I would really like the ability to give my ships better orders. The standard orders that are available are too limited because they often force your ships into making very silly decisions. For example, I want my fighters to attack other fighters… but ONLY if they have a chance in hell of hitting them. I want my fighters attacking fighters around my tractor beams, I DON’T want my fighters running off and chasing other fighters, where they become perpetual dogfights that have zero chances of resolving before the match is already over.
I also want the ability to prevent my fighters from wailing on shielded cruisers, which are physically impossible for them to even penetrate.
Generally speaking, the ability to customize the AI would greatly improve us gamers enjoyment of the game and reduce some of the frustration with building a fleet.
My main AI complaint is when I give a cruiser the “Keep Moving” command and it moves straight through a cluster of enemy cruisers, close enough to be the center of attention and for the enemies anti-fighter weapons to be inside my shields wailing on me. And I just sit there and watch it crumble…
“Yeah, that’s what you get for going in there…you’re stupid…yeah, doesn’t feel good does it…I don’t care anymore, it’s your own fault for moving RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM!”
If you gents have complaints about the current implementation of the game’s AI, this is the place to air your grievances in detail. It’s not quite a thread for suggesting totally new AI orders; rather, smoking out the existing quirks, goofs, and maddening inconsistencies that cause your captains to strive mightily to lose battles on your behalf.
One-liner bitching is discouraged, as Cliffski is closely monitoring that thread with an eye towards making signifigant tweaks that could affect the vast majority of combat for all players. He’s looking for meaningful input. So, feel free to go into detail there, but suggest with care.
The problem is that the AI keeps track of its position relative to only a single nav target, and doesn’t keep track of the location of anything else for purposes of navigation. In my “Captain Obvious” thread and early in the AI thread I suggested that this sort of behavior might be prevented completely if the AI routinely updated its nav target based on the closest available target at any given time, therefore encouraging the ship to move to engagement distance vs the closest relevant enemy, rather than relative to some enemy far away or in the back somewhere.
Unfortunately, the emphasis on the AI Thread is all on shortening the “wait to find a new target” interval, which will only effect guns. I feel that updating it so that the “find a new target” sequence also updates nav targets will be a far more useful, important, influential, and sensible improvement and should have higher priority. But either cliffski doesn’t want to do it, or doesn’t see the problem. More people are complaining about the “fighters attacking shielded targets” issue than about the “suicidal pilot” issue.
