Hellshade, “then we must assume he was very brave or very stupid!”

A few screenshots from another DH2 career.

Lots of things going on here, what a mission,....

Sept 1917 Campaign patrol in an SE5a.

Many empty chairs that day at Jasta 18´s mess, Hellshade!

Maybe just a tad over aggressive.

Yes, just a....tad...

Watching your latest video, it came to my mind that sometimes I wonder how is it that AI planes manage to make such tremendous dives without losing their wings. When enemy two-seaters make 4000 feet semi vertical dives only to recover when above the trees and I see my flight mates following them almost on the vertical I envy their structural integrity management.

Oops...

Haaaaaaaaa! You fell for the old bouncing rubber Roland trick!

My limited understanding of this phenomenon is that some of the modders have looked into how the AI can do this and they either haven't discovered why it happens or they are unable to change it so the AI flies by the same structural limitations that are imposed upon the player. If there was ever a way to get the AI to respond to the structural limits of their own aircraft, I think it would make the dogfights even more interesting because they would literally keep alitude for significantly longer periods of time. There would be "more dogfight and less dive" in many encounters. My guess - which probably has no bearing on reality at all - is that the AI coding doesn't have a way to recognize when their aircraft are being stressed, so their planes are just made immune to g-forces rather than have numerous dogfights end with the enemy ripping their own lower wings off during extended dives. While it might be interesting to see once in awhile, as I am sure it did happen in real life, it would get old pretty fast to see it happen with such frequency.

If someone can mod the AI to detect the stress levels of the wings OR limit how far each particular type of craft will dive (Spads much longer than N11s, for example) before switching to another tactic, it might more closely simulate how pilots would handle their craft during air combat. Is either one of those a possibility? (I will ask in the mods section)

Not to throw too much cold water on this, Hellshade, but I believe that JJJ has looked extensively at this issue and has concluded that the AI operates by a different set of rules than the human player, at least in regard to wing stress. My suspicion is that this is a leftover from CFS3 code. Since CFS3 was originally designed as a WWII simulator, it didn't include any variables relating to wing collapse due to overspeed, since that problem in plane design had mostly been solved by the time of WWII.

Rex Hannover and OBD might be able to create such a variable, but then they would have to figure out how to train the AI to pay attention to it without appearing too robot-like. Given the variety of aircraft (Albs and Nieuports on the one hand and Spads on the other), plus variety of pilot skills and experience, I suspect this might be quite difficult to do. I entirely sympathize with your point, however. It is disappointing to see the AI overuse the "power-dive" escape move, particularly since we can't follow them. Maybe the AI is a lot smarter than we give them credit!

BB,

I highly suspected that it was a leftover relic of the underlying WWII code that wouldn't require that feature. That said, since the players planes can break their wings, OBD did somehow manage to introduce that possibility into the code. Point certainly taken about exact calculations for how much wing stress each plane can take before breaking, though theoretically they already figured that out when they assigned the values to the players planes.

Here's a different idea though:

I wonder if a shortcut would be not to introduce gforce damage to the AI planes at all, but rather lump all planes into one of perhaps 3 categories of dive capability and then simply limit how long (or how much altitude it can lose) before it pulls out whenever the AI specifically does the steep dive manuever. Low quality planes dive for the least amount of time before pulling up into another move, moderate for a bit longer and then planes like Spads could dive much longer and farther. The AI would then pull out of the dive based on the assigned value (or before hitting the ground) before wing damage would likely have occured, simulating (very roughly) the extent that the plane could handle that type of dive. Of course it wouldn't be perfect, but it would be more realistic than an AI controlled EIII or N11 power diving a few thousand feet and pulling out to escape the player who has no hope of folllowing. Bonus would be to include skill in the determination, where AI ACE pilots could dive a bit farther (due to their skill), moderate would use the default values and Novice AI pilots wouldn't be able to dive as far for fear of ripping their wings off and not really knowing the limitations of their craft. Again - not perfect - but still moving the ball forward a bit.

What do you think?

My DVIIF pilot ran into a flight of Spads. Those guys have good crates - thought I don't know how they ever see out of them!

Jasta 2, Oct 1 1916

Jasta 2 Oct 2, 1916

So as not to clutter up the goodness of the screenshots thread, I'll post my response to your post in the mods forum.

Jasta 2, 5 Oct 1916 patrol.

bit risky flying into a melee with so many wingmen around

I love the realism of these three shots.

Yes, have to agree... beautiful!