Suggestions for AI Improvements in Future Updates

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by Aviar

AI ships have no 'path-finding' abilities. They are only programmed to follow their waypoints. They will collide with anything that gets in their way.

Aviar

My humble proposition is to take into consideration my humble proposition as in #60.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by sniperton

My humble proposition is to take into consideration my humble proposition as in #60.

The idea of having "ship packs" is a good one, and would save mission builders a lot of time since the FMB could be loaded with preset historical packs like "1942 Western Allied Convoy" or "Midway, June 4, Japanese Carrier Task Force".

The same idea could be applied to aircraft and ground vehicles as well, with formations such as "1944 U.S. Heavy Bomber Group Box Formation" or "1942 Soviet T-34 Tank Formation"

If this is implemented, another nice feature might be for the FMB to allow mission builders to create and save custom formations. That would allow TD to just include a few generic formations (e.g., "German destroyers line abreast") and let the fans create actual historical formations.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

The idea of having "ship packs" is a good one, and would save mission builders a lot of time since the FMB could be loaded with preset historical packs like "1942 Western Allied Convoy" or "Midway, June 4, Japanese Carrier Task Force".

The same idea could be applied to aircraft and ground vehicles as well, with formations such as "1944 U.S. Heavy Bomber Group Box Formation" or "1942 Soviet T-34 Tank Formation"

If this is implemented, another nice feature might be for the FMB to allow mission builders to create and save custom formations. That would allow TD to just include a few generic formations (e.g., "German destroyers line abreast") and let the fans create actual historical formations.

The "fun" of this starts when your formations need to turn. Without collision avoidance you will need a preprogrammed turning pattern for each formation. For player-created formations, player would need to create a pattern, too. There would be more than one mission designer willing to create and test such formation patterns I assume, so if created make them user-accessible, and let us experiment with it.

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

The "fun" of this starts when your formations need to turn. Without collision avoidance you will need a preprogrammed turning pattern for each formation. For player-created formations, player would need to create a pattern, too. There would be more than one mission designer willing to create and test such formation patterns I assume, so if created make them user-accessible, and let us experiment with it.

The first step would be to create pre-defined formations with fixed positions and pre-defined turning patterns. Hard-coded. If they work flawlessly, then the customization can begin, but not before. Say, you create a hard-coded formation like

_1_2
3_4_5
_6_7

Numbers here represent slots. The user can decide whether he/she fills a slot with whatever ship. If the turning pattern is defined in a parametric way (according to the slowest and worst turning ship in the pack), then it's pure mathematics to calculate each element's route (avoiding collisions).

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

The "fun" of this starts when your formations need to turn.

True. But the rules for collision avoidance during a turn are simple - follow the leader and maintain the same relative distance and "angle off" with respect to all the vehicles around you as you turn.

Certainly the calculations required for such changes of direction already exist since those algorithms are commonly used to simulate the behavior of groups of birds, fish and herd animals.

I'd also consider it to be realistic if a sharp turn at high speeds results in collisions, or vehicles skidding, stalling, tipping over or temporarily losing formation.

If IL2 can't handle the sort of math required for perfect station-keeping and collision avoidance, parameters could be built into the formation to limit the maximum speed and direction at which the formation can travel to make collisions or unrealistic behavior impossible. Again, this is realistic, since groups of disparate vehicles in convoys have to travel at a bit less than the highest sustainable speed of the slowest vehicle in the formation and formation leaders need to take the limitations of the least maneuverable vehicle in the group into account when making maneuvers.