Career mode A.I leader problem

[HagarTheHorrible]

I started a He111 campaign but on the first mission the formation leader lost an engine after being attacked by enemy fighters, this lead to a rather silly Hokey Cokey dance as the rest of the flight tried to stay in formation with the rapidly slowing down leader.

 

Bombers obviously retain much of their defensive capability from a good battle formation, it would have been nice if the leader could have dropped out of formation and the next in command taken over in order to prevent the disruption and defeat in detail of the remaining and by now dispersed formation members.

 

I would like to think that it would be possible to add an A.I routine that could have the flight leader replaced if, for whatever reason, he could no longer keep his place in the formation.  I suppose his first action should have been to ditch some or all of his bombs to try and maintain his position and if that didn't work then drop out of formation to make his way home as best he could.

[busdriver]

50 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

I would like to think that it would be possible to add an A.I routine that could have the flight leader replaced if, for whatever reason, he could no longer keep his place in the formation.  I suppose his first action should have been to ditch some or all of his bombs to try and maintain his position and if that didn't work then drop out of formation to make his way home as best he could.

 

You will find that the flight lead assignment gets passed down sequentially as losses accumulate. Also from a fighter pilot's perspective, bomber targets will jettison their bombs when under attack. Not the entire formation mind you, just the guy you're attacking.

[Yogiflight]

9 minutes ago, busdriver said:

Also from a fighter pilot's perspective, bomber targets will jettison their bombs when under attack.

Not from my experience. They only jettison their bombs when they are heavily damaged. Pe2s always turnfight with their bombs on board, and they are really good turnfighters with bombload, which is quite odd.

[busdriver]

3 minutes ago, Yogiflight said:

Not from my experience. They only jettison their bombs when they are heavily damaged. Pe2s always turnfight with their bombs on board, and they are really good turnfighters with bombload, which is quite odd.

 

Okay...then that is a little different than I saw in testing. A few rounds into a Stuka and IIRC the kette jettisoned. Perhaps there is a different routine for different airplanes.

[Ghost666]

In career the bombers jettison their bombs when attacked including Pe-2s, since the 3.0 update.

 

[InProgress]

AI is weird sometimes :/ i had mission to attack il2 with my 110. We did it and then russians got few fighters, mission was completed but my 110 started chasing fighters into enemy territory. It looks weird... I guess ai of ground attackers should be somehow fixed so they won't try dogfight if their mission was to attack certain targets.

 

Another ai problem I had and I think many others too is that sometimes enemy does not get to your mission location so you just fly around in circles waiting for them and they never come (in my case they attacked different targets and that's why they never came to us) and then you get mission failed because you did not defend your ground units from il2 even tho they never came and never attacked you.

 

Would be nice if after a while of waiting mission would end and you could return home if enemy did not come.

Edited March 21, 2018 by InProgress

[dburne]

My AI wingmen in the second career I started recently, seem to be having a problem with flying into each other on the way to the target area.

Have lost a few this way.

 

 

Edited March 21, 2018 by dburne

[Gambit21]

In my campaign missions I make the AI bomber flight leader invulnerable.

It's not a perfect solution but it's the best work-around I currently have.