Quote:
Originally Posted by Stig1207
Sure pilots did stupid things and made mistakes, especially in the heat of combat, and AI making wrong choices, making a run for it instead of a fight, and so on is as it should be, that's realistic. However, an AI wingman that clears his lead's his tail without being ordered to do so, is also more realistic than one that doesn't.
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I agree. If you're a wingman, your standing orders are to keep enemy planes from attacking your lead.
A wingman who doesn't do that unless you specifically tell him to do so isn't much of a wingman. Maybe for Rookie AI, but certainly Average or better wingmen should move aggressively to drive off enemy planes threatening his lead - WITHOUT BEING COMMANDED TO DO SO.
The only exception would be if the wingman has been forced to take evasive action himself and/or has lost Situational Awareness as to where his lead is.
If the AI wingman doesn't do this automatically, then there should be some way of making it do so, by creating "standing orders" for AI.
Actually, the ability for mission builders and/or players to "program" the AI using standing orders would be an incredibly cool addition to the game, and would be a very simple way to deal with a whole host of tactical situations that would otherwise drive an AI programmer nuts.
I could see it working sort of like a macro or script, where the player/mission builder could order certain units to do things like hold a certain course or altitude relative to another plane, fire/not fire at certain targets, avoid/attack certain planes or classes of planes, etc. Variants of this programming could be used to do things like make fighters stay within a certain distance of the bombers they're escorting, make bombers divert to a secondary target if clouds cover the primary target, fighters only drop drop tanks if they encounter fighters, or have planes in your flight trail enemy planes back to their base.