OK, I'll try to keep this really short. Basically, the Admiral AI has a bunch of issues and I think it would be better if it:
1. Did not throw in all of its Fighters and Frigates solo without decent support.
Just got to watch this happen; a huge fleet with huge fighter complement got chewed up largely because, after the one giant carrier that warped in died, the Admiral, instead of immediately replacing it (it had 6 more, just in the "giant carrier of Dewm" category, let alone smaller support Carriers) threw in a bunch of Frigates who all became, shall we say,
crisped.
2. The Admirals need to use mixed-arms approaches and respond to player tactics a little better.
Most problems are better-solved with more than one tool, rather than trying to use a sledgehammer to crack nuts. It's not that a sledgehammer won't work... but usually it's a waste.
For example, the AI fleet has 5 Onslaughts, 10 Dominators and 20 destroyers of mixed types.
The player chooses 3 uber-capitals.
The AI has a 200-DP budget; it can deploy most, but not all, of this group. So it should throw in 3 Onslaughts, 6 Dominators and as many destroyers as it has DP left. Dominators should support each Onslaught, who in turn should be given the player's ships as the objective... and
all of the Destroyers should be sent to Engage
one of the player's capitals, preferably one of the ones the Player is
not piloting, because that's smart, it might even work.
If nothing else, they probably manage to do some serious Armor damage to the capital and soften it up for the Onslaughts with escorts; even if the player has a huge late-game tech advantage, it'll probably give the player a run for their money.
What the current AI tends to do instead: send in the Destroyers first, up to the maximum DP, even if that doesn't actually make sense. I am 100% OK with the Admiral AI deciding what to do only when the players' cards are on the table; sure, that leaves the Player with some ways to game the system (by deploying more slowly, or adjusting once the AI's committed) but that's all good, presuming the AI has at least a decent DP advantage (2:1 or better, or it really should be running away, if player DP is > 50-ish).
3. Use Strike selectively and well. I never ever see the AI mass fighters somewhere nice and safe and use Strike / Harass to single out a target for complete devastation like players can. Five wings of Talons can kill a Destroyer; so why aren't they doing that, then running away for the next 30 seconds, then returning for another round of concentrated gunplay?
4. Be less obsessed with the Player-piloted ship, if it has a choice of targets, because usually defeating the Player's escorts pays better.
Granted, the Player's personal ship is awesome and terrifying and all that. Ship AIs
should be very worried about letting the Player's ship close, unless they've gotten an Engage order from the Admiral AI.
But usually, if you kill its escorts first by deliberately concentrating on them, that's the smart thing to do (and it'd certainly make players worry more about proper tactics, rather than just "ball of Dewm" with the player's flagship as the point of the spear).
Moreover, it'd push players to actually treat their fellow fleet-members a little more realistically; instead of "everybody deployed, follow me", the player might have to think more about where the attack vector is and adjust their uber-ship to blunt the assault, or deliberately concentrate the fleet elements to give the player's ship the "anvil" it needs to "hammer" against (a tactic I use fairly frequently with great effect, largely because the AI is so bad at concentration).
5. I honestly think that CP is largely a wasted opportunity with the way things are, largely because the Admiral AI is so easy to cheese and the system is so binary; instead of CP as it currently stands, I'd like to see a system where CP regenerates according to the CP rating (i.e., we'd still gain CP ratings just like now, only it would influence how many CP we could spend per minute or minutes) I also think that giving commands while paused should be removed and I think that pausing should revert us to the Captain view and not even be possible in Fleet Control view. All of the advantages here go to the player, other than the lack of CP to do anything useful if you don't go get those points.
Right now, either you have enough CP to do something vaguely like tactical control or you don't; if the Admiral AI got a bit smarter it'd be really nice to see this part of the game get a little heavier and deeper and I think that I'd rather see the AI get a bit smarter but make it a lot rougher on players- offer them RTS-like control, but you can't use sheer APM to win; winning should be about analysis and, as Clauswitz put it, "Concentration of force involves the decisive, synchronized application of superior fighting power"... "to realize intended effects, when and where required."
6. Most of the time, the AI would do better to
stay on the defensive and play much more cautiously than it does right now, concentrate and attempt to flank rather than rolling in for frontal assaults right up the middle and then dribble in reinforcements that will get killed as individuals. The most terrifying part of a big fleet battle is when the AI actually concentrates successfully, but this usually feels like luck, rather than anything skillful; most of the time, the AI would be far better off waiting for the scouts to find me, then deliberately concentrating somewhere and waiting for my fleet to close with it, rather than lumbering in my general direction. A lot of this has to do with ship speeds; because the Admiral AI doesn't appear to use Escort much, it's dispersing itself and gets blown away in isolated firefights rather than staying concentrated. So the AI should be pretty cautious about moving its main force around, to prevent dispersion.
The Admiral AI is often getting itself into great positions early, capping points on the sides of the battlefield, but then charges at player concentrations with less force than is required.
To put it another way; IRL, the minimum force ratio you want, if attacking a defender on the terrain of their choosing, is 3:1. The AI often has those kinds of numbers, but wastes them by not concentrating; a piecemeal attack is far less likely to succeed, regardless of force ratios, because the force ratio at the point of contact is insufficient (basically, the player has the local advantage in terms of force ratios, as well as being on the tactical defensive).
To put it one last way; this is a problem
Mount and Blade also suffered from; the AI basically just mobbed the player stupidly and died in job lots if the player knew what he / she was doing and used terrain well. I once wrote a better AI for it that kept the AI troops concentrated and only allowed them to charge when it wouldn't result in much dispersion, and sometimes it stayed on the defensive. Newbie, non-tactical players
hated it when the AI defended, because then the shoe was on the other foot; tackling a concentrated enemy is quite a lot harder
7. The Admiral AI needs to know how to retreat. Not "leave the battlefield" Retreat, but the real thing- a tactical redeployment that moves its lines away from the current center of conflict and allows the forces to re-concentrate. This is pretty simple to do; pick a location far away from any large concentration of the player's forces and gather everybody there at the best speeds they can manage. This may mean losing a few ships, but re-concentrating is a huge force multiplier, and it can trap the enemy.
8. Take a pause and refresh. This doesn't come up for anything but the SDF battle in Vanilla, but it's obvious that it's not happening in Vacuum. The Admiral AI doesn't think in terms of "waves", which it should, even to the point of sending in forces, doing some damage, taking some damage, then Retreating those forces off the map to send in the next round, fresh, fully-armed and ready. It just sends in forces straight into the meat-grinder over and over and over and... yeah.
9. The battlefield's pretty wide. Why do all of the reinforcements come in through a really narrow "tunnel"? Just offsetting the new spawn points to the full width of the battlefield would be better than how it works now. With really big AI fleets and a powerful-enough player fleet, you can literally concentrate and destroy the enemy before they've gotten a chance to fire, because they arrive with Burn Drive on. Speaking of which...
10. Burn Drive for reinforcements (as opposed to the initial arrivals, where it's cool) is bad. Really really bad.
It's totally cool when we
arrive this way initially, but in long battles, it's a
major problem.
It totally hoses the AI and it doesn't make much sense; IRL, they might be held back as a reserve or whatnot, but they aren't going to be
that far away. More importantly, it means AI reinforcements arrive and are
totally helpless for several precious seconds, without shields or weapons on. Perhaps the best solution is to allow shields up and weapons hot; it would be pretty logical to arrive to a battle ready to fight rather than as a helpless target.
Yeah, that doesn't come up much in Vanilla. But it comes up all the time in modded scenarios where we're fighting big fleets, and as fleet sizes and all that gradually gets worked on for Vanilla, I kind of expect that fleet sizes will go up (after all, the SDF's only considered to be moderately challenging for the vets and there is no equivalent for other factions) and then this is going to matter more.
11. Be a little smarter about what it thinks it can win. 5 Frigates might take a player-driven Cruiser, maybe, but they'll take a non-Player-driven Destroyer every time and probably without loss. If it can't find an opportunity like that, it's time to decide whether to leave or throw in the Civilian ships it has and go for broke. Speaking of which...
12. Civilian ships are being wasted. Frequently, their presence might result in a win, but they're being relegated to running away. Just because they're Civilian doesn't mean they're completely helpless and don't have any combat power. A freighter with Drones in Vanilla, for example, is pretty powerful until the Drones have been killed off, simply because of how badly the ship AIs handle Drones atm (seriously, the Vanilla Ship AI likes to sit and target each Drone in an array, one by one, individually, before it takes a swipe at the Drones' source, and this is usually a huge mistake, even in Vanilla where Drones are pretty lethal vs. unshielded targets).
13. Carriers are being wasted. They should never be sent anywhere near the center of battlefields unless there are literally no alternatives. Carriers should always be posted to lurk in the back fields; they're just not competitive against dedicated combat ships and shouldn't be wasted; their primary purpose is always to keep fighter swarms in play, their secondary purpose is to stay alive, and a distant third is fire-support with LRMs if they have them. Now that fighters don't totally suck for points, keeping Carriers alive is a much bigger deal.
14. Fighters shouldn't be posted without Carrier support unless there aren't any available. Seriously; it's such a huge force multiplier for fighters, regardless of whether they ever get "smarter" in any other way. Even a crappy one-deck Civilian Carrier is much better than none at all. 3 of the fastest Wings to cap Objectives is enough; anything past that should require Carrier support.
15. Destroyers and Frigates need to hunt in packs; dribbling them in as reinforcements in a large-scale battle (anything where there are > 75 initial DP on one ore more sides) is just plain wasteful. Again, 5 Frigates usually won't handle a player-driven Cruiser, let alone a Capital; it's wasteful to throw anything less at them, regardless of the rated DP (and supposed power). If the Admiral doesn't have the DP, it should wait for casualties to clear out enough DP to bring in a force that can actually do some good, or it should Retreat a few things.
16. It'd be nice and probably serve the AI better to be able to Retreat stuff and have it returned to the Fleet pool. If deployed again, deduct some CR; probably less than the initial Deployment cost, but more than zero. Retreated ships should get their Flux returned to zero again and get their weapons / engines repaired; in Vanilla, they can't heal their Hulls or Armor, so it's not like they're totally fixed up. One of the cool things about doing this is that neither the Player nor the AI would want to get close to the Retreat borders, especially if arriving on Burn Drive didn't leave ships helpless, since that would open you up to counter-assault by ships with "refreshed" Flux and ready weapons.
Anyhow, these are my thoughts about this, after watching a few tests with Random Battle and huge-enough fleets that these dynamics are totally apparent.
