AI gunnery mod

[KodiakJac]

Here is a philosophical discussion about the turret/rear gunner accuracy, and I don't have an opinion, as I'm still mulling it over from my own game play perspective of flying both fighter and bomber careers.  The turret/rear gunners still seem more deadly, but is that a good thing or a bad thing?  When I'm flying bombers, it is a good thing, as I'm taking fewer casualties (myself included).  I used to have the bomber career strategy of, if/when I lost my escorts for whatever reason, I started heading back to friendly territory so I could bail out and save my bomber career (or refly the mission if I didn't make it).  I hate reflying missions...lol

 

But in a fighter career, one of the goals is to keep as many of your wingmen alive as possible, as when they die, they are typically replaced with lower rank pilots with lower skill levels, and in fighter vs. fighter missions you need good wingmen.  And the AI wingmen aren't smart enough to cope with better turret/rear gunners as we've discussed above.  They typically don't maneuver into frontal attacks, they usually come in at 6:00

 

So, I'm doing better in bomber missions, and losing more wingmen in my fighter careers.  Maybe 1C made the turret/rear gunners less deadly so they wouldn't have to spend time teaching AI wingmen how to attack bombers.

 

Now, most of my careers are in PWCG.  And PWCG replaces lost pilots with low ranking pilots with lower skill levels.  The Pilot Career in IL-2 GB is a little more forgiving and gives you some decent pilot replacements to some extent, but you still keep losing ground from my experience.

 

I love the fighter behavior improvement in fighter vs. fighter engagements, but bombers are still very difficult to attack, in particular for my wingmen.  I keep forgetting to save a mission for you to look at, but I'll get a few for you!  I had a terrible one last night when my four Yak-7 engaged a dozen or more He-111 and Ju-88 on the Kuban map in an IL-2 GB Pilot Career.  They tore us up.  I finally came back alone after 3 or 4 tries.

 

Interested in hearing what others are experiencing in their careers.  Everything I do is in careers.  I never fly QMB missions, so maybe it's less of an issue for other players?

 

In any case, thanks for all the thought and work you're putting into this @Stonehouse 

[Stonehouse]

57 minutes ago, KodiakJac said:

but I'll get a few for you!

Please....It really is necessary to see missions to know what is going on as there is a big difference between low and high skill gunners (not aces which as I have said I feel are really there for human flown aircraft) - So your 4 Yaks against 12+ He111 and Ju88s..........if they were mostly high and normal skill crews then I am not surprised. Even if they are low skill that's a lot of MG fire coming at you. So if AI or you attack on your own you are probably looking at 24-36 MGs firing at you if you attack from the rear. Depending on how the bombers are set up in the mission some MGs might be 20mm cannon. If I remember correctly early Yaks were pretty fragile and lightly armed too? 

 

I'm afraid it's a slippery slope, if I make it so it's fairly easy for AI then you could probably shoot down all 12 by yourself. I suppose the real question is your 4 fighters v's a formation of 12+ bombers - what is your expected kills to losses? Remember when considering this that while I am not trying to make it 100% historically accurate for reasons I have mentioned before I am trying to make it believable. Is what happened to you in your career mostly believable? Was this last Yak mission just a bad day or are you seeing the same thing for each mission and is it across all types of aircraft? Eg if the mission had been Spitfire IXs or Tempests would you have seen the same thing? I can only work with trends not specifics because that's how the game has implemented AI. Also consider- if you are the flight lead - was there a time when you should have called your wingmen off rather than let them continue? 

 

Remember also that the mission sets the skill level you encounter not AI Gunnery. In case you didn't know, you can adjust skills levels by side and aircraft class in PWCG campaign config. It's under advanced configuration and Mission AI. You can set it between -4 and +4 and this skews the spread of skill levels encountered from pretty much always low to always high plus aces. 

 

Definitely not discounting or disapproving your comments and happy to keep tweaking but just to say there are limits before it starts to look silly eg gunners firing randomly in the wrong direction - which was a common complaint about stock gunners.

 

Also just to mention that I would really like to avoid ending up with 2 versions, 1 for fighter players and 1 for bomber players as it means more to maintain and support. The maintenance of all my published mods really starts to add up and make it more like work than fun at times. 

Edited April 3 by Stonehouse

[Ace_Pilto]

On 4/25/2022 at 4:57 PM, Stonehouse said:

 

Skill	Min	Max	Equivalent in yards
Novice	100	800	874
Normal	70	600	656
High	50	500	546
Ace	30	400	437

 

Stock values

Skill	Min	Max	Equivalent in yards
Novice	50	400	437
Normal	50	500	546
High	50	600	656
Ace	50	800	874

 

 

 

Historically the more skilled pilots would open fire a lot closer than the less experienced by their own accounts. Your values of 4/500m would be considered a waste of ammunition by an old hand. It's not impossible to hit and do damage from that far away (as M. von Richthofen himself could testify) but that is an outlier and, what I would call undisciplined shooting. Firing from 4/500m will generally result in derisive laughter from the target due to the various factors that effect a rifle caliber round in A2A combat at that range. You wouldn't expect an aimed rifle shot to hit a man sized target at that range without a very skilled marksman doing the shooting from a perfectly stable platform. Also, if you shoot from 1/2 a KM out, by the time you're in range to do actual targeted damage to the vulnerable parts of your target, your gun is jammed, you're out of ammo or you're reloading the Lewis. etc. Watch any YouTube video of people playing offline and this kind of wild optimism in shooting is fairly typical. They start spraying from an absurd angle, do not get into plane with the target and, when they end up in a position to score a kill they overshoot or have no ammunition.

 

A very skilled pilot might reliably hit a deflection shot at 250m and can certainly hit an enemy aircraft from 300 or so, but anything outside that is wishful thinking. Effective shooting begins at about 150m. That is the range where you are not just shooting at the aircraft but you are shooting at the parts of the aircraft that will result in a kill. Long ago, I made my own mod for Rise of Flight that corrected this, with the result that being attacked by an experienced AI when you were target fixated or out maneuvered resulted in more dangerous AI at higher skill levels. I would suggest dialing in those open fire values to 250/300m. It did lead to some seemingly passive behaviour at times but, I have experienced the same factor in PvP flying where a good opponent will not shoot unless it is going to be a kill. The paradigm doesn't change that much from WW1 to WW2 in this regard and the greatest aerial marksmen would typically synchronise their weapons to fire at close range. Your min values are probably a bit close for most people but, well, most people are not exceptional marksmen so I would keep those.

[Stonehouse]

3 hours ago, Ace_Pilto said:

Historically the more skilled pilots would open fire a lot closer than the less experienced by their own accounts

Don't dispute what you're saying. However, few things you might not have been aware of as this thread is now very long to read through.

• The table you've quoted is only for WW2 aircraft and out of date to the current state. WW1 aircraft have lower ranges in stock and in this mod. For WW1 part of this mod low is 400m, normal is 375m, high is 350m and ace is 300m. Stock is 200m, 250m, 300m and 400m for ace. Originally the mod did not include FC aircraft.
• WW1 bomber defensive fire is much less in density, so I believe the lower open fire ranges for WW1 fighters work ok. Someone has mentioned recently that two seaters were difficult to attack so I have said I will revisit WW1 gunners after WW2 is sorted. Happy to also revisit WW1 fighters if users of this mod feel there is an issue.
• I've so far not found anything accessible to modding to change AI fighter pilot accuracy by skill. So far all I have found are values to change when they fire such as max range to open fire for example.
• I have to work with what I've got, in this case how the game has implemented this sort of thing as a series of hard coded ranges by skill. As best I can tell this is irrespective of situation. So, a fighter will not open fire at further than the specified range regardless of whether the target is a fighter or a bomber or a glider. For WW2 this created an issue and to an extent this issue still has an impact. The issue is that when attacking bombers the fighter ace will hold fire to the specified range. I found that when I tried to use open fire ranges like 150-200m for AI aces they simply didn't survive the defensive fire from the WW2 bomber formation they were attacking. Low skill pilots would perform better than aces against bombers because they would open fire reasonably accurately from further out. Particularly this was the case with late war cannon armed aircraft like Tempests or FW190s. After some experimentation and rehashes of the bomber gunners I ended up with the ranges I have now and in fact trying to sidestep the issue for a bit more for aces and increase their survival rate they have been firing from 480m for the last few versions due to changes to the bomber guns.  While they may not be historically correct and I've never from day 1 said the mod is perfect, I personally believe that it offers a better experience than stock.  
• If I nerf bomber gunners to the point that an ace fighter survives to 150m then bombers are targets just waiting to be shot down and people who play bombers careers and campaigns no longer enjoy things.

Edited April 3 by Stonehouse

[Ace_Pilto]

I think that outlier (freak) accuracy that occurs at extreme range is a cause of the motivation for mods like this. Which is why I dialed it in to plausible range in my edit of the old RoF gunnery mod edit (I didn't make the mod, I adjusted it). I mean if you fly alongside a guy and get smoked by him you probably deserved it for flying like a fool. This, to me is the major issue. Too many outlier, extreme range shots are getting lethal. That's why I curbed the range of gunnery so severely in my mod, to cut down on the yeet police annihilating you from stupid ranges.

 

I maintain that effective gunnery in WW2 is not so different to WW1. You have to be close to hit the important parts of a target. Aim small, miss small. 

Also, in old RoF you could sit at 800m from the target and wait until they had used their ammo and then dawdle up and kill them with a burst. Another reason why I reduced the ranges.

Anyway, if you would like to collaborate on a more plausible gunner scenario, let me know. I'd be more than happy to help.

[KodiakJac]

Hi @Stonehouse

 

I haven't forgotten about this mod, and as far as being balanced between bombers/turret/rear gunners and fighters, this 20250326 Beta is doing a pretty good job.  I've been running it quite a lot, and I've attached 2 missions for you to play with, if you like.

 

The first one is a mission from an He-111 H-6 Pilot Career.  3 La-5 fighters break through my 109 escort and reach my 9 He-111.  They all come in at 6 o'clock, and the end result is my wingmen shoot down 1, and send another one off smoking.  Both manage only 1 pass.  The 3rd La-5 manages to make 2 passes on our 6, and then my 109 escorts catch up to him.  Damage to my He-111:  2 shot down, and 1 badly damaged but makes it to a nearby friendly airfield.

 

The second mission is from the Kerch-Feodosiya campaign by CzechTexan.  I edited it to test this mod by removing the enemy escort fighters for 2 flights of 6 x He-111, as well as a friendly flight of MiG-3 fighters.  So, what you have left is a friendly flight of 4 Yak-1 fighters (or anything else you want to change them to like I did for testing).  And overall, the results are pretty balanced.  The AI almost always come in at 6 o'clock on the He-111.  And they might shoot a few down, or they might get shot down, or both...lol  So, neither side seems to have an advantage.

 

For being balanced, this 20250326 Beta is pretty good.  Now, I would rather see the bombers a little more wimpy...lol  But not by much, and I can't really complain much about how it is right now.  And it is much better than the production version of this mod, as I feel like the bombers are far too deadly in it.

 

So, there is my 2 cents! 

 

 

 

 

He-111 Pilot Career Mission.zip 07-Kerch-FeodosiyaMar16_Yak-1.zip

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, KodiakJac said:

For being balanced, this 20250326 Beta is pretty good.  Now, I would rather see the bombers a little more wimpy...lol  But not by much, and I can't really complain much about how it is right now.  And it is much better than the production version of this mod, as I feel like the bombers are far too deadly in it.

Thanks, I'll try to find some time to give your missions a go and see if I can tweak it any more without making it go too far towards the fighters. As previously mentioned, it needs to work for both fighters and bombers, so bomber careers and campaigns are playable and worth doing. Testing team stuff is taking up any real spare time I have at the moment and there isn't much spare time to be had.

 

PS - if you have time, please try a Rhineland or Normandy late war career/campaign and see if you still feel the same about the balance. A lot of Eastern Front stuff is earlier in the war and so fighters tend towards lighter armaments. eg Your original MC202 example.

Edited April 21 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

FYI - there are quite a lot of changes required to resync the mod to 5.507. I'd suggest considering not using it until I have had time to do the updates.

Sorry forgot to mention that includes the beta version a few posts up the thread.

 

FYI - pilot despawn delay mod also requires changes for WW1 for certain aircraft due to the 1916/1917 parachute use and a change in pilot model. 

Edited April 23 by Stonehouse

[KodiakJac]

On 4/21/2025 at 1:55 AM, Stonehouse said:

PS - if you have time, please try a Rhineland or Normandy late war career/campaign and see if you still feel the same about the balance. A lot of Eastern Front stuff is earlier in the war and so fighters tend towards lighter armaments. eg Your original MC202 example.

 

Ok, will do.  I've got more Pilot Careers and PWCG Campaigns on the Eastern Front because I like that era more, but I've also got a few on the Western Front.

[RedeyeStorm]

I have been flying the update on Normandy. No issues to report. At least no error messages.

[Stonehouse]

6 hours ago, RedeyeStorm said:

I have been flying the update on Normandy. No issues to report. At least no error messages.

Thank you. I don't think you'll see error messages just differences in experience - the devs have changed a value to do with taxiing in about 80% of the aircraft. I don't know what it does, but I assume it is improving behaviour for the AI. It seems to be a distance in meters and is reduced in each case, I think. Anyway, so that plus the 1916/1917 parachute usage for German WW1 crews is mostly what you will be missing. Still in the process of working through looking for other differences.

[Stonehouse]

Ironically 3 years to the day from when I first publicly released AI Gunnery, I've just uploaded an updated version of both mods to the first post. AI Gunnery pilot despawn delay was a straight resync to stock. AI Gunnery itself was a resync to stock plus inclusion of 26 March beta adjustments and further reduction in accuracy of low and normal skilled WW2 turret gunners as well as increased penalty in firing while under G load. For WW1 as per feedback I have reduced the G limit to cutoff firing to 2Gs for WW1 gunners with the exception of the Fe2B gunner as when seated and firing forward I felt it was too large a handicap. I realise that when standing and firing the other gun 2Gs would be generous but be aware that the Fe2B gunner is shared for both positions so I could not reduce it for 1 position and not the other. I have also reduced accuracy for low and normal skilled WW1 gunners roughly in line with the reduction for WW2 as well as the penalty for firing under G has been increased. 

Edited April 25 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

Obviously will need update for new aircraft. 

[Stonehouse]

AI Gunnery Pilot despawn delay mod is fine post 6.001

[Stonehouse]

AI Gunnery mod updated in first post.

[FodderMonkey]

Just curious if there has been any progress in taming the lethality of gunners in Flying Circus when using this mod.  Thanks!

[Stonehouse]

Hope you can see this reply. Having terrible trouble reaching the main website and forum at the moment. Doing a tracert shows about 60% of the hops are timing out. Re FC and AI Gunnery - last update included some changes to stop gunners firing while the aircraft maneuvers past 2G and to reduce accuracy for low and normal skill gunners (most commonly encountered). See post 2 or 3 up for details.

[Stonehouse]

Obviously the two mods will likely need an update to include the new aircraft.

[Stonehouse]

23 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Obviously the two mods will likely need an update to include the new aircraft.

No change required to the pilot despawn delay mod, new version of AI Gunnery including the 2 new aircraft updated in first post