AI gunner issues collection

[=FEW=N3cRoo]

The gunner in IL-2 come in many flavours, Godlike, useless, not firing

 

Firstly i want to focus on aircraft gunners:

 

• When setting them to ACE they just become a pure lead calculation base on velocity with some weapon spread, no errors, no accuracy losses due to range. (same issue with ground AA, see video #2)
• Switching into active gunner does not give you a ready to fire weapon (see video #1)
• Gunners firing restrictions are too strict and not coherent with what player gunners can do when it comes to shooting in maneuvering Aircraft. I did training attacks on IL-2 '43 that did static turns didnt fire when i slotted in, but then openend as the pilots adjusted the turn (video #1)
• AI gunners can switch stations instantanious also do not have ANY restrictions in how fast they change angles (see video #2)
• Minor improvement could be effects of suppression or atleast degradation of skill upon wounding gunners

 

Video #1

https://youtu.be/QGPqI7hIzsU

 

Video #2 this here is a hit from a sidegunner with ~300-400kph speed difference

https://youtu.be/gjn8asGCFiE

 

 

 

Now about groundbased AI gunners :

 

• same issues to finding a good medium difficulty ACE = perfect hits .... unless you maneuver... you literally can bait flak for minutes at a time just by flying a circle and keeping a constant acceleration up (I'm sure the person looking at the code will see this as there is no integrator for past Accleration of the tgt that gets fed into the firing solution). This is compounded by the next issue
• AA does not have any type of prioritisation, once there is not a Valid tgt it just picks the closest target and stays on that very target until invalid. Hence a fighter can just circle while the more dangerous bombers or attackers deal the damage. That is especially weird programming logic for AAA that will shoot at fighters at 5km altitude while a whole bomber formation can slip in.
• Targeting only starts once there is a Valid target, more precisely there is no differentiation between Spotting distance and Firing distance. This makes shorter range AA absolutely useless against pilots who know of this and simply come in fast enough from the rear. With a Pe-2 for example a dive from 1800m or higher on a group of 20mm AA will pretty much result in 90% of the time you are in range spend by the AA rotating and not firing since they arent on target. 

Edited September 24, 2018 by =FEW=N3croo

[=FEW=N3cRoo]

Another clip, just happened today