After reading about the ai in this game, I was expecting some real challenge. Not so. I set enemy planes to Ace but they don't push their planes. I can out turn the Yak 1 with my 190a3 and vice versa, without even using my flaps.

If the ai isnt even using full elevator to stall, can't imagine how easy this would be when I start using flaps in a turn fight. If this is all BoS has, it sucks.

They have a topic for suggestions to improve the actual (anemic) AI behavior.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/31321-special-topic-work-ai-ai-behavior-commands-wingman/

How incredibly constructive...

Terrible Two's criticism was indeed extremely constructive. AI is extremely important in a Combat Flightsim and too many times, the specific thing that Terrible Two pointed out is what kills it. There are basicly two types of fights one can find: "Turn and Burn" and "Boom and Zoom". Basicly, turning around in circles, or swooping down, hitting and going back up, then coming down again, with smooth moves or a hammerhead, while conserving one's energy. Now, the latter is a pretty hard thing to program, since it requires much more "experience", the ability to "fly in the future", accurate timing, understanding of angles, Gs and bearing change rates - even psychological warfare. All things that would be extremely hard to program, or is in part not even possible at all. At best, one could program a rudimentary "Swoop down, climb back up, swoop down" kinda thing - that would already be much more than most flightsims have ever accomplished. In fact, IL2 (the first one) has some of that, thank God, and so did Rise of Flight - but the latter only initially. I watched in dismay when some ignorant people started complaining to 777 that "some planes" wouldn't fight and just "run away". No, what they in fact did was extending and avoiding a turn fight , since they were energy fighters (SE5, SPAD) and then getting back into the fight if they wanted. That was absolutely realistic, but unforunately, 777, for whatever reason, listened to these ignorants and after that, I was slaughtering these kind of planes nonstop, because they foolishly tried to turnfight against an Alb or DR1 and naturally didn't stand a chance.

Now, while B&Z / Energy Fighting is hard to program, what is not hard to program and could be expected to be there at minimum, is some decent Turn & Burn and angles fighting, with the AI maximizing its planes potential up to the stall onset or trying to meet corner speed (in Jets). And, in fact, you shouldn't have to explain that at all to the devs. But it's crazy how few people have an idea about air combat maneuvering. This is also what almost killed the otherwise venerable EAW for me - EAW's AI was terrible. Waggling your wings or doing a lazy turn left, then a lazy turn right, while going downwards or whatever, is NOT going to mess with my gun solution in any significant way. It's crazy how many people praised EAW's AI because "it didn't just fly in circles" - yeah well, but flying in (tight) circles (horziontally or vertically) is the best / most surefire way to screw up a gun solution IF you are not flying Boom and Zoom tactics. Air Combat is not like the guy in front just doing some wiggling around in front of your guns to make it "more interesting" for you. That is only in the movies. The name of the game is: Give him angle problems, or better yet, get out of his plane of motion, and then get him in front of YOUR 3-9 line. You are not accomplishing that with wiggling around or doing lazy turns like AI does when programmers have no idea of the field they are working in.

P.S. I know for a fact that at least with some of the programmers of this game here, the problem is not that they don't know better. So it must be either lack of programming skills, or they try to avoid "making it too hard" for the incompetent. Both of which is terrible.

It's not just BoS, but 1C games in general I think. It seems Rise of Flight is just as easy. Albatros V out-turning a Sopwith Tri... Hmmm.

I'm not that good either. If I go into a furball with my 190D9 in DCS, I usually get killed pretty fast.

Shame really, two beautiful games, BoS and RoF, ruined by extremely poor AI.

They have A (singular) programmer who has been busy with reworking all of the flight models, reprogramming the campaign, integrating new shaders/rendering methods, optimizing netcode, reprogramming the engine for DX11, reprogramming for 64-bit, writing their new commander functions, writing co-op back in, etc., etc., etc.

Matter of fact, revising the AI is already in the crosshair and if you have anything constructive to add (hmmmm...) you should do so in this thread: https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/31321-special-topic-work-ai-ai-behavior-commands-wingman/

It has nothing to do with a lack of programming skills or "making it too hard." That's entirely baseless and it seems you're a little misinformed about the resources 777/1CGS has available. Perhaps its that you have a chip on your shoulder because of the misguided direction that Loft wanted the product to follow?

We don't deal with Loft anymore. And thank god... Because if IL-2 had continued to follow his "vision" it wouldn't have improved in any of the ways that it has now and the future of the project would certainly be a lot duller.

Now understand, I agree that the AI needs a LOT of work. I agree that in many ways, 1946's AI behaved more believably. I believe sims like WoFF, while dated in its own way, utilizes more believable AI routines... And it's not any of those things I take issue with but how the criticism (which entirely lacks any constructiveness, to be frank...) was presented.

BOX far from sucks and one doesn't need to ignore its peculiarities to reach that conclusion.

You mean to tell me that there is only 1 (one) programmer working on IL2 BOX (as you so nicely - and accurately - put it)? So, 1 guy is doing all the work and the other people are just doing "administrative" stuff? While the trend towards that is common these days, I find it hard to believe it to such a degree with the matter at hand. In fact, I think whoever told you that was bullshitting you.

I don't know who Loft is. I think you overinterpreted my inside knowledge, maybe I was over-stating it with "I know". I should say I think I know because - having been witness to the general history of the IL2 / Russian flightsim dev environment - I know the general direction the inspiration for the original IL2 came from and some of the people who were involved and close to what was 1C in the beginning etc. I know that 1C today has not a lot to do with 777 or whoever now is doing IL2 BOX, but there are general connections between these people which go back to online flying, even in part to Warbirds, which is enough for me to know that whoever is working on those projects has an idea about air combat, other than say, some random dev who is doing an adventure game / shooter one day, and a flightsim the next day. So, when they are programming AI that is not maximizing their plane's ability in relatively simple things like flat turning, it is not for lack of understanding, but either because they cannot do it or because they do not want to do it. And the latter wouldn't really surprise me, thinking of how quickly people start whining on the forums when they get owned by the AI. A surefire way to tell that people don't know what they are on about is when they complain how "stupid" their wingmen are, while the enemy AI is cheating and shooting them down all the time. No. The wingmen have the same AI as the enemy. When you are getting shot down by AI, it is not because your AI wingmen were weak and the enemy AI was strong, lol. It's just blaming their own incompetence on "poor wingman AI". If the latter was weak, so would be the enemy AI. What is in fact happening is most people never bother to look up things like Energy Fighting or Low Yo-Yo, High Yo-Yo etc, the latter two usually being already enough to own most AI in any flightsim.

So I think that there is a real problem here with some devs getting shy to program "hard" AI, because they want to avoid the backlash they're getting from people who claim that the AI is "cheating".

And Terrible Two's criticism was constructive because he pointed out a real issue that is very fundamental to an Air Combat flightsim. One such criticism is worth more than 50 posts just praising the dev for the "Nice graphics" or sub variant X of plane Y. And from what he posted, the whole matter should already be clear and fully understood by anyone who cares about AI and ACM. I only elaborated on it at all because you felt the need to immediately disparage his criticism that was wholly on point.

Not sure how I could have been more constructive and detailed in my complaint about the AI. It's clear that ALL you have to do is start turning a tight circle, and the AI is completely dumb in knowing it can turn a tighter circle. To me, that seems like Basic 101 programming... Said AI is flying a plane that turns tighter than any other plane, said AI will make it a point to utilize the planes tight turning circle if in a turn fight....

So essentially anytime I want to win, just start turning.

In Woff you will find 4 AI settings you can adjust to your personal taste, think introducing this to BoX/Rof, would end 80% of all the AI discussions.

Considering the number of posts there about "AI sniper", "AI focus on player" ... or dev's moto "game should priorize be accessible to new players, nor for hardcore hardheads"... yes.



BoS AI has 3 levels of skill:



In CloD they try make AI skill more customizable, but since CloD result that 'It's CloD!", some sliders are only placebos.

http://SimHQ.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3543201/dummies-guide-to-skill-settings

So we have the behavior of the AI and the skill, guess were are talking about the behavior "that sucks". But indeed skill is also an adjustment that should be considered to be included as an in-game setting and not in a mission editor, more like in RB3d way back in the '97.

Jason should know better after all the AI discussion on his RoF website.

AI discussions serve as a decompression mechanism for frustrated BoX gamers. Unfortunately there is little to suggest that BoX developers are in a position to invest significant resources into a transformative AI upgrade. There were times past when even implied criticism of BoX was met with multiple hostile responses that almost invariably degenerated into personal attacks on "complainers". I think that what has changed over the years is that most have come to accept that the series is now pretty much where it will ever be. This thread addresses AI behavior. I remember threads from various sites in which queries about depth of BoX aircraft component systems modeling were met with hostile responses. Energy seems to have ebbed since those days. Best wishes to anyone hoping for transformative changes to either aspect of BoX.

Why even want a new expansion then? Battle of Midway? Who cares. How about the entire theatre of war from 1939 to 1945, but this time with every plane in DCS detail, dynamic campaign like Falcon4... who literally cares if every dogfight degrades into a turning fight easily won by the player.

WW2 aerial combat starts and ends with an excellent dogfighting AI that takes full advantage of his airplane.

I don't have WoFF, but it's looking better all the time. And WotR is sounding great, just based solely on WoFF's AI.

I cannot criticize owners of a game engine for trying to keep that engine alive to produce revenue. Unfortunately innovation is expensive. If a game engine lacks inherent capacity for building in complex AI routines and damage modeling where does the development money come from? Eventually you either accept incremental improvements in return for buying expansions or you direct your time and money elsewhere. Having experienced the RoF AI, damage modeling and online environment I decided to avoid BoX. Still it will be interesting to see how many more expansion products the developers can sell using this game engine.