[Apollo]

A mission I'm making uses AI from Blueplanet. The goal of the mission is to defend an Orion while it blockades a node. The problem is, the Blueplanet AI makes the player's wingmen so smart that they destroy all the Shivan bombers before they can hit with even one torpedo. When I switch to retail AI, the mission becomes much better balanced. Outside of making a gigantic swarm of bombers, how can I fix this? Since WiH was so well balanced, I'd appreciate some advice from the designers who are used to working with its AI. This problem has made me scrap my mission two times so far, and I don't want to go back to stupid retail AI that can't even be trusted to disarm a ship without destroying it.

I recognize that this isn't a technical question, but I think it still fits in this board.

[General Battuta]

This is a really cool question. War in Heaven had a few specific design standards that we used to try to make battles feel naturalistic. We didn't like the idea of waves of fighters and bombers hurling themselves to their near-total destruction (as much as this actually happened in World War 2 carrier warfare ). When we encountered issues like this, we always tried to solve them using in-mission tactics, rather than table adjustments.

Because agility becomes a more important defense than hit points or shields, bombers are extremely vulnerable when you're using Fury AI. Warships and escorts alike will tear them apart. If the bombers can't get through the fighter screen, then the bombers shouldn't be attacking at all; the enemy should be trying to degrade both your screen and the Orion's turret coverage. Shivans have access to all the same weapons the Tevs do. Have them launch long-range missile attacks, draw you away with a cruiser deployment, or just try to pound you into submission with fighters. Escort the bombers in with fighters of their own. Fire Stilettos at the Orion's turrets. Have the bombers approach from multiple angles simultaneously. Have one member of a bomber flight carry a whole load of Shivan cluster bombs and use FRED to force it to attack incoming fighters.

Also, consider lowering the number or AI class of your wingmen. It's really important that the player's performance be able to decide at least some part of success or failure in the mission. While it's fun to have smart wingmen who feel like good teammates, it's no fun if they handle all the work.

An intact fighter screen should be able to stop an unescorted, unsupported bomber attack. The key is to give the enemy the intelligence to know that.

[Apollo]

Hmm, so the Shivans are losing because they're using the same stupid tactics they use in retail? I probably should of thought of that.

I'll make them smarter.

[Droid803]

That or you could just use a giant swarm of bombers, because well, Shivans don't really have to give a ****, fluff-wise.
But its probably better mission design to make them a bit smarter.

[MatthTheGeek]

Aaand probably much less boring to the player.

Which is what really matters, isn't it.

[headdie]

Battuta nailed a lot of it, It is also worth considering placements, for example if you have a fighter group enter somewhere above and forward of the Orion's nose and then it will draw at least some of the fighters out of position, then perhaps as the escort is getting down to the dregs of the fighter team or as the orion get's near you warp the bombers somewhere under the engines of the destroyer.  The escort then has to travel something in the region of 2 km before they can start to effectively engage the bombers, smart tactics from the player wings will mitigate this, especially on repeated playthroughs but you are buying the bombers a little time to close and start shooting torps before the fighter screen can reach maximum effectiveness.

edit
wording change

[SaltyWaffles]

A mission I'm making uses AI from Blueplanet. The goal of the mission is to defend an Orion while it blockades a node. The problem is, the Blueplanet AI makes the player's wingmen so smart that they destroy all the Shivan bombers before they can hit with even one torpedo. When I switch to retail AI, the mission becomes much better balanced. Outside of making a gigantic swarm of bombers, how can I fix this? Since WiH was so well balanced, I'd appreciate some advice from the designers who are used to working with its AI. This problem has made me scrap my mission two times so far, and I don't want to go back to stupid retail AI that can't even be trusted to disarm a ship without destroying it.

I recognize that this isn't a technical question, but I think it still fits in this board.

You could just give the bombers some competent escorts. Like a wing or two of fighters (with BP AI). In close escort, not 2 kilometers apart.

Otherwise, what would you expect? Bombers aren't meant to dogfight, and they're tasked with banzai'ing straight at the target ship with slow, sluggish bombs.

[Apollo]

Right now, the bombers have 1 wing of Dragons and one wing of Manticores escorting them. What happens is that the escort quickly takes out Beta wing, but since Alpha has better ships and two of them have ship-guardian-threshold SEXPs for storyline reasons, the escort is unable to effectively engage them. This wouldn't be a problem with retail AI, but since I'm using Fury AI they very quickly tear the bomber wings apart.

EDIT: I think I'll follow Battuta's suggestion and give one or two of the bombers Shivan Cluster Bombs. I might also add another wing of Seraphims and have the Shivans use them as anti-fighter missile boats instead of bombers. Now that I think about it, I could also make the guardianed ships switch their Avenger Es for Prometheus Rs and Tornadoes for Rockeyes when they trigger the guardian SEXP. That would make them much less effective.

[LordPomposity]

Right now, the bombers have 1 wing of Dragons and one wing of Manticores escorting them. What happens is that the escort quickly takes out Beta wing, but since Alpha has better ships and two of them have ship-guardian-threshold SEXPs for storyline reasons, the escort is unable to effectively engage them. This wouldn't be a problem with retail AI, but since I'm using Fury AI they very quickly tear the bomber wings apart.

There are a couple solutions to this; what you want to do is allow the shivans to neutralize the friendly fighters' combat capability without destroying them. When the friendly fighters hit their guardian threshold and invulnerability kicks in, you can:

1. Destroy their weapons subsystem (rather obvious to the player)
2. Degrade their AI class (simple, also somewhat obvious)
3. Swap their weapons to weapons with identical appearance but worse stats (a pain in the ass to set up, especially if the player can configure their loadouts)
4. Set a sexp with a high repeat count that will continuously set their weapons subsystem strength to a low value (I'm not completely sure if heavily damaged weapons subsystems inhibit the AI's ability to fire like they do the player, but if so, this is probably the most realistic solution, and easy enough).

edit: and it appears that when I replied to your post, I deleted your edit without reading it. Still, I think some of the ways I suggested (particularly 4, if it actually works) are worth considering.

[VPR]

You can also de-activate the guardian later on in the mission on ships if you still want a fairly high allied casualty rate without losing them too quickly. Reducing the threshold for damage also during a mission in stages can help keep the illusion that they are not invulnerable to the player, to a certain degree.

Heavy bombers can soak up a lot of damage so jumping them in close to the Orion inside it's weapons range will draw fire while another wave of faster lighter bombers from further out can sneak in once they've drawn the attention of the escorts and turrets. Seraphims in particular excel at close assault and they have rear turrets which can do a surprising amount of damage to attacking fighters. Adding this with a fighter sweep to also attack the escorts will further keep both the AI and the player busy while you can send in more bombers behind the first diversionary wave.

[Qent]

Also remember that letting the Shivans destroy the Orion's weapons subsystem stops it from targeting bombs at all.

[Droid803]

You could just Send More Fighters to keep the plot-guardianed wingmen busy, or if they're just ignoring the escort, you could forcibly tie them up with orders to dogfight so they can't go after the bombers.

A wing or two of SF Dragons should keep your two plot invul wingmen busy for long periods of time if you give them orders to dogfight them which are higher priority than the orders the player issues (and give them no dynamic goals for teh lulz), which would represent their pilots get f*cking PISSED at the SF Dragons annoying them and deciding that THEY MUST DIE before they do anything else, mission objectives be damned. This could be set to only activate after they hit their invul limit, so the player can still use them until they "should have died". Because remember, you can "Mindlessly narrow the AI's actions on the fly now!"

[VPR]

Fine it wasn't perhaps such a good suggestion and my wording was wrong but nevermind.

[SaltyWaffles]

You could just Send More Fighters to keep the plot-guardianed wingmen busy, or if they're just ignoring the escort, you could forcibly tie them up with orders to dogfight so they can't go after the bombers.

A wing or two of SF Dragons should keep your two plot invul wingmen busy for long periods of time if you give them orders to dogfight them which are higher priority than the orders the player issues (and give them no dynamic goals for teh lulz), which would represent their pilots get f*cking PISSED at the SF Dragons annoying them and deciding that THEY MUST DIE before they do anything else, mission objectives be damned. This could be set to only activate after they hit their invul limit, so the player can still use them until they "should have died". Because remember, you can "Mindlessly narrow the AI's actions on the fly now!"

Just an aside note to keep in mind, from a new player's perspective (new to the mission, not the game), they won't know that a new wing of enemy fighters is supported to be an artificial distraction for just your guardianed wingmates while you deal with the bombers--they might send the wingmates to take out the bomber while the player engages the wing of Dragons, having serious difficulty because the player is not guardianed (and the Dragons' intended opponents are the invulnerable wingmates).

Also, if the reason Alpha 1'st wingmates are nullifying the enemy bomber's escort (a wing of Dragons, for pete's sake) is that they're invulnerable for story reasons, then it seems to me the bigger problem is that invulnerable Alpha wingmates are deadly, competent, well-positioned fighters with invulnerability regardless of the player's actions/performance/decisions, making player agency (and difficulty) a rather moot question. If Alpha 2 and 3 have to survive the mission, then unless there are other necessary plot restrictions, make 2 and 3 far less lethal at that point in the mission if they're actively guardianed. As has been suggested above, change the AI class to something stupid (you could even create a new AI class for this kind of scenario, where the fighter in question is not nearly as accurate/effective/etc as before), and blame any overt/easily noticeable drops in the fighter's performance on subsystem/various damage taken during the mission, which is said whenever the fighter's hull falls below a certain percentage. 

[Droid803]

You kind of missed my point. I said to make it so you can't reassign the invulnerable wingmen's orders, which was my whole point, so you can't use them even to tank damage or distract things.

[SaltyWaffles]

Wouldn't that be particularly jarring, though? If the lethality of the guardianed fighters is nerfed when they trigger the invulnerability, then you could add an ignore-ship order to the Dragon escort wing regarding the guardianed fighters. Dunno if playing with the priority rating would help with the fine-tuning, but is it worth a shot?

[Droid803]

Well the idea is you can issues order to them but they will ignore them. Potentially bad if you think there's going to be backup but then you don't I guess.
Also, yes that would work.

[Lorric]

I don't know if this has been solved now, but I have an alternate suggestion for your invulnerable wingmen. Empty out their secondary weapon banks.

[Apollo]

I don't know if this has been solved now, but I have an alternate suggestion for your invulnerable wingmen. Empty out their secondary weapon banks.

I did solve the problem, but the I realized that the length of the mission necessitated weakening the bombers. I'll consider your advice if I have this problem again (I will).