Ship movement slow on long routes...

I have also experienced this problem, although to be honest I thought it had something to do with having cargo on ships (the only ships I sent really long distances where ships with cargos....) Your reason sounds plausible to me.

Yeah I have it too. Hmm... your explanation makes more sense than anything I speculated on. I think it tries to check each sector again because sensor range is limited. This would also explain ships going back and forth because they try to take the shortest route, find an obstacle, go another way, forget the obstacle and find that same shortest route again, etc.

The algorithm needs to be upgraded as otherwise we'd have to work around this by giving multiple movement orders in short legs. Incidentally... how do you specify waypoints in SE V?

yes, I've watched my ships dance around a warp point that they've discovered is occupied. sometimes they'll be very ineffective -- move out of sensor range, think there's no ship there, move back in, realize there's a ship there, move out... etc....

It's actually kind of smart A/I really, except that it makes it seem really dumb.

The answer is simple. The ship has to recalculate its patch each hex it moves - so the longer the path the slower the movement. Calculating ship movement is the main reason why the AI turns are so long - not script execution etc.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Isn't it possible to make the ship make use of "visible space" (as in what can be seen at the time) and just move through that without recalculating everything, then when it hits "dark space" simply start plotting again until it hits the next bit of visible space. You could also have it check ahead for and hexes (warp gates or mine feilds for example) that it knows are blocked and tag these to help it make a new route without doing the two step?

If you put two or more ships in a sector and give them a simultaneous move to order, they don't suffer this slow-down problem. Also, when the single slow-down ship moves over another object (ship/planet/asteroids/storm/whatever) it moves at normal speed in that sector.

Strange but true.

Gee whiz, Kwok - that's got to be the most obtuse and inelegant programming I've ever heard of! Certainly it has to first calculate the entire route (no way around that) but then it could still quickly make all the moves within sensor range - since all obstacles are clearly obvious - before calculating again. The current method as described is very, very wasteful of computer resources and CPU cycles. NO wonder it's so dreadfully slow and the CPU stays maxed out!!!

But what happens when the obstruction is RIGHT outside of the given sensor radius? You could run for several sectors in a direction that takes you nowhere before you "notice" the enemy. Ick.
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Sorry to burst any programming/coding bubbles but it does precisely that right now!

Sorry to burst any programming/coding bubbles you might have here but it does precisely that right now. one of the best examples is when it encounters a ship blocking it's path at a warp point. Your ship will run right up to it, bounce back, run into it again - over and over until it runs out of moves. And all this while an alternate route DOES exist! Very, very poor approach indeed!

I haven't seen that one before... (probably because I tend to keep my own skys clear, and when entering enemy skys I just blow everything in my path) ok, that sucks.
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Pseudo-code time~ (that means I can write horrible syntax so long as it's understandable to humans). But first, one extra order that needs to be created for this to work: "WAIT ONE TURN"

This would be useful to human players too - I don't know how many times I've had to write down somewhere "now move those ships since the others will have caught up from last turn" then find those ships next turn. It should also make Next Ship better too, as sometimes we want a ship to stay where it is for just 1 turn, possibly in enemy territory (i.e. the Sentry order is useless for this job).

METHOD{EfficientMovement}

   DO While(Mv points left)
      IF (New Visible Hex) Then

         //Check if ONLY this new hex has an obstacle:
         IF (Non-trivial Obstacle Found):
            RaiseFlag(ObstacleFound at {Location})
            GiveOrder(WaitOneTurn)
         ELSE
            Move 1 hex
         End IF

      End IF
   End DO
End METHOD

EVENT{Move Order Given}

   Find shortest path to destination given known obstacles
   Move 1 hex
   //Everything's as before so far

   CALL Method{EfficinetMovement}

End EVENT

EVENT{New Turn}

   IF (ObstacleFound flag raised) Then
      IF (Human Player) Then
         Change Ship Status to "Tried to move to {Location}"
         //The player would then have the option to tell the ship
         //"Go find another path to same destination" in response to this status
      ELSE
         CALL Method(Assess Situation)
         //where the AI checks if that obstacle is still there,
         //and if so, decides whether to form a fleet to push through or find another path
      End IF
   End IF

   CALL Method{EfficientMovement}

End EVENT

On a similar vein, the AI ought to have a command like "mark this sector as Restricted for X turns" or "mark this sector as Needing Military Action of strength X" (where it updates X whenever it can see what's on the other side of the waypoint).