[spud]

A few nagging issues (some discussed before):

1. min alt was raised to 140 in a recent patch utterly eliminating realistic missions for the SWPA.

2. The AI only recognizes ground targets at 3000m or so. This makes dive bombing impossible as a flight leader since US VBs started their dives at ~12k feet. By the time you get low enough to tell the AI to DB, you have little time to execute your attack. It would be nice to increase this reaction distance a little.

tater

[ROSOBORONEXPORTCORP]

Probably

[Guest]

+1 .. and make A.I. radiator as player one: overheating- 8)

[Tigershark]

Suggestion:

1. Maybe make their ammo unlimited.. In which case, they dont fly around like morons, aimlessly near enemy AI when out of fuel and on their last waypoint...

2. Change their firing solutions and patterns to something more realistic... Many a time you see them exhaust whole belts of ammo on a target, a target which is banking only slightly to the right or left, while their tracers are JUST inches from contact.. So frustrating!!

3. Maybe reducing their visibilty at night, and too while in clouds??

4. Also too, you can NEVER sneak up on these bastards!! They always know!!

TS

[Klemm]

+1 .. and make A.I. radiator as player one: overheating- 8)

I think that unfortunately this would have dire consequences.
Since they fly at 100 percent all the time they like to, after 2-10 minutes into combat or even just climbing to altitude all AI aircraft would eliminate themself by failing motor. EVERY offline or coop mission would be fucked up by this.
As much as i'd like to see this mod, i think i know why Oleg never implemented it in the first place.
There would have to be additional AI routines programmed that take care of overheating.
I think that only Oleg could do this, but alas, he did not and i'm sure he won't do so in the future.
Think about all the 'cheats' the AI uses by not having all the disadvantages the player has.
Blackout (i know they are supposed to have a flying style that does not black the out ever), stalling, overheat, tracking targets through non-see through materials like cockpit frames, the motor or clouds, or a dark night.
I'm sure there are others but these are the ones that came to my mind just now.
All these complexities would have to have AI routines, and would eat up CPU resources.
My PC doesn't even now handle the game very good.
I'm sure (i hope) that in BoB Oleg will let the AI have all the little twists, of which only all together make a realistic combat experience. I will have a new PC then, but for IL-2 i think it's too late.

[spud]

What about dropping the min ai alt from 140m at least. I sued to be able to set them as low as I wanted. 8m for skip bombing worked.

Changing their reaction range past 3000m would certainly require testing because that would also have your flight tearing off at whatever it was set to to chase stuff.

I really hope that BoB has a fundamental change in the complexity of AI. They (1C) also need to "think outside the box" with as much as possible. They tend to program things to behave a certain way, then not bother making it possible to control for "lateral thinking" ideas.

I wish I could tell the A-20 and B-25s that a certain bombload was a "torpedo" even though it was not... seems like with the right tweaks a torpedo run could just as easily have been a skip bombing attack, for example (tell the AI the bomb is a "torpedo" that has a range of 200m and a speed of 150mph or whatever (speed of the plane)

[Guest]

klemm I'm sorry your PC is old .. mine isn't new either..BUT permit me that we can't speak here for individual problems like this despite to improving the game. I prefer, and I think to talk for all community, that a good modder will solve A.I. cheating about radiator, full trottle, superspottingview and then I'll go to change my pc. about consequences in existing missions and coops by finally get rid of this odd A.I. feature (cheat) I think your supposition may be wrong as A.I. could simply start to evade if it has overheating as it make now when it is out of ammo.
And about what will happen in new game as BOB i never mind.Now we have only IL2/FB and only this game, THEN better to focus our solution on it and not "whishing" for something in the far future that anyone know even what ..and IF.. it will be.S! 8)

[Vpmedia]

Its a pretty big immersion killer when enemy planes disengage and zoom back to altitude when I go under 100m or so

[Guest]

Its a pretty big immersion killer when enemy planes disengage and zoom back to altitude when I go under 100m or so

+1 exactly.. this is another really bad feature that I think everyone will like to solve.. moreover the same plane after this diving will climb +2.000 mt in a minute and you still are in the ground compared to him even if you have the same plane (no matter if trimmed, low load fuel ecc..)..there are Hundreds of pages in the past years at ubiZoo about A.I cheating and now if there is even one chance to solve this problem I will pay money for this 8)

[Compans]

I think the last point is one of the big ones but it's part of a bigger problem - namely, that aircraft matchups don't work and one can't use the historical tactics effectively. EAW did a good job of portraying historical pluses and minuses.
Another GREAT thing EAW did was to model morale. If either squadron lost a certain amount of a/c, and depending on the level of the pilots they'd run for home base. I HATE having to fight to the death every time and it leads to highly unrealistic attrition rates. If you read about the BoB for example, it's common for hundreds of planes to be involved in a battle with say, 4 a/c shot down. A similar situation in this sim would lead to hundreds of a/c destroyed. I believe that morale is the major factor that needs fixing.

S! Comp

[canonuk]

Is there any evidence that morale is already modelled? Even slightly?

[spud]

I'd operate under the assumption that most of the AI would be a black box for us.

I'd expect that certain elements MIGHT be available to mess with.

Things like:

1. the range at which they react.

2. the minimum altitude they will fly (we know this was recently changed)

3. on a plane by plane (loadout by loadout?) basis, what TYPE of AI they use (fighter, level bomber, torpedo bomber, etc)

4. the scaling of AI capability based on skill (perhaps skill merely alters the detection range by some factor, etc)

A wish list is nice, but I'd try to be more realistic about what we might fix.

tater

[spud]

Another thing. In the past, when planes landed and taxied to parking spots they would be damaged when shot at (strafing, say), but would otherwise act normally. After one of the patches, such parked planes have become strange. They will start to bounce if pinged at all, or spin around.

It might be the idiotic code that makes planes flip over with 20mm, actually... ping the tail, and they start to pounce off the tail wheel.

[ROSOBORONEXPORTCORP]

Is there any evidence that morale is already modelled? Even slightly?

I don't believe so. Aircraft hardly ever disengage (especially if compared to real battles). Pilot fatigue is modelled though.

If there was a way to decrease ammunition load, or to cause the AI to believe it was low in ammo at an earlier time... we might finally get realistic engagements.

[spud]

I noticed a bunch of "ai" files in the filelist with the extractor, but none show up when you extract. I assume they are some of the other files in there. Is there any way to tell what is what?

If we could open some, seems like revertng the AI min alt to whatever it used to be would be possible, among other simple changes.