[Androgeos Exeunt]

I already have it. I've just been too busy playing ASW and DoS.

[asyikarea51]

I don't have the time and I still have stuff to clear; that said, I play on Medium but even then I tend to get my arse kicked if I don't play properly (or if the missions aren't balanced overall). I could give it a try but honestly I don't know if can finish within my deadlines.

Though IMO, since campaigns have stories in them... instead of treating difficulty "as difficulty" for those two levels, how about treating them in such a way that the player can experience and finish the campaign plot first? E.g. story comes first so we'll give you lots of help here, blow things up second; the higher the difficulty, the more it leans to the latter e.g. you only want a reason to blow stuff up, so we'll make everybody gang-r*** you.

Then if the player thinks it's too cheap or they want a challenge, they can increase the difficulty?

Just my thoughts on it anyway...

[Mongoose]

I play on Easy, but I don't know if I'd be the right person to know what I was looking at.  I sometimes have enough trouble with the retail AI as-is.

[Woolie Wool]

I guess everyone's just too good for those difficulties.

I think it has more to do with people being afraid of admitting to playing on Easy or Very Easy and being labeled a noob.

[Mongoose]

Hey, I'll admit it proudly whenever someone asks.  I play campaigns to be entertained by the authors' storytelling and mission-design skills, not to be repetitively frustrated because I keep getting my ass handed to me.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I think it has more to do with people being afraid of admitting to playing on Easy or Very Easy and being labeled a noob.

Hey, I'm proud of cheating on Very Easy.

[Fury]

I play on Easy, but I don't know if I'd be the right person to know what I was looking at.  I sometimes have enough trouble with the retail AI as-is.

You are. This AI is used in WiH and unless someone like you and Androgeos tests it for us, there is a chance that WiH will be far too difficult for people like you.

[Mongoose]

Hmm...when you put it that way, I guess I don't have much of a choice.  I can't promise the world, but I can at least give it a shot on Easy and see what happens.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Right, I've tested it on Very Easy. On the whole, it's quite an improvement over retail AI.

In Apocalypse with the new AI, I encountered little difficulty escorting the transports. The only ship I did lose was one of the Lambdas. My wingmen had a few issues coping, though. Here's a summarised casualty list:

I started this mission off in a Herc II with three wingmen also flying Herc IIs. Beta Wing comprised of 4 Ulysses fighters. Gamma wing comprised of 2 damaged Perseus fighters, and Theta wing comprised of 4 Serapis fighters.

At the end of the mission, the following were dead: Alphas 3 and 4, Beta 1, Gamma 2 and the whole of Theta wing. If anything, it's proof that flying a Ulysses in the last mission is probably the best way to go.

...But Hate the Traitor was real fun. With retail AI, it's a cake walk simply because they're forever flying upwards when you're behind them, but with this new AI, it's both challenging and fun. It took me a lot longer than usual to kill Alphas and Beta. More notably, they know when I'm on their six, and when they do, they start making quick, sudden changes in their trajectory to prevent me from successfully leading them. I had one of them in front of me for a very long time, and I just couldn't hit it.

It was still pretty easy, though. I lost only 15% hull on that mission: 1% to a collision, and 14% to the Saharan's AAAh (I can never evade that).

[Hades]

Played both ...But Hate the Traitor and Into the Lions den on insane. I beat ...But Hate the Traitor with no significant problems, with 34% of hull remaining at the end. On Into the Depths of Hell, however, the first round I lost with five minutes remaining on the clock, though on the second playthrough I beat it with 62% hull remaining (would have been 77% but the friendlies rammed me a couple of times.  ). I will play Apocalypse now on insane, but I won't just sit at the node until the supernova triggers.

[Fury]

Thanks to Androgeos' and Hades' feedback on IRC, I have tweaked several values in ai.tbl and v6 is now linked to in the first post in this topic. It now works as a mod you can select in a launcher, readme.txt has been updated as well, so please read it.

What's changed since v5:
- AI has higher chance to use countermeasures
- Shield manage delay lowered for Rookie and Veteran
- Stalemate time threshold slightly lowered
- Max aim update delay cut in half

AI is a bit tougher now as Androgeous did so well on very easy. Continued feedback is most welcome to find the optimum balance in all difficulty levels. It is highly recommended to use 3.6.11 build 5720 or newer to get fixed countermeasures.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Just for a bit of information, I've attached two images to this post. Both of them are kill lists for ...But Hate the Traitor. The first one is the kill list after Fury reduced fire delay in v5, while the second one is the kill list after Fury modified the AI's chance of releasing countermeasures and reduced the AI's shield management delay in v5.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Commander Zane]

A quick clarification, will this do anything if I put the new AI folder into a secondarylist for another mod?

[Fury]

No unless you edit missions of said mod to use this AI profile and classes.

[Commander Zane]

Settles that then.

[Fury]

V7 now linked in the first post in this topic. This update has no AI tweaks since v6, but instead previous three sample missions have been deleted and replaced by full FS2 campaign mission files excluding training missions. In other words, when you select CustomAI as your mod in launcher, you can play FS2 campaign with custom AI. These missions are based on latest mediavps patch, so you need to have your mediavps up-to-date. Only fighters and bombers AI were changed.

I stress that missions have not been balanced for this AI, some may be really easy and some really hard and some perhaps even impossible. You can access all campaign mission by pressing Ctrl - Shift - S in tech room.

If you find any problems with these missions, feel free to report. I probably won't fix mission balance issues however, but if you find fighters or bombers still using retail AI classes, large ship using custom AI or a mission that still uses Retail FS2 AI profile, let me know.

This update was brought to you by a boring day at work.

[TrashMan]

No unless you edit missions of said mod to use this AI profile and classes.

OR, you're already using a custom AI profile or classes, some re-naming in the tbl files and it will basicly replace "your" AI with Fury's

[Dilmah G]

Actually, I don't believe that's the case. Fury has different names for his AI Classes. Fury's AI and Retail AI are designed to co-exist, as far as mission editing is concerned.

[Sushi]

Unless you are renaming Fury's AI class names to retail AI class names.

[Commander Zane]

I tried that myself but I don't think it held any positive results.

Edit: As in not affecting the AI at all.