AI Overloads Aircraft to their Detriment

Show us how intelligent you are by discussing the AI in this forum.

Moderators: Balthagor, Legend, Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
AtomicBoboli
Warrant Officer
Posts: 26
Joined: Jul 09 2006
Location: United States

AI Overloads Aircraft to their Detriment

Post by AtomicBoboli »

This is a rather interesting issue with the AI, and deserves some background first.

Russian campaign. The subject is Kirov, an AI state that rubbed the Moscow AI the wrong way. Despite a terrible bottleneck for the Moscow forces, costing them big, Kirov lost their capital after only a few months. In an aggressive maneuver unlike the usual AI, the Kirov AI sent several air strike missions over their ex-capital in the months following its fall. They caught the Moscow forces there completely by surprise. No fighter response, no SAMs for hundreds of klicks in any direction. It all worked perfectly except for one thing...

The Kirov aircraft would never fire a single shot!

Checking these aircraft, I see that they're so heavily loaded with missiles, which they are not using, that they have no ability to attack ground targets. I am unsure if the missiles were simply the wrong role, as would be the case for anti-ship missiles, or too short-ranged, as would be the case for freefall bombs.

In any case, I do figure that the AI's predilection for filling every missile slot available with a missile, at the earliest possible moment, to be detrimental to the effectiveness of their airforce. Sure, missiles can be awesome, but only when they're actually used. The attack values inherent to the aircraft can be just as effective, if not more so.

That highlights the other problem, that the AI did not use the missiles it had. Assuming that all of the aircraft could not have been loaded entirely with missiles of the improper role, I reach the following conclusion: the alteration to the FIRE MISSILE mission kneecaps the AI aircraft when it comes to deploying extremely short-ranged weapons such as the freefall bomb, which they like to build. Instead, they buzz around their targets, outside of the range at which they could actually do damage.

Of course, I understand that the close-to-attack feature was removed to enhance the survivability of the launching unit, but considering how many units the AI manufactures, it would not appear to be much of a problem for them. Perhaps having an AI-only, Aircraft-only version of the FIRE MISSILE mission would be a solution.

(EDIT: I searched the forums before posting, and did not find anything regarding this issue. Of course, I may have missed it, but I just wanted to be sure that someone was aware of this.)
Post Reply

Return to “AI - Artificial Intelligence”