I've been playing vanilla 0.53a for the past week or so regularly. I just got around to testing out a fleet of frigates (Hyperions and Omens) with a CapShip as my flagship (Paragon). Systems definitely flip the balance of fights into some odd situations sometimes (chasing down a Burndriving ship that's trying to escape sucks...) Anyway...
Orders vs Combat:I think I mentioned this before, but ships seem to prioritize chasing and fighting things near them instead of doing what you tell them to do. This mostly comes into play most when insteading Capture/Assault command on a CapPoint and the ships keep wandering off to fight fighters and other enemy ships in the area instead of staying near the poin to actually, you know, capture it... Now, I do understand that officer trait will come into play later in the game (once implemented). From what little I know of the plan for them, there will be officers that have this behavioral pattern. Still, until they get implemented, I'd like ships to actually do what their told instead of having a case of ADD and chasing after the first "butterfly" they see.
BTW, the above also happens when telling ships to engage a specific ship or rally/defend waypoint. If they're engaged, they'll KEEP fighting until the their current engagement is over with before carrying out the order given. I get that turning tail might be a bad idea in some situations, but it's absurd for a Hyperion (or three) with extended shields and elite crew to not just teleport the hell away to disengage from a fight (with an Onslaught I'm distracting using my Paragon) when ordered to do something else. Especially when it has the flux to do so.
On a related note, I kinda wish the ships would be on a tighter "leash" when using the Defend command on Capture Points. They sometimes wander too far away and wind up leaving the point actually undefended (one ship I can understand, but having 3-5 ships do that on one point kinda irritating...)
In general, I don't mind ships
fighting back while carrying out an order. It's them
focusing on the fighting when told to do something else that annoys me. I'd rather have:
- "Oh! There's an enemy frigate in my flight path to my destination. I'll only consider return or opportunity fire. I don't need to chase him down," instead of
- "OH~! ENEMY FRIGATE! HUNT HIM DOWN! KILL! KILL! KILL!
There's also the fact ships tend to ping-pong between attacking targets (whichever happens to be closer) instead of concentrating on one target and finishing off the ship they've weakened to near-dead. It sucks when you have 2 Onslaughts and a Dominator bunched close together and all your ships are spreading their fire across all three enemy ships as they change relative distances.
Piloting/Flight Pathing:So I find the AI still tends to love flying right into/across my firing line on a ship I'm targetting. This has been compounded by some of the systems, like Phase Teleporters/Skimmers. I'm unloading a salvo of Auto-Pulse/Pulse fire on an Onslaught... And one (or two) of my Hyperions decide to take a "shortcut" across my firing line while trying to circle strafe that Onslaught.
In another case, I had a Hyperion teleport right in front of me JUST as I unloaded on a targetted ship. He got killed enough to be obliterated/destroyed instead of just disabled. This seems to be partly due to the AI's (usually excellent) tendency to teleport into a ship's unshielded arc.
Is there any chance of getting the AI to avoid flying between the player's ship and any ship s/he has targetting and within range of getting hit by the players weapons (or 1000 range, give or take)? The AI seems MUCH better at avoiding collisions now (especially the Hyperion), but it seems very oblivious to friendly-fire situations with the player. It doesn't seem to have many issues about friendly-fire in regards to other AI-controlled vessels.