I have a friend who has become very discouraged with flying online Coop missions against enemy A.I. because of the flight model cheats that they get and also because the enemy AI AAA units seem to be unreasonably accurate.

Here's my question. Are there are lot of you here who only play human vs. human because of the limitations of the AI?

Just curious to know.

This forum seems to be mainly dominated by on-liners.

A little of both - though I prefer to fight against humans, if only because the DF map format allows for reflying.

Sounds like your friend is suffering at the hands of evil mission makers. The AI isn't extra special if they're mixed up in skill level. Some mission makers put every AI on Ace level, which is overkill.

As to air defenses, it's a rare thing that I'm shot down by it, so I don't have any advice.

For well over a year now, I've been flying more vs AI than vs human for coop missions. Flight Night has been just two of us to coordinate, and we can usually get in 2-3 times the missions in the same amount of time we could when dealing with a larger group. It's not that I don't love flying with a lot of humans, that's ultimate to me, but when you have a window of 2-3 hours, it's just more efficient not to.

The AI can be frustratingly stupid at times, but it's still the best I've found. I don't think I need to go into what makes them frustrating, but in our case, their efficiency or difficulty really isn't part of it. I can't agree that their "cheats" are such that they should be avoided. While tactically, the ace AI is pretty good at staying above you, if there's more than one of you left in the game, the AI can often be drawn down into a situation they can't recover from. They often make mistakes that a smart flyer won't, like pursuing a target all the way down to the deck right in the middle of a furball. They can be deadly accurate during BnZ when firing at a slow and steady target, so foiling their shot requires timing and lateral speed. Of coure, sometimes you just don't have a choice when the situation collapses. Dart is right, the way a mission is built is probably the true source of frustration. Even in large human groups, when flying coops, AI is often involved anyway.

Now, once we have the ability to jump into a mission in progress and possibly another aircraft when your pilot's dead or forced to bail, well, I'm guessing things will probably change. Even if we dont have this ability, new sims might draw us back. The dogfight servers can be fun, but I can't go back to playing the game without 6DOF and it seems that mods still aren't widespread enough. For people like me that enjoy mission-oriented play, the DF servers with scenarios were cool, certainly better than pure hunting, but something is still missing there.

Edit: regarding AAA, same here, I can't report many problems with it unless I get too close to a lot of it (where I shouldn't be in the first place).

There is a AI mod for this over at AAA it fixes some of these issues but the mod is not perfect yet and has some issues

I exclusively fly versus AI. Sure sometimes they're too rubbish and act weird, other times they seem unstopabble and I get killed without enven knowing where the tracers came from, but that is still pretty balanced.
Certificate's AI MOD has greatly improved the way the AI behaves, and despite the occasional bugs and oddities, it has made flying against the AI a whole lot more enjoyable.

Cheers

Nico

The one major unrealistic fault with the AI is that they will always know where you are even if you attempt a bounce from a blindspot. This makes emulation of real-life dogfights impossible. Many a plane was shot down by the classic bounce but this is just not possible with IL2.

Most of my online play is over at Forgotten Skies which uses a scripted DF server so you are always flying against only Human pilots. No special AI abilities involved at all. It makes for a much more realistic game.

the ai ace are alot better then most of the online pilots, but do some ridiculous spinning manuevers see through clouds etc, i think a combo of both human and ai is the way to go. If you look at all the online war games 95% of humans kills are ai only.

I do enjoy veryone one on the same team vs alot of ace ai. Either way its alot of fun, plus the ais crash and bail from alot less hits then a human takes.

Humans aren't predictable and you can talk to them so I prefer flying against humans but living in a bad time zone relative to where the bulk of players live, I either have to time it right or just practice target shooting on the AI. I dislike being unable to bounce AI too Will look at the AI mod - didn't know there was one!

yes this is really annoying. the above mentioned mod suposedly fixes this. I haven't tried it myself as there seems to be some issues with playing campagins, AI crash or can't take off etc... if they fix that it will be a great mod.

Yes, especially when bouncing a lone target.

For anyone who might not be aware: Pretty sure that 2X your convergence is the point at which they break. Shorten the convergence and you'll be able to get closer. Especially in an aircraft where all the guns are in the fuselage like the later 109 models.

Losing an entire flight (or even yourself in auto-pilot) into the side of a hill/mountain or losing wingmen to the ground while landing because you forgot to tell them to go home pushes the limit for me.

Still, tactically, the AI is usually a pretty good challenge and it will clearly take advantage of superior numbers. It at least forces you to avoid situations where you're missing the advantage in numbers and/or energy. It will sometimes force you to make hard decisions and making the wrong one will usually put you where you belong. More than I could expect a computer to do.

Many of these faults I'd overlook if they'd simply give their position when they call out for help. heh.

I once tried playing AI vs. AI because of limitations of the human (made two missions - it had limited gameplay interest, though - for me anyway).

On the other hand the AI don't type "that's b&llshit" in the chat window after your unbelievably lucky shot. They don't call you an effing cheat and sweep dramatically out of the server if you're better than them and they don't mind if you mess up 3 takeoffs in the same mission and have to restart!

Give 'em some due!

sweep dramatically out of the server

The Miss Piggy Flouncers. We blame the parents I bet

Ming

Thanks for the info guys. I'll definitely look into that AI mod.

I also wanted to say that the problem where a lone AI will miraculously spot you once you get close on their 6 is definitely not a problem unique to IL-2. I've seen that happen in a bunch of other flight sims.

One thing about bouncing an AI: looks like they don't break or dodge if attacked at ~30 deg. angle. It is of course hard to estimate closure like that and for a stinko shooter like me all too hard to actually hit the plane. (They tend to explode when you hit the lower part of the fuselage).

I train in QMB usually against veterans and have flown quite a many hours in Air Force War (still active in Hyperlobby) where some of the opponets (and friendly) are AI of varied level.