The glide mechanic will allow the AI and player to use glide, but you may need to do further modding to get it working really well. Talk to Spoon.
Oh, I can tell you all about this too.
First, glide.
Using (only) Glide in combat is a tradeoff. You gain the ability to hit a target that isn't forward of your velocity vector. However, you also end up moving in a straight line, making you an easier target. Using glide is essentially an aggressive move: you're confident that being able to shoot at someone is more important than being able to dodge them.
For this to be effective, you need:
- A ship that rotates reasonably fast
- AI profiles and/or AI classes which use glide ($Glide Attack Percent and $Glide Strafe Percent)
"Glide attack" is how often the AI uses glide in a dogfight when it thinks it has a good opportunity. This is the behavior where the AI flies away, hits glide, then shoots you while flying backwards. "Glide strafe" is how often the AI uses glide vs capships. This is where the AI coasts by the capship target sideways while unloading lead into it.
Now, let's talk sidethrust.
Using sidethrust in combat is almost always to your advantage... as long as you can adjust your aim to compensate. Sidethrust is mostly defensive, but it can be considered an offensive move against ships with their ability to face you constrained (e.g. if you can sidethrust around them faster than they can turn, you can stay on their tail).
For effective AI treatment of sidethrust, you need:
- ships with fairy strong sidethrust. Acceleration is more important than top speed here, although both help.
- AI profiles and/or AI classes which use sidethrust ($Circle Strafe Percent and $Random Sidethrust Percent)
- Not required, but helpful for maximally nasty AI:
- If the AI can also use rear thrust, it will make circle strafe more effective.
- Likewise with glide: if the AI is flying a ship with glide, it will use it while circle strafing.
- Using $No extra collision avoidance vs player makes the AI more effective when circle strafing.
Circle-strafe is essentially Descent-style fighting using sidethrust. The AI will try to stay a reasonable distance from you, then sidethrust around randomly while shooting at you. If the ship has rear thrust, it will be used to help maintain distance. Circle strafe percent controls how often the AI tries circle strafe when it thinks the conditions may be right for it.
Random sidethrust just means that the AI will randomly apply sidethrust during a dogfight, making it more unpredictable and harder to hit. This feature is not yet official: I'm still tweaking it a bit. That said, it works just fine, and makes nimble ships a real nasty pain to fight.
A test "Scar" AI for Diaspora, using all of the above tricks, can beat me nearly 100% of the time in a guns-only fight. Most of the time, it can do so without me even landing a hit.
