Ground Attack unrealistic for medium bombers
 

This may have been covered before but I thought it should be brought up again, if it has.

The problem I have is with medium bombers (A-20, B-25 gunships) and their repeated attacks against ground targets.

These repeated attacks are unrealistic - especially if there is heavy flak. Whole flights get wiped out by repeating tacks on targets with heavy flak. Realistically, one attack would be made and then get out fast and head for home - not only to avoid flak but also enemy aircraft.

Is there some way that the A/I behavior can be fixed?
Is it possible to make an option in the FMB for Ground Attack where the builder can choose to make only one attack run and then head for home?

same also with bomb fuse settings, set a waypoint to attack ships at to low a level and bombs destroy the plane. that and a20 go into line astern at low level regardless of bomb load, parafraged their following flight.

Perhaps try this.
Set a target objective over whatever you want the bombers to destroy.
And set it to a percentage less than 100. The bomber should destroy enough to meet objective and then leave. Maybe....

This is a problem for any type of aircraft. The problem is that the AI currently doesn't calculate damage to, or loss of, other aircraft in the flight, nor does it take enemy defenses into account when making attacks of any sort.

Realistically, pilots facing little opposition would loiter over their targets, attacking until they ran out of ammo or had to leave due to fuel or other concerns. But, things were very different if they faced effective AAA or aerial opposition.

Barring improvements to AI behavior, the next best solution would be to allow the mission builder to limit the number attacks a particular plane makes against targets at a particular waypoint.

That is kind of what I had in mind. To change A/I attacking behavior of several planes would be more difficult than setting parameters for a ground attack waypoint.

FWIW, if you're in command of a flight of AI bombers, you can usually get them to break off the attack and head for home using flight commands.

yes, but only if YOU are in command to give the order.

Yep. It would be nice if those in-flight commands could be pre-programmed using the FMB to give mission builders more control over AI.

It might not take that much work to create a simple "scripting language" in the FMB, based on player commands for AI, which would allow mission builders to give AI the semblance of unit tactics a formation reaches a particular waypoint.

I would be already happy with an FMB option (let me call it 'bravety of attack'), ranging from 'drop the eggs or whatever and get away' (disregard objective percentage) to 'attack until objective percentage reached' (samurai).

This could be made complementary to skill, so that we could also have cowardly aces and brave rookies .

Or more simply: 'don't repeat attack', 'repeat attack N times', 'repeat attack until target destroyed'

Create a new attackTimeOut option for the GAttack waypoint.

Set an attackTimeOut (in minutes or seconds or both) for any waypoint that has a target or GAttack waypoint.

For level bombing, don't use it of course, but for A20 and such, they will continue to attack the area until:

percentage is destroyed
or timeout reached

then proceed to next waypoint.

can someone rework the old dgen bomber campaigns? it is not realistic the medium bombers to attack enemy collumns...

You really know nothing about the eastern front, do you?

Read a bit about Pe2 exploits over there.

Or the SB2.

the pe2 had airbrakes the he111 not

In some (many?) occasions the Luftwaffe was forced to use medium bombers to attack troop and tank concentrations, see for example the books of C. Bergstrom on the Eastern Front air war.

Air war on the Eastern Front covered such a huge area, involved so many planes, and was so desperate, that at this point almost nothing would surprise me about unusual variants and tactics.

Brilliant! No AI programming needed.

Other options:

* Attack until X percentage of friendly forces/X number of friendly planes are destroyed.

* Attack until X percentage of ordinance expended.

Other ideas for the FMB:

* Option to change plane class for a mission. Right now, the game recognizes fighters, attack planes (sturmoviks), and level bombers. You should be able to make, say, a fighter-bomber behave like an attack plane, or an attack bomber behave like a level bomber.

* Option to have planes only attack certain targets with certain weapons. e.g., "Only use guns to attack soft vehicles." "Only use rockets to attack merchant ships."

:mrgreen: "Shittengitten" was the name of a B-26 in New Guinea. Maybe some foreignors may not understand the meaning but it basically means to "Dump" your load "and"- "Git" (get) out of there as fast as you can!

Or DB-3.
Or TB-3.
Or MBR-2 - yes, they were used over land as well (with disastrous results for themselves).
Etc, etc.

The way i would do this is setting several ground attacks to the same position with a low flight path that try to use the terrain for cover between every ground attack, also set the damage to low percentage for every ground attack.

Using terrain to optimal effect - unless you do it using waypoints in the FMB - requires lots of AI programming.