[Nico]

That's indeed the biggest problem: the computer's AI. But can't that be fixed with Sexps? Granted, I know nothing about fredding, but isn't the following possible? You have a mission where you need to destroy a capship ( aka going after bridge+engines ):
-Beta wing is the bomber wing charged of taking of the capship
-Their mission order would be, in fred, to destroy the bridge and engine subsystems, and not to destroy the ship
- sexp: if engine and bridge subsystems are destroyed, the capship will go "boom"

Then you have the possibility to target said subsystems and order your wingmen to destroy those.

As for antifighter defenses, I think they shouldn't be that important on capships ( unless you have an antifighter cruiser, for exemple, of course ), coz that's what fighter covers are for, and bombers only would be a danger to them anyway ( only large bombs can damage the subsystems -bare turrets- quickly enough in wing commander ). So that should make bomber runs pretty balanced if your own fighter cover does its job.

[KARMA]

actually I have almost no idea about fredding:p
btw I think that to have fighters attacking specific subsystems, you will need paths, the autopath system of aurora is cool, ok, but...
and more important, how does the AI work? I mean:
what if the wings of bomber are under fighter attack? IIRC from the main campaign the bombers just go straight even if under fire. And how effective is the AI in covering other ships from fighter's attaccks?
What's the distance used by AI to fire bombs? If they fire too far, the bombs will be destroyed by the defensive turretts, if they fire too close the bombers get cutted in pieces by the same turretts.
And what will they do after launching bombs? I SW games, bombers fire all their wareheads in rapid succession, but here there is a big delay between shots: what does the AI between the two shots? what does to re-lock to the target? You risk to have your wings destroyed after launching just one or two wareheads out of their whole loadout.
What if they have to destroy a subsystem on the other side of the ship? will they just try to go through the hull, like in tachyon :/; will they fly close to the hull, being an easy target for flaks, will they get enough space to have the time to lock on target? etc etc
What I'm saying is that all the algorythms defining the AI behaviour under certain circumstances will have to be tweaked a lot, if you want to change the game balance.

[KARMA]

and with game balance I'm mostly meaning the parameters, like making ships just stronger; in SW mod, for example, we will have to look for a new balance, and not to make a distorted version of the existing one, wich I don't know if it will be easyer or harder:)

[Nico]

Originally posted by KARMA
actually I have almost no idea about fredding:p
btw I think that to have fighters attacking specific subsystems, you will need paths, the autopath system of aurora is cool, ok, but...
and more important, how does the AI work? I mean:
what if the wings of bomber are under fighter attack? IIRC from the main campaign the bombers just go straight even if under fire. And how effective is the AI in covering other ships from fighter's attaccks?
What's the distance used by AI to fire bombs? If they fire too far, the bombs will be destroyed by the defensive turretts, if they fire too close the bombers get cutted in pieces by the same turretts.
And what will they do after launching bombs? I SW games, bombers fire all their wareheads in rapid succession, but here there is a big delay between shots: what does the AI between the two shots? what does to re-lock to the target? You risk to have your wings destroyed after launching just one or two wareheads out of their whole loadout.
What if they have to destroy a subsystem on the other side of the ship? will they just try to go through the hull, like in tachyon :/; will they fly close to the hull, being an easy target for flaks, will they get enough space to have the time to lock on target? etc etc
What I'm saying is that all the algorythms defining the AI behaviour under certain circumstances will have to be tweaked a lot, if you want to change the game balance.

Well, all that is already true, isn't it? only difference would be the "fly through" to get to another subsystem.
As for the warhead launch pb, well, I'll take the exemple of WC:P again: it's much more difficult to get to the said subsystems, so one torpedo is enough to kill it ( well, there's two kinds of torpedoes, the big one that kills large ship subsystems in one direct hit, and the small one who does the same on smaller ships, but requires 2 or 3 direct hits on a larger ship. In any case, a single successful bomber wing strike will be enough. And in WC, you rarely have 2 bomber wins like you'd have in FS2 ).
As for paths, I completly disregarded them while making OTT, that didn't lead to much collision pbs ( OTT ships were not really fatso anyway ), but now I think they're utterly important, I wouldn't dismiss them anymore.

[KARMA]

just to say I forgot "?" on those statements like the fly through thing.
My point is that there are many things, many fixed patterns, many behaviours that the AI perform if some cirumstances are present.
Now, what I was reporting are possible behaviours that could cause problems with stronger capships, with the result of bombers/fighters being non effective, unuseful in missions except for scrambles.
I really don't remember what the AI EXACTLY does in those situations, but I remember I noticed that the AI in fs2 was pretty stupid and the wings were already often unuseful.
Those "fixed reactions" of the AI should be analyzed, modifyed, improoved anyway, but it will be absolutely necessary if you want to change some parameters of the game balance, like resiliance/weaponary of capships, or if we want the AI to do things (like seeking/hitting critical subsystems with some % of success) when wasn't designed specifically for this purpose.

[Nico]

I think, first, that would should had some kind of bounding box around capships that fighters/bombers would try to go out from as soon as they reach it. That would already fix a lot of problems.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by KARMA

What I was trying to say is that you can obviously do that, just remember that fs2 has not be designed for this, and you risk to have an unbalanced gameplay, with no fun for the players.
If you make it harder for the players to hunt down capships, increasing their weaponary and hitpoints, and considering the fighter's AI, you risk that the only way to take down big ships will be to place other capships in the mission designing, with the players just sitting there looking an annoying beam battle, and the only thing you will be able to do in your camp will be scrambles, scrambles, scrambles.
Just be careful...

I'm not crazy...I'll try to avid that.
And better AI would be a blessing.

[Sandwich]

I know I'm late, and I don't care.

Originally posted by TrashMan
Are FS2 capships vastly undergunned?

Not anymore. *points to CapShip Turret Upgrade link in siggy*

:thepimp: