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

Your video is consistent with my observations, Robert. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the AI "forgets" how to fly and will crash. I thought this occurred only during attacks, but your video showed it happening in level flight, although there was flak around. Curious.

For what it's worth, AI forgetfulness might have something to do with the skill level and motivation assigned to them -- while I tinker with a small pack of missions for the Italy mod., I've noticed, for example, during a dogfight with several Albies that, once the Albies were shot down, two of my SPAD VIIs then attempted to leave the area -- both were at low alt., with the fellow assigned a skill/motivation value of 2/7 twitching at times and plowing into a mountain rather comfortably -- and the other fellow, assigned a value of 3/8, gingerly avoiding the mountain side, finding an opening, and proceeding to get out, above, and flying off nicely across a valley. I am of course testing using the quick/custom missions option in WoFF, not via the other option for QC (quick combat).

Cheers all,
Von S

Very interesting idea, VonS. I wouldn't be surprised at all if skill/morale is a factor in these unexplained AI crashes. Perhaps those pilots with low skill or morale are more likely to "panic" and temporarily forget how to fly. I'll look over my saved mission logs and see if I can find any correlation between skill/morale and crashing.

Edit: Confirmed (preliminary). It appears that pilot skill is a factor here. Of the four aircraft that seemed to crash for no apparent reason, three had a skill level of 1 and one had a skill level of 2. The AI pilot with a skill level of 2 was the only pilot in his flight that crashed. All the other AI pilots in that flight had a skill level of 3.

Morale was much more variable, with some at a morale level of 5 or 6, and one with a morale of 8.

If AI skill is a factor, then my workshop settings may be playing a role here. Currently, I have "Enhanced AI Skill" and "AI Damage Affects Skill" set to off. Question: do these settings affect skill or morale, and does either one give a boost to skill or morale or do they do something else?

IF skill is playing a role here, perhaps a tweak should be made to this factor so that only very green AI pilots should have a skill rating of one. Note: squadrons also have skill ratings. Maybe only "poor" squadrons should have skill ratings of one?

I recently ran two missions with collision avoidance increased from 300 to 500, and AGL lowered from its original value to 50, and there were no crashes, even with several AI pilots with a skill level of 1.

I will now try a few missions with the collision avoidance set at 100 and see what happens.

Okay, ran a few more missions this evening. I'm now more inclined to believe that the collision avoidance value plays an important role here, although it can't explain all aircraft crashes.

For the first two missions, I had collision avoidance set to 100, AGL to 50. Pilot skill set to 1. There were six pilots in each of these two missions. Out of these two missions (one airfield, one RR) there were six crashes, with three in each mission. In one of the missions, one clearly appeared to be the result of ground-fire, while I cannot explain the other two. Oddly, the mission debrief screen showed three pilots killed, one due to enemy, but the other two were described as "Destroyed by Self." Does that mean they accidentally flew into the ground?

For the third mission, I changed collision avoidance to 400. AGL and pilot skill remained the same. There were four pilots in this mission. In this mission, there was only one crash, also unexplained, but perhaps by gunfire.

So, for those experiencing AI crashes during airfield and RR attacks, I suggest increasing the collision avoidance to 400 or 500. AGL, however, can safely be lowered it appears.

I still can't explain all AI crashes, like the one Robert reported earlier. I have saved four or five mission logs, for anyone who might be interested in looking at them.

Thanks guys.

We looked this morning and can't see anything particularly wrong. Between us we ran well over 20 missions. We only saw 5 crashed aircraft.
Approx 3 to 5 dives, per aircraft (x5) per mission. For me after the first 2 missions, no one crashed at all for 10 missions.

I believe it's when the aircraft is damaged from Flak or MG fire. Then all bets are off.

Flak is very increased in latest BH&H Recon Wars if you remember. You can turn the flak down maybe if you want to use rockets for airfield attacks.
Airfield attacks were very dangerous.
We know rockets are fun to use, but they did not take rockets on ground attacks generally as they were incendiary air-to-air rocket. Imagine the smoke as you fire randomly-veering rockets in front of you just as you fly down to the tree line. So to be more historical you should not load them unless a Balloon or Zep attack.
AI is not particularly designed to use them at the ground targets as they did not use them - although they do very well anyway.
Note, low to the ground the blast from target exploding from the rockets could also affect the aircraft.

The randomness in this sim is insane, you could run the same mission dozens of times and think something is wrong because you see too many casualties, then run it another dozen and see none.

OK back to WOTR for now.


(BTW at 5.05 in your video Robert if you look at your label it says it's fighting a Fok DII hence the changes in manoeuvres at that point - it's not trying to ground attack any more).

I follow your reasoning Mark but in the vid, the DII is quite a ways off to be taking radical maneuvers such as those demonstrated in my opinion. That said, you know better than I as to the AI reasoning/decision making. I just elected to take back control rather than wait to see if the Pup would crash. I probably shouldn't have done that.

Best Regards

Thank you, Pol.

For what it's worth, I ran all these missions with AA fire set to easy.

In terms of ranking the lethality of these missions from these tests, I would place RR yard attacks as the most lethal, airfield attacks the second most lethal, and balloon attacks as the least lethal. RR attacks are probably the most lethal because of the combination of flak, mg's, two-story buildings, and several trees, which make it extra hard to maneuver at low levels.

One thing I have noticed about the AI just after it finishes an attack run is that it tends to bank hard in such a way that its wing becomes temporarily perpendicular with the ground, making it easier to collide with tall objects such as trees.

Also, from looking at several mission log files, I noticed frequent "innacurateRocketsCount" and "rocket launch FAIL" messages just before a crash. Probably have nothing to do with the AI crashes, but I thought I would note it anyway. I will refrain from using rockets on airfield and railyard attack missions from now on, though.

Another thing I have noticed from looking at the mission log files is that the AI has difficulty with transitions from one tactical manuever to another, such as in the above example. There may also be a "cascade" effect. That is, when the flight leader crashes, one of the remaining AI immediately becomes the flight leader, which often results in a change in that AI's tactical orders. Perhaps the sudden change from one maneuver to another is confusing the AI, leading to a crash, particularly if the AI is in the middle of an attack?

Indeed Robert I merely was pointing out it's nothing to do with rockets or diving at that point.

BB - WM checked through the ground avoidance code and there is nothing wrong/off. As I say it IS dangerous even for humans to dive in a WW1 aircraft close to the round and shoot, especially rockets! So don't take them. We do not auto assign them for ground attack, that is your personal choice. Maybe just take them for yourself next time, and not for the other AI pilots in your flight?

Yes, they are meant to bank at various (randomized to a point to avoid any AI robotics) steep angles to get out of the way of any other aircraft too, not just ground objects. This is by design. Helps a lot in balloon busting which is fairly complex for AI to do.

Given the tremendous complexity of a war situation and AI coping with every single thing that happens, it does extremely well - much better than pretty much any other sim out there. Some of those ground crashes WILL be from damaged controls or aircraft parts from the MG and Archie at the target, even random failures too, and ground blasts.
Remember, the defensive MG crews in WW1 usually do not use tracers so you cannot see the bullets flying.

We do NOT want robot AI that always does a perfect dive etc. As In real life shooting up an airfield, some will die. Some will crash, many guys crashed doing victory rolls and showing off too - so any crashes are reasonable and should happen.

Thanks Mark, for taking the time to explain, it's appreciated.

Best Regards

As Robert said, thank you.

I wasn't trying to argue with you; just pointing out a few of my observations in case they might have been helpful to you and improve the sim. No offense meant.

No offence taken, and thanks for reporting. We took it seriously and took some time out both of us looking for a whole morning (rather than making WOTR) and found nothing wrong so I was reporting what you could be seeing sometimes.

It's all good. Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to investigate.