Outperformed by AI every single time

[palker4]

Originally Posted by ACE-OF-ACES

Where you complaing?

Sorry I didn't notice your complaing..

All I noticed was you asking 'how hard can it be' followed by you answering your own question by saying 'sounds simple'.

At which point I just assumed your had a software background in AI development..

But now based on your most resent post, I see that your statment of 'sounds simple' did not stem from someone with a software background and is thus meaningless

That was meant ironically hence a Jeremy Clarkson picture. I guess your just not Top Gear fan then.

[rga]

Actually the G-50 is not that hard to catch. I fly the Hurricane very often and G-50 is the only opponent that can makes fun. German aircrafts are just too fast. Problem is: Hurricane has miserable acceleration and takes forever to get to top speed. Lower the RPM to about 2800 and flat dive should be useful. In term of speed, CloD is not as bad as IL-2, where AI just laughs at you and flies away.
Sadly the same cannot be said for AI maneuver. They can do insanely fast roll, and use it for effect. There is nothing which ruins the gameplay more than an AI rolling literally around your gunsight. You just give up all of your hard-built speed to place the pipper over this SOB for just a bit longer than an eyeblink. The new alpha patch makes it worse. My inner conspiracy Keanu Reeves told me that Luthier used old IL-2 code to update his AI.
Enough complaining. Good news is: with the AI scales, you can dumb down AI practically to the level of grandma-driven car: They are slow, unresponsive and useless. Perhaps with enough testing, one will find out the optimal setting. I just do not have enough time.
AI does not need to be realistic. It just has to be believable.

[JG52Uther]

A good thread on modifying AI here:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31193

[Ataros]

From bombers barrel rolls I can guess they made a model of a generic human pilot which flies every aircraft in the same way. This pilot has a very wide range of skill levels from rookie up to "the best ace in history of aircombat".

Problem comes when a mission maker does not adjust skills levels to the mission needs and aircraft types as explained here http://www.bobgamehub.blogspot.com/2...-of-dover.html

If all 8 skills of all AI in a mission are set to "the best ace in history of aircombat" they fly like those aces of cause.

The devs did not have a dedicated mission maker when they released CloD. Now they hired B6 to make missions for BoM. I hope he does the job better. For CloD it is easy to adjust AI skills in FMB as described in above link or using the AItweak program http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31573

Feel free to create a new entry in the bugtracker asking to correct AI skills levels in stock missions and campaigns specifically.

QMB missions with corrected skills can be downloaded here http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31193

[ACE-OF-ACES]

Originally Posted by palker4

That was meant ironically hence a Jeremy Clarkson picture. I guess your just not Top Gear fan then.

Emmm never heard of him.. That and I am more of a Top Shot fan!

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by jspec01

But can/will this be done? Was it planned, and there was just no time to implement, or is it not even on anyone's radar to do this?

As an offliner, even after tweaking the sliders and such in the fmb it's still too frustrating for me to play for any length of time.

Originally Posted by palker4

Well why don't they do it then. Sounds simple, I mean

Well, maybe they are doing it, we don't know. What we do know is they hired an AI programmer some months ago but he was also involved in fixing other aspects of the sim so he couldn't focus 100% on AI.

For all we know, this guy could be bug hunting just like the rest of the team and not working on AI until performance is optimzied, or he might be slaving away in his basement testing and retesting a really great AI.

The reason we don't know is that they don't usually announce features unless they believe they are on a good track to be released in future patches.


Generally speaking though, Ataros has it nailed down:

Originally Posted by Ataros

From bombers barrel rolls I can guess they made a model of a generic human pilot which flies every aircraft in the same way. This pilot has a very wide range of skill levels from rookie up to "the best ace in history of aircombat".

Problem comes when a mission maker does not adjust skills levels to the mission needs and aircraft types as explained here http://www.bobgamehub.blogspot.com/2...-of-dover.html

If all 8 skills of all AI in a mission are set to "the best ace in history of aircombat" they fly like those aces of cause.

The devs did not have a dedicated mission maker when they released CloD. Now they hired B6 to make missions for BoM. I hope he does the job better. For CloD it is easy to adjust AI skills in FMB as described in above link or using the AItweak program http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31573

Feel free to create a new entry in the bugtracker asking to correct AI skills levels in stock missions and campaigns specifically.

QMB missions with corrected skills can be downloaded here http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31193

You can see this in quick missions if you go into a dogfight mission and replace the fighters with bombers: the AI in the mission is fighter AI and the bombers start acting funny.

In any case, the AI can be adjusted by the players and now that we have some tools to do it automatically and information about what each setting does (in case we want to do it manually and experiment), things are much more manageable until we see an official solution.

The moral of the story is "don't be afraid to get your hands dirty". We didn't buy a game so much as we bought a "simulator operating system" and i had a feeling it would be like this right from the start. There's tons of things possible even now (look at the custom menu screens and campaigns made by community members or 3rd party mission designers).

I know sometimes we just want to fly, i know that tinkering is not everyone's cup of tea and i know that even tinkerers some times just want to come back from work and unwind by flying a quick furball.

What i also know however is that it was community involvement that made the previous series a success. It was rock stable upon its release compared to CoD, but it too had a host of limitations: static campaigns, AI, certain FMs, high PC requirements to really enjoy it, limited flyables, etc.

I've been there since 2001, i saw it transform into a multi-theater sim with 200+ flyable aircraft and i think i know why it managed to do it: a lot of people were creating content by themselves and making it available to the community, whether that content was freeware campaigns, missions and skins and new aircraft models, payware 3rd party add-ons or simply tips, tricks and walkthroughs (never underestimate the value of having the right information )

So my advice to everyone is: don't just sit by. Pick ONE thing you are curious about in WWII aviation ("hmm, i wonder how they would navigate back then?"), google up some information, go try it in the sim and come tell us about it.

You'll be surprised at how much you will learn, how much you can teach others and how much of it actually is applicable in the sim, all at the same time. Plus, the better you become at something the more you will enjoy it and it's something to keep busy with until other aspects of the sim are fixed

What i mean is, sure, CoD has problems. But there are perfectly working parts of it that a lot don't ever see because we don't even scratch the surface. Cheers

[von Pilsner]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

...
What i mean is, sure, CoD has problems. But there are perfectly working parts of it that a lot don't ever see because we don't even scratch the surface. Cheers

Well Said!

OK here I go.......

AI does some strange things! Part of the problem it that the mission builder defaults to generic stats for the different skill levels (rookie, average, veteran, ace) if you open up a mission file the stats will read (something like) 'Skill 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3' where all the varying skill attributes are set uniformly. Unfortunately this seems to be contributing to the odd AI behavior as the attributes in question are (in order): BASIC FLYING, ADVANCED FLYING, AWARENESS, AERIAL GUNNERY, TACTICS, VISION, BRAVERY, and DISCIPLINE.

By experimentation (mostly by others) it seems that some values work better if they are higher or lower and depending on the aircraft type (fighter, bomber, dive bomber) this kind of generic implimentation of the AI skill attributes is leading to some funky behavior (bombers behaving as fighters and insane snap rolls are my favorites). Values that seem to lead to more sane behavior (but these are not yet perfect!) are:

// Fighter
rookie = 0.30 0.21 0.78 0.40 0.64 0.85 0.85 0.43
average = 0.32 0.21 0.87 0.60 0.74 0.95 0.90 0.53
veteran = 0.73 0.21 0.92 0.80 0.74 1 0.95 0.63
ace = 0.93 0.21 0.96 0.92 0.84 1 1 0.63


// Fighter Bomber
rookie = 0.30 0.21 0.78 0.30 0.74 0.85 0.90 0.70
average = 0.32 0.21 0.87 0.35 0.74 0.95 0.95 0.72
veteran = 0.73 0.21 0.92 0.40 0.74 0.95 0.95 0.75
ace = 0.93 0.21 0.96 0.45 0.74 1 1 0.75


// Bomber
rookie = 0.30 0.21 0.78 0.20 0.74 0.85 0.90 0.90
average = 0.32 0.21 0.87 0.25 0.74 0.90 0.95 0.93
veteran = 0.73 0.21 0.92 0.30 0.74 0.95 0.95 0.95
ace = 0.93 0.21 0.96 0.35 0.74 1 1 0.97

I know many of you are experimenting and fine-tuning these values and I would appreciate more feedback (preferably in this thread: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31573) on what values to tweak in what circumstances (bomber, fighter, etc...). Perhaps we (the CloD community) can find some good AI values and get Luthier and Co. to incorporate these into the full mission builder... This would require a slight modification to the FMB as it would need to define the values differently based on plane type. I know this is not difficult to do in C++ so I imagine they could do it to their code base in hours (not days - but we need to wait and see what the AI improvements bring as they may already have solved many AI issues in the next few months and if not we want to supply them the best settings we can come up with).

An other problem is that the mission builder will (by default) set the whole flight to 1 skill level so they all behave similarly... When building a mission I suggest setting the planes to individual skill settings rather than make the whole flight one skill level this leads to some variation in AI and if you use the default skill attribute settings (rookie, average, etc...) you can still use AITweak on your mission to tweak the values for you.

[trademe900]

I don't know about you guys but no matter what I set BASIC FLYING and ADVANCED FLYING to, they are still doing the same ridiculous f16 barrel roles.

Anyone find this? Aerial gunnery and awareness makes a difference but the others don't seem to do anything.

[von Brühl]

Don't try to have the advanced flying past the half-way mark, and they'll quit the barrel roll ballet. I find a good balance between 30% and 70% max for most of the skills (especially gunnery).

[Ataros]

Please vote for AI fix on the bugtracker http://www.il2bugtracker.com/issues/280

Check out other reported issues too and vote please. The devs need feedback from more people.