[Aardwolf]

I asked on #hard-light and apparently nothing has been done about this, and according to The E nothing should be done about this, but...



In the mission "Speaking in Tongues", right at the start any wingman says "Command, we have hostiles on radar, but we cannot acquire a target."; there are Shivan fighters 2600m away which show as faint noisy blips on the radar and cannot be targeted. Nonetheless, if you gave them Maxims, your wingmen are already firing at those fighters.

This has always been an immersion breaker for me. It's clearly an oversight on the mission designer's part, that they would shoot at something they can't see or target while talking about how it's still too far away to see or target.



The reason The E gave for not changing it is that it's "gameplay", and FSU's prime directive is "don't change gameplay". I contend that  because of the range involved, and the fact that the targets are fighters and therefore a) shielded and b) fast and maneuverable, the only effect that maxim barrage could have had is getting those fighters to "wake up" a little earlier, if they aren't already heading for the player at mission start.

I don't think changing it would have much effect on how the mission progresses, if any.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Regardless of how that change/fix in behaviour would affect this mission in particular, it would be a nice AI_profile flag to have.

[WhiteFox]

I remember that this problem should be on retail freespace too.
The Maxim has an very large range, so i think the AI is firing the gun because the shivans are in fire-range (forget the sensors, i saw there an shivan in the nebular!  )

[Aardwolf]

Indeed, it has been like this since retail.

I don't think anyone is going to argue that it actually makes sense for them to fire their maxims while talking about inability to acquire a target? So it's a retail bug.

I know FSU's policy is "don't change retail gameplay", but what is gameplay? Does something that doesn't affect the player count as gameplay? Does something that affects the player in an imperceptible way count as gameplay?

[Fury]

In retail AI ignores many effects a player is affected by, this is only one of many. The root cause of this behavior is that how would AI determine when an object is within "visual" range?

if I remember correctly, a nebula has modifiers to determine how close a ship has to be before it becomes visible. I can't remember whether these visual range modifiers were exposed to mission designers in retail, but I faintly remember them being exposed in FSO at least. Nevertheless, this modifier could be used in conjunction with a new AI profile flag that enables AI to recognize existence of objects only after they are within visual range of the nebula modifier.

 doubt this will make it in to retail FSU missions as it has a huge chance to make all nebula missions to play differently. Especially where Shivans are concerned. So this would not address Aardwolf's complaint, but would allow future missions to be designed around this new behavior.

[Phantom Hoover]

I agree that it's not in the scope of FSU. There are a lot of dumb little oversights in FS2's campaign that could be fixed, but that'd be more a kind of 'unofficial director's cut' deal than a straight upgrade.

[Kolgena]

Any chance that substantially affects balance is usually no-go for FSU, like you've mentioned (Exceptions include changing the Hercs to Lokis in mission 2, but I really don't know why that change went through at all). There's a mission where you hunt Shivan gas miners and your wingmen get maxims. In my experience, the maxim prefiring helps make the mission survivable on higher difficulties, so I'd say balance would be changed here by quite a bit if the change was globally implemented. Also keep in mind that a nebula radar range change would affect shivan shots as well, which might make some of the nebula missions easier to play.

The biggest offender for bad/bugged mission design is probably High Noon. That mission is probably the crappiest of the entire campaign. The Colossus sits there doing nothing as a set-piece because its scripted (broken) waypoints depend too much on when objectives are completed to work properly, and none of your friendly warships are allowed to use beams. That said, if a mission that broken isn't going to get fixed, I don't see how a Maxim-in-nebula change could possibly make it to FSU.

However, I'm all for an AI flag. It seems like a nice option for any nebula missions in mods, and it would provide the option for power users to customize their own install of FS2 how they like.

[jr2]

FS2  (and FS1) Reborn would be awesome...

[X3N0-Life-Form]

The biggest offender for bad/bugged mission design is probably High Noon. That mission is probably the crappiest of the entire campaign. The Colossus sits there doing nothing as a set-piece because its scripted (broken) waypoints depend too much on when objectives are completed to work properly, and none of your friendly warships are allowed to use beams. That said, if a mission that broken isn't going to get fixed, I don't see how a Maxim-in-nebula change could possibly make it to FSU.

I think you mean Their Finest Hour (though High Noon is kinda crappy as well).

However, I'm all for an AI flag. It seems like a nice option for any nebula missions in mods, and it would provide the option for power users to customize their own install of FS2 how they like.

That would be nice.