Court martial for wingmen?

[1./ZG1_ElHadji]

Is there anyway you can stop your wingmen from disregarding orders and doing stupid things in campaign missions? Or at least have them court martialed afterwards?

 

I was just flying a campaign mission in the second part of the BoM campaign. I was leading a flight of four Bf 110's in a airfield attack. Just as we approached the target and I initiated the climb from tree-top to attack altitude, my wingmen spotted fighters and went after them. Very clever decision with a full bomb load... This meant that I was alone over the target while my wingmen were being shot down away from the airfield that we was supposed to destroy. This kind of breaks immersion when flying campaign missions.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

Once while leading an intercept I picked some rockets to shower the enemy formation with. The second the idiots spot them, they launch all rockets in a salvo and due to the fuse these explode some 50m in front of me. Geniuses!

[unreasonable]

AI = Artificial Imbeciles.

 

This has always been a weak component of BoX SP - it was much the same in RoF. TBH IL-2 1946 was no better.

 

Is it really hard to program, or the developers just do not want to spend the resources? 

[216th_Jordan]

Hit tilde (^) and tell them to follow your orders (f6) once they disengage. they will return to formation and actually sometimes even do their job :D

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

Both, particularly at the complexity level of this game. I'll also risk a guess that giving them too much brain makes for a CPU killer.

 

The thing is, the AI acts fine unless it's in the player's flight, so the capability is there. Attacking enemy formations always brings a sharp AI escort, and those intercepting our group are also dangerous. From experience they have saved my ass a few times though. If only they weren't so jumpy...

 

Go give the new 1946 AI a go, it's become much more interesting.

[Yogiflight]

ElHadji, did you try to give them the order "Follow me", when arriving at the action point? It helps me quite good so far, my wingmen stay with me as long as they don`t get attacked directly. But for the attacking itself I order them to attack ground object for themselves, because I made the experience, that they quite rarely hit anything with the order to follow me an do as I do.

BTW, when they attack enemy aircrafts they get rid of their bombs at once. So giving them the order to follow you after they turned away is only second best. When I tried this they always came back without bombs.

[1./ZG1_ElHadji]

Hit tilde (^) and tell them to follow your orders (f6) once they disengage. they will return to formation and actually sometimes even do their job :D

 

Nope. I ordered them to formation, to follow my orders and to attack ground targets but they were too busy engaging fighters to listen to their Schwarmführer. I guess they forgot what the mission objectives were... The funny thing was that the enemy fighters weren't even close to the target when they decided to chase after them.

Edited May 1, 2016 by 1./ZG1_ElHadji

[LeRocket]

i've experienced what you have, but there are times where they will listen to my commands (like me telling them to follow me again) when they try to abandon me. as lucas mentioned, i remember reading one of the devs post saying adding more complex functions to the a.i will make it more cpu intensive.

[unreasonable]

The simple and non-cpu intensive solution would be to make the AI not abandon you at the action point.

 

I can see that they need a criterion which will make them break formation - being fired at by enemy air, for instance, but arriving at the action point should not trigger anarchy.

 

This is a major weakness in the SP as of now - makes missions more like managing a kindergarden play group than leading a military formation. "George, come back here. Stop that!"   

[BlitzPig_EL]

Just use your flight for bait to keep the enemy fighters off you, in the current poorly thought out system, it's the best you can hope for.

[unlikely_spider]

About the multiple enemy fighters coming after you but ignoring your wingmen - I just experienced that, but activated the Cover Me command and all wingmen came and engaged the fighters in question. Is that consistent with others' experience here?

[Feathered_IV]

I don't think the developers are interested in improving AI behavior or the placeholder radio speech.

[seafireliv]

The Devs need to put more effort into AI wingmen. Right now, they don`t even have the feel of the IL2 `46 Wingmen which at least followed orders and acted relatively realistically.

[unreasonable]

I don't think the developers are interested in improving AI behavior or the placeholder radio speech.

 

Sadly, I suspect the same. Makes one wonder why they keep putting effort into an SP campaign. 

 

Unfortunately, I fear it also means that much of the work going into PWCG will not, ultimately, lead to a significantly improved SP experience. 

[unreasonable]

TBH not sure, you would have to check all the suggestions... or put in a new one yourself. I know it has been discussed before, mostly unfavourably as I recall.

 

There comes a point, however, when constructive criticism has been ignored indefinitely, that it seems preferable to just do something else, while checking occasionally, more in hope than expectation, to see if  BoX will ever get the SP campaign mode that it deserves.