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[Wyvern]

A bomber-equipped carrier with no fighter strike order set should prioritize not sending its fighters past enemy ships. I see this all the time at the start of combat: the carrier picks some destroyer+ sized target, sends its fighters over the initial screen of enemy frigates, and loses half of them to entirely avoidable fire.

For at least the specific fighters I'm using on the ship I'm noticing this with (1x longbow, 2x dagger), the correct call would be to send the fighters against the nearest enemy, swapping targets if that 'nearest enemy' ends up behind some other enemy ship; this is a bomber setup that can be quite effective against frigates if the AI would just use it that way.

[Alex]

Hmm. That does make sense, though it'd have to distinguish between types of bombers at that point - replace the Daggers with Cobras or Piranhas or pretty much any unguided bomber, and that evaluation changes.

[Wyvern]

Hmm. That does make sense, though it'd have to distinguish between types of bombers at that point - replace the Daggers with Cobras or Piranhas or pretty much any unguided bomber, and that evaluation changes.

Somewhat yes, somewhat no - such bombers wouldn't be effective against frigates, but I'd argue that the carrier should still prioritize not sending them over enemy ships.

I'm not sure there is a 'right thing' to do if you're using unguided bombers there, but the 'good' choices are to send them off against a frigate anyway, even if they won't connect - they'll still distract the thing and make it dodge ordnance - or to just keep the bombers in reserve and wait for a better target.

(Well, okay, there's an exception: the Khopesh, despite being unguided, should generally still be allowed to target frigates; the spread of its rockets means it's got a good chance of still getting some hits in.)

[Oni]

Hmm. That does make sense, though it'd have to distinguish between types of bombers at that point - replace the Daggers with Cobras or Piranhas or pretty much any unguided bomber, and that evaluation changes.

Honestly, I'd set it up that way anyway. Targeting frigates without going over them is better more often than not, and unless we get the ability to assign fighter groups to allow them to go after different targets...  would that actually be possible?

Allowing the player to assign fighter bays to a specific "Fighter Group" to allow you to separate your fighters and bombers and have different targets? Maybe a variation on the 'Weapon Group' function.

[Cruacious]

I think allowing carriers to assign individual strike groups to targets would be a solid feature to add as it would allow players (and maybe the AI) to more selectively manage their bomber and fighter resources.

[Oni]

I think allowing carriers to assign individual strike groups to targets would be a solid feature to add as it would allow players (and maybe the AI) to more selectively manage their bomber and fighter resources.

Right now, for the sake of simplicity, I'm kinda envisioning something like this:

When you have fighter bays on a ship a new button pops up/unlocks near where the 'Weapon Groups' is or within the 'Weapon Groups' popup a new section showing the fighter bays appears (whichever is easier to program). This show the same grid that 'Weapon Groups' have now, with whatever fighter group you have in a bay being listed like the weapons are. The vertical rows would be for basic strategies and priorities. The first is 'Default' (ie the standard behaviour already in the game), the second is 'Interdiction' (will attempt to actively intercept enemy fighters and missiles), then 'Assault - Light' (will prioritize cruisers and smaller ships), 'Assault - Heavy' (will prioritize cruisers and larger ships), 'Sentinel' (will stick close to and attempt to defend their carrier), etc.

These preset strats would be in effect unless given orders during a fight (which would take priority for all fighters), and resume when those orders are complete or cancelled. You could pobably keep the current 'Regroup' combat function as is with this.

I... think that'd work. 

[Wyvern]

While being able to split up your fighter wings is an interesting idea, it's kindof orthogonal to my original point of changing the AI to not send its fighters on obvious suicide runs.

Also, while it might work for AI-controlled carriers, I think it'd get a bit clunky for a player-controlled carrier. It's already tricky enough to get fighters going at one target while firing missiles at a different target, and adding multiple different fighter targets would just get increasingly problematic to manage.


That said, adding an option for specifying "How should the AI use this carrier's fighters?" is something I'd be entirely in favor of, especially for battlecarriers - the Defensive Targeting Array hullmod is a very nice option to have, but it'd also be nice to have something that told the AI to support itself with its fighters while not clipping them to zero roaming range - you can imagine, for example, a battlecarrier that focuses on HE-type weaponry and then uses longbows to get its kinetic damage - but the AI currently doesn't work for that, since it'll send its fighters off at some random target that isn't what it's shooting at. (Or, if you give it longbows with DTA, it'll only get its kinetic damage at point-blank range.)