I appreciate the human player being able to override. Still this is only a workaround for a serious incapability of the AI. Also it is somewhat unfair, because the computer controlled opponent's side doesn't benefit from this workaround.
The core problem persists. There are situations in which the AI proves to be unable to prioritize threats. You can't really make decisions in advance for all kind of threats during a pre planned mission. You have to trust basic abilities of the AI to deem it capable of accomplishing the mission. Otherwise nobody would create missions anymore, we would all fly our missions manually. As much as we don't need to land aircraft manually at the end of a mission, we shouldn't be needed to override rather suicidal decisions of our AI pilot.
Currently the AI pilot may solely focus on mission tasks or some bingo state, while he has the foe in weapons range at is six. AI should be able to handle a basic and simple decision like that. Currently it isn't. The AI is deciding wrong. And in my opinion it would improve the gameplay very much if something would be done about that. The AI has to understand that preserving it's own existence is ALWAYS the highest priority (see below) and that the more immediate danger to its existence deserves the highest attention at all times.
Working around this inability can help in the shorter term. But this has limits.
1. To be able to override this wrong AI decisionmaking, the human player before even has to notice this situation happening. Probably no issue with a small scenario, but absolutely depending on luck if you have a dozen assets flying across your screen.
2. To interfere after noticing it, you will still have to unassign from current mission (possibly triggering unwanted departures of other a/c tasked with this mission when obeying a 1/3 rule) and issue a F1 onto the nearby threat. This takes several seconds. Seconds in which your pilot, who may even have been in the advantageous position, will have dropped into a disadvantageous dogfight stance, leaving him much more vulnerable and likely to become downed unnecessarily.
3. The computer controlled side doesn't have this workaround. If the red side pilots runs into bingo while dogfighting with your pilots, they are doomed and will be shot by your guys like sitting ducks.
Self defense is always the priority. The player shouldn't have to plan for that, nor do I see how he could do so.
Like in my other thread addressing the AI focusing on a ground target instead of defending against nearby interceptors, the AI displays a serious lack of ability to prioritize threats. Since this currently can lead to quite unrealistic unit behavior, I would love to see you guys acknowledging some potential for improvement.
Not only would we gain an increase of immersion and realism, we'd also have this wonderful feature of mission planning improved even more.
I absolutely understand that the AI will never be able to react reasonably to ALL surprises. But in my opinion this issue is as basic as the ability to fly along waypoints, drop weapons efficiently or how to land.
The player wouldn't want to send his a/c on pre planned missions if he'd risk them crashing because he had to override to issue a landing clearance. Please teach the AI that the predictable missile from behind is much worse than running out of fuel in about an hour or having to do another attack run on the tasked ground target AFTER the immediate lethal threats have been dealt with.
preserving own existence is ALWAYS the highest priority
as demonstrated decades ago by
W.O.P.R. (1983)
HAL9000 (1968)
Skynet (1984)
CMANO - 2016 ?