From more underwater life and environmental dangers, through to proper aquatic craft. This appears to have dropped off the plans though as it's been a long time now. In earlier versions of the game, SVs were able to fly under water just fine, so underwater bases were a thing - I know, I built them. After the changes to vessels so they stall if submerged though, things didn't develop further.

Will AI for HVs and SVs ever be expanded on do you think? Will we ever see a swarm of enemy AI-controlled tanks floating towards our base, SVs dive bombing it from above?

I noticed that Empyrion is FREE on Epic from the 10th of October. I imagine this will bring in a fair few more players, expanding the use base. If a future paid DLC introduced such thing, I can see that being quite popular.

What do people think? Perhaps all of this is something for "Empyrion 2" if that's the direction the Devs want to go. I'd be fine with that.

 

No. It would require the AI we have now to be even vaguely competent. The OPV and Drone AIs have gotten worse over the last 4 years.
We have drones with their guns on backwards that don't want to shoot at the player; OPVs that somehow manage to find and faceplant into each other in a billion cubic kilometers of empty space.

 

Thanks for the reply. I did a fresh RE2 start fairly recently and, perhaps largely due to luck from what you're saying, I'd actually not noticed any of the weirdness with Drones I've seen in the past. For planetary Drones, they've all be behaving well, none of that weird gun angle / flying upside-down weirdness. In space, I've only encountered the most basic of Drones thus far, and they appeared to be behaving again too. I have of course seen OPV's managed to hit something in space, which is really quite amusing...if we knew it was being fixed...

You're right though of course, the game needs much improved AI for this to work well. I just wondered if the Devs were actively working on such things. I do worry that the game is in a fairly static state now when it comes to features. New blocks and the like are of course always welcome, but it's the Core game that needs work in my view. Is there any sort of on-going road-map? The game did seem to hit release status while it still very much felt like early-access. I fear that the DLC was a bit of miss-step (in my opinion) as it didn't add anything to the game that interests me.

Forums seem pretty quiet these days, is interest waning I wonder. With Emyrion's FREE release on Epic, I'd hoped it would garner some more attention.

 

That's good, well, not so much for Taelyn but good for the game. I've not been in the Empyrion Discord for a little while.

The good news about Empyrion being free on Epic is of course that the Devs still get paid, which is great. This can only help further development and, hopefully, allow the devs to address some of the long-standing issues as well as introduce new features.

 

Hope you are now able to get some sleep.. I'm sure I saw you replying to people at ridiculous hours of the morning some days????
The Discord channels have certainly been rather manic over the last week with the influx of new players. And unlike a-lot of game communities, the existing players have tried to be as helpful as possible to them.

 

Here I am being the party pooper... again, I don't do any of the social media platforms discord,steam*,youtube,reddit,facebook,instagram,twitter,X,... none of that, so what happens on them flies over my head.

The forums do seem a little quiet here and I'm sorry to say that I feel it would be nice to have a crew member commenting here more often** even if only to laugh and say "no", it's surprising how much goodwill an answer generates, I've looked at the suggestions and added a few myself but it seems to be a bit of a 'no go' and 'no comment' area for Eleon staff, I understand that Eleon have other stuff to do, but before I retired I had my own business, and even I had time to answer the phone and reply to questions on a frequent basis.

The AI, yes I'd like to see better AI, but not because I want to constantly bat them away from something I've painstakingly created to protect it, I just want Traders to fire back when they have their buildings and people shot by carless drones and PV's that are in all likelyhood shooting at me, I don't want to feel that I'm the one everyones waiting for... the same in every game I suppose, Hey if you nail that one you'd be head and shoulders above the rivals.
Further to the AI stuff, Critters, we have Pery and Preditors, all preditors would stay away from others unless the prey is there... they would then fight for the resource until one left, it's the game when they're all clustered around the rock or Ship I'm standing on, dino's, spiders, golems, zirax, all fighting side by side trying to get a piece of me...
I've seen Drones come up out of the ground... 'emerge' if you will, I actually like that and wish it for some 'not all' critters, it would have them arrive on the scene in a realistic way, but I don't know how easy it would be to control/implement.


* I have my lad buy my stuff from steam so I have no steam account as such.
** After all, these are the Official Empyrion Forums.

 

Shame, I guess that continuing to post here is pointless then, however, I'll not be feeding any data collecting platforms, it looks like I'll be joining the silent masses.