[dANGER boy]

Not sure which mission it is but you have to disable all 4 of the Sathanas' beam cannons (if you can).  Is it just me or do other people have problems with the AI attacking the subsystems?  I order them countless times to destroy the forward flak cannons or one of the beams but they don't do anything?  Is it a bug in the mission, a bug with the SCP, or did this problem exist in the retail version?

[Mongoose]

That would be the infamous Bearbaiting.  It's not really a "bug" so much as "wingmen suck at destroying subsystems."  You're mostly on your own for this one; I've found that your wingmen serve you better by keeping the Shivan fighters distracted than by trying to take out the subsystems.  Unless you have your heart set on grabbing the secondary objectives, you can largely ignore the flak cannons; they really don't do a whole lot of damage.

[eliex]

When taking out the beam cannons, just transfer all your fighter's energy to shielding, as you won't really need your weapons and engines at full power so the long range flak can't do any harm.

[karajorma]

I've never really understood why the AI suck so badly in Bearbaiting though. I've played missions where I've ordered them to attack the beam cannons and not seen them take any damage at all.

[Goober5000]

It's probably because both the beams and the flak require you to attack from very odd angles.

The beams most people can manage by now, but the flak guns require you to (somewhat counterintuitively) fire through the hull on the underside of the guns.  If you fire from above the guns, you inflict far less damage.

[karajorma]

Less damage I'd expect. But whenever I've tried it I've noticed that all the cannons I didn't shoot at were at 100%.

[Vip]

Traitors to the Alliance! I always knew that shooting those damn wingmen was the right choice, however the Command fails to understand this...

Oh well, I'm yet to see a fully competent AI in a game, even more in a space-sim. You're on your own here. There's a reason it's called SINGLE-player campaign.

[Kie99]

I've never really understood why the AI suck so badly in Bearbaiting though. I've played missions where I've ordered them to attack the beam cannons and not seen them take any damage at all.

Read in another thread that the AI automatically switches to it's weakest weaponry when you order it to destroy a subsystem, the weakest weaponry in that mission is the Akheton while you need the strongest (Helios) to do any real damage.