Super AI

[leadgtr81]

Originally Posted by smink1701

Agree 100 percent. The AI is on steroids. It would be great to have a slider or somthing to lower thier skill level.

There is in the FMB. I haven't actually seen too much of a difference, but I'm in the process of testing out various AI slider settings within FMB. If there's any sort of a difference, I'll be sure and share the news.

[baronWastelan]

I want to believe the AI doesn't cheat. Let the devs post up a track showing a human in a Spitfire at 24,000 feet dog-fighting some 109's to put all these allegations to rest once and for all. Without air-start.

[snwkill]

Definitely a +1...

It seems to me the damage is way under-done as far as physical effects on opponent aircraft. I can maybe understand being able to pump some extra rounds in a fuselage, but when you unload your whole arsenal on the engines and it still keeps on chugging along. Seems a bit wacky.

[flyboy4612]

+1 I had an He-111 roll quicker than my Spitfire. I was just in a fight in a 109 against a Hurricane and the AI plane's flaps were deploying and retracting as quickly as the ailerons and elevator were moving. The Hurricane also seemed to have an awesome amount of thrust at certain points and leave me in the dust. And all the AI fighters do the old IL-2 barrel roll in a downward spiral.

[Blue Scorpion]

Sounds like they did go with the IL2 ai model after all, in which case this arcade rubbish is headed for the dustbin. I got sick and tired of this absurd notion of boosting ai performance to cover deficient ai routines in the earlier versions of the series.

There really is no good reason for it, we all know and accept the ai will never be as good as a competent human pilot, which is why players turn to multiplayer when they want that level of challenge. However, single player offers a more structured environment in which to play through specific scenarios, mimicking situations that occurred at the time, which generally would not work well in multiplayer.

Moreover, the number of aircraft involved in the typical single player melee, negate many ai deficiencies through weight of numbers, and the ever changing situation in a three dimensional environment, removing any need for this asinine boosting of performance. The approach of artificially boosting performance and removing physical restrictions from the ai, results in nothing but a farce, and combat situations that never happened in reality, destroying any notion that this title can be considered a simulation of the period's air war.

[reflected]

Agreed. It's the same old shitty barrel rolling über AI from Il2...even more über - in regards of cheating physics. Not so good in regards of flying abilities.

[jspec01]

I've got to agree with your very well thought out and respectful post, leadgtr81 - especially in regards to the a.i. roll rate - it really is something to behold!

I know they have a their hands full for the time being, I just really hope that it can be sorted out in the future.

[Talon89]

I spent many hours hacking and tweaking the AI in IL2 to mixed success. (I came up with the Cert AI mod).

This reeks of the same extremely simple crap they had back then, that was almost unsalvageable. I mean, I made it different, and probably better, at least more random, but it was by no means quality AI, it was poor from the ground up.

The AI in IL2 had no CEM. It had its own simplified flight model that ignored this.
The AI in IL2 had damage models that were stronger or weaker than the player based on skill level (simple multiplier, 50% stronger on ace, 25% on veteran, IIRC).
The AI in IL2 had no concept of a cockpit, perma-wonder woman.
The AI in IL2 had no concept of clouds.
The AI in IL2 knew that you were there the instant that you came within a certain range (5kmish, IIRC)
The AI in IL2 had a number of maneuvers to call upon, but in its stock form it just did the barrel roll 95% of the time.

There were also a bunch of random unfinished pieces of AI code in there based around bomber attacks, BnZ aircraft etc. They appeared to have been discarded, or maybe from an earlier build and no longer used? I used 4.08 as my base.

Anyway, I thought I would shed some light on the old IL2 AI for those curious. I really hope that they rectified at least some of those problems.

More maneuvers are easy enough to add, not seeing in clouds is doable, adding semi-randomized successful bounces based on skill was easy enough, but if it's still using a simplified FM and has no cockpit, it will probably be mostly unsalveagable as a proper AI again.

[ICDP]

The developers said in multiple interviews that the AI were much improved. They said the AI could no longer see through clouds, they actaully can see through clouds. Is this an oversight or an outright lie?

Instead we get the old IL2 AI. You can sneak up on them a bit better but watching them cheat is a real deal breaker for an offline exclusive player. They were pretty bad pre-patch, now they are worse. I think the devs just simply cannot do decent AI, we will have to learn to live with this.

[mazex]

Well, as they are in the middle of a crazy code optimization Marathon in no time, I'm pretty sure a lot of the tweaks have been seeing very little testing. Sure they have been doing stuff with the AI code too - and it's nothing you can write automated tests for with any precision at least. It takes beta testing so keep good reports coming about bugs and instructions about how to reproduce them!

I'm sure a lot of these bugs where not there two weeks ago