Ju-87's AI gunners don't fire

[Alfaunostebas11]

I am testing a single mission where the player, in the cockpit of a Soviet fighter, attacks a formation of Ju-87s.
I noticed that the Stukas are an easy and defenseless prey, because the gunners seem not to respond to fire.
There is something to be done when setting up the mission to make the gunners more responsive.
I also tried to give Ace's skill to the Stukas, but the behavior doesn't seem to have changed.
Note that the Ju-87s are heading to an Attack Area, and managed to perform a ground target attack.
Thanks for your attention, Stebas

Edited January 28, 2020 by Alfaunostebas11

[LLv34_Temuri]

What priority are you using for the Stuka waypoints? If you set the priority to High, they won't open fire.

[Alfaunostebas11]

Ah… I used High, without thinking that this will compromise the defend capacity… now I test with Medium...

Thank.

[IckyATLAS]

Yes but this behavior has to be considered either a Bug or a poor design. A waypoint priority for planes has two functions:

One is to specify the flight behavior (pilot)when the enemy is there: that is either fly your course whatever happens, or avoid it if attacked or go and attack him if an enemy is around and continue your way only when the enemy  threat is not there any more: High means fly straight and do not care.

The other is to specify the rate at which you will fire against the enemy (gunners): High means do not fire take a sleep and dream.

 

As you can see we are here in full contradiction.

 

Suppose you are on a bombing run where you need to keep your course even when you are attacked. If you set your waypoint priority to High then the plane flies straight whatever happens, be it enemy planes attacking or AAA pounding. All the bomber gunners will be watching youtube on their smartphones, and  will remain silent. This is dead wrong. You have to decouple the pilot from the gunners on board. This is why you need two priority parameters. The only way to have both to do something is setting the priority to Medium and here you have a mediocre solution from my point of view.

[namhee2]

1 minute ago, IckyATLAS said:

Yes but this behavior has to be considered either a Bug or a poor design. A waypoint priority for planes has two functions:

One is to specify the flight behavior (pilot)when the enemy is there: that is either fly your course whatever happens, or avoid it if attacked or go and attack him if an enemy is around and continue your way only when the enemy  threat is not there any more: High means fly straight and do not care.

The other is to specify the rate at which you will fire against the enemy (gunners): High means do not fire take a sleep and dream.

 

As you can see we are here in full contradiction.

 

Suppose you are on a bombing run where you need to keep your course even when you are attacked. If you set your waypoint priority to High then the plane flies straight whatever happens, be it enemy planes attacking or AAA pounding. All the bomber gunners will be watching youtube on their smartphones, and  will remain silent. This is dead wrong. You have to decouple the pilot from the gunners on board. This is why you need two priority parameters. The only way to have both to do something is setting the priority to Medium and here you have a mediocre solution from my point of view.

 

[slawson612]

I have also seen that Stukas with the 37mm underwing cannons do not use them. The fly to the way points and swoop down but I have yet to seem them fire on anything.

[IckyATLAS]

Here is what I do.  The waypoints far from target are set to low priority. So the pilots will do evasive moves, brake formation and fire back. Then at medium distance we go to medium priority. They still fire back but stay a little more on course and keep better formation. Then the last MCU AttackArea is with priority set to high. In this way on the last short strech (the real bombing run) they concentrate only on keeping straight course and formation on the target and do the bombing. Once bombs are gone you can then link to the next waypoint in low priority to allow them to defend themselves as best as they can.

If you have fighters covering them this helps distracting attacking fighters. Be careful about altitudes. It makes a big difference with the Stukas.

 

A typical example of a bombing mission trajectory is:  Low, Low, Low, Medium, Medium, Medium, Medium, High, Low, Low, Low etc...

The number of Low, Medium depend on your scenario.