[-Norbert-]

I was wondering if it's possible to implement additional orders to wingmen.
Especially interresting for me would be commands like "Disarm all anti-capitalship weapons" (or alternatively "Disarm all beamweapons") and "Disarm all point-defense weapons".

Maybe the current "Disarm all target's weapons" order could be replaced with a new sub-menu where you can select which weapons the wings are supposed to take out (1-all, 2-anti-cap, 3-point defense).

[assasing123]

you can order your wingmates to shoot at specific subsystems is not that Easy but is good enough i believe. however i do have a request related to this for the SCP team.


in the old xwing, tie fighter, and xwing vs tie fighter games, there was an order called: Launch warheads, specifically this order would order your ship mates to fire with their heaviest ordenance once against a specific target. being different to "attack target" in that ships would primarily attempt to get onto missile lock range, lock and then shoot their warheads and dissengage.

i remember one of the most effective uses i had for this was that i ordered 3 squads to form on my wing and we all flew at about 10kms from a ISD, then we turned around and i gave said order, best fireworks show ever seeing all the proton torpedoes going at the the ISD and it blowing up without losing a single squadmate that stupidly tried to use its main guns against the ISD.

so in short, can we get a "fire ordenance" order ?

[MatthTheGeek]

The problem is, how does the code know what an anti-capital ship or a point defense weapon is. All beam weapons might possibly be more viable. Need coder input.

[niffiwan]

What about checking for the Huge or Supercap flag on the weapon?

[Colonol Dekker]

I support this request

[TwentyPercentCooler]

What about checking for the Huge or Supercap flag on the weapon?

Yeah, I was going to say this. In which case, adding an order that would essentially order wingmen to launch weapons with the huge flag at targets would be a big help. It might make them more useful in bombing roles. Possibly, it might even be helpful for certain campaign makers to be able to flag weapons as something like, oh #dogfight or #interception, as well as huge. The player could then order interceptor wings to prefer interception weapons (think Trebuchet) when engaging a target.

Might be reaching, depending on how much work it is, of course.

Edit: actually, now that I think about it, would it be possible to have flags like #dogfight and #interception and have the AI automatically prefer them against certain classes of targets? Or do they do this already?

[mjn.mixael]

Isn't there already a good-secondary-time sexp?

[Trivial Psychic]

I believe that that works for a specific side (friendly, hostile, neutral, etc.) rather than specific wings.

Sounds like what people want is a flexible command system where the FREDder or Modder can allow any AI-based sexp to be linked into it.  It could perhaps even include an option to select an event to trigger which would then set into motion the actions contained in the event.  It would need to also offer custom naming for these options.

Granted, half of what I've described has been done in WiH, through training messages & number keys.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

I was talking more about the ability to tag all weapons with one of a small set of tags - types, if you will. Say, dumbfire, dogfight, interception, anti-subsystem, bomb. And then, set the AI to automatically prefer certain types of weapons against certain types of targets. Especially for the intercept category. It might help with the problem of the AI being mostly useless at pure interception.

For example, let's think about a hypothetical, difficult escort mission. The player is given command of two wings. The player decides to have one wing of interceptors and one wing of space superiority fighters. The interceptors are loaded with long-range, high-damage, low-maneuverability anti-bomber missiles, (like the Trebuchet), in one bank, and a normal dogfighting missile (Tornado, Harpoon, etc.) in the other bank to make sure they can properly defend themselves from fighters. The interception missiles are tagged with #intercept - a tag which makes the AI use them against bombers and not against fighters, which will likely evade them, and if not, waste a missile on overkilling a fighter that should have been used on a bomber. The dogfighting tag would tell the AI to prefer to use them against very small targets like enemy interceptors and space superiority fighters, instead of expending a very large number of them to down one bomber.

I've always wondered if the AI already does something like this, but when I think about it, at least in retail - there was weirdness like Hornets being excellent at killing cruisers and transports, despite not being described as anything like an "assault" missile. I'm not saying it's a mistake, necessarily, perhaps it was and  just didn't correct the description. My point is, perhaps having specific roles for weapons defined in the AI tables could make them more effective at doing the jobs you assign them. It would also reward people who look at their mission objectives carefully and change all the loadouts. That's probably most of us already, but rewarding attention to detail is usually not a bad thing.

[mjn.mixael]

You can already pretty much do that with good-secondary-time. (Use arguments, etc.)

But it's a waste of time to argue this.. it's AI code... AKA the dark alley of FSO that few coders even dare to venture into.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

You can already pretty much do that with good-secondary-time. (Use arguments, etc.)

But it's a waste of time to argue this.. it's AI code... AKA the dark alley of FSO that few coders even dare to venture into.

Ah, well then, you'd be kind to pardon me. I've made only basic attempts at FREDing lately. I'll take a look at that and see what I can do with it.

EDIT: Been playing around with good-secondary time in FRED. Technically, it does what I want it to do, but it's kind of a pain to set up and it doesn't work for dogfighting missiles specifically. It's like a workaround, just to get the AI to do something it (arguably) should do automatically; that is, use the correct weapons against their current target. Spitting Harpoons at Seraphim is generally an exercise in wasting ordnance. Shooting Rockeyes at a cruiser even more so. I'm not gonna be a backseat coder and start demanding features, of course. Good-secondary-time works, albeit a bit inelegantly.

[BlasterNT]

Doesn't objecttypes.tbl already somewhat support turret/weapon type prioritization? 

[headdie]

Had a flash of inspiration.

can anyone explain in more detail these options in ai_profiles

$smart primary weapon selection:
FS2 Open 3.6.10:
If set, enables the new primary weapon selection method
$smart secondary weapon selection:
FS2 Open 3.6.10:
If set, enables the new secondary weapon selection method (including proper use of bomber+ missiles)

[assasing123]

You can already pretty much do that with good-secondary-time. (Use arguments, etc.)

But it's a waste of time to argue this.. it's AI code... AKA the dark alley of FSO that few coders even dare to venture into.

Ah, well then, you'd be kind to pardon me. I've made only basic attempts at FREDing lately. I'll take a look at that and see what I can do with it.

EDIT: Been playing around with good-secondary time in FRED. Technically, it does what I want it to do, but it's kind of a pain to set up and it doesn't work for dogfighting missiles specifically. It's like a workaround, just to get the AI to do something it (arguably) should do automatically; that is, use the correct weapons against their current target. Spitting Harpoons at Seraphim is generally an exercise in wasting ordnance. Shooting Rockeyes at a cruiser even more so. I'm not gonna be a backseat coder and start demanding features, of course. Good-secondary-time works, albeit a bit inelegantly.

how good do it behaves when the player changes the loadouts? and how did you manage to have a specific use Warhead order? I m curious...

[TwentyPercentCooler]

You can already pretty much do that with good-secondary-time. (Use arguments, etc.)

But it's a waste of time to argue this.. it's AI code... AKA the dark alley of FSO that few coders even dare to venture into.

Ah, well then, you'd be kind to pardon me. I've made only basic attempts at FREDing lately. I'll take a look at that and see what I can do with it.

EDIT: Been playing around with good-secondary time in FRED. Technically, it does what I want it to do, but it's kind of a pain to set up and it doesn't work for dogfighting missiles specifically. It's like a workaround, just to get the AI to do something it (arguably) should do automatically; that is, use the correct weapons against their current target. Spitting Harpoons at Seraphim is generally an exercise in wasting ordnance. Shooting Rockeyes at a cruiser even more so. I'm not gonna be a backseat coder and start demanding features, of course. Good-secondary-time works, albeit a bit inelegantly.

how good do it behaves when the player changes the loadouts? and how did you manage to have a specific use Warhead order? I m curious...

The reason I say it's very inelegant is that, as far as I've been able to tell, you have to set an event for every missile, and the SEXP also doesn't include most of the normal missiles; for the original FS2 campaign, it's basically only for the Trebuchet and anything heavier. Also, I'm not sure if there's a duration or if other orders override or cancel out the SEXP. Including a trigger count and repeating it helps a bit, though. In the test mission, I have it set to repeat at opportune times - for example, my intercept wings get good-secondary-time for Trebuchets every time an enemy bomber wing jumps in.

It's not perfect, but it works well enough. My only problem is that it's not very flexible. I would really like to see something like I described a few posts back, but I don't like the idea of waltzing in and going, "Hey guys, do this, it would be awesome, right? Right?" 

[MatthTheGeek]

Improved AI should be able to use Trebs against bombers on their own without good-secondary-time.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Improved AI should be able to use Trebs against bombers on their own without good-secondary-time.

Oh, I know they're capable of using Trebs. I'm more talking about how they don't seem to know to prefer certain weapons against certain targets, besides using bombs against large targets if they're in a bomber, because they haven't been programmed to. Correct me if I'm wrong, though; I don't code.

[MatthTheGeek]

That's what the FREDer is here for.