[General Battuta]

More advanced dogfight styles, like start-stop to throw off a pursuer.

And bombers that actually defend themselves. That is, if it's possible to solely increase the accuracy of bomber turrets, not capship ones. Or have bombers pursue the occasional fighter when under attack.

For the first, play on insane, and the second happens already depending on what orders the bombers have been given.

[takashi]

First post in a year and i aleady feel like an idiot.

[General Battuta]

No, no, welcome back! There's no need to feel idiotic.

They're definitely good ideas. It's often hard to notice the behaviors.

[asyikarea51]

Do Shivans suddenly engaging lateral thrust to beat your agility count as start-stop?

[Dilmah G]

I'm not sure but that would be interesting.

[pietraz]

Do Shivans suddenly engaging lateral thrust to beat your agility count as start-stop?

I noticed it several times with Maras while playing the retail FS2. At first I was like: 
As it seems, they are capable of maneouvers which terran and vasudan fighters can only dream of.
And that would explain the fancy appearance of Mara - the extra thrusters could be mounted on the tips of those "legs" she has.

[Sushi]

More advanced dogfight styles, like start-stop to throw off a pursuer.

And bombers that actually defend themselves. That is, if it's possible to solely increase the accuracy of bomber turrets, not capship ones. Or have bombers pursue the occasional fighter when under attack.

One interesting thing to note is that turrets on bombers only attack the bomber's current target. That means that bombers who go straight for their target get ZERO use out of their turrets. Maybe bomber turrets should simply attack the closest target in their FOV?

Do Shivans suddenly engaging lateral thrust to beat your agility count as start-stop?

Here's the funny thing: that lateral thrust thing is NOT part of any "evade" maneuver in the code, even though it looks like that's what they're doing! In reality, there are only TWO places where sliding happens in the code:

1. Avoiding collisions. I think this is what you see those Maras doing: they're trying to get somewhere, your ship is in the way, so they use sidethrust to try to avoid a collision. In other words, the sidethrust you see from Shivan fighters now is more or less an accidental side-effect that happens to work pretty well in the game. AI code is like that.

2. Moving towards a waypoint, along a path, or towards a ship. If the ship hasn't rotated all the way to point directly at their destination, they use sidethrusters (if they have them) in the meantime to move them more in that direction. I'm actually not sure exactly how this is working (or even if it is) but I know for sure it has nothing to do with evasive or combat maneuvers.

In other words, there are a LOT more places where sidethrust could be used in combat and evasion but currently isn't. Thus item #2 on the wishlist. If I have my way, you'll eventually be able to dogfight ships that make full use of sidethrust (and glide) and make your life extremely miserable when trying to shoot them down.  Of course, you'd have to enable the appropriate AI_Profiles stuff first, but the option would be there...

[Mongoose]

One interesting thing to note is that turrets on bombers only attack the bomber's current target. That means that bombers who go straight for their target get ZERO use out of their turrets. Maybe bomber turrets should simply attack the closest target in their FOV?

This would be immensely useful, particularly if any attacking ships could be prioritized.  As it stands, your own bomber turret only serves as something of a backup primary bank, and like you said, AI bombers hardly ever use them when it would be prudent to do so.  I think this alone could go a long way toward improving their survival rates.

[Kolgena]

Oh! I know!

Fighters actually use Trebs on other fighters. Fighters actually try to dodge trebs.

[General Battuta]

Fighters do currently try to dodge Trebs.

The reason they won't fire at other fighters is because Trebs have the bomber+ flag (I believe.) You can fix that with a table edit, no AI modifications required.

[Kolgena]

Are you sure fighters dodge them? I don't think I've ever seen anything 3 klicks out use countermeasures against trebs. At least to my recollection, downing dragons with a single treb shot is almost guaranteed if the distance is long enough.

Also, the problem with the tags on the table for the treb is that the bomber+ tag makes them use it against bombers and the huge tag forces them to hit only cap ships. It means that, if I edit table values, the treb can only be used by the AI as anti-bomber or anti-turret ordinance, but not both. This is why I thought that perhaps modifying AI behavior with tag overlaps like this could be a better solution than pigeonholing this versatile weapon.

[General Battuta]

They'll maneuver once the Treb gets within their 'threat envelope', so far as I can tell.

Why don't you just pull of all the tags, and the AI will use it against all targets...?

[Kolgena]

They'd waste it really quickly, which isn't great considering its low max capacity, and they'd also try to use it in dogfights, which would be fail^14. Limiting it to bombers AND capships (if possible) would allow AI to use trebs where they're most valuable, and since those targets are slow, you wouldn't notice AI spewing off misses as much in a fight.

Edit: Building off that, I'm not sure if AI have preferential tactics/uses of secondaries against opponents. Are AI smart enough to realize that hornets will always miss unless you fire them in a tight cone behind your target? Will fighters use hornets or tempests instead of harpoons against cruisers? If not, it'd be great to have that, and it would fix this treb issue as well.

[General Battuta]

Those are good points.

[karajorma]

Also, the problem with the tags on the table for the treb is that the bomber+ tag makes them use it against bombers and the huge tag forces them to hit only cap ships. It means that, if I edit table values, the treb can only be used by the AI as anti-bomber or anti-turret ordinance, but not both. This is why I thought that perhaps modifying AI behavior with tag overlaps like this could be a better solution than pigeonholing this versatile weapon.

Specifying a new flag that had both effects rather than altering the behaviour of the current flag seems smarter to me.

[Dilmah G]

One interesting thing to note is that turrets on bombers only attack the bomber's current target. That means that bombers who go straight for their target get ZERO use out of their turrets. Maybe bomber turrets should simply attack the closest target in their FOV?

This would be immensely useful, particularly if any attacking ships could be prioritized.  As it stands, your own bomber turret only serves as something of a backup primary bank, and like you said, AI bombers hardly ever use them when it would be prudent to do so.  I think this alone could go a long way toward improving their survival rates.

Personally I think current attacker, and if none exists the closest target.

Also, the problem with the tags on the table for the treb is that the bomber+ tag makes them use it against bombers and the huge tag forces them to hit only cap ships. It means that, if I edit table values, the treb can only be used by the AI as anti-bomber or anti-turret ordinance, but not both. This is why I thought that perhaps modifying AI behavior with tag overlaps like this could be a better solution than pigeonholing this versatile weapon.

Specifying a new flag that had both effects rather than altering the behaviour of the current flag seems smarter to me.

Why yes it does, but I've never seen fighters actually using Trebs on ANYTHING, I assume you needed to use the good-secondary-time sexp to get them to use it.

[Wanderer]

More advanced dogfight styles, like start-stop to throw off a pursuer.

And bombers that actually defend themselves. That is, if it's possible to solely increase the accuracy of bomber turrets, not capship ones. Or have bombers pursue the occasional fighter when under attack.

One interesting thing to note is that turrets on bombers only attack the bomber's current target. That means that bombers who go straight for their target get ZERO use out of their turrets. Maybe bomber turrets should simply attack the closest target in their FOV?

Option (objecttypes.tbl) for preventing that has already been added in wanderer branch (quite a while ago actually)...

[Sushi]

One interesting thing to note is that turrets on bombers only attack the bomber's current target. That means that bombers who go straight for their target get ZERO use out of their turrets. Maybe bomber turrets should simply attack the closest target in their FOV?

Option (objecttypes.tbl) for preventing that has already been added in wanderer branch (quite a while ago actually)...

Sweet! Crossed it off the list

[Topgun]

AI that works with Newtonian physics.
that would be cool.

[pietraz]

Why AI only?
Besides, that would ruin the gameplay, to say the least.
For it to work we would have to redo the engine and the conception of battles.

Want newtonian physics, play Frontier.