4.11 - AI debugging

[SPAD-1949]

Originally Posted by X-Raptor

Hi, 1st I congrats to all Daidalos Team for the work about 1946 they are offering to improve this game still.

just my observation: would be possible to stop A.I. behaviour that we can see many times A.I. climb almost vertically for a long time gaining altitude and JUST EXACTLY at the moment of stall they level the nose and then continue to fly orizontally ..as nothing happened .. THIS is really annoying and innatural .. and frustrating.. because A.I. using - I see OFTEN- this manevuer A.I. make a lot of cheat:
1) it use this quite innatural manover to evade from enemy (human or A.i.)
2) It use often this manover to jump from high to hit you or other A.I. planes.

Please can DAIDALOS TEAM LOOK to solve this?.

Im an offliner and I've never seen this bahaviour.
Is this an online occurance?
AI cheats in other ways all through the enhancments of AI behaviour changes, but usually if they vert up until stall, they drop their noses and vert down until regain of controll.
Eventually it just looks alike, when you head onto them with intention for a kill lacking energy and starve in sight of them without proper situational awareness.
It sometimes looks líke that.
Eventually a energy superior AI opponent with good Situational awareness tricks you out, if he recognizes, that you are about to stall and breaks his vert up towards horizontal flight, because he has enough margin for that maneuver, but it must not look like a sharp hook.
Rather a mor or less slight curve.
Bf109s can do that if you sit in a mosca.

[X-Raptor]

..It occurred to me for example in a mission where there were il2 bombing p39 defending bombers vs 190 and 109 attacing (a kursk campaign extract). I see this behaviour in more than one 109 just like you said creating a "sharp hook" at the bottom of the vertical uber-dive of A.I.s planes.

[Pursuivant]

I just noticed this:

8 Average Ki-43 III vs. a "box" of 3 Veteran B-24J in QMB. 5000m over the Okinawa map. No advantage to either side.

The Ki-43 don't make head-on shots on the initial pass and don't make high-side attacks subsequently. Instead, they go for tail-chase attacks which are much more dangerous.

Even worse, the B-24 try to act like fighters! None of them stick together in formation and I actually saw one of them doing a barrel roll. All of them will try to turn to avoid much more nimble fighters, often pulling high-G turns that have the plane "standing on its wing."

Realistically, the bombers should tighten up their formation and possibly "jink" a bit when attacked. If one gets separated, it should "corkscrew" to try to spoil the attackers' aim while rejoining formation. Also, the rest of the formation should slow down to try to protect the damaged bomber as long as possible. As it is, by trying to maneuver like fighters, they seriously reduce the accuracy of their guns and give up the coordinated firepower of the "bomber box."

In real life, the sort of high-G turns I saw would also rip the bombs off their shackles and send them through the bomb bay doors.

It seems to me that, if it isn't already in the game, TD needs to have different AI for heavy bombers and similar planes (e.g., planes like the PBN or H8K) vs. smaller and faster attack bombers. Bombers also need different behavior routines for when they're loaded vs. unloaded.

Edit: Same behavior for B-17G and B-29. And, even when the U.S. heavies are loaded with bombs!

This is even more stupid behavior for a B-29 since they have the speed to outrun the Ki-43. They shouldn't be diving, turning and trying to dogfight. Instead, they should be keeping level, tightening formation and accelerating.

[X-Raptor]

Dear pursivant , sadly ME, YOU and BEARCAT are the few other here are writing here with nonsense, as you can easly notice from DT anticipations on 4.12 release that there isn't ANY mention about correct all these A.i. bad behavior we diligently are reporting to the Daidalos Team.
They are going to release 4.12 with just other things improved... ..but IMHO way less important compared to try to resolve all this A.I. "bugs" we still notice in 4.11

[TheGrunch]

Daidalos Team have never reported bug fixes in development updates for the next patch. Wait for the readme before you complain.

[Tuco22]

Originally Posted by TheGrunch

Daidalos Team have never reported bug fixes in development updates for the next patch. Wait for the readme before you complain.

This.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by X-Raptor

They are going to release 4.12 with just other things improved... ..but IMHO way less important compared to try to resolve all this A.I. "bugs" we still notice in 4.11

Respectfully, I disagree. My experience is that TD listens to the fans and works hard to correct their mistakes. Over the course of the past 3 years TD has worked hard to fix things that 1C/Maddox couldn't be arsed to fix during the previous 7-8 years of the game's existence.

As an example, the vast improvement in fighter AI in the 4.11 was literally a game-changer for me. AI fighters are a real challenge to beat, unlike before when I was routinely winning fights against entire squadrons. Bomber gunner behavior has finally been fixed to deal with the dreaded "sniper" problem.

In the upcoming 4.12 patch, there are lots of little fixes fans have asked for for years, like customized sounds, aircraft which taxi in an intelligent fashion and the ability to padlock ships. In previous patches, we've seen small fixes to things like sky appearance and 3d fixes for some of the older aircraft.

But, AI programming is tricky work, there are lots of planes in the game, lots of different missions and many different tactics. Even worse, "fixing" one aspect of AI behavior might "break" another aspect. I accept that the 4.11 AI wasn't perfect, but I'm confident that TD will fix the problem.

Anyhow, dogfighting bombers is an easy problem to fix. There's less AI programming in making a plane keep station with the other planes in formation, fly straight and level or try to run away than there is in making them try to dogfight. Even if the AI were programed so isolated bombers try to "corkscrew" or hug the ground (if flying low and no ventral gunner) it would probably still be easier to program.

More challenging for AI would be for isolated bombers to try to turn to present the most number of guns against few attacking fighters to trying to "jink" or "break" in such a way as to spoil attacks (e.g., slipping or diving just as fighter making a high-side attack starts its attack run).

[X-Raptor]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Respectfully, I disagree. My experience is that TD listens to the fans and works hard to correct their mistakes. Over the course of the past 3 years TD has worked hard to fix things that 1C/Maddox couldn't be arsed to fix during the previous 7-8 years of the game's existence.

As an example, the vast improvement in fighter AI in the 4.11 was literally a game-changer for me. AI fighters are a real challenge to beat, unlike before when I was routinely winning fights against entire squadrons. Bomber gunner behavior has finally been fixed to deal with the dreaded "sniper" problem.

In the upcoming 4.12 patch, there are lots of little fixes fans have asked for for years, like customized sounds, aircraft which taxi in an intelligent fashion and the ability to padlock ships. In previous patches, we've seen small fixes to things like sky appearance and 3d fixes for some of the older aircraft.

But, AI programming is tricky work, there are lots of planes in the game, lots of different missions and many different tactics. Even worse, "fixing" one aspect of AI behavior might "break" another aspect. I accept that the 4.11 AI wasn't perfect, but I'm confident that TD will fix the problem.

Anyhow, dogfighting bombers is an easy problem to fix. There's less AI programming in making a plane keep station with the other planes in formation, fly straight and level or try to run away than there is in making them try to dogfight. Even if the AI were programed so isolated bombers try to "corkscrew" or hug the ground (if flying low and no ventral gunner) it would probably still be easier to program.

More challenging for AI would be for isolated bombers to try to turn to present the most number of guns against few attacking fighters to trying to "jink" or "break" in such a way as to spoil attacks (e.g., slipping or diving just as fighter making a high-side attack starts its attack run).

Hmm.. Bomber gunner sniper behavior fixed you told?.. Respectfully I don't agree m8 , for me Is really equal as ever was in 4.10, moreover as you said we now have A.I. bombers acting like fighter "Bug" too now that was not present in 4.10 for example.. things are going back instead of forward I feel..

And I repeat: I thank all DT for their FREE work for all us here, but if A.I. code is so hard to modify as someone like to mention here that is a mere and sterile observation, then I think DT will better not even to try again to modify nothing about A.I. code as to prevent other bad evolution of the feature of A.I... is just too bad now.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by X-Raptor

Dear pursivant , sadly ME, YOU and BEARCAT are the few other here are writing here with nonsense, as you can easly notice from DT anticipations on 4.12 release that there isn't ANY mention about correct all these A.i. bad behavior we diligently are reporting to the Daidalos Team.
They are going to release 4.12 with just other things improved... ..but IMHO way less important compared to try to resolve all this A.I. "bugs" we still notice in 4.11

I can't speak for anyone else but while these AI issues that I mentioned are indeed quite annoying .. I understand that TD is doing this work for free and on their own time and I do greatly appreciate it. I hope that at some point sooner rather than later these issues can be addressed fully.. and the thing that kills me is.. sometimes they actually do work right, which was what prompted my question about resetting the AI in another post.. thinking that perhaps that was the issue.Just last night in an online mission I was attacking a two man flight and I told my wingman who was AI to attack fighters.. he promptly changed his attitude to pursue the wingman of the bandit I was chasing .. which really surprised me because usually they break off to attack the target I am in pursuit of ...

[IceFire]

Keep in mind folks that the QMB and FMB don't make a lick of difference in terms of the AI. It's the same algorithms no matter what. The QMB isn't anything more special than a bunch of mission templates with the ability to adjust the type of plane and altitude. Everything else is just a .mis file to correspond to that situation.

I haven't seen a sniper gunner since 4.11 came out but apparently some still are. Any good track files with examples? Apologies if some have been posted already. If there is a problem... document it to the n'th degree.