Some praise for the latest AI build.

[oc2209]

I want to call attention to the improvements I've noticed in AI aiming and overall attack behavior.

 

I had an old Tempest career (last played months ago) which I've started playing again. I once got 11 kills in a sortie. Focke-Wulfs were jokes. Now, they expertly boom and zoom me and mercilessly attack me if I sacrifice my altitude to escape them. In the screenshot below, I've been forced down and their strafing is still too accurate for comfort. Before, I could fly low and slow and not even bother to evade.

 

The AI is also much better at bouncing you and hitting you (catastrophically) in a very short amount of time. No more blind spraying to warn you, or ineffectual glancing hits. It's now striking targets in turns from high deflection, and hitting me from various attack angles, including head-on passes. There was, just today, a brilliant 109 attack on me from nearly directly above, that only missed me because I saw him and evaded at the last second.

 

Hard difficulty is, at last, hard. At this point I would call it just about right as far as gunnery and aggression go.

 

[Q_Walker]

Absolutely agree with this, this latest update has definitely seen improvement in the gunnery of the AI, which was a huge step forward. Looking forward to continuing improvements, that AI programmer has certainly been putting in hard work!

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

2 hours ago, =AW=Q_Walker said:

Absolutely agree with this, this latest update has definitely seen improvement in the gunnery of the AI, which was a huge step forward. Looking forward to continuing improvements, that AI programmer has certainly been putting in hard work!

Absolutely, the ai is now lethal but fair. That is one area the sim is starting to excel in.

[Yogiflight]

What about friendly AI? This was the main issue. That your squadmates were as helpful as a butter knife in dogfights.

[sevenless]

11 minutes ago, Yogiflight said:

What about friendly AI? This was the main issue. That your squadmates were as helpful as a butter knife in dogfights.

 

Unfortunately that is still the case. AI improvements are gradually and highly appreciated, but we are not there yet.

[enyak]

At some point I am happy with gunnery skills and dogfighting ability and instead what I want to see are improvments to high-level decision making and flight and wingman cohesion and tactics.

[[DBS]Browning]

Start a quick mission and take any fighter against 8 Ace P-47s with the extra ammo loadout.

Set your throttle to 70%, leave the level stabiliser on and use the turn left key to start a gentle, constant left turn.

 

The AI will expend all the ammo from all 8 planes and get maybe a few hits on your right wingtip.

It's still not great at what should be easy targets.

[unreasonable]

The AI can do a straight line extrapolation quickly with few resources (ie just one set of target speed and direction data) but not predict a curving flight path. It is the same with ground fire. 

 

At some point that may be possible without enormous resources, but I have no idea if that can be implemented in the game's computational time/resource budget. 

[[DBS]Browning]

I find it hard to believe it's a resource issue given that such things were not a problem in the 90s.

[Yogiflight]

3 hours ago, [DBS]Browning said:

I find it hard to believe it's a resource issue given that such things were not a problem in the 90s.

Not to forget, that one or two years ago the AI was absolutely deadly in deflection shooting. They hit you easily from angles, that were far from believable. After a lot of complaining about this it was changed. So now they are the other extreme.

But for friendly AI the major issue is, they don't even care, if you get attacked. So it doesn't matter if they could hit the enemy or not.

[vonGraf]

I usually take a long dive down when I have a very hostile AI behind me, then pull out to 50 m and watch them crash into the ground.

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by vonGraf

[RedKestrel]

13 minutes ago, vonGraf said:

I usually take a long dive down when I have a very hostile AI behind me, then pull ot to 50 m and watch them crash into the ground.

 

To be fair, I have done this to flesh-and-blood opponents in Multiplayer lol. 

[itsbillyfrazier]

4 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

To be fair, I have done this to flesh-and-blood opponents in Multiplayer lol. 

 

Yeah, I've been that guy who got suckered into the chase... more than once ?

[Zeev]

Thats awesome to hear, but for me, lets just say - wake me up when enemy AI stop rushing after you and your squad into your airfield base half the Europe map.

Edited February 19, 2021 by Zeev

[RedKestrel]

1 minute ago, itsbillyfrazier said:

 

Yeah, I've been that guy who got suckered into the chase... more than once ?

I have also on occasion glanced over my shoulder and said "Ha, the sucker is following me in the dive! Good luck pulling out!" Then tried to pull myself up, realized I was deep into compressibility, and had a few seconds to deeply ponder my life choices.

[Oyster_KAI]

58 minutes ago, Yogiflight said:

Not to forget, that one or two years ago the AI was absolutely deadly in deflection shooting. They hit you easily from angles, that were far from believable. After a lot of complaining about this it was changed. So now they are the other extreme.

But for friendly AI the major issue is, they don't even care, if you get attacked. So it doesn't matter if they could hit the enemy or not.

And now, the fatal thing is the AAA or the AA gun on the ship
I bailed out about 2km away from them. My parachute was hit, I was still alive, but the pilot fell down and was killed by a bullet in the air...

Edited February 19, 2021 by Oyster_KAI

[Mandoble]

Now I'm very positively surprised by the AI. They seem to be far more dangerous than before, which is great.

[keeno]

I think the Ai is getting their slowly. I'm playing the brilliant "lightning strikes" campaign. My wing-men form up after take off, stay in formation, alter formation at my command, attack and destroy ground targets. During one mission I fought German P51's strangely, 1 guy I couldn't defeat even though I tagged him. After 5 minutes and short on fuel and ammo I gave up and ran and he followed for a short while but disengaged and turned for home.

 

Definately an improvement!

[Gambit21]

1 hour ago, Zeev said:

Thats awesome to hear, but for me, lets just say - wake me up when enemy AI stop rushing after you and your squad into your airfield base half the Europe map.

 

Again, for the hundredth time, that is not an AI issue, it’s a mission design issue - easily mitigated with proper logic.

[RyanR]

Were there AI tweaks in the most recent update? It would not be surprising if I missed that in the release notes.

 

-Ryan

[WheelwrightPL]

AI can be good, but can also be sitting-ducks, even in Hard mode.

My MIG-3 was shot down yesterday by a lone BF-109 which I couldn't shake off. I was hit multiple times by its deflection shots, which previously would just harmlessly pass me by. So something must have been done to ramp-up the skill level of AI, or at least its gunnery accuracy (I think the latter is more likely).

On the other hand a couple days ago I had a turkey shoot, with E-7s playing a role of turkeys.

Same career, same difficulty settings. Maybe those E-7s were crewed by demoted Stuka pilots ?

[69TD_Hajo_Garlic]

9 hours ago, [DBS]Browning said:

Start a quick mission and take any fighter against 8 Ace P-47s with the extra ammo loadout.

Set your throttle to 70%, leave the level stabiliser on and use the turn left key to start a gentle, constant left turn.

 

The AI will expend all the ammo from all 8 planes and get maybe a few hits on your right wingtip.

It's still not great at what should be easy targets.

I did this and got shredded. (To be fair, I cherry picked the 110e.) 

Ai effectiveness seems to greatly depend on the aircraft they fly. Also fighting different combinations of enemy’s like mig3s and i16s at the same time makes things much more interesting.  
 

22 minutes ago, WheelwrightPL said:

AI can be good, but can also be sitting-ducks, even in Hard mode.

My MIG-3 was shot down yesterday by a lone BF-109 which I couldn't shake off. I was hit multiple times by its deflection shots, which previously would just harmlessly pass me by. So something must have been done to ramp-up the skill level of AI, or at least its gunnery accuracy (I think the latter is more likely).

On the other hand a couple days ago I had a turkey shoot, with E-7s playing a role of turkeys.

Same career, same difficulty settings. Maybe those E-7s were crewed by demoted Stuka pilots ?

E7 jabos that took off with full fuel, bomb racks, extra armor are slow and lose the e series maneuverability. Hs129s with no escort are more survivable. 
Flying e7 careers are very difficult, almost very mission fails and half your flight gets decimated.

3 hours ago, Oyster_KAI said:

And now, the fatal thing is the AAA or the AA gun on the ship
I bailed out about 2km away from them. My parachute was hit, I was still alive, but the pilot fell down and was killed by a bullet in the air...

In my experience ship AAA has always been the nastiest thing to go against. 

[oc2209]

10 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

What about friendly AI? This was the main issue. That your squadmates were as helpful as a butter knife in dogfights.

 

They're still weak, but that wasn't the point of this thread. Improvements are, naturally, incremental. I merely wished to say that the latest changes are noticed and appreciated.

 

As an aside, one of my Yak-9 wingmen managed to kill a 109G-4's pilot in a battle where my flight was badly outnumbered. In a different sortie, a bomber intercept, I gave my flight's last 9T to my wingman (because I'm too cowardly to face defensive gunners), and he did manage to knock an He-111 down as I intended (while I kept the fighter escort busy).

 

So friendlies aren't 100% useless. I do use them pretty often to fulfill basic sortie requirements to trigger the 'mission accomplished' message.

 

It's also plane-dependent. My Tempest flights are getting hammered brutally. For some reason, the Tempest feels like a slug to me lately. I can only handle the new AI with planes like the 109 and the Yak. The AI certainly has planes it does better and worse in.

1 hour ago, RyanR said:

Were there AI tweaks in the most recent update? It would not be surprising if I missed that in the release notes.

 

-Ryan

 

Yes, there have been several AI improvements made over the last few months.

[[DBS]Browning]

7 minutes ago, Hajo_Garlic said:

I did this and got shredded. (To be fair, I cherry picked the 110e.) 

Ai effectiveness seems to greatly depend on the aircraft they fly. Also fighting different combinations of enemy’s like mig3s and i16s at the same time makes things much more interesting.

 

That's why I specified "fighter".

The 110 gets hit because it is a large enough target.

[RedKestrel]

15 minutes ago, oc2209 said:

 

They're still weak, but that wasn't the point of this thread. Improvements are, naturally, incremental. I merely wished to say that the latest changes are noticed and appreciated.

 

As an aside, one of my Yak-9 wingmen managed to kill a 109G-4's pilot in a battle where my flight was badly outnumbered. In a different sortie, a bomber intercept, I gave my flight's last 9T to my wingman (because I'm too cowardly to face defensive gunners), and he did manage to knock an He-111 down as I intended (while I kept the fighter escort busy).

 

So friendlies aren't 100% useless. I do use them pretty often to fulfill basic sortie requirements to trigger the 'mission accomplished' message.

 

It's also plane-dependent. My Tempest flights are getting hammered brutally. For some reason, the Tempest feels like a slug to me lately. I can only handle the new AI with planes like the 109 and the Yak. The AI certainly has planes it does better and worse in.

 

Yes, there have been several AI improvements made over the last few months.

Is it possible that you are outfitted with the 7lbs boost engine, instead of the 9lbs boost? IIRC the 7lbs Sabre engine wasn't deployed with the Tempests in combat, only the 9lbs was, but I'm not an expert. 

Whenever I forget to check the modification for the 9lbs engine, the Tempest indeed feels a lot less powerful. With the 9lbs engine it's back to its beastly self. But I have not flown the latest patch yet.

[69TD_Hajo_Garlic]

17 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

 

That's why I specified "fighter".

The 110 gets hit because it is a large enough target.

It’s a heavy fighter! 

[oc2209]

8 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

Is it possible that you are outfitted with the 7lbs boost engine, instead of the 9lbs boost? IIRC the 7lbs Sabre engine wasn't deployed with the Tempests in combat, only the 9lbs was, but I'm not an expert. 

Whenever I forget to check the modification for the 9lbs engine, the Tempest indeed feels a lot less powerful. With the 9lbs engine it's back to its beastly self. But I have not flown the latest patch yet.

 

I make a point to always use the extra boosted engine. What I'm finding difficult is evading enemy fire. It's possible I'm only noticing intrinsic sluggishness (like roll rate) that I hadn't noticed before, because I wasn't being shot at as much by the old AI. They missed so wide, I was under much less pressure.

 

I even notice a difference in my evasive ability from the Yak-9 to the 9T. In the plain 9, I'm almost unhittable. Not so in the 9T.

[RedKestrel]

1 minute ago, oc2209 said:

 

I make a point to always use the extra boosted engine. What I'm finding difficult is evading enemy fire. It's possible I'm only noticing intrinsic sluggishness (like roll rate) that I hadn't noticed before, because I wasn't being shot at as much by the old AI. They missed so wide, I was under much less pressure.

 

I even notice a difference in my evasive ability from the Yak-9 to the 9T. In the plain 9, I'm almost unhittable. Not so in the 9T.

I see. well, the Tempest is a big target after all. That said at medium-low alts you should be able to out-dive or outpace your enemies. It also turns like a spitfire, but that can prompt a blackout pretty quick...

I don't have the vanilla Yak-9, only the 9T, but it makes sense that they would maneuver differently, IIRC the airframe was modified pretty substantially to take the cannon.

[40plus]

I'm curious to see how well these improvement shave translated over to Flying Circus. My experience there, 8v8 in the QMB with reasonably matched crates and Ace pilots, is a one sided bloodbath with myself getting 5-8 kills. Has anyone tried such a match in FC since the patch?

[oc2209]

15 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

I don't have the vanilla Yak-9, only the 9T, but it makes sense that they would maneuver differently, IIRC the airframe was modified pretty substantially to take the cannon.

 

On paper, the 9 turns less than 2 seconds faster than the 9T (17 something versus 19.0), but boy can you feel the difference. That 19 second turn is the reason I don't buy the Yak-1B. I'll tolerate it for the 9T's cannon.

 

Like the Japanese, I'm obsessed with turn performance.

 

I'd suggest you get the plain 9 at some point. I prefer it greatly to the Spitfire; which I try to love, but like the Fw-190, I just can't quite get there.

[Yogiflight]

1 hour ago, Hajo_Garlic said:

It’s a heavy fighter! 

The 110 E2 is not. At least that was the statement of the Devs to the question of one member after its release. It was their argumentation, that the E2 is explicitely the ground attack version, which is the reason, why it doesn't have the engines, which were planned for it, but the engines which were used at the beginning of the E2's production, when the planned engines were not available yet. Which is a funny argumentation with 50% of the BOM missions and 90% of the BOS missions being pure fighter missions.

[Avimimus]

12 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

What about friendly AI? This was the main issue. That your squadmates were as helpful as a butter knife in dogfights.

 

That is more of an issue of coordinating larger numbers of aircraft and situational awareness isn't it? Something more for a squadron commander level of AI or something that controlled aggression or tactics? Rather than the actual combat AI?

[oc2209]

I was just doing some tests for fun. Myself in a Yak-9, my opponents (in single combat, at 300m, head on start, Ace AI) in Spitfire Vs with and without the alternate engine, and Spitfire IXs with no special fuel, the low level engine, and with clipped wings.

 

I lost two out of eight duels. Which is an improvement, as I'd probably lose none before.

 

The AI is not yet using Spitfires or Hurricanes to their full potential; likely something to do with G-mechanics and not wanting to black out. With some difficulty, I can catch Spitfires and Hurricanes in a Yak-9 (including by using flaps in turns, for short periods of time, under 170mph).

 

When the tables are turned and I'm in a Spit IX/Hurricane (I don't own the Spit V), I can pretty easily catch a Yak-9 without the use of flaps.

 

This was the best shot the AI got on me:

 

 

It's a few seconds after he fired, but he fired from that same attitude. I was duly impressed, as he crippled my damn engine while I turned into him (in a 109F-4 during this test).

 

As we can see from the distance, orientation, and deflection, it's a difficult and complex shot to take. And it was a short burst; not spray.

 

By contrast, I, as a lowly human, prefer to get a little closer. Just a smidge closer:

 

 

I will never stop loving that iron sight.

[69TD_Hajo_Garlic]

52 minutes ago, Yogiflight said:

The 110 E2 is not. At least that was the statement of the Devs to the question of one member after its release. It was their argumentation, that the E2 is explicitely the ground attack version, which is the reason, why it doesn't have the engines, which were planned for it, but the engines which were used at the beginning of the E2's production, when the planned engines were not available yet. Which is a funny argumentation with 50% of the BOM missions and 90% of the BOS missions being pure fighter missions.

Interesting. Not to derail but a fighter bomber then? I feel like calling it an attacker doesnt do it justice

Edited February 19, 2021 by Hajo_Garlic

[l_commando]

2 hours ago, Hajo_Garlic said:

AI effectiveness seems to greatly depend on the aircraft they fly. Also fighting different combinations of enemy’s like mig3s and i16s at the same time makes things much more interesting. 

I've noticed this in one-on-one quick battles even before the latest patch. The 109G-6 Late is a very formidable opponent at Ace level. Interestingly, even more so than the G-14 and K-4. Same goes for the new 190A-6 vis-a-vis the A-8 but to a lesser extent.

 

In general, through the few quick battles I've played (haven't delved back into the campaigns just yet), AI are significantly more effective at engaging bombers and transports and I'd say slightly more effective at engaging fighters. Also, as has been noted before, they tend to be better shots and have better trigger discipline overall.

 

 

[Yogiflight]

2 hours ago, Avimimus said:

 

That is more of an issue of coordinating larger numbers of aircraft and situational awareness isn't it? Something more for a squadron commander level of AI or something that controlled aggression or tactics? Rather than the actual combat AI?

A bit of both, I would say. What you say is more about, what I wrote in my next post

8 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

But for friendly AI the major issue is, they don't even care, if you get attacked.

 

But I often see my squadmates chasing enemy fighters and never hit them, to a degree, that I circle above them until I get bored and dive down to kill the enemy fighter. So apart from flying in front of enemy fighters to keep them busy, so I can pick one after the other, they are of no use. Of course there are exceptions from this, but they are very rare.

 

1 hour ago, Hajo_Garlic said:

Interesting. Not to derail but a fighter bomber then? I feel like calling it an attacker doesnt do it justice

Of course the 110 was a heavy fighter at the beginning, but was retracted from this role more or less over time as enemy fighters became better. My point was more, the Devs can't say it is a pure ground attack version, therefore it has the weaker engines with very bad climb and high altitude performance and then use it in career mode mainly as fighter. Even the ground attack missions usually are fighter missions as there is no fighter escort.

[LukeFF]

I can look into adjusting the Bf 110 E-2's mission set, so it doesn't fly so many air-to-air missions. 

[Ram399]

Between the current build and the prior 4.505 I have noticed more persistence from both enemy and friendly AI's in pursuing targets as appropriate.
Which is good, its very good.

Gunnery in my opinion has also improved somewhat- but only with regard to certain aircraft, and I think this has to do with weapon configurations.

While aircraft with guns which all more or less match eachother in projectile speed have benefitted, the AI for aircraft like the pre-G6 Bf-109s and the P-39 have yet to see the same perfomance increases because they seem to base their aim off of their low caliber but high speed machine guns rather than the hard hitting but slower moving cannons which do the real killing.

This issue is less noticeable with the 109 G6 and subsequent models, as the 13mm MGs do more damage and also more closely match the ballistics of the cannon which can result in more hits there as well.

As of currently however, if you get involved in an AI furball in Kuban between any number of Bf-109 G4s and the usual P-39/LaGG/Yak swarm, the end result will be a bunch of 109s who are either dead or have burned through all their ammunition trying to kill enemy fighters using only their MG-17s.

I'm only basing this off of what I've observed in several hours of testing using the quick missions, but multiple times over all of those tests I would just watch as the AI peppered a target in a constant rate turn with what might as well be nerf darts while the slower moving cannon rounds passed underneath the target. 

Obviously I've got no idea how AI programming works, but if they could be switched over to aim with the cannons rather than the machineguns I would bet on a greatly increased lethality index.

[WheelwrightPL]

I think in one of recent patches they improved gunnery accuracy for AI, which was previously spraying without hitting anything, which looked unrealistic.

As a side effect it is much harder for me to score any kills in hard career mode, because AI can now hit me at ridiculous deflection angles.

I think only shooting accuracy has improved, because my AI wingmen still cannot obey the simplest of commands such as "patrol for air targets", instead preferring to follow me.

In my opinion AI shooting accuracy should be dialed down, so it is between now and what was before, or a new "extra hard" mode should be added.

[oc2209]

1 hour ago, Ram399 said:

As of currently however, if you get involved in an AI furball in Kuban between any number of Bf-109 G4s and the usual P-39/LaGG/Yak swarm, the end result will be a bunch of 109s who are either dead or have burned through all their ammunition trying to kill enemy fighters using only their MG-17s.

I'm only basing this off of what I've observed in several hours of testing using the quick missions, but multiple times over all of those tests I would just watch as the AI peppered a target in a constant rate turn with what might as well be nerf darts while the slower moving cannon rounds passed underneath the target.

 

I can see why this would still be true, yes. I can't get kills with .30s, so I can well imagine the AI can't either.

 

1 hour ago, WheelwrightPL said:

In my opinion AI shooting accuracy should be dialed down, so it is between now and what was before, or a new "extra hard" mode should be added.

 

Nein! Nyet! Negatory!

 

Hard mode should be punishing. I can still get plenty of kills, but I have to think and plan more than I used to. The old AI let me get away with obscene mistakes and lazy maneuvers, even on hard mode.

Edited February 20, 2021 by oc2209