Not really a MOD

Just a file edit to alter the AI's maximum vision to identify planes - enemy or friendly.

1. Backup your simulation.xml file in the WOFF directory.

2. Right click on simulation.xml and open it with notepad.

3. Find and Edit the following line to whatever number you like (I'm using 1750 - default value is 750): perfectRange_met="1750"

4. Close and save.

Encounters are actually more interesting now:

1. Support flight now engages enemy most of the time.

2. Planes have more time to react, so not all enemies join the fight. They now have more time to run away which I've seen happen from both my flight and enemy flight.

3. Mission outcomes are still realistic along with my previous MOD installed.

Happy flying!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the value is in meters. I'm also trying out 3000.

Sounds mighty interesting (especially the Support Flight part) and certainly worth a go-round.
Thanks OldHat.

That's interesting that mission outcomes remain realistic. I might have to give this a good too since it's easy to change back. Kudos to you sir.

I'll give it a go as well, it would be nice to have the supporting flight actually get involved.

In that case it's back how more like we had it in the past

We deliberately reduced it to allow more passing by. Increasing the AI perfect range means they will definitely see you sooner. So all flights will see you from further away now.

So if the support flight "joins in" more so will other flights including of course enemy flights so you will have more deaths from that too.

Yes some will run away sooner, but also those that are up for a fight will now see you sooner and more often and attack more often rather than passing by sometimes.

Flights running away happens already. If you increase the "perfect vision" it also means you will not be able to sneak up on aircraft as much too - something that often happened in WW1

As per usual there's a 100 other situations that get affected. Swings and roundabouts.

Yes indeed.
Trying to judge the ebb and flow impact on game play via number changes is a tricky business.
Might be great, might be nothing, might be a game breaker.
But like Hellshade said: easy to change and easy to change back if it don't feel right.

Indeed, the default settings we had originally literally had 1000s of missions test (pass the revolver please) to assess it.

I hear ya Pol but people just like to try to make a great thing even greater.
In a way it's a good sign folks think and care enough to give it a try but maybe I am weird.
I fully understand your thoughts and position though - and would feel the same way!
"Hey we did thorough testing guys and its best like this eh? What?! Don't wanna take our word for it? Fine...do whatever."

On further reflection this probably SHOULD NOT be combined with the shorter AI "search times"?
I tried the shorter (but not dramatically so) times for about 5 or 10 missions and really did not notice much.

Course as Pol says it probably takes 100's, certainly dozens of missions, to get a feel for possible impacts with all the cool variables built into the sim.

Take heart Pol. Skyrim sold 10 million copies - which means somebody somewhere liked it - and yet that game has like 100,000 mods for it. When people love a sim or game, they just naturally want to tweak the hell out of it (often to their own detriment) for some reason. It's all a sign of love.

All you need is love eh

And a few billion in cash never hurts either.

Choices. I like Choices.

My small attempt to alter the numbers/ratios/percentages gives me a better gaming experience. Originally, I didn't plan to post a DM MOD or this AI vision, but I was encouraged to share so that it may benefit others as well.

For example, here is a typical mission with the most recent change I did to the AI vision along with my DM MOD (activity labels turned on):

Flying with B flight in Jasta 11 on January 1918 to patrol the front. I have A flight as support. However, A flight slightly drifts away from our path as we approach the front. They are now 4 km away from B flight. We're flying above large heavy clouds when our flight leader notices 6 Re8s through a break in the clouds 3 km below. He decides to attack and we fly into the clouds for cover and then emerge from the clouds less than 1km behind them. The bombers are all focused on bombing one of our airfields and don't notice us sneaking up behind them. We start firing from about 300 meters and break them up. The Re8s are now fighting for their lives as we pound away at them and destroy all except one that managed to escape. At the same time, "A flight" was above us fighting a squad of SPAD 13's (escorts?).

The final outcome is that most of our flight took heavy to light damage with a couple of wounded pilots, but no one was killed. That was cool and I enjoyed the whole mission.

Again, this edit is only for folks who want to try a different experience.

Just gave the Vision switch a try (made it JGSME compatable) and, flying with 1 Squadron in Feb 1917 saw not a bit of difference as the support flight (A Flight) did not engage a group of about 5 Albs.
Interestingly B Flight (except me) all took a bit of damage and there was only 1 kill claim with the Stock DM. Again though this result off-times happens with stock.

Now of course one mission MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but again, I love in OBD's work that everything is always different encounter to encounter as all the numerical factors come into play just a bit differently from moment to moment and mission to mission.
You would have to fly dozens of missions to get a proper feel for this change. Like OBD did to get the Stock values.

Yeah I think that's the problem with testing, and you have to test in Campaign not QC.

There's a whole lot more going on than the vision, many factors from flights and individuals pilots make up the whole decision making, from damage, advantage of craft abilities, pilot abilities, morale, fatigue, mission objectives, height advantage, speed, over the lines or not, cloud below in front etc and so on I won't bore you more. You will see what you saw with current vision settings, and also with our old vision settings (which we will likely revert to improve on other things we wish to work better).

The new vision was to make more dogfights break up earlier and so on but anyway more on that later.

Problem is you need to test like for a year to see all possibilities which is what we did (in fact nearly 2 years during development) to know it's not a placebo or other random event that is causing different things to happen.


Anyway I'll leave you guys to the modding and butt out.
All the best.

I wish you wouldn't "butt out."
I understand your position on modding and I get it - I really do. From both the creative and tech support side.
And it always seems like I come back to Stock on everything as it provides the best overall result - which you have striven mightily to achieve with all your time and hard work and I am most appreciative.

OBD has done a fantastic job on WOFF but, people being people, there are always going to be tweakers who try to make it even more perfect in the own mind.
And your input is always appreciated as it points out possible issues with these "ideas" and why they may be bad and game breaking. Not having access or knowledge of the internals not everything is as simple as text file change like with Ranks.

And as a Part II, overall, the AI performance is excellent taken as a whole.
Of course there are a couple of things that I may like changed but really its not worth breaking things as they are now.
Changing number variables to change this and that will always be like a dog chasing his own tail as other unintended consequences will naturally occur I reckon - and not always for the better.

Very complicated and I will be amazed if you ever make everyone happy.

Although OBD changed the AI vision in their v2.11 patch, I've decided to change them to suit my play style to the following:

maxRange_met="5000"
perfectRange_met="1500"

Also, I've changed these other variables:

SHOOTING_RANGE_met="100"
COLLISION_RANGE_met="100"

Since the 2.11 settings are "new" I am going to experiment with them for a while to get a solid base of experience from which to judge.
Certainly advise on your thoughts with those settings as time goes on OldHat.
Can never have too much information.