Dang it! I never knew so many people would answer while I'm figure skating back to home through the 3 km long bicycle way. So I'll try to answer some questions and suggestions quickly today. I'm in a urgent good night sleep here.
There was a command in FS1 and FS2 called "disarm my target", that's what it does (including blob turrets)
If I remember correctly, this is not prioritized in retail version - or then the wingmen never destroyed the most dangerous AAA-weapon for some reason. Anyways, the most important thing is that the command is single target related and the wingmen will fixate to that target until the most dangerous stuff has been blown up. Sure you could command it yourself to each wingmen, but that suddenly makes your fingers really dance on the keyboard. Besides, I usually don't have time to check through the capital ship cannons and AAA-weaponry if they have been destroyed. What I think would be of the lines: "You may freely engage and destroy any and all AAA-beams and flak cannons, but nothing else. Please make sure you each destroy a different target."
How do you define "complete"? There have been completed releases already.
A version that has standardized FRED commands and the same functionality in every computer. I don't want to design a mission that relies on some OpenFRED-thing which doesn't appear the same like with every computer. Also, no glitches and bugs. How does this differ from the current release paths? Current releases tend to happen on a faster rate, while I have had difficulties to follow which things have been changed in which version, especially in Graphics department and in SEXP-lists. What I would like to see is a surely working version of the FSOpen that contains the basic commands that will be found in every version after it and those commands will function always exactly the same way. A building block version if you will.
Anyone who knocks the AI in Freespace just doesn't know how to use it properly.
And that's more of a "knowing how to play the game" fault.
Here I'm already thinking of RE-writing a mission (dang Windows XP reinstallation and dang nuclear1 and Mongoose) that will surely change that attitude. Also, check Falcon 4.0 AI for a reference of almost believeable behaving airplanes. Of course, FreeSpace is faster paced, but here computer doesn't need to calculate turn rates and energies in dogfight. Also, what is wrong with the missile evasion of the wingmen?
Target a hostile. See the little filled red circles next to its target box? Each red circle means one of your wingmen is attacking that target. This was a feature first implemented in an old FS1 patch.
While we're talking about subsystems, just remember one thing, according to the AI code (which the SCP team hasn't changed at all) any computer pilot firing at a subsystem has 100% accuracy. So C-3-4 can be useful, although in practice it's too tedious to bother with that exploit.
But this is not what I tried to say! I don't want to specifically command every ship under my command to engage a different enemy. They could do it automatically, maybe even informing player (chatter before the real battle, but important with Trebuchet scenarios) which one which wingman will take - and also informing player when they change targets after the last one was destroyed or priorities change (important while dogfighting). Some of the wingmen casualities are related to the player not being able to follow their actions while himself engaged.
Also, some prescribed attack patterns could be useful wingmen commands, like "Launch longest range missiles and return formation", Bracket - type tricks would be nice of course with the additional option for dragging the enemy so that you can get a shot to its tail. Also a quick command for immediate maximum turn rate turn to up/down/left/right to a specific wingman would be useful. Like they tell you there's someone behind you (would it be difficult to add a best possible direction on the message to counter the enemy?), you could also effect them to not get shot down so easily with these, while getting the enemy in your crosshairs.
Would it be possible for wingmen to actually keep in pace with Alpha 1 if he decides to direct all energy to engines and use the afterburner?
Mika
