4.0.3 Fighter Behaviour

[Yorkshire Tea]

Having managed to get 2 new hard drives in my machine I've been replaying Operation Highland on a clean 4.0.3 install, and on Veteran difficulty, as commander of the Gerrond DESRON group.

Slight spoilerage ahead...

Well, all was fine, but now I'm getting creamed on Day 8 in Jalah [:(] (Played till midway through Nightfall in 4.0.2 without too many probs).

My problem is with the new fighter AI. As soon as you take an offensive action against any enemy capship group you get at least 8, and usually 16 enemy fighters laiden with torpedos bearing down on you from the two carrier groups (Manticore and t'other one). These make mincemeat out of my destroyer command - and there is no option for asking for fighter cover from the Archon (you think they could set up a 4 or 8 ship CAP to travel with my destroyer group).

Secondly the new enemy fighter AI seems to send a fair number of ships into a circular loop around the target, cutting through the main horizontal plane, at speeds in excess of 2000m/s and with a 75km+ radius. This means that, even though they are not shooting at you and you can't do a thing about them, you can't end the mission with esc+1 because the enemy is too near. Quite amusing watching them orbit around me though [8D]

After 2 hours of this repeated looping on 4x speed [>:]- I got bored and ended the mission by ramming the destroyer Mattock with the Gerrond. [8|]

Soooo....

1. How do you request assisstance as a destroyer commander? You can do it as a fighter pilot by radioing control. Apologies if I've missed something in the manual. I suppose I could ask the Archon to "cover me" [:)]

2. Could PDB's be given the ability to target torps launched off fighters, or be extended in range? Or could someone retrofit the Asher class with a Mark 7 launcher [:)]

3. Could anyone spare a few Berents class Frigates, I need some more, or could someone ask the Shadow DESRON to get a b****y move on [:)]

More seriously, could the looping fighter behaviour be looked at? (Just tried it myself, using a Stormhawk as a test I pulled out off plane and started a vertical loop on max. afterburner - was soon up to 5.3km/s - wonder if the AI is having the same problems?)

[jmccormack]

Something similiar happened to me in MP. One of my kids was the titan CVBG and I was the Archon CVBG. We would sent out a flight of fighters on a ship strike mission and they would just circle around the target and would not fire or be fired at...I had no probelm directing fighters to attack other fighters just the ship striks were not working.

Now this DID NOT happen in the single player Missions where you attach the opposing carrier group... Ship strikes were easy to do and very pretty to watch the opposing side explode!!!!!

Anybody have any ideas/fixes for this????