[MikkOwl]

this system could actually leave the pilot with the relaxed difficulty settings at more of a disadvantage than the full difficulty pilot. For example, how many different stall recovery techniques will an AI be able to use? How many different variations of engine management routines per type? What kind of skill level will the helping AI be?

I think that is part of the motivator for players to try to move beyond the aids. If they achieved ideal flight through aids then there would be less motivation. I did cover this aspect in the initial post and stated it was a disadvantage in many cases but it permits so many more players to take part at an earlier stage of experience/skill/hardware. Still a win-win situation.

How can you learn your airframe if you are not allowed to make mistakes? supposing that the AI routines are indeed variable enough to give you a bit of unpredictability, how will you accurately judge your aircraft's performance when you see it behaving differently in a series of similar events?

There's many, many things someone must learn in order to fly successfully (in a completely realistic simulation) without aids. One must start somewhere. Things can always be learned by flying even with aids, and for those things that are not yet mastered, I think that the more realism minded players would really prefer not to have their team mates crash their Junkers 88 on take-off or into others when trying to land. I.e. some things are best practiced offline The larger the range of settings that can be toggled, the easier they can be learned one at a time. Nail the taxiing bit and take off bit, but still can't land without crashing into the ground crew servicing your team's planes, can automate just landing - for now. Can't handle fuel primer pumps yet and thus can't even take-off, well, look it up later, or just fly without it as it is of no major consequence for the most part of flight. Can't handle stalls/spins yet because there's so much to learn - leave the aid on until getting grips on the other things.

None of us stepped from non-gamer straight into a realistic simulator. The learning courve was long and hard. Spin recovery and those things are not that hard to learn for someone who has some grips on flying physics, so it will probably be one of the things early turned off.

[quote]the practical problem behind this is that a more experienced pilot can still shoot you down[/qoute]
On any servers enforcing a somewhat decent level of realism, this will always be the case no matter one's settings. This is the way of things. The proposal does not attempt to rectify this. It only attempts to allow those who cannot handle 100% realism due to whatever reason (and that most likely includes nearly all of us here) to participate with those who can without giving an experienced pilot advantages if he also choose to employ the same aids.

If there are servers willing to mix realism settings, then the admin would for example flag certain settings in the console as selectable by the user and keep the rest adjusted according to his desire. If on the other hand he doesn't want to mix them up, he would simply flag none of it as user selectable.

The current IL-2 system allows mixing realism settings by default - unless all realism settings are set to max. I don't think there even is an option to enforce people to use less realism/aids than max if a pilot wants to. SoW is going to add more extreme realism settings for complex management of all kinds of systems, and this is what I see as the main problem on the horizon (depending on just how realistic SoW turns out).

the list of automated functions you suggest is a bit large to see any widespread use apart from training

It is only a list of examples of what could be included in a single range, and also of aids that don't currently exist but could exist (and how they would integrate even in a more hardcore environment). For the 'realism first' minded players, I think even they would get taken back by very complex management of the fuel/electrical/coolant/starter etc system, assuming it is included, and would choose to have it automated, while others out of principle will switch their fuel tanks manually. Hardware available is a consideration. I have a G940 and Saitek Quadrant, but I cannot even reach my keyboard when flying, and I could not use all the systems if they were simulated with my current setup. Others are the same and I would prefer it if servers were accomodating to this fact (and more, as it is to everyone's advantage).

By having an AI routine heavily modulate your flying to keep you safe, you've effectively put yourself in a position where you are as predictable as the AI. [...] That's not only on the part of the pilot receiving the AI help, but on my part too, as it will feel like fighting against the AI whenever someone on relaxed settings pulls too many Gs in front of me.
Sure, if he pulls too much he will stall, snap roll, bleed 100mph of speed and loose 500 feet of altitude, but i know better than to cut my throttle and follow him if i'm not 100% sure i can kill him with a single snapshot. Otherwise i'm getting myself set up for attack by someone else, because in order to follow him i also have to slow down by 100mph and drop 500ft lower. What that effectively means is that despite his clumsy technique, he has managed to evade my firing pass and has gained anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds to escape depending on what each one of us flies, speeds and altitude that the engagement is taking place. If the AI kicks in just as he starts to push the airframe and limits him to a 2.5G relaxed break, i'm simply going to pull a bit of lead and fill him full of holes.
It could be like shooting fish in barrel and i'm no hotshot by any means.

There's some misunderstanding here. I was not specific enough: the stall/spin recovery aid I suggested would not act to disallow stalling and spins, but only (attempt) to recover from spins using correct technique that veteran pilots know perfectly how to do already. They would stall and enter spins if pulling too many G's, but at least they could have a chance of recovering if not too low. Your impression of my suggestion sounds more like turning off stall/spins in IL-2 (yes, that one alters physics while this one would not, but if this suggested aid did not even permit stalls, it would be affecting things a bit too much).

In that sense, your personal experience fighting someone with spin recovery aid would be no different from a veteran pilot, all else being equal. They'd stall out and then try to recover, from your perspective. There's no way you could tell if they had it or not.

What could maybe work is a single difficulty setting for automatic startup/shutdown that would be a sub-setting of realistic systems management. That could work pretty much like Black Shark, with you sitting back while the AI goes through the motions and then it would only be limited to starting up and shutting down engine,radios and whatever other systems your plane might have, useful only at mission start and after you land and exit the runway.
In such a way, if you want to you can start things manually, or if you don't or happen to be trying a new airframe you can simply press the "engine on" key, but this should again come with a drawback. For example, a quick and dirty but still safe manual start up will be faster than having the AI going lazily through the entire checklist. An automatic one will be by the book, while a manual one you can do as you like.

Now you see the spirit of things I agree with it, but I don't think it should be as basic as two options for aircraft system management - one for stuff more than throttle, and one for start/stop procedures. There's many more systems that should be toggle-able depending on the user's preference, experience or hardware available. In IL-2 'complex engine management' takes over the radiator (mostly), prop pitch/RPM and fuel mixture all at the same time. It would be nice to specify if I want to move on to learning how fuel mix works and bind that to a lever without having to also learn prop pitch at the same time. In SoW this will be more complicated, warranting more options for automation.

As for the fuel primer pump thing, it's not just a matter of knowledge, it's also about (as mentioned) hardware. Even if something can be learned, it might not be possible to manipulate it in a fun/good/decent/ergonomic/immersive way.

Great post, loved reading and replying to it!