[Droid803]

8 Gunpoints lets you win jousting runs.
Thus hardware advantage.

[Luis Dias]

So what is really needed is a new ship class, let's call it AREION, with 12 gunpoints and enough power to feed them.

[General Battuta]

So what is really needed is a new ship class, let's call it AREION, with 12 gunpoints and enough power to feed them.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEF_Izra%27il
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTF_Ladiel
ololololol - http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/VEF_Aoh

[Destiny]

So what is really needed is a new ship class, let's call it AREION, with 12 gunpoints and enough power to feed them.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEF_Izra%27il
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTF_Ladiel
ololololol - http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/VEF_Aoh

Lovely. Now we gotta slap Morning Stars on them.

[Nohiki]

@Destiny: And do what? Knock cruisers around?

[Marcov]

The only thing that would knock cruisers around would be heavy beam cannons !

Okay, I've just made a test. 4 friendly Hercules vs. 4 enemy Erinyes. Unpredictably, the Hercules blasted the crap out of the Erinyes, and the most the enemy could do was either kill one friendly (in the first test) or damage a friendly to the point where he screams "hull integrity failing!" (in the second test).

Is the friendly AI naturally better or something?

Also the Erinyes appeared to be firing only 4 gun banks, I think, though I'm not entirely sure.

[Droid803]

AI profiles/difficulty level controls if they link their banks.
Play on insane.

[General Battuta]

The only thing that would knock cruisers around would be heavy beam cannons !

Okay, I've just made a test. 4 friendly Hercules vs. 4 enemy Erinyes. Unpredictably, the Hercules blasted the crap out of the Erinyes, and the most the enemy could do was either kill one friendly (in the first test) or damage a friendly to the point where he screams "hull integrity failing!" (in the second test).

Is the friendly AI naturally better or something?

Also the Erinyes appeared to be firing only 4 gun banks, I think, though I'm not entirely sure.

Play on insane, use Fury AI to remove stupid IFF differences, make sure the mission has BP2 or equivalent AI profile.

[Thaeris]

Most of the time because the Herc's get vaporised on the first jousting run.
If they somehow manage to survive that in decent enough numbers they can win the resulting close range dogfight

Very fair assessment. Performance wise, the only difference between a Herc 2 and an Ery is that the latter is 10m/s faster.

Can someone do a test on a wing of Herc 2's vs. a cruiser and a wing of Erinyes vs. said cruiser? I've seemingly observed in the past that the Ery just couldn't last long as an assault/strike fighter. This is odd to me; I always felt the Ery was a bigger target, though that's assumably false... It does have a smaller weapons load, but with the guns it shouldn't matter... It has more HP than the Herc 2, though it also has weaker shields. That said, I've got no idea why it seems to be a less survivable fighter wing than a Herc 2 wing in the retail campaign.

[General Battuta]

Most of the time because the Herc's get vaporised on the first jousting run.
If they somehow manage to survive that in decent enough numbers they can win the resulting close range dogfight

Very fair assessment. Performance wise, the only difference between a Herc 2 and an Ery is that the latter is 10m/s faster.

Can someone do a test on a wing of Herc 2's vs. a cruiser and a wing of Erinyes vs. said cruiser? I've seemingly observed in the past that the Ery just couldn't last long as an assault/strike fighter. This is odd to me; I always felt the Ery was a bigger target, though that's assumably false... It does have a smaller weapons load, but with the guns it shouldn't matter... It has more HP than the Herc 2, though it also has weaker shields. That said, I've got no idea why it seems to be a less survivable fighter wing than a Herc 2 wing in the retail campaign.

This is not a ship vs. ship thread, but feel free to open one.

[Zacam]

To really balance whether or not the difference comes down to AI or Hardware, you'd need to set up something like the following, I'd think:
Herc/Herc2 vs Herc/Herc2 (make sure they are the same in both, matching loadouts), where Friendly has it's AI class to BP and Hostile has Retail.
Captain to Captain and the like or as near equivalent as possible.
(For real regression, then repeat the exercise with the Friendly using the Retail AI and the Hostile using the BP AI just to remove any factors)

You can then vary the ships (but always matching ship to ship and loadout to loadout) however many times you want to gauge the effective levels of AI vs AI when hardware configuration is no longer the concern.

Additionally, if you wanted to adjust AI levels (so that it's no longer a Captain vs Captain of 2 AI behaviours) you could do that as well.

[Fury]

AI doesn't perform by its AI class alone but AI profile also plays significant role. Because of this, comparing retail AI vs. custom AI is literally impossible. Why? Because retail AI is not retail AI if you use custom AI profile, the retail AI would receive many of the benefits a custom AI has simply by using custom AI profile. For this reason, any comparison of retail vs. custom AI cannot be done with any decent accuracy because retail AI is no longer retail AI if its behavior is altered by AI profiles.

Now, it IS possible to create ai.tbl and ai_profiles.tbl where all AI behavior alterations are located under specific AI classes. But not quite all AI behavior alterations are supported in ai.tbl, which means the custom AI would not be able to perform at its best.

The bottom line? It is not possible at this time to compare two AI classes that were designed to use different AI profiles. Only AI classes that were designed to use same AI profile are comparable. This also explains the fact that retail AI classes are even able to put up a fight with custom AI classes, either custom AI classes sucked because retail AI profile was used or retail AI classes were better than retail because custom AI profile was used.

[Marcov]

This also explains the fact that retail AI classes are even able to put up a fight with custom AI classes, either custom AI classes sucked because retail AI profile was used or retail AI classes were better than retail because custom AI profile was used.

retail AI classes  custom AI classes, either custom AI classes  retail AI profile was used or... retail AI classes were better... retail because custom AI profile was used.

 

Wow, just imagine if you said this ten times with a motor mouth!