AI is on top of my list

[He111]

AI yes! Defiants aren't suppose to do continual barrel-rolls .. the gunner would be sick all over his turret!

Pity we don't have scripts that could be changed. eg Tactics of a defiant is going to be a million miles different to any single-seater fighter!

He111.

[buddye]

The strategy of the BOBII AI has been a major topic of player discussion. Do the AI fight, how long, when do they break off and then what?

In BOBII we have evolved to a different strategy for our Instant Action Missions and our two Campaigns (Single Player and Commander Campaign).

In Instant Action (IA), we have assumed that the player is interested in a good scrap (a longer dog fight where he can practice his combat pilot skills). In the Campaign, the AI Squad will break off sooner to prevent unrealistic Squad losses. In both the Campaign and Instant Action Missions, the AI will break off when the Squad losses reach a certain level or the Squad is outnumbered by a certain number.

A individual AI will disengage when he is out of ammo, at bingo fuel, or has damage that prevents effective fighting. When disengaged, the AI will head for home after diving away but the AI will take evasive action if shot at (either a bullet hit or a bullet near miss).

[Les]

Originally Posted by buddye

The strategy of the BOBII AI has been a major topic of player discussion. Do the AI fight, how long, when do they break off and then what?

In BOBII we have evolved to a different strategy for our Instant Action Missions and our two Campaigns (Single Player and Commander Campaign).

In Instant Action (IA), we have assumed that the player is interested in a good scrap (a longer dog fight where he can practice his combat pilot skills). In the Campaign, the AI Squad will break off sooner to prevent unrealistic Squad losses. In both the Campaign and Instant Action Missions, the AI will break off when the Squad losses reach a certain level or the Squad is outnumbered by a certain number.

A individual AI will disengage when he is out of ammo, at bingo fuel, or has damage that prevents effective fighting. When disengaged, the AI will head for home after diving away but the AI will take evasive action if shot at (either a bullet hit or a bullet near miss).

Interesting points Buddye, a good reminder that developing the AI is about more than deciding how the individual planes dogfight each other. Anyone who's ever tried in vain to get through an IL-2 series campaign with minimal squad losses will understand how crucial the development of the strategic aspect of the AI is.

On a related note, I'm guessing that similar to how the individual AI are dependent upon the flight models of their planes, the strategic or tactical aspect of the AI as a group would be dependent on the game having an effective way for the player to command their AI team-mates.

Is working on the command system a part of developing the AI, or is that as separate as the flight modelling is? Seems to me there might be a bit of a grey area or overlap there in terms of what the AI are coded to do, as opposed to what the player can tell them to do. I imagine there must be some kind of heirarchy or order of importance that would have to be determined. For example, did refining the BOBII AI require fixing things like the tendency we see in the IL-2 series for several AI to form a conga-line behind a single enemy AI, often following it to the exclusion of all other considerations? Would be good if stuff like that could be written out of the picture once and for all.

[buddye]

BOBII uses Radio Commands to permit the Player to get information from the AI and command the AI. Some Radio Cammands are indpendent and some must work with the AI. The problem with many AI attacking a single enemy was solved with a option permitting the player to select the max number of AI that are permitted to engage the same enemy.

Here is a list of the BOBII Radio Cammands taken from the User manual:

Radio Keys Fighters Fighter Bombers

Group Info
R-1-1 Report in Report in
R-1-2 Report position Report position
R-1-3 Fuel check Fuel check
R-1-4 Report status Report status
R-1-5 Tight left turn now Tight left turn now
R-1-6 Tight right turn now Tight right turn now

Pre-Combat
R-2-1 Test guns Test guns
R-2-2 Patrol position Patrol position
R-2-3 E/A vector E/A vector
R-2-4 Airborne Airborne
R-2-5 Give freedom Give freedom
R-2-6 Take command Take command

Combat
R-3-1 Bandits! Bandits!
R-3-2 Sighting request Sighting request
R-3-3 Break! Break!
R-3-4 Covering? Covering?
R-3-5 Attack my target (Help!) Attack my target (Help!)

Post-Combat
R-4-1 Regroup Regroup
R-4-2 Send all home Send all home

Tower
R-5-1 Mayday! Mayday!
R-5-2 Home tower Home tower
R-5-3 Nearest tower Nearest tower
R-5-4 Surface wind Surface wind
R-5-5 Wind at altitude Wind at altitude
R-5-6 Land at home Land at home
R-5-7 Land at nearest Land at nearest

Ground Attack
R-6-1 N/A Begin your Bomb run
R-6-2 N/A Strafe the target
R-6-3 N/A Leave area

[KOM.Nausicaa]

Content deleted.

[planespotter]

Some good AI example for Cliffs of Dover, so it is not all bad. I am trying the campaign mission where in Spitfire you have to intercept incoming raid flying from Manston. Here there is also a Hurricane squadron, already on their way, as your Spitfire squadron takes off. In BOB for real, the Hurricanes generally concentrated on the bombers while the Spits took on the fighters.

In this mission that is exactly what happens, even though the Spits are close to the bombers as they are climbing up, they leave the bombers for the Hurricanes to attack, and they go after the 109s escort. The Hurricanes do manage to bring down some Heinkels and the Spits do OK against the 109s but not great I will say.

Anyway, some good things to say about this element of the AI!

[David198502]

Originally Posted by planespotter

Some good AI example for Cliffs of Dover, so it is not all bad. I am trying the campaign mission where in Spitfire you have to intercept incoming raid flying from Manston. Here there is also a Hurricane squadron, already on their way, as your Spitfire squadron takes off. In BOB for real, the Hurricanes generally concentrated on the bombers while the Spits took on the fighters.

In this mission that is exactly what happens, even though the Spits are close to the bombers as they are climbing up, they leave the bombers for the Hurricanes to attack, and they go after the 109s escort. The Hurricanes do manage to bring down some Heinkels and the Spits do OK against the 109s but not great I will say.

Anyway, some good things to say about this element of the AI!

i think that behaviour is not much about the AI itself, but more about how the mission was created in the FMB.if they selected the bfs as a target for the spits, then its no wonder that they will ignore the bombers.
that is more a strength of the FMB instead of the AI itself i think.
but what i recognized in a similar mission today, created by myself, was that a group of bf's, who escorted He's over the channel to dover, flew s lines 500 meters above the He's, to stay in contact with them, although they flew faster.i set both groups at the same altitude, but as soon the bf's spotted the bombers, they climbed up to 1k and began to bank right and left all the time, to keep the high six flying 400kph, while the He's flew at 500m with 300kph.i flew as the wingman of the leader, and was pretty surprised by this behaviour.