AI will fire missiles in lots of cases where it really shouldn't be doing it, some relatively clean examples:
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21842.0
Thank you for the link! The 4th item is a bug that's currently fixed in-dev. #3 I'm not sure about, that does look a bit odd.
#1 and #2 - using the Hurricane - is expected behavior. For most missiles, there's an ammo capacity where the AI won't care about conserving it and will just fire it off. For the Hurricane, this is set to 5, so it'll start out by using a bunch of them without much concern for the tactical situation. This can be a good thing, especially of there are many of them on the field.
For most other missiles, this ammo capacity - where it'll conserve missiles - is burst size times 9. So, for example, a ship with maxed out Harpoon racks (or pods!) will still conserve all of them. The Breach is set to conserve all of its ammo - or, rather, it can be free with its fire (and actually is much more so in-dev), but the decisions are always based on the tactical situation, there's no point where it suddenly gets more or less conservative.
Also see Onslaughts fire Typhoons at fighters pretty often, 4 missiles in their own alternating group.
First few times thought it's a fluke but been keeping an eye on it and sometimes just does it with nothing else around, and not being close to dying.
Onslaughts do routinely fire reaper torpedoes at fighters, particularly fighters launched by Astrals. I have no idea why.
Oh, interesting! Is there an easy simulation where I can check this out? This sounds like a bug.
One trick I've learned recently on Enforcers with Reapers is to put the Reapers in 2 groups, each one composed of the reapers on one side of the ship, each in alternating mode. This bypasses the AI's tendency to fire 1 reaper, overload the target, and then not fire anymore because it switches to the other group to fire off another. I suspect there is some sort of anti-overkill timer on reapers that this kind of grouping can bypass to make the weapons more effective.
The AI doesn't like to fire the same STRIKE group in rapid succession; it's... basically an early move towards avoiding Reaper etc overkill/wasting all of them too quickly. It can also be extra punishing for the player when they're on the receiving end.
Are ships aware of other ships in the fleet that have already fired missiles?
Yes! Within a certain (large) radius of the target.
Also, maybe if the AI knows that firing linked groups would be really excessive overkill (20 harpoons for a hound) it should not fire instead? Not sure if that would be the best behavior, but also not sure that there is actually good behavior in that situation. I would definitely prefer a ship with 5 linked harpoon pods to just hold fire vs a hound personally.
I get what you're saying, but this sort of thing is really tricky - the example makes sense, but even then it's not *always* true (consider a 1-1 when one ship *just* has 5 linked harpoon pods), but the really complicated thing is drawing the line.
What the AI actually does here is introduce a random factor into the decision to fire non-kinetic missiles at shieldless ships - or, rather, just shieldless frigates - and increase the likelihood if the ship's own flux is getting higher. So for example, if you have a Legion with those 5x linked Harpoon Pods, it's very unlikely to use them at all when facing off against a pair of Hounds. Throw in something else that can apply enough shield pressure to drive up its flux, though, and it will use the missiles to get rid of them quickly. I think this works quite well, actually!
I'm kind of surprised to see the "AI wastes all its missiles against Hounds" thing pop up here and there. It used to do this, yes, but to the best of my knowledge it doesn't anymore, and I wonder how much that's just a meme at this point rather than reality. I mean, it'll fire a salvo *sometimes*, but it's very far from being a clockwork "see Hound, waste missiles" situation. For example, I just went through 5 fights - Legion vs 2x Hound - and it didn't fire a single Harpoon salvo.
Put a Buffalo Mk.2 in there, though, and the missiles start flying. I wonder if maybe this logic should be applied to destroyers, as well - or if the Buffalo Mk.2 should get a special flag that lets the AI know not to waste missiles on it...