Quote:
Originally Posted by Marabekm
Ok so AI doesn't care what aircraft is, it knows one thing. In mission builder you set waypoint height and speed. So if you set AI to fly at 600 km/hr 50m off the ground, that's what it will do. It does what it's told.
This is what results in AI aircraft in the campaigns operating so as the player can not keep up. Example: Load the Pearl Harbor campaign mission as a D3A. If you open the mission in the FMB, you will immediately see that the D3A's are set to travel at 400 km/hr. (That's 215 knots)
Have a look here: http://www.combinedfleet.com/ijna/d3a.htm
Notice the max speed of the Val? 209 knots. So end result, you can in fact no way keep up.
So really its up to mission builder to make sure and set realistic speeds for aircraft. |
The waypoint settings are only for transit between those points. It doesn't matter what speed and altitude you set for them once they engage in combat - they'll accelerate/climb/dive to whatever they feel is appropriate to get the job done. You can edit the mission files with a text editor and make the waypoint for a LaGG-3 to be 900km/h and on spawning it will snap like any LaGG that was too eager in a dive.
Problem is that the AI seems to fly absolutely perfectly every millisecond, their engine management and trim is optimal at any given moment. This makes it appear as though their performance goes beyond the limits the player is constrained by - whether or not the AI uses the same FM as human aircraft or has a simplified version, I'm not sure of. Much like Janosch, I've had instances where a particulary persistent Kingcobra has kept pace with my Do 335, but being human I probably wasn't running engine settings etc in a way that gave me the absolute maximum speed I could get out of the airframe, whereas the AI was.
However I think the "just moves" part of their flight model these days is relegated to their landing, which looks decidedly artificial sometimes, especially when you make them snap out of it with a squirt of .50
