Request for AI (fighter) pilot improved gun management.

[TexMurphy]

Milo.

Would it be hard to improve how the AI Fighter Pilots use multiple primary weapon groups.

Say that my fighter has two primary gun types. Lasers and Ions. Lasers having longer range, lower damage and higher velocity while Ions having shorter range, higher damage and lower velocity. This makes the Laser gun better for suited for the initial longer range engagment and for the chase situation. While the Ion is more suited for the close in kill shot.

Today when you have multiple primary groups the AI just now and then fires of a single shot with the 2nd group. It never switches over to the 2nd group.

To make this simple what I would like to see is 2 situations when the AI switches gun group.

Always use the gun that has the lowest possible max range as long as its cap is over 20% charged.

In my example this would mean that the pilot at longer range starts out with the laser gun then swiches over to the ion as he gets closer, when he drains the cap he quickly swiches over to the laser till the ion is back over 20%.

At ranges past the Ions max range he will not swich when his Laser cap is down because he cant use the ion at this range.

This is roughly how I as a human pilot do use multiple primary guns and its very powerfull. Problem is that ballancing the Wing Commander ships (virtually all of them have more then 1 primary gun group) is very hard when the AI is as dumb as it is now.

For example the Dralthi that has 2 lasers and 1 tachyon gun is very weak when AI uses it but extreamly lethal when a player uses it just because one can use the tachyon in the right situation, while the AI is just peckin with the lasers all the time.

Would this be to hard to implement?

Tex

[Kuokkanen]

What you have just suggested, there is going to be problems when primary weapon has longer range but limited number of shots and harder to hit. I mean, in case of Wing Commander try hit fighter with plasma cannons when there are ions! Those freaking plasma cannons are antiship weapons! Then is possible create primary weapon which don't make hull damage but freezes subsystems instead.

[TexMurphy]

Yeah I know there will still be problems.

But this way you actually CAN ballance ships with multiple primary weapons, atm you cant as the AI pilots only use the first ones.

Also it is my experience when extending a functionality with a bit more complex algorit its better to first do it simple, see that it works with the simpler algoritm then expand upon it.

That is why I dont request that EMP weapons only are up as long as sheilds are up for instance, to start with. This is functionality that can be added later on.

IF you want a primary gun to be used only against non fighter ships then you just set the targeting parameter. IF you want Plasma to ony be used against cap ships then you can have that now. Though I doubt the AI will swich to Plasma now if he attacks a cap ship. But with the sudgested algoritm above it would work perfectly fine.

Tex

[Kuokkanen]

I forgot there is bit mask for different types of targets. Thanks for pointing that out.