Suggestion for a future patch

[Furio]

Originally Posted by Ice_Eagle

Badly damaged AI planes to immediately head for home.

In the meantime, it could be helpful to give more authority to player, regardless to his current rank.
Authority to: 1) order to any comrade of any rank to “Return to Base Immediately”. 2) To over ride control tower, giving priority to damaged planes.

I can’t see any collateral and undesirable effect on current gameplay, but I don’t know how much easy or difficult it would be.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Furio

In the meantime, it could be helpful to give more authority to player, regardless to his current rank.
Authority to: 1) order to any comrade of any rank to “Return to Base Immediately”. 2) To over ride control tower, giving priority to damaged planes.

+1.

This would be much simpler to implement than new AI programming.

The player should also be able to automatically give landing priority to any plane - not just damaged ones. This allows planes that are low on fuel or which have wounded crew aboard to land first.

Further useful commands for players:

1) Go to next waypoint - makes friendly planes stop flying towards their current waypoint and go to the next one. If used repeatedly, this command will eventually send the flight back to base.

This allows the player to skip stupidly placed or irrelevant waypoints. For example, no reason to follow a pre-programmed fighter sweep pattern if you've already met the enemy and shot him down.

2) Go to previous waypoint - makes friendly planes stop flying towards their current waypoint and go to the previous one. If used repeatedly, this command will eventually send the flight back to base.

This allows the player to prevent his flight from getting massacred by flying through flak or fighters when they don't have to. It also allows the player to establish "rally points" where planes in his flight can regroup after combat.

3) Divert to different airfield - Makes any plane in player's flight land at the nearest non-hostile airfield. Useful for making sure that damaged planes don't crash on the runway preventing other planes in the flight from landing.

4) Land here - Makes all planes in player's flight land at the nearest airfield. Basically, the group version of "Divert".

5) Don't land - makes any planes in player's flight break out of their landing pattern. If the enemy is nearby they engage in combat. Otherwise, they join formation.

Further tactical options that would be helpful are:

1) Climb + number = makes aircraft climb by n x 100 meters.

2) Descend + number = makes aircraft descend by n x 100 meters, down to a minimum of 100 m above ground level.

3) Loiter - makes planes circle over location set by player. Canceled by Rejoin Formation or Next Waypoint commands.

4) Fly this direction - makes planes fly in a particular direction unless attacked - 0 = N, 1 = NNE, etc. Countered by Loiter, Rejoin Formation, or Next Waypoint commands.

Good for avoiding obstacles or setting up ambushes.

[Ice_Eagle]

Set different altitudes for different flights in QMB. EG: Have flight 2 flying top
cover for flight 1 and such.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Ice_Eagle

Set different altitudes for different flights in QMB. EG: Have flight 2 flying top
cover for flight 1 and such.

+1

This option is needed even if there is the option to command a flight to separate and gain altitude, since on many QMB maps there isn't time to gain sufficient altitude before combat starts.

[Pursuivant]

Option to have mixed flights of planes in FMB (not sure it's possible in the QMB).

For example, this option would allow the historical Finnish tactic of sending up a flight of 2 Bf-109s & 2 B-239, since the Bf-109 was the better "Boom and Zoom" plane, and the B-239 was the better "turn fighter."

[Music]

Congrats on the 1000th post Pursuivant.

[Spartan18a]

I think something like this would be great: Certificate's Ai Mod

http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.ph...g43.html#msg43

What does this do?

It changes the enemy pilot AI so that they perform defensive maneuvers besides the 360 degree roll.

- The AI should now scissor vertically and horizontally, zig zag from side to side, attempt negative G redouts to foul up your shot, perform an angled split S instead of constantly doing that 360 degree roll thing and all sorts of other stuff

- Made changes to the pilot settings to simulate overheat and reduce their unrealistic advantage of always being perfectly trimmed.

- AI Gunners are now toned down for AI aircraft only. AI Gunners on player controlled aircraft remain with default accuracy, even if co-op host is running AI mod. There's nothing that can currently be done about this.

- Changed landing light behavior. Will only use nav and landing lights at night, and should now use Nav lights in landing pattern, switch to landing lights on final.

- Random chance of enemy aircraft not reacting if you approach from behind with a large energy advantage. This is to simulate the AI getting "bounced". Chance decreases as skill level of enemy pilot increases, almost no chance of this happening vs. an Ace.

AI BEHAVIOR CHANGES ARE MOSTLY DONE TO VETERAN AND ACE LEVELS. TO FULLY UTIILIZE THIS MOD, TRY TO PLAY ON VETERAN OR ABOVE.

More detailed changes and notes available in the readme.txt in the AI_MOD install directory

[Ice_Eagle]

You like sugar pills too? Certs AI does nothing other the substitute one
maneuver for another. There is no critical thinking by AI. Its all a placebo.
Just look at the buggy buggy sas engine mod which uses CERTS AI. The AI
flew right past full retard and went straight to potato. When your player BF-109
can shoot down the AI controlled F4 or F-18.. somethings wrong son.

4.12/13 AI is the best to date. Albeit with some flaws, but so goes life.


That said, why the AI STILL eventually climbs to the verticle while in a dogfight
with enemy on its 6 is beyond me.. easy kill.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Ice_Eagle

That said, why the AI STILL eventually climbs to the verticle while in a dogfight
with enemy on its 6 is beyond me.. easy kill.

My interpretation: A misjudged attempt to use their E advantage(or climbing ability) and turn the tables, when done right pursuing plane stalls first and pursued plane drops on pursuer from above. If well executed. If poorly executed (not enough separation, E advantage or climbing ability not great enough) pursued is usually toast. Which is almost always the case when AI does that maneuvre.

[Music]

I would like to see plane parts for populating airfields, detached wings, and planes with their engines off, ect.
maybe more varied damage models for stationary planes destroyed on the ground

More smaller ships, stationary and moving, to make harbours and fleets look more realistic.

And the ability to adjust the speed of land vehicles. Maybe a option for building your own convoys, so you can assemble a group of individual vehicles, call it a group, and then move that group as a group by setting one way point.

(Same option would be nice for ships).

QMB, the ability to set individual flight heights,

Picking a plane in flight one, makes all the planes in other flights the same model, so you don't have to scroll to find the spit 8x. Same would apply to all flights below, if flight three (3) is changed to a bomber, all the flights below are the same model.