AI findings

AI takes off without warming it's engine, as player you are too late to follow.

AI keeps flying in formation when being attacked. As player it's easy to down these aircrafts.

AI crashes when player lands instead of landing at home base.

AI congratulates player for a kill too early not visible yet that the aircraft goes down. As player you have an advantage not wasting ammo.

AI bailing out too early out of small damaged aircraft.

AI continues flying in a burning aircraft.

AI not dropping their bombs on target, they fly home with their bombs.

One annoying thing about the AI radio is during a huge battle you hear the whole squad talking at the exact same time, saying the exact same thing. We need some variety!

Change up a few of phrases the pilots say. Just 2 or 3 different phrases that mean the same thing would be a breath of fresh air and make the radio feel less like a bunch of robots and more like human beings.

Is there any footage of a real WW2 squad talking on radio during a dogfight? I would try to replicate that.

Gentlemen!

The most things i read about the AI behavior are consequences of incorrect mission building. If you do the things correct in FMB, the AI is a very good and realistc one. If you behave wrong in FMB, than you have some Problem. This belongs also to the Quick Missions, from what, imho, most must be "rewritten". By spending now more than 1.000 Hours in the great FMB of CloD and over 770 Hours in Combat tests for the builded Missions, i realy stay on that point of view.

But i think this will not bother the AI discussion ;).

Cheers
Thomas

Were you drinking heavily and/or under the influence of pyschtropic drugs during or preceeding the creation/testing of FMB ?

Well, my personal "peeve" with the AI is the lack of what really separated experienced pilots from utterly green rookies - situational awareness.

A totally green pilot put into a combat aircraft will barely be able to do more than cling to his leader (and losing sight of him often enough, though). Such a pilot's attention is completely occupied by keeping the aircraft in the air and not losing sight of his formation. You can read that often enough in veteran's memories - they almost never saw the enemy aircraft during their first air combat.
Experience is gained through flying missions (and coming back in one piece ;)) and the first thing that improves is the situational awareness. Suddenly the pilot does have more and more routine in flying the aircraft so that he can keep most of his attention outside, scanning the skies for contacts or other unusual things. There are varying grades of situational awareness, there are pilots with little and pilots with a great load of it and often training or experience have nothing to do with gaining it, but only after a certain amount is gained other aspects of flying other skills improve (such as aerobatics, combat tactics or even shooting skills).

This brings us to what is my main "booo!" with the AI - it does know (always!) when an enemy aircraft is on its tail. There is no way to surprise the AI, once you get into shooting position it will start "waggling" from left to right so badly, that I get headaches after watching it for a while. There is no tactics involved - no sharp break turn, no steep dive, just that insane "wag the wing" stuff.

My 0,02 € ...

Error description: Launcher.exe Crash
Details: Playing online after 5 to 60 mins the whole game crashes to desktop. This happens even faster when more aircraft are in one place.
Can it be consistently reproduced?: Yes, have 12 pilots take off from 1 airfield and the whole game slows down and then crash. Same with large formation flying...

Win 7 64 bit

Asus Mobo
8 Gig of Ram
CPU I5 @3.0Ghz
5770 ATI Radeon

Hey,

for now i think the most important feature for the AI would be some kind of debug output. Reading some very good suggestions like having rookie pilots react in a slow / panic like way could easily interpreted as further bad AI behavior, even though it was intended. Lacking this feature a proper discussion with everyone talking about the same situations / reactions is hardly possible in my opinion.

Hence the AI should state what its trying to achive and why, of course this should only be enabled as a debug for example in track recordings or as a text file.

An example to illustrate:
Player P attacks a formation of fighters F(1-4). He hits F(4) on his first attempt and breaks of not overtaking the formation. F(4) starts a slow turn, not going fully defensive, but leaving formation.

From a player standpoint of view there a several "bugs" to report, for example:
* AI reacts not defensive enough if shot at
* AI formations don't form a defensive circle when attacked
* AI turning performance is bad

From an AI standpoint of view there might have been reasons for this behavior, for example:
* AI tries to simulate bad leadership by a slow reacting formation leader
* AI pilot is dead, the rest of the formation has not noticed
* AI plane is damaged, course can not be maintained, AI is still in the process of communicating

To resolve messages like this could help:
*F(4): i have been hit, i do not know by what or from where, i am a rookie i am waiting for a 3.14 second time to properly react
*F(1): communication with formation ongoing
*F(1): i am a rookie i am waiting for a 5 second time to decide what to do next
*F(4): i am a rookie i have a 79% chance of panic, i panic and hence leave formation, i am trying to find the attacker
ect. ect.

Of course this would be very verbose, and could not be used all the time. But for the sake of a proper improvement of single, isolated situations and reactions it is very important.

Madog

P.S. Oh, first post... Hello everyone :)

Hi Madog43, welcome and good post. Output would be helpful. It is possible to get damage model information (see my sig) and this would be great for AI debugging.

Suggestions:

1. Remove wing wobble when the AI can't make up its mind which way to roll. Just pick one and commit!

2. Reduce roll rate. I don't care if the rate is technically possible, there's no way it could be controlled well enough.

Just a thought but ideally AI players would emulate human players. Would it be possible to interrogate server tracks to get common responses to scenarios? You would get a range of skills from players like me through to people who know what they're doing.

+100!

Oleg would never admit it but BoB2 is the benchmark in AI and all you need to do is buy some time from Buddye. Just look at his list of manoevres which the BoB AI code can choose from, there are hundreds, depending on the tactical situation (not just a few as in CoD).

But here is my big AI wish...

If a flight of luftwaffe fighters flies directly past, within ten feet of a flight of Blenheim bombers, they should bloody well attack them!!!! How hard is that to program for goodness sake!

I just set up a mission in fmb with blenheims bombing france, three groups of luftwaffe fighters set to free hunt all at same altitude, clear skies and even when the blenheims gunners fire at them they ignore the blenheims. Try it yourselves. It sux.

This is from a Buddye post...Read it and LEARN!


The design of the AI Maneuver Selection

The design of the AI maneuver Selection Criteria was driven by the need to become more deterministic and less random in selecting AI maneuvers. I felt the need to move in this direction to improve the AI offence and defense so the AI selection software had more control...

Here is a summary of how the AI selects from the (more than 80) available manouvres:

1. Altitude (how much altitude and rate of change)
2. Speed (how much speed, and rate of change)
3. Position of A/C to each other (nose to tail, tail to tail, nose to beam, tail to beam or left, right, front, back) This is what makes the AI really 'smart' - it is constantly testing to see if it is 'offensive' or 'defensive' and chooses its response dynamically as the fight progresses.

To implement the new selection criteria I built a 3 X 6 matrix (a truth table) and many new programs. For each A/C (the unfriendly and the AI or the player), I designed programs to look at Altitude, Speed, and position and to first try and select the best maneuver option (aggressive or defense) based on AI skill level.

Altitude and speed can also be thought of as “energy” as altitude can be turned into speed.

I also gave the Terminator AI a bit of boost in performance and tune-up so you might want to try it out. With the boost in Terminator performance, he was getting “cocky” so I implemented a spinout feature. The Terminator flies so close to the edge now that he has a tendency to “spinout”. This is when you can get him. (BOB2 has a 'Terminator' skill setting, which guarantees the AI will fly offensively/aggressively against the player in all situations. It isn't superhuman, it still makes mistakes and follows the laws of physics, but it will, in every way, be out to kill you!)

I also implemented a new AI feature called “Flying Factor (FF)”. This is the knowledge of the AI pilot to fly a given maneuver (experience) and how well the AI pilot will actually fly the given maneuver (skill). The FF is based on the Skill Level (customer selected in Instant Action Missions and software assigned in the Campaign). The Terminator is assigned a Skill Level of Hero2 (the highest in the game) so that is where he gets his boost in performance (edge). BOB2 has since 2009 had up to 4 mixed skills within a flight Novice, Veteran, Ace or Hero. So you might get lucky and bag a novice with limited abilities, to then be up against an ace who has the full range of AI talents available to it.

AI Maneuver Selection is the KEY

First, the BOBII AI has a special case for selection called “Evasive maneuver selection”. The Evasive maneuver is required when an AI is shot at (either a hit or near miss). The AI will select a defensive maneuver randomly based on the criteria/data for both Player and enemy AI (speed, altitude, and the position of the targeting AI and the AI being targeted with respect to each other). Of course, the AI will evade the players quicker, if and only if, the AI can see the enemy (remember in BOBII, the AI vision is blocked just like the player's vision is blocked by the cockpit, wings, sun, and distance).

The first key decision to be made is to select either an aggressive or defensive maneuver. This is a complex decision based on the available information on both the Player and the Enemy AI or the friendly AI and the enemy AI. The data considered for both Player and enemy is speed, altitude, and the position of the targeting AI and the AI being targeted with respect to each other.

After selecting either an aggressive or defensive, then a random approach is used to select a category (choose good, choose bad, or choose “neither” good nor bad maneuver). This also makes the AI very human, the chance that it will choose a 'bad' maneouvre in the circumstances.

Maneuvers are then divided into three parts Vertical, Horizontal, and dive for each of our categories (choose good, choose bad, and choose neither good nor bad maneuver).

The individual maneuver selection is then based on speed, altitude, and position of both the player and the enemy AI.

In BOBII we have over 80 complex maneuvers for selection (both the aggressive and defensive maneuvers) for the fighters (Spit,Hurri,109.110) and over 50 maneuvers for selection for the JU87 and Defiant. The following are BOBII’s complex maneuvers: (My comments in bold on some of the less obvious labels)

MANOEUVRE_SELECT
MANOEUVRE_LOOKROUND
MANOEUVRE_WELDEDWINGMAN
MANOEUVRE_BAILOUT
MANOEUVRE_TOPCOVER
MANOEUVRE_FORCETOPCOVER
MANOEUVRE_LINEABREAST
MANOEUVRE_PINCER
MANOEUVRE_MULTIWAVE
MANOEUVRE_DIVEANDZOOM
MANOEUVRE_INSIDELOOP
MANOEUVRE_LAGPURSUIT
MANOEUVRE_SPLITMANOEUVRE
MANOEUVRE_HEADON
MANOEUVRE_LINEASTERN
MANOEUVRE_VICATTACK
MANOEUVRE_BARRELROLLATTACK
MANOEUVRE_SCISSORS
MANOEUVRE_MILDSCISSORS
MANOEUVRE_TURNINGFIGHT
MANOEUVRE_SPLITS
MANOEUVRE_ZOOMANDDROP
MANOEUVRE_STRAIGHTANDLEVEL
MANOEUVRE_SPINOUT
MANOEUVRE_DIVEFORHOME
MANOEUVRE_GOHOME
MANOEUVRE_MAKEFORFRIENDLY
MANOEUVRE_MOVEAWAY
MANOEUVRE_QUICKROLL
MANOEUVRE_IMMELMANNTURN
MANOEUVRE_IMMELMANN
MANOEUVRE_STAYWITHPREY (forces AI to ignore eg fighters and concentrate on bombers)
MANOEUVRE_CLIMBFORHOME
MANOEUVRE_STRAIGHTDIVE (for LW, this is a bunt, for the RAF Merlin engine fighters, they will roll to invert, then dive)
MANOEUVRE_OUTSIDELOOP
MANOEUVRE_SHOOTTOFRIGHTEN (eg if AI detects a comrade under attack within range)
MANOEUVRE_SHOOTTOOEARLY
MANOEUVRE_GAINHEIGHT
MANOEUVRE_LAGROLL
MANOEUVRE_EXTENSION
MANOEUVRE_DIVINGROLL
MANOEUVRE_REVERSETURN
MANOEUVRE_SELFASBAIT (or 'drag and bag' in other parlance - one AI will fly steady and slow, luring the player, while its wingman stalks)
MANOEUVRE_JINK
MANOEUVRE_BREAKTURN
MANOEUVRE_LAZYTURN
MANOEUVRE_BREAKLOW
MANOEUVRE_BREAKHIGH
MANOEUVRE_BREAK90
MANOEUVRE_BREAK180
MANOEUVRE_HIGBARRELROLL
MANOEUVRE_PANICTURN
MANOEUVRE_TURNANDRUN
MANOEUVRE_LOWALT
MANOEUVRE_ZOOM
MANOEUVRE_INTERCEPTHIGH
MANOEUVRE_INTERCEPTLOW
MANOEUVRE_GAINSPEED
MANOEUVRE_HEADONATTACK
MANOEUVRE_LUFBERRY (a special manoeuver for the Bf110s)
MANOEUVRE_STEEPDIVE
MANOEUVRE_UPANDUNDER
MANOEUVRE_STALLTURN
MANOEUVRE_SLASHINGATTACK
MANOEUVRE_CLIMBTURN
MANOEUVRE_ROLL360
MANOEUVRE_STRAFFE
MANOEUVRE_TRANSITION
MANOEUVRE_PEELOFF
MANOEUVRE_SNAPSHOT
MANOEUVRE_STAYONTAIL
MANOEUVRE_FLYTHROUGHCLOUD (a defensive manouver available if clouds are present - the AI dives for the nearest cloud)
MANOEUVRE_REGROUP
MANOEUVRE_DISENGAGED
MANOEUVRE_SPINRECOVERY
MANOEUVRE_COLLIDE
MANOEUVRE_LAST
MANOEUVRE_ALIGNMENT
MANOEUVRE_DROPANDZOOM
MANOEUVRE_COLLISIONAVOIDANCE
MANOEUVRE_TURNTOHDGANDPITCH (turn to heading, a waypoint command)
MANOEUVRE_SCREWYOUGUYSIMGOINGHOME (when damaged, out of fuel, or low on morale - unlike in CoD, the AI will still evade if attacked when running for home).

The AI Performance Criteria/Dependencies

Skill Level

The AI performance is dependent on AI Skill Level (which is customer selected in Instant Action and SW assigned in the campaign). BOBII AI do make mistakes (spin, crash, dumb maneuvers, bad judgment, shoot late , shoot bad, etc) which is after all very human.

The skill level of the AI is key in making decisions on about everything with respect to AI performance like (1) how well the AI fly, shoot, shoot fast, slow, accuracy, or not shoot, (2) how well the AI fly, what maneuvers are selected, and how well the AI will fly the chosen maneuver.

Random Numbers (Luck of the draw)

The BOBII AI A/C is also dependent on luck (specifically on random numbers). Random number decisions are coded through out the AI code. BOBII’s random approach keeps BOBII from doing the same thing each time. Even something as simple as the direction to start a maneuver (left or right), I will use a random number to decide (why hard code something when you can use a random number).


For example, most BOBII vertical maneuvers use a random number to assign a length of time to for a specific vertical maneuver (Like Zoom). The AI pilot will sometimes cut off early, or late, or somewhere in the middle. If early, the maneuver may carry too much speed, and if late, the AI may slow down so much that control is lost (very human).

The bottom line is that the customer will always see a somewhat different maneuver (very good, good, not so good, and loss of control) both because of the random implementation and the different physic’s parameters (speed, roll, heading, pitch, and overall energy) going into each maneuver.

The very real downside of random numbers is it is very hard to test (not repeatable) and the processing power used.

Conditions

The conditions for each maneuver are always different (energy, speed, altitude, skill, damage, and enemy position). This also changes how the maneuver is performed. A damaged AI will not fly as well as an undamaged AI (damage is always taken into account in the AI flying performance).