Advance And Secure (Planes And Tanks)

[ickylevel]

I was hoping that the reduction of tank count and game time would prevent the issue. I guess we will have to abandon the mg concept.

[stupor-mundi]

AI flak trucks.

I want to raise an issue with those AI wheeled vehicles with AA on them.

One of the changes in the history of tank crew, which I consider a real progress, was, when the AI tanks stopped shooting at players through forests.

So much has been done in tank crew over time which in my view hasn't contributed to the fun of playing it, but this one was a biggie.

A huge progress, since it meant that, what was good tactics when opposing enemy player tanks, then also became useful useful against AI tanks. You didn't have to worry, sitting concealed in the forest, that some stupid AI would suddenly take you out through many layers of foliage.

Now that we have those AA trucks, their behavior is different. And I think I understand why (of course only guessing) -- probably for AA purposes it would take away too much of the effectivity of those trucks if they did have to do the forest/foliage calculation in the way the AI tanks do.

But the resulting problem is that the trucks don't only shoot at planes through foliage, but also at player tanks. That's extremely irritating because it basically throws us back to that bad situation from many, many, months ago, whereever the AI AA trucks are employed as part of an attacking AI tank column.

 

I realize this is really an issue for the game developers to solve, but I wonder if, to mitigate it, the AA AI trucks could be limited to a more defensive role, or reduced substantially...
Or are there any settings available in mission design where they could be allowed to fire through forests at planes, but not at tanks?

 

[super-truite]

hmm unfortunately I think there is no way to make them shoot only at planes when they are on the move.
As for the AI tanks not shooting through trees, is this really something that changed ??? I did not notice any change 
 

[stupor-mundi]

1 minute ago, super-truite said:

hmm unfortunately I think there is no way to make them shoot only at planes when they are on the move.
As for the AI tanks not shooting through trees, is this really something that changed ??? I did not notice any change 
 

 

It was long ago, probably before you started. I can't even remember how long ago now.
I may have used the term tank crew incorrectly, since that change possbily occurred before they officially announced the start of tank crew. Have to keep in mind that it was possible to play the tanks in IL2 years before they officially released tank crew...

[Fisheye1964]

I think I rember there was indeed a change in shooting through trees. They still shoot, but there was a change in the way that you can not be seen by Ai if you are 30 or 50 m behind trees in the forest. Same for Ai planes.

 

So if you dont want to be shot by Ai you could move more deeper in the forest.

 

I remember there was a DD about that, but don't remember when.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Fisheye1964

[moustache]

On 1/1/2023 at 5:56 PM, stupor-mundi said:

One of the changes in the history of tank crew, which I consider a real progress, was, when the AI tanks stopped shooting at players through forests.

you were lucky, because it hasn't changed, he continues to see and shoot through the forests...

[stupor-mundi]

6 hours ago, moustache said:

you were lucky, because it hasn't changed, he continues to see and shoot through the forests...

 

AI tanks still CAN shoot you through trees, and it's hard to know exactly how much forest prevents them from doing it. But at least the game nowadays has this functionality, i.e. tries to achieve some realism and prevent AI tanks from shooting you though forest, if it's wide enough.

Whereas before that functionality was introduced, AI tanks would just shoot you through any thickness of forest, or multple of those lines of trees.

In the same way that the AA does now...

[stupor-mundi]

Something just occurred to me as I was on a prokhorovka mission on the server 'BoT cepBep Ha Tpoux'. Not a trace of SloMo there, and something about the mission design which made the map quite tedious due to large distances was, that bases, with paks, stat tanks and so on were just placed in the pre-existing town and villages of the prokhorovka map, without adding buildings at all. There were some AI tanks that spawned as well.
This made me notice a difference between how maps mostly used to be on the servers without SloMo, which were generally done in this way, without adding a lot of buildings. And it fits with what surprised me, that I get SloMo on Engelskirchen at even lower player numbers than most of the other AAS maps. But Engelskirchen has all those added buildings to protect the spawn points.

So this is a bit counter intuitive, because it's hard to figure why this would be, since the added buildings just sit there and don't do anything, but maybe the implementation of added buildings in the game engine is somehow done really inefficiently...

So I have this suspicion now that added buildings might be responsible for some of the differences between the maps, with regard to SloMo.

[ickylevel]

On 1/14/2023 at 6:15 PM, stupor-mundi said:

Something just occurred to me as I was on a prokhorovka mission on the server 'BoT cepBep Ha Tpoux'. Not a trace of SloMo there, and something about the mission design which made the map quite tedious due to large distances was, that bases, with paks, stat tanks and so on were just placed in the pre-existing town and villages of the prokhorovka map, without adding buildings at all. There were some AI tanks that spawned as well.
This made me notice a difference between how maps mostly used to be on the servers without SloMo, which were generally done in this way, without adding a lot of buildings. And it fits with what surprised me, that I get SloMo on Engelskirchen at even lower player numbers than most of the other AAS maps. But Engelskirchen has all those added buildings to protect the spawn points.

So this is a bit counter intuitive, because it's hard to figure why this would be, since the added buildings just sit there and don't do anything, but maybe the implementation of added buildings in the game engine is somehow done really inefficiently...

So I have this suspicion now that added buildings might be responsible for some of the differences between the maps, with regard to SloMo.

What was the cloud cover at that time?

[stupor-mundi]

12 hours ago, ickylevel said:

What was the cloud cover at that time?

Not sure anymore, it was either mostly clear or completely clear. Certainly not rainy.
But I think the focus on weather may be a red herring. I've been paying attention to the weather when I experienced heavy SloMo recently, and there were a whole bunch of occasions with fairly or even completely clear weather which had heavy SloMo. I just wasn't able to see a clear correlation between what the weather was like, and the degree of SloMo.

[stupor-mundi]

Are there server tuning parameters that set the strictness regarding player to player state updates?

Observed something interesting just now in Engelskirchen at ca. 10- 13 players.

At first, around 10 players, was surprised at the absence of SloMo effect. Didn't notice at first, while I could hear explosions, that I could not see any other tanks. Was from time to time blown up, realized eventually that other tanks were invisible to me. Houndawg was commenting on seeing partial tanks.

I then exited, restarted IL-2, rejoined, and immediately, strong SloMo, but now I could see the other players.
So it seems when I first joined, I did so in a way without being hooked up to get updates from the other players. While my position updates must have been transmitted, otherwise I wouldn't have been blown up a couple of times.

And after restarting I re-joined in the proper way, which apparently the server could only handle whilst inducing heavy SloMo.

[wolfbojan189]

Belgorod map groud is black?

[super-truite]

fixed

[stupor-mundi]

I just tried Belgorod v7 and it was playable for me at 13 players (mostly tanks) with minimal slo-mo.
I remember a few days back trying v4 or so which had very strong slo-mo at only 6 or so players.

Would be interesting what was changed since then, seems to help...

[super-truite]

no AI tanks, no console calls. I suspect the recent crashes have to do with one or the other. Slow mo might be linked to that too. I hope it is not about console calls because this allows a lot of new stuff like artillery support 

Edited January 23, 2023 by super-truite

[stupor-mundi]

On 1/23/2023 at 8:55 PM, super-truite said:

no AI tanks, no console calls. I suspect the recent crashes have to do with one or the other. Slow mo might be linked to that too. I hope it is not about console calls because this allows a lot of new stuff like artillery support 

Interesting, and at the same time confusing. Console calls is a pretty new thing in these missions, right?
Confusing, because some missions which do have AI tanks, like Tessy, are also relatively good regarding slo-mo.

[stupor-mundi]

I started a thread about simulation fidelty in Great Battles, and got an interesting reply from RossMarBow pointing to a related thread

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/82662-simulation-fidelty-in-online-multiplayer/?do=findComment&comment=1253019

where the point is made that the number of spawn points may be a big factor in the issues with simulation fidelty, which I call slo-mo.

The thread is about stutter, but I think the point about spawn points may still be relevant. The best mission for me currently regarding slo-mo is Tessy, whereas a bad one is Villersbocage, I'll keep an eye out if I can correlate this in other missions.

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by stupor-mundi

[super-truite]

interesting (and really weird), if that is the  that case this problem will be solved in the future because I made a new AAS template with only 4 tank spawns. Try the Belgorod map also (it is already using the new template)

[stupor-mundi]

Belgorod is quite good for me, with regard to slo-mo.

Driving on the roads there feels weirdly spongy, and as if riding on some additional thickness of invisible road surface, but I think that's a trait of those special roads, not general slo-mo.

Edited February 2, 2023 by stupor-mundi

[super-truite]

yes this has to do with the roads from the original map (it is just a texture but it is not solid ground), I might modify them but the issue is that it leads to very long loading time for people joining when I modify the map  and some get confused and cancel the loading, thinking it will never end. It is bearable but it can take up to a few minutes ...

[Leady_Brickov]

Wait what! You put the additional roads into Belgorod!?! Wow I just assumed that the dev's hadn't added the smoothing layer/effect on/under them. I thought it was super weird they were there but not shown on the map.

 

So do your surface edits get transferred to us when we load your version of the Prokhorovka map? I assumed that surface editing was worthless as other players would just play on their local default version of a map if I made edits, meaning that only I would see the results.?

 

Looking forward to your reply? ?

 

 

[super-truite]

I did not activate it on Belgorod yet because I want ideally to find a solution for this long loading time issue : the transfer of the map modification takes a long time and is performed each time a player comes back even though the map has not changed...The devs added the right textures for the roads on Belgorod (contrary to other map where there is a low resolution road texture)  but did not make the road "solid" so I need to modify it, otherwise it looks like you are driving in a bumpy field.
But if it was not for this problem, it is really easy to add new roads and airfields (we tested it on the map "Carentan" which I removed from the rotation because it was not polished enough).

PS: all the info for surface editing and usage in MP are here  

 

[stupor-mundi]

Any recent changes to Tessy?
Tessy used to be the most playable (least slo-mo) mission for me, together with Dieppe and to some extent Etretat.
But yesterday and today it felt like having the handbrake on. If there was a recent change it might be a pointer towards the causes of slo-mo...

[super-truite]

Stats are working now !
http://aas-il2.com/

[Fritz_Faber]

server down?

[Leon_Portier]

AAS is awesome!

[=J18=CCC]

16 hours ago, [N.O.G.F]Leon_Portier said:

AAS is awesome!

Totally agree!

---
Quite a good combination of differnet combined arms maps.
Always fun to just jump in.

 

CCC

[stupor-mundi]

I've got a question. Has there been a recent fix / change to Villersbocage that might affect the base switching logic / efficiency?

Reason I'm wondering this: I used to only be able to play the non-base-switching missions like Tessy or Etretat, since I get so much slow-motion effect on the others.

Couple of days ago I tried Villersbocage and suddenly had no slo-mo, even at around 10 players.

So I wondered if you fixed something or the devs fixed something in the latest release or patch.

In the latter case, other base-switching missions should also be fixed. But Yuznaya was just as bad as before. I also tried Malmedy which had slo-mo.

All this seems to point towards that Villersbocage specifically has been fixed somehow...

So if something had been done there, certainly it had a great effect, and maybe the same thing could be done to other missions?

 

[super-truite]

No, nothing changed on Villers Bocage

[stupor-mundi]

11 hours ago, super-truite said:

No, nothing changed on Villers Bocage

 Good to know! That makes it pretty weird. Maybe some pattern will emerge.

[Fritz_Faber]

super-truite, server down?

[super-truite]

updating to a new server

[stupor-mundi]

I tried to play Etretat twice since it came back on the new server. A thing I noticed is how no remaining time is shown now in stats.
But the second time I joined it, the initial state was that the central flag was still white, so it can't have been far into the mission time.
In both cases, red AI tanks took the central flag. And in both cases the mission just ended saying 'victory axis'.
On the first occasion the mission time might have been over, but I it seemed weird that Axis won although red had the flag advantage. But the second time the mission time couldn't have been over. So the mission seems to behave in a different way now.

[super-truite]

ok I see thanks, I will fix it right away

[super-truite]

how are the performances ? I need to change to a new server in theory, but busy with other projects  (related to tanks )

[Fritz_Faber]

Hi supertruite,

has aas come to a standstill? there haven't been any new missions for a long time ... ?

For a small, loyal panzer community, your server is still the only chance for online TC fun. therefore our hopes and wishes are that you will not turn your back on this server.

Working on other tank challenges? Good luck!

?

 

Is the stats server broken?

Edited June 26, 2023 by Fritz_Faber

[super-truite]

Server updated to the new il2 version.

Hi Fritz, not much time atm, working indeed on something , but cannot say anything yet .
I will maintain the server though, it is just that I had little time due to some IRL work lately. 

 

Edited June 27, 2023 by super-truite

[Leon_Portier]

looking forward to see whatever that is

[super-truite]

I deployed the server on a new machine that should be more powerful.
I am currently adding the different external functionnalities.

• The artillery system should work (Only on the Belgorod map)
• The random weather should work
• The AI manager which removes AI when sufficiently players are connected should work

I am still working on the stats and discord bot

[super-truite]

stats are up: http://aas-il2.com:8000/