[Aardwolf]

So yeah, I noticed something.

The AI classes (i.e. "Coward", "Lieutenant", "Captain", "Major", "Colonel", "General") vary with difficulty.

On low difficulty, the Shivans are pushovers , because their AI sucks, and you have various other statistical advantages over them. On high difficulty, they can be pretty nasty.

Well, friendly ships use the same AI classes as enemy ships, and on an easy difficulty level, this means in addition to pathetic enemies, you've also got incompetent wingmen.

Thus, I have a proposed solution for modders, which is already supported by existing features:

Create separate AI classes for enemies and friends. The friendly AI classes should probably be approximately constant between difficulty levels, and the enemy AI classes should get "smarter" as the difficulty level goes up. This way, you won't suffer from 'stupid ai syndrome' on easy mode, and you won't have your wingmen doing all of the work on hard mode.

Comments?

[Wanderer]

ai.tbl is a table i categorize as 'mostly harmless'...

[Spoon]

Not a bad idea really, not bad at all.
Now that you mentioned this, i'll probably be using this idea. Never thought about it like this.

[Dragon]

AAA beams are set up that way (though many campaign designers ignore AAAh beam and leave hostile Terran and Vasudan ships with AAAf-s, which results in them having pinpoint accuracy on easy and pathetic on hard, which is not the way it's supposed to be).
Adding separate AI classes is undoubtedly a decent idea.

[General Battuta]

AAA beams are set up that way (though many campaign designers ignore AAAh beam and leave hostile Terran and Vasudan ships with AAAf-s, which results in them having pinpoint accuracy on easy and pathetic on hard, which is not the way it's supposed to be).
Adding separate AI classes is undoubtedly a decent idea.

 

I never thought of that. At all. Must be fixed.

[SpardaSon21]

Just another thing WiH needs to do right then.

[headdie]

I think thats how TBP approaches AI looking at it through FRED and i know its how i am looking at it for my little project, if nothing else it allows greater flexibility in fine tuning behavior

[Aardwolf]

ai.tbl is a table i categorize as 'mostly harmless'...

Wanderer is referring to something discussed on IRC shortly after I posted this. There are a lot of other difficulty-related factors which are in ai_profiles.tbl, which he says/said are more significant.

[Droid803]

I'm thinking the whole "beam accuracy varies with difficulty" thing ought to be axed as it creates a goddamn balancing nightmare...
Also...penalizing friendly accuracy just makes the friendly ai worse than then already are...

[Wanderer]

Beam accuracy values are controlled in the weapons.tbl and are relatively easy to modify... Weapons.tbl -> BeamInfo -> Miss Factors

[Aardwolf]

I'm thinking the whole "beam accuracy varies with difficulty" thing ought to be axed as it creates a goddamn balancing nightmare...
Also...penalizing friendly accuracy just makes the friendly ai worse than then already are...

It's only significant for AAAh vs. AAAf, and if you get that backwards it's because you're an idiot.

[Colonol Dekker]

Play on insane. . .