FWIW I agree with toning down AI flanking (and missile) concerns in specific situations. The AI's preoccupation with it stalls out some opportunistic moves under certain conditions. The main issue I have is when, say, an enemy ship overloads and begins retreating and I have a ship nearby that could take advantage of this. I give an eliminate command but my AI ship won't capitalize on the overload because it could be flanked by a nearby enemy. Alternatively, incoming missiles could stall it out long enough that the window is gone even though I as the player knows that AI ship's PD could handle it. Before speed is mentioned, I've personally taken control of the ship when it happens under my flagship's autopilot and proved that I
can get there in time and do damage. The AI just isn't willing to in that situation. Alternatively, when a slower ship has high flux and is trying to retreat and vent and I do the same command. Sometimes the AI ship won't get into full weapon range and the weapons it is using isn't quite enough to prevent hard flux from dissipating. Once again, I feel like an opportunity was lost because of AI cautiousness despite a direct order to the contrary. The thing is, it doesn't always happen that way - just sometimes. But a common denominator in these situations is nearby enemy ships or missiles. So that is my assumption of what is probably the culprit.
How to fix it specifically? Maybe make it so that if there is an escort order on the player AI ship or an eliminate command on the enemy ship that the player AI ship is assigned to, then it won't consider flanking or missiles when engaging at all? Of course, that's assuming its easy to "turn that behavior off" under that context. I mean, it
kind of does that already if there is an allied ship in between a flanking enemy and the ship in question right? It at least seems like it does in practice. I've noticed that additional enemy ships nearby can still give the AI pause in that scenario, however. Not sure if that change would slow down battles or not, but I think it would help the player use commands to get out of a situation of stagnation and make opportunistic strikes without having to have their flagship nearby.
As a counterpoint for reference: Alex made a really good point a while ago that cautious AI allows for lots of situations for the player to personally intervene - either to kill a priority enemy target or save an allied ship in a bad situation. So some stagnation is good. As a whole, I very much agree with that analysis. If the player only gets to really fight one or two ships in a big battle before its over
and has to reconcile with losses because of suicidal AI, that wouldn't be very fun and would inevitably shift the meta into only fast ships more than it already is.
On the other hand, I get pretty frustrated by the scenario I mentioned. I guess the best way of putting it is that I don't want RTS level micromanagement, but I want enough control through commands to be able to use tactics like that consistently and I'm perfectly fine with paying the price of a lost ship if I misjudge the situation. I mostly can already, it is just that one scenario in particular that bugs me, and I have a feeling it is because of flanking and missile concerns. Personal flying is a lot of fun don't get me wrong, but I'm a tactics junky at heart lol.
It's a pretty tough call because if ships make a bee line without trying to coordinate, that itself can cause problems against large and tough enemies as they can pick off superior numbers piecemeal that way, but I'm just more ok with losing ships I guess. I don't think that is necessarily the popular opinion though.
I'd call my problem an edge case for sure as it requires a specific situation, but it is a painful one as I really like to use the AI and commands. That, and nothing is more frustrating to me than an overloaded enemy ship that I can't do anything to punish.