A collection of AI troubles, engine bugs and balance issues.

[Aleksander55]

Taking a look in the last couple of days I've seen that other people have the same issues or variations thereoff, I'm sorry but I'd like to make my report as well.

 

 

The techno-chat disappears at random in some missions.

 

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As I don't have head-tracking and use the padlock, sometimes the view controls go crazy, with my fixed view stuck to one side and losing the padlock ability.

 

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In 'bomb the river crossing' missions on the russian side, intercepting airplanes aggro on the player, and your companions do nothing to help you, the blyats. This happened before the bug that repeated this mission, but as it didn't happen often I thought that it was happenstance. With the bug I saw that it happened almost every time. They simply go through my friendly flight formation ignoring them on a beeline for me. While I'm fleeing and dodging for my life my blyat comrades continue on their merry way leaving me to my fate, sometimes leisurely doing their bomb run then flying back home at a snails pace without any AI bothering them.

 

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AI flak also seem to aggro on the player, but I'm not as sure in this case. This could be a skill issue and never learning my lesson, I admit. Every time this happens I think I have the measure of the AAA, I get too confident and think I'm safe, at a good distance. I do my bomb run, keep my speed high and altitude low, and dodge around if I see I'm being fired at. But then, at what I think is a good distance, reuniting with my flight after their run (very close to them, pretty much formation distance) the flakvierlings stealth blot me out of the sky, aparently on the 1st shot or burst as I never see tracers passing me when it happens. I'm usually still faster and higher than my flight, they are always flying much slower and more predictable, but it always comes for me with bot like precision.

 

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Damage model for german engines seem to be made of hitlerinium, but I saw comments and apparently this also seems to happen for players on german missions against russians. In my case I fly mostly the I-16 with the Shvaks on battle of Moscow, before this I practiced hundreds of missions on the quick mission editor. My convergence is at 230 meters. I walk the rounds from the engine cowling to the cockpit of the ME109 Es and Fs as they are turning.

 

In summary: When I connect a good burst, looking at enemy external view in the QME and replay on the pilot career: anywhere between 6 to 14 clear 20mm holes as well as several dozen 7,62 impacts all over the engine cowling and the oil cooler always showing a big (HE) impact decal:

 

9 out of 10 times the plane will only start spewing thin white smoke, lose very little performance and stay in the fight for several minutes, many times shooting down friendly AI in intact planes, a few times damaging me and even shooting me down when I left it for dead and multiple times also makes it back to their airfield and land, or they would if they didn't insist on making the landing circuit.

 

The 1 out 10 times it spews thick black smoke and loses performance is when it catches fire.

 

Adding to this, these attacks also usually add some big HE holes on their wings, many holes all around the cockpit, and at least one of the radiators leaking. Granted the wing holes are usually near the wing root, but still seems to cause very little loss of turning performance.

 

There's a lot of variety and apparent RNG in this. It can go from a short desperate burst of my last 7,62 rounds against an intact airplane making their engine catch fire or killing the pilot inside that force field cockpit - to flying wrecks with dozens of 20mm HE holes all over behaving like UFOS - which is what happens more often.

 

Aparently this is a general AI 'cheat' issue. Watching youtubers on MP servers like 'Der Sheriff' (who I follow for the great missions and how to guides) when he and his flight flying german planes happen to get hit it seems they take much less damage to call it quits, try to fly back to friendly lines, ditch or jump. This is a comment I saw repeated here in this forum as well, about other players in MP servers.

 

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RS-82 rockets have a weak and weird effect against LW bombers. I fire them directly with contact fuses as I can't for my life understand the flight path and timing of the timed fuses.

 

I'm not as sure of the numbers, but I'd say there's a 50/50 chance of one direct hit being enough to shoot down, either a Heinkel or Junkers. They never cause catastrophic airframe failure and instead of concentrating damage on the near area of impact it spreads all over the bomber - up to the clear other side of the airframe. An impact on the left wing will many times spread to and cause almost the same damage to the right wing - it would have to go through the airframe to get there, probably killing some or most of the crew.

 

Weird, weak and unrealistic in my opinion.

 

In a very recent mission in pilot career in BOM, I managed to score 2 hits on an HE111, very rare, and both on the left wing, even more lucky. No catastrophic failure and it made it's way back to the frontline airfield, only crashing on final approach. Even with practice it's still a lotery if I hit or not with rockets, and managing to hit 2, on the same wing, on an Ironman career - one can imagine my bemusement at hitlerinium airplanes as I watched the replay. 37mm shots from youtuber videos seem to have more realistic and destructive effect.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Aleksander55