[TopAce]

What is your opinion about the Ai(Artifical Intelligence) in FS? Mine is ... so weak, and they are cheating everywhere they can, they have no'lock time' while using a warhead, and can immediatly fire its missiles with acquired lock, they are not disturbed inside the nebula due to the lack of sight of vision etc.  The most nerve-killing is that most of my damages of are taken by the stupid wingmen's collisions, who are always 0.000001 mm close to me, when I give them the 'form on my wing', or 'protect me' order. I think my wingmen always have the 'collide the human player' order to make FS harder.

Please vote!

[Tiara]

Meh, your wingmen are useless. Don't use 'm. Though they can be used to take out AAA turrets (usually getting themselves killed in the proces but MEH).

[diamondgeezer]

Yes, the AI does cheat in certain ways, but you can also run rings around it. Basically, even with all the advantages it has, you can still wipe out dozens of enemy fighters in nothing but half a Loki.

Go have a look around the SCP forum, a lot of people arepushing for the coders to give the AI a serious beating with regards to collsions and what have you


Semper Fidelis

[mikhael]

Wingmen exist to be sent to draw AAAF. They have no other purpose. Do not tell them to protect you. Do not tell them to form on your wing. DO tell them to to "attack my target' after selecting the biggest, most heavily armed hostile in the area.

As for the hostile AI cheating... not likely. They're as pathetic as your wingmen.

[LtNarol]

Originally posted by mikhael
blah blah blah

In other words, AIs are just stupid.  There, see how simple that was mik?

[Windrunner]

lol. I remember the time i had problems with the AI. i order them to one thing and they fly of and killed in a matter of minutes

[Hippo]

My two cents:

FS2: Always press C-3-9 immediately unless you have a reason otherwise. let them go in in front of you, but never stay more than 300m behind them. they'll split up the fighter groups in front of you so they have to fly furthur to reach you, and distract beams. you can go one-on-one with anyone left coming at you.

FS1: order your wingmen t engage enemy only after the enemy have reached 1000m. that way they are close to you for protection, but are close to the enemy also. then press C-3-9 so they break off and pursue, keeping the fighters occupied. in case of cruisers, order them all to attack so it dies faster...

-Hippo

[Eishtmo]

Go and play other space sims, and you'll apologize to the Freespace's AI for thinking such bad things about them.

[mikhael]

Hey, at least the AI in most other space sims knows how to dogfight around capships. I've never seen Wing Commander, I-war2, or Starlancer AIs try to fly THROUGH THE HULL OF A CAPSHIP to get to the other side.

Freespace AI is some of (but not the absolute) worst there is.

[CP5670]

Yeah, the FS2 AI is pretty crappy. There are ways to make the AI somewhat acceptable by using appropriate combinations of mission scripts and table edits though. As for the cheating, I have noticed one or two instances where the computers do things a human cannot do but it does not really give them any advantage. I guess if you are playing on insane then they fire their primaries really fast, but that's about it; I have seen much worse games on that front.

[Tar-Palantir]

I suddenly feel the need to defend FS2's AI. For a start it'll never be as intelligent and flexiable as a human player. Games like TIE-fighter X-wing Alliance in reviews always say that they have great AI, but I don't think this is the case (persoanlly I think it is your own targeting reticule which makes they hard to hit and therefore makes the Ai better.

Secondly compared wingmen will die. The enemy will be sending in fresh waves of fighters and bombers against your own fighters etc which will gradually take more and more damage.

As too the enemy ships 'cheating' I've never noticed it (which I suppose is a gooding thing).

[diamondgeezer]

Here's a paradox for you - one of the very best games of all time had some of the worst AI cheating of all time: Mario Kart for the SNES. The computer would cheat like a good'un to catch up with you when you pulled away from the pack...

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Tar-Palantir
I suddenly feel the need to defend FS2's AI. For a start it'll never be as intelligent and flexiable as a human player. Games like TIE-fighter X-wing Alliance in reviews always say that they have great AI, but I don't think this is the case (persoanlly I think it is your own targeting reticule which makes they hard to hit and therefore makes the Ai better.  

No one is comparing the AI to humans. I'm comparing it to other games' AI models. Trying to fly through capships to get to the other side is a BAD THING, not matter what game. You just don't see that sort of garbage in other games (well some, but none of the ones I used in my examples).

Secondly compared wingmen will die. The enemy will be sending in fresh waves of fighters and bombers against your own fighters etc which will gradually take more and more damage.
 

Yes, wingmen die. Generally in the first wave of combat against other AI craft. Not on second and third waves. The first.

Maybe that has more to do with the fact that I let them be slaughtered whilst I take all the signifigant kills (where possible) myself.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by mikhael
Hey, at least the AI in most other space sims knows how to dogfight around capships. I've never seen Wing Commander, I-war2, or Starlancer AIs try to fly THROUGH THE HULL OF A CAPSHIP to get to the other side.

Don't even compare the SL AI to the FS AI.  It's a complete joke.  At least the FS AI is persistent.  Despite being in a bunch of more heavily armed and armored craft, the coalition pilots will A) break off runs before you even shoot at them and B) probably fail to hurt you anyhow unless you actively ignore them.

You give the AI in SL far too much credit.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Shrike
Don't even compare the SL AI to the FS AI.  It's a complete joke.  At least the FS AI is persistent.  Despite being in a bunch of more heavily armed and armored craft, the coalition pilots will A) break off runs before you even shoot at them and B) probably fail to hurt you anyhow unless you actively ignore them.

You give the AI in SL far too much credit.

Oh its crap in SL too, Shrike, have no doubt, but at least it doesn't run into the 1.5km capship trying to get to the fighter on the other side. It DOES at least manage to go AROUND. Not dodging capships is bad AI. Dodging capships, I'm betting is the LEAST complex behavior you can give the AI. None of the situational guessing of "should I dodge those cannons" or "i'll take the missile hit and line up on a volley of my own". No: running into a capship is always bad.  If I overestimate SL AI, you overestimate FS AI equally.

Side note:
Are the Coalition craft in SL more heavily armored? I never noticed. One of Starlancer's worst failings, in my opinion was the weapons balance: there was no need to take anything but Screamers and AB fuel on missions (except when a mission goal required a Jackhammer).   Between the Screamers and your main guns, not one single ship smaller than a capship could stand up to you. Armor?

[Shrike]

Originally posted by mikhael
Oh its crap in SL too, Shrike, have no doubt, but at least it doesn't run into the 1.5km capship trying to get to the fighter on the other side. It DOES at least manage to go AROUND. Not dodging capships is bad AI. Dodging capships, I'm betting is the LEAST complex behavior you can give the AI. None of the situational guessing of "should I dodge those cannons" or "i'll take the missile hit and line up on a volley of my own". No: running into a capship is always bad.  If I overestimate SL AI, you overestimate FS AI equally.

Side note:
Are the Coalition craft in SL more heavily armored? I never noticed. One of Starlancer's worst failings, in my opinion was the weapons balance: there was no need to take anything but Screamers and AB fuel on missions (except when a mission goal required a Jackhammer).   Between the Screamers and your main guns, not one single ship smaller than a capship could stand up to you. Armor?

I can stand the poor performance around capital ships because not all missions have you fighting in close proximity to a capital ship.  It's a less important flaw than SL's piss-poor dogfight AI which lacks any determination to actually kill you.

And yes, Coalition ships were tougher and normally had more guns.

[CP5670]

I actually never noticed that capital ship thing in the game for years and only found out that it was an issue when it was brought up here some time ago. In most cases this can be remedied by just setting better waypoint paths while designing missions. Much more of a problem with the AI is its terrible close-range dogfight tactics, which I have talked about around here before.

[mikhael]

Shrike, I've never really found any AI that has a real determination to kill you. They all seem to have a determination to fly around and shoot and basically make things look interesting.  When it comes down to it, we're shooting monkeys in a barrel, for all the good the AI can do. In dogfighting, AI (especially in SL, I'll grant you) just doesn't last long. Its only in the other stuff that we get to see genuine behaviors, hence my carping about capships. Also, capship battles are (for me anyway) the most memorable bits of the game. Random dogfights in the inky blackness of space don't stick in my head very well. They're a dime a dozen.

Heck, even Iwar2, for all my love of the game, the AI doesn't handle combat terribly well--though they do coordinate pretty good (unless they're on your side, then they're pathetic).

[IceFire]

Originally posted by mikhael
Hey, at least the AI in most other space sims knows how to dogfight around capships. I've never seen Wing Commander, I-war2, or Starlancer AIs try to fly THROUGH THE HULL OF A CAPSHIP to get to the other side.

Freespace AI is some of (but not the absolute) worst there is.

REALLY?  No...REALLY?  Open your eyes while playing, that tends to help

Seriously....all the way from WC1 through WC:Prophecy both Privateers, and so on...fighters have tried to ram themselves through capital ships on a semi-regular basis. WCP's AI attempts to break off but other AI commands send them crashing into the hull.

FS2's AI isn't that bad...many times they manage to get out before blowing themselves up.

[mikhael]

I never played either Privateer game, but no where in WC1 thru 3 and Prophecy did I see the strange, almost gravitational attraction that capships have for fighters the way even corvettes in Freespace do.

Besides, IceFire, if I had my eyes closed, I wouldn't have see the crap that goes on Freespace, would I? Give me a break.