Product: Command & Conquer Remastered
Platform:PC
Summarize your bug GDI AI airstrikes targeting elsewhere post-dispatch if the originally targeted thing is destroyed.
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Play a NOD mission featuring periodic GDI airstrikes. Missions 9 and 11 (A or B) are good examples.
What happens when the bug occurs? The planes can often attack in different parts of the map separately. They will also divert to different targets unfairly if their originally intended target is destroyed before their capacity of napalm is depleted.
What do you expect to see? Airstrikes behaving more consistently with player deployed airstrikes. -- The two planes should not be in different parts of the map, and they should not be diverting to alternative targets when if their original target is destroyed.
The GDI airstrikes when dispatched by AI seem to be significantly unbalanced.
Instead of targeting an area to dispatch they seem to target a specific thing -- be it a structure, vehicle, or person. If that target is destroyed by an early napalm drop both planes will target another thing, changing their course entirely.
You definitely can NOT do this when you dispatch an airstrike, you select a position and the planes drop napalm there whether the thing has moved, destroyed, or whatever. The drop zone is 100% committed.
I don't remember this being the case in the DOS/W95 versions. You could place 1 unit at the most northwest possible position, and both planes would drop their napalm loads on that position. Its very fair that this northwest exploit has been fixed, but the planes were not able to divert from their original drop zone, and not able to stop dropping their loads if the intended target gets destroyed.
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This poses a particular problem in NOD missions 9 (Egypt re-fortification) and 11 (Stealth tank rescue). -- Cleverly scattering your units to avoid a tight cluster getting wiped out is no longer possible.
For example on NOD mission 11 I had the four artillery units well spaced out to the south of the river ready to fire at the guard tower opposite, but in comes an airstrike. The first plane arrives way ahead of the second. Just two napalm bombs wipe out an artillery unit, so both planes now proceed to the next one way away from the drop zone of the first. By dropping only partial loads and diverting when the target unit is destroyed they are able to wipe out all four artillery units.
I've also noticed in both NOD missions 9 and 11 the airstrikes heavily prioritise the commando, and (in mission 11) the artillery south of the river, both at very early stages into the mission without much chance of their purpose being fulfilled. You can't move them out of the way if you notice the planes arriving soon enough because they change their drop zone.
I asked a long time friend about this. He said that the initial target was always tracked should you move it after the strike is dispatched, but also that once the drop begins that position is committed. -- No diversions.
It also seems strange that the two planes arrive 5-10 seconds apart. This just allows for way more time to do the diversion.
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There's quite a few comments about this on a thread at the Steam community.
