Outperformed by AI every single time

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by PotNoodles

So the question that needs answering is why do they want it this way? Is it something that cannot be fixed, or something they want to keep in the game?

The short answer is that CEM is very complicated and takes away a lot of resources.

Going into more detail, i have had the sim since the EU release and early tests back then showed that enabling CEM would cost about 10 FPS. And that's just for the player aircraft.

So, the player aircraft flies on CEM, but the AI fly on simplified rules.

For example, while in your plane there is a complex set of rules in the code that governs engine behaviour ("if paramater X rises to value Y then Z is affected, which in turn changes parameter A to value B and so on), the AI planes fly with a simplified rule set (to the effect of "don't exceed this value for that parameter"). This AI rule set is then affected by certain modifiers, depending on the AI skill levels.

Online it's not a problem because the parameters for each player controlled aircraft are calculated on their own PCs and (probably) only positional and speed (vector) data are exchanged with the server along with certain event flags.

Eg, if i blow my engine the server doesn't need to know the whole story behind how it happened. It only needs to know that the rest of the players need to see me streaking black smoke and how my speed and position are changing over time, which is probably exactly what is transmitted over the network.

Offline however, or online against AI, to have full CEM would place too much of a burden on our PCs or the servers hosting missions with AI.

In short, the compromise is very reasonable and necessary. What needs tweaking is the rule set under which the AI fly.

I think this is doable, since it's working under simplified rules to begin with. All the AI needs is to tone down some of their parameters (like their roll performance), place a timer on certain capabilities (so that they follow engine limits), place an upper limit that can't be exceeded by skill modifiers (so that AI skill doesn't exceed aircraft capabilities) and upgrade some others (so that even if surprised and being inactive at low skill levels, which i like, they should eventually start taking evasive action and not sit still indefinitely).

The real delay in such a process wouldn't come so much from the actual task of changing parameters in the code, but mostly from identifying what to change and how, as well as testing the results.