AI on ground attack

[Flyingkiki]

Hi all !

 

I've been starting playing the IL2 BoX series lately, with a new PC after years playing on 1946, and wow, it's awesome, a lot of fun flying my troubles away.

I decided to launch a Stuka career, and enjoy ground attack missions.

 

The first one with the ingame career was fun until my AI Stuka friends decided not to attack ground targets, just flying around with their load attached.. So I decided to switch to Pat Wilson' campaign generator to see if it was better. Sadly no, my three AI allies stayed hovering and then getting harassed by enemy fighters, while I was badly attacking russian troops.

 

I have seen some complaints about AI on ground attack ; is this a huge bug, or was I unlucky ? I'd love to fly hours of Stuka campaign, but this is a no-go if AI doesn't play along..

 

However I absolutely loved the PWCG's mission, with a lot of ground troops fighting, smoking villages and planes everywhere, it felt amazing and real !!

 

If you have any advice on this, it will be greatly appreaciated :-)

 

Have fun guys !

[Thad]

Salutations,

 

Based upon my single player mission creation experiences, there was indeed some anomalies encountered during attempts to get complete flights of Stukas' to attack ground targets.

 

It has been quite a while, but if I remember correctly, I had to fiddle with the attack parameters (where to begin the attack on the targets). I was able to finally get all of the Stukas to make their ground attacks and they realistically attacked different target in the area. It was very gratifying.

 

Unfortunately, I suspect that any automated mission creation routine will not make any such adjustments and a standard attack command will be used and therefore your AI attack problems. ?

Edited June 19, 2020 by Thad

[Gambit21]

I have/had a flight of Stukas attacking ground targets with no problems in the Havoc campaign - but with guns not bombs. I haven’t checked the behavior in that mission recently.

[Stoopy]

On a more basic level other than mission creation specifics, were you the flight leader,  and if so did you give your AI flight members the command to attack (or patrol for ground targets)?   I ask only because you say you are relatively new to the sim and may not have learned to leverage the flight leader commands yet, accessed by the ~ (tilde) key..

 

They also don't usually head straight into an attack vector when requested, instead they will kind of circle around the target and make a run from one direction, drop one bomb, then pull off and make a lazy circle again to attack from the same general direction as before, based more or less on the direction that the target is facing.   It's a very casual, Sunday-flier approach to ground attack.  If they are up high enough you may see them wing over and dive straight down on a target in the classic Stuka style, otherwise they use shallow dives for their bombing or strafing. 

 

Edited June 19, 2020 by =[TIA]=Stoopy

[LLv24_SukkaVR]

Last time i played with Stuka in career mode few weeks ago, my flight just flew over the target, then maybe 2-3km behind it made a 180 degree turn and then entered a shallow dive and bombed it. In real life i think they flew just a little bit behind the target or above it, rolled over, dived in, dropped the bombs and flew straight at home.

[Sybreed]

I've had missions where I needed to escort Stukas and they would come back home with their bombs still on their racks. I've also had similar behavior with my own flights of IL-2s. There seems to be bugs and bad AI scripts altogether on how and if your teammates use their bombs.

 

The other issue is how AI prioritize targets: AA will always be targeted first and therefore be the first targets of your flight when they drop their bombs, while the "hard" targets like tanks and buildings will get strafed by guns and therefore take no damage. So, you can be stuck in a mission if enough AA units are around, because your flight will drop their bombs on AA units and won't be able to damage the mission targets, making it impossible to complete it (the game will tell you to return to base after a while though).

Edited June 19, 2020 by Sybreed

[ShamrockOneFive]

This is an area that the AI has improved but not completely improved. It does sound like, from a recent developer diary, that this is a new area of focus for the AI programmer. Hopefully we'll see some more capable and aggressive attack runs from the AI in the future.

[Flyingkiki]

Thank you all for your comments on that !

I haven't checked a lot of missions, just the two for now, and I should check their behavior a bit more. I did one user-created mission I found for Stukas, where boats are to be attacked on a river. The leader asks the Kette to hunt targets on their own, and everything happened perfectly.

May be it's the auto-created mission that lack something, which is implemented in the user-created one. I don't have the experience and knowledge to say more on that ^^

 

Thanks again all of you !

[Bobitron]

I don't think the strategy of the AI is completely invalid. Tight and slow formations may mean high accuracy due to plenty of time to level out and less flak casualties due to the flak being overwhelmed.

[flagdjmetcher]

On 6/20/2020 at 5:34 AM, =[TIA]=Stoopy said:

They also don't usually head straight into an attack vector when requested, instead they will kind of circle around the target and make a run from one direction, drop one bomb, then pull off and make a lazy circle again to attack from the same general direction as before, based more or less on the direction that the target is facing.   

 

 

I don't issue attack vectors, in absence of such I've noticed IL-2's make a concerted effort to make their attack run into the prevailing wind.  Took me ages to figure out why they would fly past the target initially, and why they wouldn't do a bomb run straight down the road on convoy attacks, but that was it.  Target facing doesn't seem to come into it; even with targets like dug in tanks where there's clearly a weak direction they just stick with upwind runsl.  Maybe 10% of the time some of them will go a bit off-script, haven't worked out yet what causes that.

Just my observations with undirected IL-2s, might not apply to other situations.

[Guest deleted@210880]

I've tried a ground attack career again and am frustrated at the attacking actions. Its PWCGnot stock career but I know he is trying his best to get the most out of the logic.

 

The process of attacking has me grinding my teeth from start to finish.

 

-The long build up, circling round seemignly aimlessly before attacking. What I have read of Il2 attacks were they were low, fast approach, pop up and attack directly, pass over target, then, maybe return for another quick attack depending on how the target was hit or not. The delay before attacking just ruins the experience for me and you often have to game the game by attacking the AA at this point. Accounts I read did not mention attacking the AAA as there was too much of it, instead you aimed for the target and left rapidly.

 

- Inability to drop ordinance. I would prefer the attack to drop everything on one target in one go, or pairs/salvos at least, and ideally called by the leader. The AI seem very accurate in their attacks, maybe this is a setting, but I would like to see everything dropped on a bridge in one go for example, and maybe none of it hit, rather than one bomb dropped and the bridge gone and all other ordinance carried home. Again from what I have read it seems the intention was to drop as much as possible, and expect much of it to miss rather than pinpoint accuracy.

 

- no indication of the attack finishing and heading home. There needs to be some clear notification of the attack finishing that replaces teh real life agreement and orders the pilots woudl have.

 

If the developers can create a fast attack mission event/command, and add a 'lets go home' call/message then groudn attacking in il2s/110s etc woudl be improved no end in my eyes.

 

Currently IL2 BoX works well as a fighter sim, but is letting down all those lovely aircraft models and flight models with some of the ground attack behaviour. 

[Semor76]

12 minutes ago, John_Yossarian said:

Currently IL2 BoX works well as a fighter sim, but is letting down all those lovely aircraft models and flight models with some of the ground attack behaviour. 

+1

[Yogiflight]

21 minutes ago, Semor76 said:

34 minutes ago, John_Yossarian said:

Currently IL2 BoX works well as a fighter sim, but is letting down all those lovely aircraft models and flight models with some of the ground attack behaviour. 

+1

I've mentioned earlier in other threads, GB is purely a dogfight simulation, not a combat flight simulation.

[vonGraf]

8 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

I've mentioned earlier in other threads, GB is purely a dogfight simulation, not a combat flight simulation.

 

Even Pe-2 chased me in a Bf-110 like fighters do. The first time I thought they're maybe flying in a 'heavy fighter' role and it's meant this way but they would need at least a better armament on the front side.

[Yogiflight]

1 hour ago, vonGraf said:

 

Even Pe-2 chased me in a Bf-110 like fighters do. The first time I thought they're maybe flying in a 'heavy fighter' role and it's meant this way but they would need at least a better armament on the front side.

And they do it with bombs on board, which you wouldn't in heavy fighter role. They tried that with me, too.