[Reprobator]

i'd like to make the ai capship able to use primary bank and primary weapon witjout having to cheat with turrets 

A shield ship ai : i explain what i mean :

I'm planing to make a special ship who'd be used to enforce a capital's ship flak screen where bombers and fighter stay in formation behind that ship shield untill they pass the flak screen to release they're payload.

actually it would work in multiplayer if the shield ship would be a player but i don't think ai would be able to handle it correctly.
Anyway i didn't tryed yet if the collision system allow that kind of "Physical shield" .

[Sushi]

A shield ship ai : i explain what i mean :

I'm planing to make a special ship who'd be used to enforce a capital's ship flak screen where bombers and fighter stay in formation behind that ship shield untill they pass the flak screen to release they're payload.

actually it would work in multiplayer if the shield ship would be a player but i don't think ai would be able to handle it correctly.
Anyway i didn't tryed yet if the collision system allow that kind of "Physical shield" .

Yeah, I'd recommend getting it working as a player-flyable ship before worrying about special AI for it. Neat idea, though, I hope you can get it to work.

[Rodo]

Tactics for every retail capital ship to face the enemy with most of it's turrets... I mean to avoid that dancing thing the do now, I know you can dissable that from the table but still It would be nice to have custom IA's for every capital ship, sorry if that doesn't fit here.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Do you mean having every capship try to put its target in the spot where it can bear down with the most firepower? If so, that's fairly hard to do... I suppose it's possible if there is a table entry or something that specifies the "optimal" attack position, but it would mean that people would have to manually debate over and choose the "best' attack position for every single capship.

exactly, the positions can be discussed by the comunity but we can all agree on some.. for example I've been doing missions with Deimos lately and for me the set up should be like this:

When facing a weaker enemy the Deimos must put up most of it's firepower to bare and kill the threat as fast as possible for that a position like this should be acquired.

But... if it's facing a far superior foe.. let's say a Deimos against an Orion (which we know will turn the Deimos into dust) it must try to shield itself from the firepower and STILL be able to respond to the aggression... something like this minimizing the hit zone for the Orion and still having something to fight with.... sure it will not be that effective but it's better than the actual.


PD: disregard the orion on the second shot... it's not meant to be there.. in fact it's only a test mission which I used to test some nameplates.. so the position should be facing straight forward the aggressor.

[Reprobator]

the thing is :
as long as i have no ai to try with i'll have to try it online ^^

But that's planned

And about enabling ai tu use primary and secondary weapon on capital ships, is there any possibility?
The thing is, afaik (correct me if i'm wrong) you can't set a number of limited ammunition on a turret, and having this would give another dynamics to battle (maybe not in fs2 universe but others would gain from it)

[Talon 1024]

I think the AI needs to be smarter when they're travelling along a waypoint path.  If you have a bunch of ships that are assigned to follow one waypoint path, and the waypoint is near, the AI can be pretty stupid, almost to the point where they fly like they were drinking alcohol.

[Topgun]

AI should use shields correctly.
that means different routines for capships, since they should use shields differently.

[Mobius]

A thing bomber wings should definitely do is opening their formations. The closer they are, the easier they go down.

Claiming that opening formations makes turrets less effective, although potentially true, is not to be taken in consideration. Bomber turrets can hardly damage a fighter so their presence is nearly insignificant - opening the formation is a much better solution.

AI should use shields correctly.

You mean something like this? 

[General Battuta]

Can't you get the bombers to 'open up' just by placing their warpin points farther apart?

And, um, I have to say I'm decently satisifed with the Freespace AI. 

[Mobius]

Changing their positions in FRED somewhat solves the problem, but bombers would tend to close their formation if they're sufficiently close.

The whole issue can be circumvented by using bombers as single spacecraft rather than grouping them in wings, but this option is not handy at all.

[General Battuta]

Agreed, that's not ideal.

[Kolgena]

This will break retail campaign balance, but allow AI ships to dual fire secondaries. (I don't think they can currently, but if they do, well call me stupid.)

[General Battuta]

Methinks they do, judging by some of the Tornado volleys I've seen coming my way...

Oh, yeah, they probably do. Haven't you seen bombers launching a pair of bombs? It happens, I think.

[Dilmah G]

Yeah, it does. Also, http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ai_profiles.tbl there are already options implemented for people who didn't know.

[Sushi]

I think the AI needs to be smarter when they're travelling along a waypoint path.  If you have a bunch of ships that are assigned to follow one waypoint path, and the waypoint is near, the AI can be pretty stupid, almost to the point where they fly like they were drinking alcohol.

Could you please be more specific?

And regarding capship positioning: I'll add it to the list, but IMO capship battles is one area that will always be easier to get right via good FREDding than via AI.

[Dilmah G]

Regarding Capship AI, yeah I agree, maybe you could take a look at the existing code and see if there's anything that looks blatantly out of place or looks like it could cause some errors and make some edits there instead. In terms of following waypoints, try to keep the AI level when they follow them, occasionally they seem to bank and it looks plain retarded seeing a Deimos on a 45 degree angle.

[Reprobator]

Something about ai i was thinking about ,
Is this intended that when a ship (big ones) is exploding, the turrets continue to shot?
I mean if we want to make long and dramatic explosion it would be cool to disable the turret's ai at the begining of the explosion sequence (can be freded maybe? )

[Dilmah G]

That'd be an unnecessary one to FRED, I think it's okay, I mean everything doesn't suddenly die at 0% Hull Integrity, the ship has to blow up.

[General Battuta]

You could turret-lock the ship at 1% hull. Would that carry over into the death? Probably.

[Reprobator]

Ok

[Dilmah G]

You could turret-lock the ship at 1% hull. Would that carry over into the death? Probably.

That's what went thru my head when he asked the question, but if you're going to FRED a huge mission.... urghh, too much effort.