So, upfront let me say I have been among the first and one of the loudest complainers about the CoD combat AI. Most of the time it isn't aggressive, it is half blind, the wingmen can't follow orders, it has a very limited range of maneouvres and unless you manually adjust the AI it is brain dead. It burns through all its ammo in a couple of long hosepipe bursts and it can't deflection shoot, especially when sitting straight behind an unmoving target.

BUT

In a mission yesterday I had a fantastic fight, full of surprises, which luckily I was set up to capture in an AAR. I've copied a part of the AAR here to show what I am talking about. Even CoD AI can give you a great fight. Here is what happened, without 'narration'.

Spotted a 109 chasing a Hurricane down low and went after him





Fired to try to drive him off more than to hit him



It worked, he broke off





I thought.

He actually used the 109s better climb to try and pull away from me, but I had the energy of the dive and stayed with him





He turned the last of his energy into a corkscrew vertical zoom climb, really cool maneouvre, and believable at the airspeed he had at the time. I was able to stay with him.







We both stalled at the same time and I got in some good hits, we both dropped away.





I thought he had gone defensive and was trying to get away.

Instead, he turned the dive into an attack on a nearby Hurricane, maybe the one he had been attacking earlier, not sure.





He got in a couple of bursts at the Hurricane - not hosepipe bursts as usual, but nice short controlled bursts. Not sure if he hit.



He couldn't stay with the Hurricane and dropped off.





I got behind him. He pulled a tight turn, I nearly blacked out, but I stayed with him.







He was still on the offensive, hunting the Hurricane! Even with me in his wake, firing.





I could only get in occasional bursts with the Hurricane so close, and still the 109 pilot stuck with his prey.





Finally, the Hurricane rolled and pulled away, the 109 overshot, and I had a clear line of fire.







This time I gave him a long, decisive burst.





He put his nose down and tried to pull away.



But not for France. The AI was had apparently calculated he wouldn't make it to land in France and made for the nearest dry land, which was England. This was a great bit of programming.

I was so dumbstruck I pulled in behind him and followed him down. I was actually rooting for him to make it!













Finally, about two miles from the coast, his machine stalled, and he dropped into a tight left turn.





At the last second he straightened up, and hit the water nose heavy, but with wings level.



He speared into the waves, but the machine held together and went under slowly. I like to think the pilot could have got out, if he hadn't knocked himself out when he hit the water.





What I loved about this encounter was:

- the 109 AI made good use of its vertical advantages on several occasions, rather than trying to turn fight the Spit

- it broke off and evaded when I first engaged it, which I expected... but

- it was aggressive, if not against me, then against the AI Hurricane, and re engaged the Hurricane and stuck with it even though it was still under attack from me

- when the engine was kaput, it headed for England. That was a very 'real' and immersive moment - you could imagine a pilot in the same situation weighing up his chances - POW in England, or drowning mid Channel.

Anyway, in fairness to the game, thought I would post this to show the CoD AI aint ALL bad!

The full AAR is here

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3718929/CoD_REDUX_Mission_10_Teutonic_#Post3718929

And I went into the FMB to check the AI settings - they were my usual except I had bravery at max. Makes sense...

I don't get why he would persist in going after the Hurricane when you were a clear threat. We're not talking about a bomber intercept mission where you might ignore the escort to go after the bomber, even if that's a bit suicidal.
However, if he HAD changed targets to fighting you, I wonder how different it would've turned out ie would he have started turning with you?




The Jedi Master

I think it may have to do with proximity of incoming fire. On my first pass, when I jumped hom, I got clear hits and he evaded.

Then he re engaged w the Hurricane and I had real trouble landing a blow on him, not least because of fear of friendly fire.

If I was coding a 'bravery' parameter, proximity and position of enemy would be one factor, proximity of incoming fire another. At 'hero' level even if the enemy was close on the AI six, if the incoming fire wasn't close, I'd want the AI to stay offensive.

The best response though, I have to say, is what you get with BoB2. The Hero AI stays offensive, but he breaks off his target and he comes for YOU.

H

My jaw drop Ai experience was a single mission I made where I tasked a group of 109s to attack a flight of bombers.

I flew a spit along with 3 AI.

It was enjoyable to see these 109s dive in on the bombers pull up, rinse and repeat, but what surprised me was when I got on the 6 of a 109 one of his buddies would pull off their attack and came after me. They did this repeatedly. Buggers. But good ones.

I would love to know what settings you are using for the AI, all I can seem to get out of them is a spiral down into the channel when I attack them, makes it hard to practice my gunnery when they kill themselves before I even get in range to fire.

You can see the settings we used in this jpg, from the mission builder.



Unfortunately you can't get these settings in quick missions (the game usually allocates mixed skills to a unit so you get a lot of the 'bad AI' settings) If you do choose from just the 'stock' settings, I would never recommend 'ace'. This gives you the dumbest behaviour of all, unfortunately. 'Veteran' is the best compromise.

But you will see DSoft use settings like this in their campaigns, and the example above is from the REDUX campaign where all enemy units use this type of AI setting.

What we found through extensive testing is that these AI settings enable the AI to kill other AI, so in a dogfight like the one above, you will see the luftwaffe getting 6-12 kills against the RAF, and the RAF getting similar numbers.

A good player will rarely have trouble against the CoD AI unless they get jumped, and will not find it too hard to get kills with practice, but at least these settings usually stop the AI acting 'stupid' (constant barrel rolls, flying straight past an enemy etc).

But CoD AI is notoriously bad at managing low level flight and you do get quite a few 'lawn darts'.

Heinkill, thanks for posting this, especially the screenshot of the custom skill settings you used.

Question: I'm using almost the exact same settings when I write missions, except for "Discipline" setting, which I have set at only about 20% versus the 80% setting in the screenshot.

What have you observed regarding how much "Discipline" effects the AI's willingness to engage, versus blindly following their waypoint routes?

Thanks!

Best wishes.

LeadTurn_SD

Discipline (for me at least) seems to affect the degree the AI try to keep together in combat and general formation keeping. 20% would be good for a formation I wanted to scatter on being bounced, raising it they tend to stick together a bit more, and possibly respond to 'recalls' slightly better. With low discipline AI will often 'go off on their own' to attack enemy AC seen

The levels I find are, to an extent, dependent on each other, low bravery can alter a high discipline behaviour, for instance. High bravery extends the time before RTB if low on fuel and will be more likely to engage and remain in combat for longer, possibly even perform head on attacks(this is very rare but I've never seen it happen with bravery <9- the stars really have to be aligned for this )

I also use something similar as a 'base level', but add some variation in discipline , bravery and tactics (and maybe advanced flying), to get some variety

I'm still experimenting w discipline...as my wife will tell you

The lower it is the more likely they are to scatter. In this mission I needed them to stay together to get to the escort rather than go for the bombers which are the first target.

Also, it seems to increase the chances they will follow your radio orders.

Thanks bolox and Heinkill!

What I have been using for bomber formations is about an 80% Discipline setting, and for fighter formations about a 20% Discipline setting.

The problem that I think all of us have when trying to write missions for CoD is finding that "magic" setting that gets the AI fighters to engage (and disengage!) in a believable manner, and the AI bombers to attempt to hold formation (or scatter!) as they would in the "real" world.

Trying to figure out what combination of custom skill settings best achieves this is what has had me scratching my head.

Thanks again for the help!

Best Wishes.

LeadTurn_SD

And I'd be happy if someone could 'teach' the AI to shoot! The AI settings as far as I can see, don't help eliminate those long pointless hosepipe bursts that burn all their ammunition. Just watching them engage bombers, you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes, at times they seem to act like TIE Fighters with unlimited laser ammo vs props with limited numbers of bullets. When they're clearly in lag pursuit and have no hopes of hitting, or they're roughly on six but misaligned (ie to the top and right but heading the same way with similar alt) and then they fire like they think the target is 10x larger than it is, it reminds me of the BSG episode "Hero" where the Cylons were letting a prisoner escape but wanted it to look good, so the pursuit fighters were missing on purpose.

In fact, one of my biggest gripes with AI in 1946 was that they could hit your cockpit with one burst in a vertical climb from your forward quarter while 2000 ft below you, but right on your six if you didn't jink much they could miss and miss and miss. I think some of that was brought over.




The Jedi Master

Actually AI deflection shooting has gotten much better in il2 1946 with the latest patch. Can't say the same for ClOD.

It sure has. I wish TD would work their magic on CoD. I bet it's the same piece of crap code from the original IL246.

Well TBH the last time I put any real time in 1946 was 4.10!




The Jedi Master

Here are a couple of videos showing some of the changes to A1 shooting in the v4.11m patch.

AI-Shooting

Standard Definition: http://youtu.be/NcvrCfErUr4

Gunner friendly fire check

Standard Definition: http://youtu.be/WvqWR1N2muc


Wheels

Makes you wonder why it took 10 years to get that right.



The Jedi Master

Those 'before' videos could just as easily have been CoD. They must have just re-used the same code. I remember Oleg claiming at one point that IL2 had the best AI of any sim, even as people in their dozens complained about this sort of thing. So it makes sense that he chose to just rip it straight into CoD. Easy for him, shame for us!

Actually, IIRC he didn't actually claim it was the "best"...when questioned he simply asked "whose AI is better?" and took advantage of their being caught off guard to claim that Il-2's was qualitatively no worse than any other out there.

Personally, I always found the AI in TK's sims to be pretty good. Perhaps it rarely makes you think "hey, it's a human!", but it pulls relatively little stupid crap like that gunnery or blatant BS maneuvers that you can't do yourself.

Even ROF I still get mad at the AI sometimes.





The Jedi Master

If we ever stop complaining about the stupid AI I think we will have quit playing computer games.


Wheels