4.12.2 de-bugging

[KG26_Alpha]

Originally Posted by Vendigo

Full tanks of course.
I've made two simple missions to describe what I'm talking about. You can unzip the attachment to IL-2 folder and it will add them to "Single missions" directory, you will find them in Japanese Army airforce section. It's called ME-163 BUG. Just turn the autopilot on as soon as the missions starts as watch what the AI will do.
In "test1" the AI Me-163s will not attack the bombers, in 9 out of 10 times they will abort the mission before they reach 5km altitude.
In "test2" AI Me-163s always attack the bombers.
Can anybody try it on your PCs?
It seems that AI need more time after take off before they see the bombers, otherwise they don't attack.
But this perfectly worked in 4.11

Please check the mission 1 I have edited for you it works as it should now.

Pay attention to the new waypoints, altitudes and speeds etc etc it should point you in the right direction for your mission building.



Have fun.

[Pursuivant]

AI fighter routines to attack heavy bombers seem badly flawed.

Fighters forgo effective and relatively safe head-on or high-side deflection shots in favor of suicidal tail-chases against U.S. heavy bombers.

Fighters equipped with "schrage-musik" style weapons don't take advantage of them, which makes it pointless to design bomber intercept missions for the Ki-45.

Fighters don't attack stragglers or "tail end Charlies" (the last and outermost plane in the formation), instead choosing to go for the #2 or #3 plane in the flight. If the bombers are in a "vic" formation, this means that a fighter taking a shot from behind the target is exposed to the defensive firepower of the entire formation!

Fighters will fly in between two "vics" of bombers when making stern chase attacks, so that they take fire from the front guns of the vic behind them and from the rear guns of the vic ahead of them.

Fighters always attack bomber formations individually, rather than than coordinating their attacks to split defensive firepower.

Fighters will follow an obviously crippled bomber all the way down to the deck, ignoring the other bombers in the formation. This effectively takes them out of the fight.

And this is for ACE AI!

On the other side:

At least in QMB, heavy and medium bombers don't appear in "defensive box" formations. Instead, they fly in the standard vic formations used by light bombers and dive bombers. This might be an artifact of the QMB, but Uber-demon's mission builder makes it very easy to assign different formations to particular groups of planes.

In QMB, bombers will break up their formations when they turn and not regain them for several minutes. This makes them much easier targets for fighters. This might be an artifact of the relatively short distances between waypoints.

(As a related issue, why have landing waypoints in the QMB? Would it be possible to just have AI planes that fly from one edge of the map to the other, possibly turning to bomb some location on the map?)

U.S. bombers seem to catch fire and/or break apart very quickly. While a 20-30 mm cannon shell could easily start a huge fire if it blew apart a fuel tank, it seems a bit unrealistic for even 2-3 hits to blow off the entire wing of a heavy bomber. And, while massive fires could burn through a wing fairly quickly, I'm not sure that the fire from a single fuel tank could do it quite as quickly as depicted in the game. (Keep in mind that the spectacular pictures of B-17 and B-24 plunging to earth with missing wings and with massive fires were mostly due to direct flak hits and/or wings pulling off due to excessive G forces.)

Bombers seem to make no attempt to control fires. Since IL2 can't model shutting off fuel tanks or switching fuel from damaged tanks, it seems to me that fire suppression systems on heavy bombers should have a slightly better chance of working than they did historically, and that there should be some method of using "fire extinguishers" to suppress fuel fires as well as engine fires.

I'm still dreaming of a QMB mission where I could quickly set up an immersive intercept mission by Axis fighters against Allied heavy bombers.

In a head-to-head daylight intercept situation, I'd love to see:

1) Fighters take diving or level head-on attacks against the lead bomber in the lead formation.

2) Against loosely formed formations, possibly taking additional shots at planes in trailing formations as they continue.

3) Climb or dive to out of range of the bombers guns. Look for stragglers.

4) Detail some members of the flight to attack cripples (using coordinated high-side or head on-attacks).

5) The rest of the flight/squadron turns, gets ahead of the bombers and turns to make new head-on or high side attacks. With some planes in the squadron making right and left high-side attacks while others make head-on attacks.

6) Repeat as necessary.

[Vendigo]

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

Please check the mission 1 I have edited for you it works as it should now.
Pay attention to the new waypoints, altitudes and speeds etc etc it should point you in the right direction for your mission building.

Thank you but it only works 50/50, in about half the times I tried it the AI Me-163s still fail to lock on the B-17s and keep flying in circles until the fuel runs out. Unfortunately seems this is not the solution I need.
I would like to note again that in 4.11 the Komets would take off and always attack the high-flying bombers even if Me-163s had only two waypoints set. It's a natural behaviour for rocket fighter AI but now it is not working as before.
Could anybody from DT pay attention to this and be so kind to comment whether this could be fixed, please?

[FC99]

Originally Posted by Vendigo

I would like to note again that in 4.11 the Komets would take off and always attack the high-flying bombers even if Me-163s had only two waypoints set. It's a natural behaviour for rocket fighter AI but now it is not working as before.
Could anybody from DT pay attention to this and be so kind to comment whether this could be fixed, please?

In Il2 when plane finds the target it checks through WayPoints and adjust/switch its WP according to position of the enemy. In your mission, right after the takeoff Me163 acquire the target and immediately switches to Landing WP.

In 4.11 that was not a problem for your mission but in 4.12 change has been made for planes that are landing. Prior to 4.12 once the planes were Landing they were not changing their intentions even when attacked. Now they defend themselves when they are attacked even during landing. As their main goal is to land there is a check which prevent them to get carried away with fighting and if distance to their target is to big they go back to landing.

That's what is messing up your mission. What to do now? You can adjust your mission and add WP like I did in test1 mission:

[MAIN]
  MAP Empty1a/load.ini
  TIME 12.0
  CloudType 0
  CloudHeight 1000.0
  player g0100
  army 2
  playerNum 0
[SEASON]
  Year 1940
  Month 6
  Day 15
[WEATHER]
  WindDirection 0.0
  WindSpeed 0.0
  Gust 0
  Turbulence 0
[MDS]
  MDS_Radar_SetRadarToAdvanceMode 0
  MDS_Radar_RefreshInterval 0
  MDS_Radar_DisableVectoring 0
  MDS_Radar_EnableTowerCommunications 1
  MDS_Radar_ShipsAsRadar 0
  MDS_Radar_ShipRadar_MaxRange 100
  MDS_Radar_ShipRadar_MinHeight 100
  MDS_Radar_ShipRadar_MaxHeight 5000
  MDS_Radar_ShipSmallRadar_MaxRange 25
  MDS_Radar_ShipSmallRadar_MinHeight 0
  MDS_Radar_ShipSmallRadar_MaxHeight 2000
  MDS_Radar_ScoutsAsRadar 0
  MDS_Radar_ScoutRadar_MaxRange 2
  MDS_Radar_ScoutRadar_DeltaHeight 1500
  MDS_Radar_HideUnpopulatedAirstripsFromMinimap 0
  MDS_Radar_ScoutGroundObjects_Alpha 5
  MDS_Radar_ScoutCompleteRecon 0
  MDS_Misc_DisableAIRadioChatter 0
  MDS_Misc_DespawnAIPlanesAfterLanding 1
  MDS_Misc_HidePlayersCountOnHomeBase 0
  MDS_Misc_BombsCat1_CratersVisibilityMultiplier 1.0
  MDS_Misc_BombsCat2_CratersVisibilityMultiplier 1.0
  MDS_Misc_BombsCat3_CratersVisibilityMultiplier 1.0
[RespawnTime]
  Bigship 1800
  Ship 1800
  Aeroanchored 1800
  Artillery 1800
  Searchlight 1800
[Wing]
  g0100
  usa0100
[g0100]
  Planes 3
  Skill 2
  Class air.ME_163B1A
  Fuel 100
  weapons default
[g0100_Way]
  TAKEOFF 5661.22 9105.14 0 0 &0
  NORMFLY 6175.56 15527.31 7000.00 600.00 &0
  NORMFLY 6403.96 18040.39 8000.00 700.00 usa0100 1 &0
  NORMFLY 6064.36 9707.96 500.00 500.00 &0
  LANDING 5699.89 9106.71 0 0 &0
[usa0100]
  Planes 4
  Skill 0
  Class air.B_17G
  Fuel 100
  weapons default
[usa0100_Way]
  NORMFLY 2089.23 8598.55 8000.00 350.00 &0
  NORMFLY 6343.32 18222.32 8000.00 350.00 &0
  NORMFLY 21103.97 19059.20 8000.00 350.00 &0
[NStationary]
[Buildings]
[Bridge]
[House]

Another (ugly) option would be to add special check in code for Me163 in next patch or we can do something else, what would that be I don't know at the moment.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

AI fighter routines to attack heavy bombers seem badly flawed.

We haven't touch that at all yet, that's on TODO list.

[KG26_Alpha]

Originally Posted by Vendigo

Thank you but it only works 50/50, in about half the times I tried it the AI Me-163s still fail to lock on the B-17s and keep flying in circles until the fuel runs out. Unfortunately seems this is not the solution I need.
I would like to note again that in 4.11 the Komets would take off and always attack the high-flying bombers even if Me-163s had only two waypoints set. It's a natural behaviour for rocket fighter AI but now it is not working as before.
Could anybody from DT pay attention to this and be so kind to comment whether this could be fixed, please?

Well the mission 1 I edited puts the waypoints in the correct position to attack the bombers and they do 100%, simply putting a couple of waypoints like you did at 500m with the bombers at 85000m the ai have no choice really but to ignore the target 8000m above them as they were never told to go to that alt and direction, you told them to go 500m to point 1 (set USA) and return to land.

It makes sense to me they would go and land.

@FC99
Even with the new landing defence ai routine it wont make a difference where bad mission building practice is involved, there used to be a set number of waypoints for take off and landing,
and waypoints for aircraft to climb out to IIRC

Nice to hear the Ai bomber attack routines being looked into

[Vendigo]

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

Well the mission 1 I edited puts the waypoints in the correct position to attack the bombers and they do 100%

You are wrong! I ran the mission edited by you 10 times just now, and it worked only 3 times, whereas 7 times Me-163s failed to notice B-17s at all and just kept circling until they ran out of the fuel.

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

Well the mission 1 simply putting a couple of waypoints like you did at 500m with the bombers at 85000m the ai have no choice really but to ignore the target 8000m above them as they were never told to go to that alt and direction, you told them to go 500m to point 1

But you are wrong again, in my "mission 1" the first waypoint is "take off" and second waypoint is at 8000m and 700km/h (not 500m as you say) and this WP is in the same direction where the B-17 are headed.
But still I think that adding more waypoints should solve the problem, so thanks for the clue. I will need to do more testing.

[KG26_Alpha]

Originally Posted by Vendigo

You are wrong! I ran the mission edited by you 10 times just now, and it worked only 3 times, whereas 7 times Me-163s failed to notice B-17s at all and just kept circling until they ran out of the fuel.

Again I have 100% intercept success with the ai .

Originally Posted by Vendigo

But you are wrong again, in my "mission 1" the first waypoint is "take off" and second waypoint is at 8000m and 700km/h (not 500m as you say) and this WP is in the same direction where the B-17 are headed.
But still I think that adding more waypoints should solve the problem, so thanks for the clue. I will need to do more testing.

I concede the first waypoint was indeed 8000m but its not enough to set just one wp to intercept from take off as already recognized.

Originally Posted by Vendigo

Thanks for explanation and your variant seems to be working all the time.

FC99 and KG26_Alpha thank you for your help, now I think I can make it work.

Glad your on the right track now.

[Vendigo]

Originally Posted by FC99

That's what is messing up your mission. What to do now? You can adjust your mission and add WP like I did in test1 mission:

Thanks for explanation and your variant seems to be working all the time.

FC99 and KG26_Alpha thank you for your help, now I think I can make it work.

[Alien]

Originally Posted by FC99

We haven't touch that at all yet, that's on TODO list.

Yeah