@Guildenstern:
We know that pilots are being added to the game and most players seem to assume that by the game's time period AI will be highly developed.
Are you sure? In this case, the discussion would not be worth it.
From what we've seen in the game universe the wars actually served to slow down technology development (remember what the folks in the 50's and 60's thought the year 2000 was gonna be, well that is what we got in the 2080's too apparently),
Wars might slow down civil technology development - but they boost military technology. This can be seen by every bigger war - since WW1.
Furthermore:
AI pilots are today's technology. Ok, hardly competitive to human pilots - but this will change. The new JSF F35 is probably the last interceptor with a human on board. The development of drones is fast advancing - the predators are in use yet, and far more advanced systems are in the pipe.
so the AI's would be more or less advanced state systems(my assumption), so they work best when all the data is available for them to run against their rules system(perfect world the AI works best)
There's no difference to human pilots.
Aliens are very good at jamming and ecm reducing the amount of available data while making it impossible to control the craft from base within X distance of UFO so something on-board must control the plane(If you're having trouble seeing as to why you'd be able to give instructions to it in this state, we can attack that later, it does have logical means to explain this).
Ok, let's have a look on the jamming effect:
- no radar
- no radio (remote control, GPS)
- no laser tracker to the UFO
What else Do you believe is jammed?
Imho are following sensors are not jammed:
- TV systems
- laser rangefinder to everything but the UFO's hull
- speed, altitude and flight attitude
- inertial guidance
- all internal systems
As TV-tracking works today on 40 km, I assume no problem to track the UFO if the interceptor was guided in that area by the ground control.
The fight itself is quite simple - you belong completely to TV-tracking.
[...] Granted that it is going to be a PITA to figure out a mechanic to recover your pilots when they get shot down that is plausible, I believe it can be done (or at least willing to beat it to death to find out)
Sure.
Another point:
Interceptors are extremely cheap compared to other equipment - to a machine gun the ratio for an interceptor is something like 20 to 1. The interceptor is 'just' 20 time more expensive than a machine gun.
PHALANX interceptors are the state-of-the-art human technology - so I compare them at least with the price of the F22 fighter (150,000,000 $ flyaway). I assume that today a quality machine gun costs 5,000 $ - so the ratio is 30,000 to 1.
The Predator costs less than 40,000,000 (complete system) (ratio: 8,000 to 1) and the advantages of mass production are in favour of the F22 - up to now.
Effectively, drones are much cheaper than fighter with human pilots. I assume that an interceptor would cost not 30,000 credits, but maybe 500,000,000 credits - based on a realistic ratio to other equipment.
We certainly need some sort of technical advance or system to explain out the high g-maneuvers as the alien dropships that are being downed are full of critters that are subjected to those forces too. I can see two routes to this to make it work. We could have A)an input governor such that it is simply impossible to cause those accelerations that are lethal or B) Some black-boxed tech to remove the physics from the equation. I think A is a better idea because its simply an addendum slipped into the craft descriptions in the ufopedia. Certainly possible to add some sort of alien research that can open up high-g maneuvers, but those craft at the start need something to make this a non-issue other than believing that the pilot just knows when to stop (this is certainly true that they really know when to stop, but there are accidents all the time because people in similar situations don't)
Imho UFOs are not much faster than human interceptors. They have some kind of "jump drive", but for atmospheric flight they're similar to interceptors. However, aliens could bear more g-forces than humans.
But I cannot imagine aliens sitting on their g-force chairs in their g-force suites like astronauts - or human pilots. Including all mobile stuff inside the UFO locked. In my opinion, they have no problems with g-forces - or zero gravity in space. The walk around in their UFO, doing their business, despite high speed manoeuvre.
I suppose, g-compensation and artificial gravity are linked technologies and work together in a 'black box'. Maybe, UFO Scouts and UFO fighters don't have these components, as they're quite small and not very important to the UFO fleet.
As the aliens have some interesting technology based on gravity (the gravity sensor), I don't expect this technology as to exotic for an realistic explanation.
cu