[YodaSean]

I kind of llike the suggestion for the AI.  I'm all for anything that will make my battle-of-endor mission making easier.  On a similar note, did anyone ever do that automatic beam-free-all thingy?

[TrashMan]

The beam-free-all thingy is in the mission speification (a checkbox) in FRED2_Open 3.5.3...I think...

Anyway, would this be really so hard to do?
NOTE: This ai command could work with the ai-set-ship sexp, thus making FREDing a whole lot easier!
(look at the last post in the sexp thread)

[##UnknownPlayer##]

What's really needed here are some precalculated values of where on a capship the most firepower is available for each class of ship it might take on. Then we can let the AI intelligently choose how to assault a target i.e. if predominantly it only has forward facing guns, then it will try and position itself out of the firing arc of the ship its attacking and then sit there firing away at it (reconsidering its position every so often). If on the other hand it had a 2:1 split of firepower between its front and rear then it would consider doing fly by's of the target to minimize damage to itself.

We'd need a well structured data format to do this though that was quick to query for information.

[TrashMan]

Ummm.... yeah that could be implemented in the AI...
OR
We could use the ai-face-ship sexp....the one in the sexp thread...

Whichever is better...but with a sexp you could order a ship to face the target anyway you want and attack it from any side you want... much easier than waypoints and it does give some freedom to the AI...

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by ##UnknownPlayer##

We'd need a well structured data format to do this though that was quick to query for information.

You'd need to work out both teh turret positions & normals and do some weapons calcs for 'em, I think - i.e. if one side has lots of weak turrets, whilst the front has forward beams.  Maybe you could go for the easy route and simply put in an optional 'best side' entry for the ship in the tbls?  Default to side on if there's no entry parsed or something.....

Guess it depends how intelligent the turrets should be  - whether they just attack the ship closest to the center of their firing 'zone', or whether they (i.e.) attack the enemy ship which has it's best side facing.....

[phreak]

or maybe a lethality parameter that calculates the power of its weapons upon startup, basically add up all the turret weapon damages for a quadrant and divide by the number of turrets. then you can get the average damage dealt per turret. after that, you can get the ai to do something with those averages.

the ai should also recalculate these parameters when a turret is destroyed

[J3Vr6]

But is all that possible?

[phreak]

not yet, maybe after 3.6 is released

[TrashMan]

Yes, it could be done that way!:nod:

But what about the ai-ship-facing sexp? Why doesn't anyone comment on that?