Artificial Intelligence in the campaigns of the different Pilot careers

[1/JSpan_Wind75]

Artificial Intelligence in the campaigns of the different Pilot careers

Having flown almost all the "Campaigns" of the "Pilot Career" I can assure you that friendly planes (AI) do not shoot down a single enemy plane. Apart from following you at 4,000 meters of altitude. You give them radio commands and they don't listen:

Attack Closer Planes: They fly around calmly until they are shot down by enemy AI planes. ?

[Knarley-Bob]

At least they are keeping the "Bad Guys" busy........?‍♂️

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

Yeah, it seems that when the primary objective is completed, verh often the AI wont really engage opponents.

 

Devs usually say that its the way the mission is generated that causes most of the confusing AI behaviours in careers such as not engaging, not jettisoning loadouts when engaging, following enemy planes on their way home way beyond the frontline.

 

No matter the source of these issues, it cripples the gameplay of careers in a significant way and should be addressed. Although I noticed that enemy AI fighters dont chase you forever as much now, which is good.

[CountZero]

single player is true to its wording, you realy are alone

[Knarley-Bob]

It's interesting how the AI are crack shots when it comes to shooting the player. At each other, well, not so much. It's humerous to watch a "Bad guy" running form 6 "Good Guys" and getting away. Being out of bullets, what does one do but enjoy the show.........?

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

9 minutes ago, Knarley-Bob said:

It's interesting how the AI are crack shots when it comes to shooting the player. At each other, well, not so much. It's humerous to watch a "Bad guy" running form 6 "Good Guys" and getting away. Being out of bullets, what does one do but enjoy the show.........?

 

Its true, the other day I have seen 3 AI Yak 1's empty all their guns at a ju88 that was level flying. They all aimed above the left wing and every single bullet and shell missed. Of course the ju88's gunner kept suffering from severe hallucinations and fired sporadic bursts at phantom enemy planes.

 

It was glorious.

[1/JSpan_Wind75]

It's sad to see how there is an enemy just hanging around a group of your planes and nobody does anything. Nobody shoots him.

The only order that the artificial intelligence planes carry out is to return to the airport, to land.

[twilson37]

I don't know my wingmen have done a good job of shooting me down or colliding with me when I am on the tail of an enemy fighter. Always a pleasure to have an Iron Man campaign ruined when your wingman saws of your wing over enemy territory. I must admit I am impressed by their formation flying skills though. 

[S10JlAbraxis]

So many areas of this sim have seen major improvments over the last several years but single player campaign AI has had limited improvment with the exception of eliminating AI planes constantly following the player half way across the map (which I really appricate).  However since the majority of people spend all or most of their time with single player I think we are overdue for some meaningful improvments in this area:

• Raido coms that cause the AI piolts to respond.  Example: calling for help when damaged and being chased down.
• A wingman that watches out for you and calls out attacks on your 6.
• Some level of team interaction/cordination amoung the flight.
• Ability to contact ground control to get navigational vectors and vectors to enemy flights (when this capibility historically existed).
• Etc....

The dev team is very busy with announced enhancments right now but perhaps some work can be done in this area next year.  

 

  

Edited July 20, 2022 by S10JlAbraxis
Typo

[Knarley-Bob]

The worse part is when your AI "Wingmen" start a fight, you join in, then, they all abandon you there with a bunch of bad guys! It's hard to out fly 6-8 enemy planes ?.

If I was told to return to escort duty, I would! Thank goodness for the re-fly button..............Next time I'm stayin' with the bombers.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Knarley-Bob

[Ram399]

The skill of your AI wingmen corresponds directly to their experience level.
If you commit to keeping them alive as best you can and they'll start pulling their own weight, I assure you.
(But it also helps to always stay on the mission goal in order to avoid the occasional pacifist pilot conundrum.)

Pics related:

Spoiler

 

[Knarley-Bob]

Really? That I did not know that.... I guess I'll have to quit getting shot down so often and see if that works.........?

 

Thanks,

KB

[354thFG_Leifr]

There is nothing intelligent about the AI in BoX.

[jollyjack]

1 hour ago, Leifr said:

There is nothing intelligent about the AI in BoX.

 

Patience, the devs are working on it ..

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

4 hours ago, Leifr said:

There is nothing intelligent about the AI in BoX.

Great, more constructive feedback. And not even true.

 

On 7/19/2022 at 12:40 AM, I./JG52_Woutwocampe said:

Devs usually say that its the way the mission is generated that causes most of the confusing AI behaviours in careers such as not engaging, not jettisoning loadouts when engaging, following enemy planes on their way home way beyond the frontline.

 

No matter the source of these issues, it cripples the gameplay of careers in a significant way and should be addressed. Although I noticed that enemy AI fighters dont chase you forever as much now, which is good.

Correct. When a mission is properly scripted, the AI performs quite well and usually make logical decisions. Much (most?) of the current issues, real or perceived, with the career AI rather result from the less-than-perfect mission scripting from the automated mission generation process.

 

But yes, this issue should be addressed at some point in time.

[jollyjack]

ME, can be a real resource for (wasted?) passtime hours, especially for nitpickers. And then there was Ai in all it's splendor.

Guess i spent more time with the ME than with the game itself.

[1/JSpan_Wind75]

17 hours ago, Ram399 said:

The skill of your AI wingmen corresponds directly to their experience level.
If you commit to keeping them alive as best you can and they'll start pulling their own weight, I assure you.
(But it also helps to always stay on the mission goal in order to avoid the occasional pacifist pilot conundrum.)

Pics related:

  Hide contents

 

I also try to keep my AI pilots alive but they are the ones that get into trouble and get shot down. Some are only wounded, others dead and several missing. Today I have flown some missions and it is almost impossible to keep them alive, keep you alive too and accomplish the mission.

[Knarley-Bob]

 

O.K., it seems the next question is how long does one have to keep themselves and the AI alive for them to start learning?

 

[PatrickAWlson]

Can we please dispel the myth that the AI is different.  It's not.  Does anybody here really believe that 1C develops and maintains two completely different sets of AI? 

 

What is certainly true is that the AI will react differently based on the situation.  QMB and Career do not necessarily present it with the same situation.  The situations in Career are almost certainly more complex, therefore making it more likely that the AI goes wonky in Career. 

 

What I have always believed is that the code for the AI is not well formed. Inputs into decision making are probably scattered.  The decision making itself might also be scattered (hope not, but possible).  The game is multi threaded, so it is entirely possible that inputs are being generated in many different sequences, and decision making AI is being run on any number of data variants.  Career is going to have more stuff, so more inputs for the AI to consider, more combinations, etc.  Finally, there are some obvious flaws (bombers playing at fighter is one) that should NEVER  happen, but they do.

 

But it's still the same AI.

19 minutes ago, Knarley-Bob said:

 

O.K., it seems the next question is how long does one have to keep themselves and the AI alive for them to start learning?

 

 

The AI never learns because it's not really AI.  It is procedural algorithms that will perform a set of processes given a set of inputs.  Given the same set of inputs it will always have the same outcome.  The only variant is the skill level of the AI.  That is a number from 0-4.  0 is player, so only 1-4 are relevant.  That gets tossed into the hopper with all of the other inputs and may impact the outcome.  

 

So the AI never learns anything.  It just has a different response when the number is 4 (Ace) as opposed to 1 (Novice).  What you are asking is what are the transition points from Novice->Average->Veteran->Ace (1, 2, 3, and 4).

[Knarley-Bob]

So, the AI doesn't learn. Does the AI by chance increase in skill value as the "Career of the player" proceeds? Or is that a random # the computer spits out as it generates the new mission?

[Skelthos]

AI is a complex subject, to even guess what is happening we would need to know if the game uses Deterministic AI or Nondeterministic AI.  

If it is the first (which given the age of the game I think is likely) there is no AI learning involved and the entire decision chain has to be programmed by hand. 

If the second case we would have to know what type of machine learning they are doing.

In either case if a scenario is thrown at it that was not anticipated it would cause things to go sideways.   This would be more obvious when layering the flight AI on top of procedurally generated missions.  

 

For what it is worth, the campaigns I have flown the AI members of my Squadron do get kills. 

[Knarley-Bob]

32 minutes ago, Skelthos said:

 

 

For what it is worth, the campaigns I have flown the AI members of my Squadron do get kills. 

 

True, they do, and a blind dog will find a bone now and then too.

[Skelthos]

13 minutes ago, Knarley-Bob said:

 

True, they do, and a blind dog will find a bone now and then too.

  Note that this is anecdotal based on my observations flying solo campaigns. 

 

 I am going to make the argument from what I have observed the kill rates of the AI squadron members are likely close to reality, well the player kill count is high.

 

Just as some examples: Note here that different sources vary some on number of missions flown. 

Adolf Galland flew 705 combat missions and scored 105 kills   averaging 1 kill every 6.79

Erich Harman flew 1104 combat missions to get 352 kills averaging 3.14 missions for ever kill.

If you dig into it these are fairly  normal rates, Yeah you have incidents where a pilot would score ace or even triple ace in day, but those same pilots had many missions with no kills. Most aces of the period flew between 3 and 5 missions for every kill they obtained. 

 

A flight of 4 planes taking off flying a combat mission and coming home with 1 or 2 kills for the entire flight is likely close to real world statistics. 

 

That though is a different discussion than how the AI performs in general. Would definitely be nice if your wingman would stick with you, and the AI would react to enemy aircraft etc in a more reliable manner. 

[PatrickAWlson]

1 hour ago, Knarley-Bob said:

So, the AI doesn't learn. Does the AI by chance increase in skill value as the "Career of the player" proceeds? Or is that a random # the computer spits out as it generates the new mission?

 

The AI in PWCG is persistent and improves based on missions flown and victories scored.  So you do get the transition from 1 to 4.  It is noticeable when you take care of your AI mates and you are flying with veterans and aces.  I thought the AI improved in the 1C Career as well - at least the AI pilots in your squadron.

[Ram399]

5 hours ago, 1/JSpan_Guerrero said:

I also try to keep my AI pilots alive but they are the ones that get into trouble and get shot down. Some are only wounded, others dead and several missing. Today I have flown some missions and it is almost impossible to keep them alive, keep you alive too and accomplish the mission.

Casualties are always unavoidable, but the best way to keep the AI alive is to take much more of a overwatch role.  Fly top cover in furballs and only engage when a wingman is threatened or you have a target of extreme opportunity- its also a great way of keeping you alive as well.  It also helps to almost exclusively fly as mission lead and smack L-Alt+0 as soon as things start to look a bit too hairy.
 

3 hours ago, Knarley-Bob said:

So, the AI doesn't learn. Does the AI by chance increase in skill value as the "Career of the player" proceeds? Or is that a random # the computer spits out as it generates the new mission?

The AI does not learn procedurally using any sort of machine learning or other fancy progression.  Rather, their skill level is set based off of their acquired stats (air kills, ground kills, missions completed etc.).  Depending on how good their stats are they are assigned one of the four AI profiles at mission start, those being Rookie, Average, Veteran, and Ace.  In this sense the AI doesn't learn so much as they "level up" by crossing the required stat threshold to progress from one AI profile to the next.  There isn't an easy way to actually check what level an AI is at in the game files, but the best determinate I have found while in game is spotting distance, as ace level AIs will often call out and break to engage targets long before any of the other pilots in the flight do so- up to a maximum range of 10km.

It is possible to get an AI pilot from a 0-experience fresh transfer rookie up to the ace level, but it is exceedingly difficult.  I've only managed it a single time and have been playing the career-mode almost exclusively since its release several years ago.  For this reason I've found that it is often easier to focus more on protecting the higher ranked members of the squadron at the outset of the career, as the skill gap between Rookie and Average is by far the most severe one I have seen.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Ram399

[spreckair]

I am just starting a Battle of Stalingrad career and I have a squad of fairly competent AI pilots who are taking the initiative, scoring well, and are surviving, which is a refreshing change.  This is in stark contrast to my squadron during the Battle of Moscow career, where losses were very high.

[1/JSpan_Wind75]

Well, I've had several fellow fliers who shot down enemy planes, but I could never save them in no more than 4 or 5 missions. The simulator is incredible in many aspects, especially in graphic quality, but in Artificial Intelligence it leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the Pilot Career mode.

 

I think developers do what they can, with the budgets they have, and keeping a development team improving AI is not very lucrative. Nearly all resources go into upgrades to clouds, skies, and collector's planes; and in some campaign with a script, with a story.

 

I imagine that improving the Artificial Intelligence is not a priority for the development team, when I think that more pilots are flying in single player campaign than those who are flying in dedicated servers.

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Ram399 said:

There isn't an easy way to actually check what level an AI is at in the game files, but the best determinate I have found while in game is spotting distance, as ace level AIs will often call out and break to engage targets long before any of the other pilots in the flight do so- up to a maximum range of 10km.

 

It takes a bit of work, but if you open the _gen.mission file in /data/missions after a career mission is generated, you can find out what the skill level is for each of the AI pilots that flew with you on the mission. The best way to do that is to note the name for each pilot and then run a text search (preferably with a program like Notepad++). Each given pilot will have a block with all of their identifying information (unit, skill level, plane type, etc).

[JonRedcorn]

The problem is flight lead commands, that's the biggest issue IMO. In past games your wingmen listened to the plethora of commands available to you at any one time. This game we get a few commands and get lucky if they choose to obey or if you can even call the commands at all. I was playing a mission in PWCG as a lead lagg 3 pilot and commands worked fine until after we were on our way back to base and the AI just stops listening to commands at that point and I literally cannot even make new commands. It just doesn't do anything. I don't get how it's so hard to have basic features that past il2 titles had. Vector to homebase is non existent.... Attack ground, fighters, bombers, attack planes, these options don't exist besides patrol for ground targets or patrol for air targets. The AI in 1946 had a ton of options and commands to utilize. You could send specific groups of your wing to attack bombers and another to attack fighters, you could pick a specific target to attack if you wanted. Even in cliffs you could request backup from base and have a group of backup fighters fly out to assist. Nothing like that in box. This game could be arguably the best ww2 flight sim ever if just a few things were worked into the AI and singleplayer flight experience. If we literally just had the basic features that a game that came out 20 years ago had it'd be hands down the best singleplayer experience on the market.

 

I adore this game, the flying the fighting its all great but the AI is just such an absolute let down that it makes me get bored with the experience so quick. I've flown a few missions in cliffs new tobruk campaigns with the p-40 and it's been an absolute blast. I wish we could have that much fun in box. It's like I said in other threads too, we have western front campaigns yet the career modes generate flights at 5k ft that would be more suited to the russian front.... If normandy comes out and the careers making flights at 5k feet it's going to be an utter disappointment... I wish nothing more than the devs to dive into the sp experience and try and make it better. It seems that's an impossible task to ask of any modern flight sim at this point. DCS is like pulling teeth asking for it and so is great battles. I've spent half a thousand bucks on this game and only wish to see better AI and mission scripting in the SP careers.... I am not asking for earth and water to be moved here.

[tattywelshie]

9 hours ago, JonRedcorn said:

 This game could be arguably the best ww2 flight sim ever if just a few things were worked into the AI and singleplayer flight experience. If we literally just had the basic features that a game that came out 20 years ago had it'd be hands down the best singleplayer experience on the market.

 

Yeah I agree, I LOVE this game, it's everything my 15 year old self back in the day would have craved. Fab graphics, brilliant flight model and super immersive. But I agree with you, some work on the AI and general single player experience within the career mode is desperately needed. I really hope once Normandy is released, they take a step back and maybe invest a bit more time into AI and improving the career mode. I appreciate the financial impact of new modules etc, but yeah, I'd love to see a bit of a sort of stock check of the sim as a whole and just ironing out stuff, before they jump into the next instalment. Who knows what's planned, maybe Normandy will be the last of the current engine and they'll go for a total overhaul of the game.