Matrix Games Forums

So I just played Highland (SS:TGS) up through about 13 days of missions and I must say I'm somewhat disappointed with the friendly AI up through this point. The Archon is at 40% damage and all other friendly cap ships are KIA. I don't think the Simmons is listed as KIA but I haven't seen it in days. Both the Spectre and Asher class DESRONs were taken out one at a time as they attacked a pair of enemy Destroyers. Either of the DESRONs shouldn't have had much issue taking out the pair of DD's, but the friendly DD's attacked one at a time, without the support of either of the FF's, and didn't launch any torps until after the enemy had several volleys away, and didn't seem to have it's PD activated, either. One of the friendly FF's just sat still, PD off, apparently, as it got pummeled by a salvo of torps from one of the enemy DD's.

Also, after the Shadow DESRON was no longer listed under the "forces" screen, it continued to successfully assault the enemy, as well as entirely eliminating enemy destroyer squadrons.

The Archon seems highly reluctant to launch T-bolt strike packages unless I'm personally assigned to the Warbirds; otherwise all the assault packages are Eagles. The Archon also doesn't seem to like to launch intercepts very often, even when I fly patrols and spot incoming enemy flights that are 100+km away from the carrier. Overall, the Archon never seems to have enough birds in the air; in the training mission for carrier command, the player is instructed to have 4 flights on patrol at any given point, basically, to cover all approaches to the carrier group. The friendly AI doesn't seem to do this. Many of the times when I launched recently there would be pairs of S-hawks or eagles just sitting in space, at rest relative to the Archon. These guys probably should have been on patrol, not just sitting around. I wonder if the "escort" AI needs to be tweaked; if fighters are told to escort a 'stationary' craft, they probably should fly in a circle around it or something to keep their sensors sweeping across various approaches.

In summary: the Archon needs to keep more birds in the air on patrol, launch more intercepts as well as T-bolt assault packages, preferably with fighter escort (either s-hawk or eagle would be ideal since they could carry a light ASM load in addition to MRMs and SRMs)

Speaking of t-bolts, does anyone else feel like their internals get trashed way too easily? The last 3-4 assault missions I've flown, I've lost my guns before I've gotten into gun range. It seems the first time an enemy gun looks at my fighter the wrong way, my guns fail. Same way for sensors on the other fighters, which I don't mind nearly as much; that makes a lot more sense to me than the A-10-type craft losing it's heavy guns at the slightest brush with enemy fire.

Now, don't get me wrong; I love Starshatter. I've played it off and on since version 2 or something, back when the weapons panel was it's own dedicated screen like the engineering one and there were precisely three ships: Stormhawk, Berents and Spectre, though I guess there must have been a carrier as well. I've been very impressed with how far the game has come; I just want to see it get better!

Oh, and one other thing: I still think there should be an EMCON property on nav points; it'd be nice to be able to send assault packages under stealth to hit enemy ships

I definately agree, I've seen the same thing happen and worse with the Archon and with other ships in the other campaigns. Though in a kind of paradox I've also seen the ENEMY AI preform what I thought were some brilliant manuevers like having a main carrier battlegroup right in front of my fleet to distract the strikes and cap ships while a second group of destroys and cruisers manuevers from behind to smash the fleet in the rear. That was a very painful thing to watch as I lost most of the fleet in the Highland campaign and couldn't do a thing to support them in my little Eagle.

I guess that's an improvement over the FFs charging ahead of the DDs. Still not buying this until the friendly AI is less frustrating.

Yeap I agree with all of that. My main concern would be the lack of command in each SQ, what I mean is, just like when a player takes over say a crusier SQ and can give orders to all ships in that SQ, the AI should do this too. So when one ship in a SQ sees an enemy and reports it to the SQ leader, he orders all the ships to act together. Instead of what seems to happen now; ship that sees the enemy first engages first and gets cut to ribbens, the next ship does the same.. so while their squad mates are getting hammered... the other ships in the squad just sit there and take it.
Like someone point out above me, sometimes the AI enemy does seem more complex and clever, and yet it's not convincing enough that you'd think maybe they were just flukes.

I think the game is great, and one of a kind right now, but if the AI is fixed this game would be a real great one, a cult game maybe, but a great one at that.

Anyway, once command AI is fixed, then I'd like to see a fixed carrier AI, as it does not do too badly currently, well not as bad as captial ship squads.