Dogfighting -does 4.11-4.12 patch address this?

[Fenrir]

Originally Posted by Pugo3

I thought it best to avoid directly answering the one respondant who demonstrates the unfortunate tendancy of too many forum perons these days to reply with rather condenscending, dismissive, and demeaning remarks after first misrepresenting and attaching all sorts of malice to my comments. Such persons are best left to themselves, a fitting punishment in itself.

It is an historical fact that 51's and 47's did dogfight with German fighters on occasion, the accounts are plentiful and you've all read them, no need to make this string a mulitpage tangle of combat accounts quotes to make the point. In QMB, a 51 and 47 will not dogfight, only fly away and joust. Mock, dispute, slander, misrepresent all you wish if you are so inclined, this stands.

Fly a Bf 109E7 against a Spitfire V 1941 one on one.
Fly a Bf 109E7 against a squadron of Spitfire V 1941. Nevermind what our dismissive associate states, see for yourself. Not rocket powered, of course this was overstated, but definitely all Spits are demonstably faster, with higher climbs rates, etc. Try it with other enemy AI aircraft your familiar with.

I inquired only if these failings had been addressed. No honest person of worth would consider this a request for making the game unrealistic. Rather, both of these shortcomings detract from the game and if anything render it unrealistic by not allowing one to experience this aspect of combat flying.

thanks to all who replied with constructive comments while maintaining personal integrity and good faith.

Excuse me for incredulousness at your post when you expect the developers to pander to your desire for dogfight entertainment and reverse years of attempting to make this game as realistic as the limitations of the engine & platform allow.

The AI as in it's current 4.12 form are the most realistic I have seen; in co-ops I find it difficult at times to tell the breathers from the bots. That in and of itself speaks volumes to me about the excellent work FC has done in manipulating the AI dogfight routines.

If my critique of your flying style came across as condescending then it was as a direct result of your ill-informed, presumptuous and mildly insulting post; not to me but to FC, who I suspect has devoted hundreds of - no doubt frustrating - man hours of investigating, experimenting and tweaking the code to get it to the frankly best level I've seen in any sim of late.

I stand by my opinion of why I think you are running into difficulties and why the AI *appear* to you to be turbo boosted. True an element is down to the AI knowing to the second how long they can risk overheating in WEP and are perfectly trimmed in all flight regimes, however if you fight smart you can negate these attributes with your ability to abstract and read the overall fight picture in a way no AI can hope to.

I don't deny more than one-turn dogfights did happen; but their frequency was so low as to be a tiny fraction of the overall percentage. 9 times out of 10 the victim did not even see their attacker.

On top of this your reference to P-51/P-47 combat reports is crucially flawed. The vast majority of the Jagdwaffe pilots by the 1944 era were inexperienced, rushed through training and could just about handle the skills to takeoff land and fly formation; they did not have the tactical nous to be able to understand the dogfight environment and pulled all the wrong moves when defensive; as such because they had such little experience in handling their aircraft at or beyond the limits of it's performance or crucially where their advantages lay against their opponents they bleed their E and just make the job easier for the teamworking USAAF fighter jocks.

Oh, hang on, that scenario sounds familiar... like someone whining that they keep getting gang-banged by teamworking AI that keeps up it's E. Hmmmm. Funny that.

[Woke Up Dead]

"Pander to your desire for dogfight entertainment," "whaaambulance," snarky critiques of piloting abilities, what's the matter with you guys?

The QMB is obviously not a place for hyper-realism, it's for setting up "what if" scenarios. Like, what if I spawn in on my opponent's six, 1000m above him, and he has 100% fuel and no ammo and is a rookie and is alone, and I have 20% fuel and an ace wingman. Realistic?

If you can already set all those variables, then why not also be able to set the aggressiveness and likeliness to dogfight of your opponent? Like a lot of online pilots in planes better suited for hit and run do, you know, for fun?

[MaxGunz]

People come in with revisionist agendas, making false assertions and acting like they're right when they're not. Sorry "victim" but you started it and I'm not the only one who's not eating the BS you put on our table.

Woke Up Dead, anyone can set up QMB as they like. With FMB they can even set up the waypoints the targets will use. Make the enemies rookies if that's what it takes... the game already does that and more! Nobody is saying that everyone has to play the same.

As far as historic, goooooood luck! You can approach elements of history but it's a flight sim and game AI hasn't got the resources to make strategy.

Hey FC! Is it possible to network with PC's that only run AI client? No graphics or input devices, all resources given to AI? What could be achieved then, even with older PC's?

[IceFire]

Combat reports do contain examples of dogfighting and close in energy fights... they also contain reports of mass bounces and not much else. In the QMB I see plenty of both.

I'd like to see what a joust looks like. Could you record us a track of this particular behavior?

Also I'd like to know why a P-51 Mustang should engage in any sort of close in dogfight behavior when its against the strengths of the fighter... similarly I expect a Zero to engage in a close in fight using its turn advantage to maximum effect and avoiding flight regimes that involve too much speed.

[MaxGunz]

Joust is two fighters making head on attacks. Those happened in history every so often, some planes seem almost made for it with a big radial block in front and devastating firepower to go with it. Even the P-38 got a reputation, whoa those guns!

But lessons got learned and aerial suicide avoided. Imagine if every P-51 pilot jousted with every FW pilot he met? The USAAF would have run out of P-51's and pilots pretty quick.

[Laurwin]

I suppose the rookie level AI is a little bit too good in this game.

I mean, we are talking about the lowest level skill pilot we can have in game. One could argue they're quite a bit better than the new pilots Germany had in 1945 for example (re-assigned bomber pilot into fighters, practically no advanced fighter training etc....)

rookies were the guys who confused their flight leaders for enemies (like erich hartmann once did ) and tried to dogfight them. Or then they would just get lost in the skies. I mean these people were given limited training before sent to the front (for example, even American flight training was quite limited in scope, before pilots were sent from flight school to the front). And compared with most countries fighter training, it (American) was the most comprehensive one. There wasn't top gun school back then, only the basic courses, and a few flights on gunnery training.

rookie should be nerfed further, to replicate that they would be lowest skill pilots. (greenhorns, newbies)

-aircraft identification (esp headons). So they don't always know to blast away, would such a thing happen in real war? Before you can know if he's friend or foe? Merge happens for example, because of IDing bogey. In WW2 it meant silhouette ID or the insignia, if you wanted to be certain of friend-or-foe.

probably not unless you could visually ID the rest of the silhouette of the plane from a slight angle, before committing to headon attack. (special exception would be radial vs inline and such things... i.e. p3

-AI tracking skill (situational awareness) Rookie should be significantly worse than veteran, and ace.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Laurwin

I suppose the rookie level AI is a little bit too good in this game.

I've thought this myself. "Pitiable," "Turkey Shoot" or "Straight from the Farm" level AI would certainly be suitable for most kamikazes, or possibly the worst of the Chinese pilots.

Originally Posted by Laurwin

I mean, we are talking about the lowest level skill pilot we can have in game. One could argue they're quite a bit better than the new pilots Germany had in 1945 for example (re-assigned bomber pilot into fighters, practically no advanced fighter training etc....)

This isn't quite fair. Reassigned bomber pilots might have thousands of hours flying heavier combat aircraft types, meaning that they'd have Veteran to Ace level skills in navigation and target identification, and Average to Veteran level routine piloting skills and situational awareness, but Rookie level gunnery, combat maneuvering and combat situational awareness.

This means that they'd be quite good at doing things like taking off, landing, holding formation and following fighter intercept to the target, then identifying targets and setting up attacks, but not so good at hitting the target, and potentially quite poor in a dogfight.

Sadly, IL2 doesn't give mission builders the ability to set different skill levels for different tasks.

Originally Posted by Laurwin

Rookies were the guys who confused their flight leaders for enemies (like Erich hartmann once did ) and tried to dogfight them. Or then they would just get lost in the skies.

IL2 doesn't model the risk of deliberate attack by friendly planes due to failure of target identification. This was a real problem for Allied planes like the P-51 or Typhoon (or Soviet fighters encountering Western Allied fighters). I don't think it would be that hard to implement as an AI feature, but for now such encounters have to be set up as specific missions with the "friendly" planes being assigned to the opposing side.

Originally Posted by Laurwin

I mean these people were given limited training before sent to the front (for example, even American flight training was quite limited in scope, before pilots were sent from flight school to the front). And compared with most countries fighter training, it (American) was the most comprehensive one.

I think that U.S. training was actually pretty good, at least by 1944. Pre-war training was good, but there was a dip in quality in 1942-43. It wouldn't be unreasonable to call "rookie" 1944 U.S. pilots "Average" in terms of IL2 pilot quality.

If it was possible to do so, I'd give your typical newly-minted USAAF/USMC 1944 2nd Lieutenant/USN Ensign fighter pilot:

Navigation: Average.
Target Recognition: Average
Routine Piloting (e.g., aircraft system maintenance, formation flying, landing and take-off): Average
Combat Situational Awareness: Rookie
Air Combat Maneuvers/Aerobatics: Rookie
Gunnery: Rookie
Bombing: Rookie
Rockets: Rookie

By contrast, a 1940 British Pilot Officer or 1942 Soviet junior Lieutenant straight from training might be "rookie" across the board, while a 1945 kamikaze would be "turkey shoot" quality in all but target recognition which would be "average."

Originally Posted by Laurwin

-aircraft identification (esp headons). So they don't always know to blast away, would such a thing happen in real war? Before you can know if he's friend or foe? Merge happens for example, because of IDing bogey. In WW2 it meant silhouette ID or the insignia, if you wanted to be certain of friend-or-foe.

In some cases, it's possible to identify an aircraft from head-on by things like size, wing angle and fuselage cross section. Additionally, even with a big HD monitor, the human eye gives more detail than a computer screen can, which might be enough to pick up things like color and distinctive reflections.
Finally, IL2 doesn't include the option for radar vectoring or mission briefings, which give useful information like altitude and heading for bogies, or "any twin-engined planes in the sky today will be hostile."

Even so, target recognition was a problem, especially with sun glare, clouds and darkness, and IL2 doesn't reflect that.

I'd simplify target recognition down to a percentage change of mistaking a target from each "o'clock" angle, with chances slightly increased for rookies and reduced for veteran or better pilots, and possibly with increases for planes of a rarely-encountered nationality. And, with exceptions for distinctive planes like the P-38 or Me323.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by MaxGunz

Joust is two fighters making head on attacks. Those happened in history every so often, some planes seem almost made for it with a big radial block in front and devastating firepower to go with it. Even the P-38 got a reputation, whoa those guns!

But lessons got learned and aerial suicide avoided. Imagine if every P-51 pilot jousted with every FW pilot he met? The USAAF would have run out of P-51's and pilots pretty quick.

See this is what I thought but the AI does it so infrequently that I thought maybe he was using the word incorrectly and it was in reference to boom and zoom energy tactics which is also not dogfighting

The initial pass does tend to be head on when the QMB is set to default. I like to setup advantage/disadvantage scenarios as well. Mixes things up. But after that its an all bets are off... it does not tend to be a lot of tail chasers but it also doesn't tend to be a continual head on after head on. I almost never see that... Then again I usually go nose up immediately, gain about 500 or more meters, then level out build my speed and make an aggressive angled shot into the initial formation breaking it up and separating out the fighters so I can pick them off. Veteran, Ace, Regular... none of them think tactically. They just react

[Fenrir]

Originally Posted by Woke Up Dead

"Pander to your desire for dogfight entertainment," "whaaambulance," snarky critiques of piloting abilities, what's the matter with you guys?

You know what WUD, you are right. I reacted badly. However, I found my resentment piqued by Pugos attitude. There's ways and means. if he had come in asking for assistance as to why it is he's having so much difficulty with the AI and what he can do to minimise its apparent advantages, I'd have been much more civil.

Instead he waltzes in and has the temerity to demand that years of hard work trying to get the AI to the convincing level it is now are thrown away just so he can get more kills. It's the classic "you should do the hard work so i don't have to" attitude I see insidiously infecting the social mentality nowadays and it raises my hackles. Why not try asking oneself "what am I doing wrong, how can I improve?"

The QMB is obviously not a place for hyper-realism, it's for setting up "what if" scenarios. Like, what if I spawn in on my opponent's six, 1000m above him, and he has 100% fuel and no ammo and is a rookie and is alone, and I have 20% fuel and an ace wingman. Realistic?

Granted. However, the product is what it is, and strives towards as realistic an experience as the parameters of it's platform & programming limitations allow. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it's a bloody convincing and enjoyable effort. In that spirit, the what if's are also constrained by those parameters and those of the game. If you want a swirling multi-plane melee with everyone trying like hell to turn themselves inside out getting on each others tails - which I have done many times 1-v-1 in Il-2 against the AI (try a P-38J against a 109G-10) - then go buy War Thunder.

If you can already set all those variables, then why not also be able to set the aggressiveness and likeliness to dogfight of your opponent? Like a lot of online pilots in planes better suited for hit and run do, you know, for fun?

As cool as that would be I suspect it's asking too much of both FatCat99 and the Il-2 game engine. It was something that was supposed to be a variable in CloD but unless Team Fusion can work their magic with it I don't know how far we'll see it progress. And even then, having an Ace AI trying to dogfight a Spitfire in Bf109 in the classic interpretation of that term seems paradoxical. In the meantime I stand by my opinion of Il-2 AI air combat tactics - it's the best i have seen in ANY flightsim of recent years and has even fooled me into thinking it was one of my squadmates on occasion.

[K_Freddie]

P3:
While there are problems with the human interpretation of the AI (trust me DCS is a lot worse wrt AI).. TDs IL2 AI (v412) is.. repeat, IS the best I've seen for a long time. AI long term tactics, I'm sure are still a problem.. but QMB seems to suffice in this regard.

What a lot of people seems to forget, is that the 'relative performances' of the IL2 aircraft seem to reasonably accurate - and there are a lot of aircraft. An aircraft's specific RL performance might not be up-to-scratch.. but for online WW2 'jousting', it is the best so far - even for a 13 year old engine.

What it always comes down to.. is knowing your a/c, whether it's IL2/DCS or RL, and the limits you can push it too.