Not a big problem, and no rush to fix anything, but I have noticed a possible problem when assigning rockets to the AI for airfield or railroad attack missions. Seven out of ten times after firing their rockets, they crash!

Now, this may not be a historical use of rockets in the Great War, but it can cause quite a few losses to your squadron if you assign rockets to them for these missions.

In an effort to investigate further, I waited for an airfield attack mission and assigned rockets to myself and my flight mates. When we got to the target, I turned control over my airplane to the AI. Sure enough, when the AI shot off "my" rockets, the throttle on my engine immediately went to zero and my aircraft banked sharply into the ground. I have since been able to repeat this in three out of four missions. I am wondering if firing my rockets is causing blast damage to my aircraft? So far, I have only tested this on the Sopwith Pup, so I don't know if this happens to other aircraft or not.

Again, not a big issue, but something I wonder if other people are aware of.

Excellent detailed report Bob. Maybe keep a set of logs after such a mission incase Pol asks for them.

Best Regards

Good idea, Rob.

I knew something was wrong when three out of four of my flight with rockets crashed during an airfield mission. The only survivor did not fire his rockets, so I suspect they are to blame somehow.

One of the mission logs I checked noted the rockets being fired and then the "smashed aircraft" immediately after but did not note any blast or groundfire damage. I suspect that there is something about firing the rockets which somehow causes the throttle to go to idle, which then leads to the crash. In a different mission I noticed that if I am quick enough to turn the autopilot off and reset the throttle to 100%, and then un-pause and take over control of the aircraft, I was able to keep it from crashing. I then turned the AI back on and it was able to fly the aircraft normally.

Just wondering If balloon attacks result in the same problem.

I've wondered that myself but haven't had time to check.

The problem may also be limited to Pups only.

The game gave me two opportunities to attack a rail station and the results were not pretty. In one mission, three out of five AI crashed, and in the other mission, four out of six crashed!

HOWEVER, it is now unclear to me that firing rockets are entirely to blame, although there does still seem to be something strange going on. In the two missions, the AI seemed to crash for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, this was clearly caused by gunfire or flak, but at other times, it was unclear why the aircraft crashed. The mission log did not give me many clues. A couple of theories: 1) the aircraft are flying at too steep an angle and can't pull up in time after completing their run. 2) After completing a strafing run, the AI aircraft often bank sharply by dipping their wings to one side. Perhaps the dipped wing is contacting a tree and then crashing? 3) Rocket blast. 4) AI has difficulty with ground avoidance and collision avoidance. 5) Unknown reasons.

In regard to the ground avoidance, it is possible that changing a setting in Jara's Multimod may be causing a problem. It's been so long since I used that program that I can't remember if I changed anything. I will run his program again and reset it to vanilla and re-test.

I have saved copies of the mission logs if anyone is interested.

BuckeyBob:
Since Pol has always said that they can not nor will not fix problems caused by "mods", have you tried to see if you have this same problem with "vanilla" WOFF BH&H2 ??????

I checked Jara's Multimod, and the collision and "minimum ground" distance values were set to default. The only other active mods were my two weather mods, but they should have no impact on the FM or AI behavior. Nevertheless, I will try again with no mods enabled.

BTW, "default" according to the Multimod is 300 for collision range and 150 for AGL. Does this sound correct for BHaH2?

Default for collision is 300 m in BH&H2, 500 m in UE/PE. Default AGL in UE/PE is 150 m, but for some (unexplained) reason I have AGL at 10 m in BH&H2 -- I don't think I tampered with that value in BH&H2 -- anyway, see the long PM that I sent to you BB -- more info. there. A good AGL value for UE/PE is 40 or 50 m -- might work well in BH&H2 too. My collision values are at 150 m, in UE/PE and BH&H2, by the way.

Cheers and happy tinkering,
Von S

Has anyone tried balloon busting yet?

VonS:
Where do you find those collision and AGL numbers ????

I plan to set up a "mission mod" that will only give me airfield attack, railway station attack, and balloon busting missions so I can do some more detailed testing tomorrow.

I plan to try different AGL and collision settings, along with some FM tweaks that VonS has provided, to see if I can achieve better results.

@PR, the AGL numbers can be found in the AI section of the simulation.xml file (thanks, VonS). Mine currently look like this:

<AI
SHOOTING_RANGE_met="500"
COLLISION_RANGE_met="300"
COLLISION_TIME_secs="3"
ALLIED_INCURSION_RANGE_met="-1"
AXIS_INCURSION_RANGE_met="2000"
MIN_AGL_met="150">

Most of these values can be quickly changed using Multimod.

As BB indicates, found in the simulation.xml file. And also found in JJJ's MultiMod (in both vers., for UE/PE and BH&H2). For simplicity, best is to set those nos. via the MultiMod. I'm getting good results in the WoFF series with an AGL of 40 meters (also good is 50 meters). No strange crashes and the AI does some nice rooftop swoops on occasion during tight low-alt. dogfights (at least as observed in my PE/UE 4.18 install -- haven't had any low-alt. dogfights yet in BH&H2 so can't comment on that).

Cheers all,
Von S

Actually, I have just seen it here BB on an airfield attack, so we'll try to look into at some point. Mind you I have had several runs with no cratering too. So thinking on it, it's possible the aircraft are damaged by ground fire, so after firing they are unable to manoeuvre as they would and cannot pull up in time. Just as it could be. Also is not easy to see the MG ground fire as it has no tracers now. You will see individual soldiers fire though if any around.

Pol, thanks for looking into this. I know you are very busy, so don't consider this something that you need to devote a lot of, if any, attention to at the moment. Hopefully, we users will be able to figure out what is happening, on our own. If we can't, I'm sure that you and Winder will figure it out eventually.

It definitely is a complicated problem. In contrast to before, when I thought this was mainly a problem due to rockets, I have now come to the conclusion that the crashes can come from a variety of causes. First of all, these are all very dangerous missions, with the railroad attack missions the most dangerous, because of all the trees and tall buildings in the area. Secondly, as you mentioned, these areas are all heavily defended, so some of these crashes are no doubt caused by groundfire--but not all of them! I have looked at a couple of mission logs after these missions, and sometimes they do record hits on the AI craft just before crashing, but in other cases, there is no indication in the log that the aircraft took any fire at all. In one notable example, an AI aircraft crashed immediately after his waypoint changed just after the flight leader crashed and the AI was made the new leader. Perhaps the change in orders caused him to alter his flight path at a very bad time? In others, the AI crashes after firing his rockets. It may be a coincidence, but from looking at the logs, it appears that the AI that manage to hit something with their rockets are slightly more likely to crash than the AI that miss. Perhaps they have to get really close to hit--maybe too close?

Of course, the above is mainly speculation, based only on my limited observations. However, I will continue to save mission logs and can send them to you for analysis later on, when you may have more time. I also recommend that anyone else who decides to test these missions to save their mission logs.

I may not get a lot of testing done today, but I will get around to it eventually.

If you want to eliminate ground fire from the equation, try attacking your own airfields, balloons, and rail yards with a test pilot or in QC

the explanation has been given with variations


rockets fire, throttle is reduced to zero, AI gets panicked and banks to the ground.

is the fireing control linked to the throttle some how?

Of course, I can only see the throttle setting in my aircraft, so I can't say what may be happening in the other AI, but I did notice this on at least two occasions when I let the AI control my aircraft. So, I can only say it occurs to the AI on some occasions, but I have no idea how often. However, I have seen the AI successfully fire its rockets and not crash, too.

For what it's worth:

WOFF Pup Rocket attack on balloon in autopilot mode shows some erratic behavior

Time interval Observation
02:26:36 Rockets fired, Pup pulls out ok under AUTOPILOT mode
05:05 Pup enters into erratic behaviour and out of control in AUTOPILOT mode
05:30 Took Pup out of AUTOPILOT in order to prevent crash, entered into defense against DIII and shot it down. proceeded to level flight
08:15 While in level flight, returned Pup to AUTOPILOT for duration of mission with no further problems

Session video of Pup attack on balloon in autopilot mode

Zipped log files with included session video full resolution

Maybe POL will look at the logs if deemed worthwhile.

Best Regards