A big issue with playing with AI crews currently, at least that I have personally experienced as a captain, is the fact that you have little to no control over what the AI actually do. Generally this is not a problem when it comes to AI engineers - they are pretty good at their job. But when it comes time to actually attack the enemy ship, God forbid the AI knows which gun I want them to shoot from. For example, if I somehow get stuck with a gunner AI, and I decide to use my Pyramidion, the gunner seems to have a natural aversion to ladders and firmly plants themselves on the side guns, where they do little to no good most of the time. This is the simplest scenario that I can come up with, but there are many more that I have found myself in, like my AI gunner being on the wrong side of my Junker when I'm circling (happened a few minutes ago
)
The solution to this, however, seems to be somewhat implemented already - or at least the interface is. The recently added voice commands would be SO useful if you could use them on AI. Instead of futilely switching between "AS YOU WERE!" and "ATTACK!" several times in an effort to coax the gunner onto whichever gun you actually want them to shoot from, you could simply navigate to "Man the _______ guns!" and they would instantly hop to it. It just seems like a natural extension of the voice commands. I actually found myself trying this in game and feeling somewhat disappointed that it didn't work.
The only thing that I can see going wrong with this is the fact that I may start preferring AI's to real players. Thoughts?
