[Starman01]

Hello,

I'm posting this here, since I'm not sure if it is simply possible by doing that with just table editing, but it is actually possible though SEXP or tables to control the AI's behaviour in firing missiles ? Or is this just another another AI-Issues that will never be changed ?

Actually I want them to fire missiles less often, since the WCS loadout is very limited. We already created special AI-Missiles with higher reload time, but that's not the perfect solution at all.

[karajorma]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,39005.0.html

I'll be looking into the possibility of making that lock-secondary bank SEXP very soon.

[Starman01]

Ah yes, those new SEXP's. Unfortunately the new Fredbuilds are unstable and crash or destroy the missionfiles when placing objects in greater distances. Until this is fixed, I'm forced to stay with the december builds Though while this will allow me to set loadout /or lock entire secondary banks, I still can't alter the AI-Behavior to fire missiles only on good possibilities.

See it this way, FS-Ships have 80 Missiles, rather weak, so no problem firing them in masses. but our medium fighter carriers only 6 Missiles (each one kills a fighters if not evaded). Now I travel to a Navpoint with 6 enemy fighters and those thurds fire nearly all their issiles. Then I come to the mainbattle zone and my fighters have nearly no missiles left.

Of course the lock secondary would at least solve that a little (since I can lock them on nav1), but the problem stays. Can't it be altered within the AI.tbl or something ?

[Prophet]

Starman has a good point there. FS ships do pump out missiles at ridicilous amounts. No wonder GTA had trouble recovering economically from the Great War when the triggerhappy pilots were wasting money on clearing asteroid fields. It would have been cheaper to sent the ships out unarmed and let them die, than to keep manufacturing missiles. Well, almost...
But the fact is that in other universes missiles tend to be a bit rarer (and better). Including all those conversions hosted here.

This issue could be solved with the AI table...

[Kaine]

i believe that placing a variable time(like a cooldown period) that the AI has to wait between firing missiles (or clusters of missiles eg/ the tempest) would go a long way to remedying the problem. have a set of default times to use with the original VPs and put a value into the weapons tables for use with the new VPs, then the value would be tweakable by whomever takes it upon themselves to fine-tune it. (maybe different values for different difficulty levels?)

for aspect-lock missiles the cooldown period could be applied to how long a lock has been maintained for (a 3 or 4 second aspect lock is a pretty sure thing, setting the value to under a second would indicate a twitchy or trigger happy rookie pilot, liable to offload his missiles early in an engagement, whereas waiting for a more likely hit is indicative of an ace that picks his shots carefully)