Interesting insights Buddye, thanks for that.
It looks to me, as someone who has no idea of how these things really work, that you have a set of potential manouvres that are triggered by where the planes are in relation to each other and what their individual state is (damage, speed, skill level etc.) With variations in how well the manouvres are carried out also based on the planes individual state, but with some randomness thrown in as well.
In laymans terms, that would mean the more of those manouvre routines you have, and the more often the game re-calculates which routine is required under the changing circumstances, the better.
What a nightmare lol
And by that I mean, where do you set the point at which the game still remains playable and all your computing power doesn't get chewed up by calculating what the AI should do?
It's always got to be a compromise.
But even so, it's hard to accept that some of the behaviour we see in Cliffs Of Dover is the unavoidable result of making compromises to work within those fundamental computational limits.
It could be done better, right? There are ways to make the AI conform to at least a basic set of player expectations aren't there? And if those expectations were conveyed to the developers they wouldn't be too difficult to meet, would they? Just asking for your opinion based on your understanding of what's involved and what you've seen of Cliffs Of Dover in it's current state. I know you've already said the AI could be worked on endlessly and that the developers couldn't afford to do that, just wondering how far you think they might be able to get.