Positioning bug

There is exploit in “Pulled into Combat” event. In positioning of Enemy Ship.

Assume Combat is in 1D field (one row of fields A…Z). I was thrown into field A, Pirate is on field D. Pirate should close down, to field C, and open fire. But if I click movement into Field Z, Pirate will set course to field X, and, if it not slower than me, We’ll disengage without single shot.

So Pirate don’t plot intercetion course, but try to ambush me in my planned “end of movement” field. Makes many battles even more easy/useless.

First of all, it’s not a bug, it’s known, even intended behavior. The main reason: it is very difficult to make an enemy follow player in real-time, constantly re-plotting course in order to keep specific distance. So intercepting the player at his destination is kind of simplification, but not generally a wrong one (we know that player will get there eventually with his current velocity/vector). And in many cases it works just fine (as enemies react on course change and re-plot accordingly).

But. You’re right that it sometimes produces funny results, especially if enemy’s speed is higher than yours - then he “hurries” towards your destination, increasing distance to his target (you). That’s a good point and I can already think of a solution, that should improve this behavior without implementing real artificial intelligence :wink:

Enemies should now move at reduced speed in such situations, so that they don’t outrun the player.