Confounding AI vs AI attack behavior in Flying Circus

[AcidBath]

I created a Flying Circus multiplayer dogfight mission for our squad, where one of the main objectives is to protect a flight of 4 AI Breguet 14s on a bombing run.  The Breguets behave perfectly on their mission, their rear gunners are active against the enemy AI attackers and they bomb their objective consistently well.  Unfortunately the attacking enemy AI, commanded using either specific attack commands, or the generalized attack area command, will immediate as commanded directly fly out to attack the bombers but then fly around like a bunch of gnats behind the bombers, barely making an effort to shoot at them, and most of the time not scoring a single kill.  I've tried exhaustive permutations of configuring the attack commands with no differing results, and this included disabling the Breguet's rear gunner.  What I also find puzzling that in a BoX mission of mine, I have a flight of 12 AI B-25s being attacked by multiple AI FW 190 using the same attack logic that I based the FC's mission on.  Every time in that BoX mission, the FW 190s totally slice and dice all the bombers over a few minutes if no player air cover intervenes.  In my FC mission, the players' air cover can fly at a safe distance from the fray and watch the Breguets successfully complete their mission almost every time, which for me makes the player's base challenge of that mission nonexistent.   Anyone else seen this silly AI vs AI attack behavior in Flying Circus?  Thanks for reading.

[SYN_Vander]

4 hours ago, AcidBath said:

I created a Flying Circus multiplayer dogfight mission for our squad, where one of the main objectives is to protect a flight of 4 AI Breguet 14s on a bombing run.  The Breguets behave perfectly on their mission, their rear gunners are active against the enemy AI attackers and they bomb their objective consistently well.  Unfortunately the attacking enemy AI, commanded using either specific attack commands, or the generalized attack area command, will immediate as commanded directly fly out to attack the bombers but then fly around like a bunch of gnats behind the bombers, barely making an effort to shoot at them, and most of the time not scoring a single kill.  I've tried exhaustive permutations of configuring the attack commands with no differing results, and this included disabling the Breguet's rear gunner.  What I also find puzzling that in a BoX mission of mine, I have a flight of 12 AI B-25s being attacked by multiple AI FW 190 using the same attack logic that I based the FC's mission on.  Every time in that BoX mission, the FW 190s totally slice and dice all the bombers over a few minutes if no player air cover intervenes.  In my FC mission, the players' air cover can fly at a safe distance from the fray and watch the Breguets successfully complete their mission almost every time, which for me makes the player's base challenge of that mission nonexistent.   Anyone else seen this silly AI vs AI attack behavior in Flying Circus?  Thanks for reading.

 

Yes, I have seen poor performance of the AI sometimes. Question: What is the type of the enemy fighter? Perhaps they don't have the speed to set up a good attack? It feels as if the same AI logic is used for WW1 and WW2 and that might not work with totally different closing speeds.

As a test, could you let the Breguets fly very slowly?

[Zooropa_Fly]

Are the bot fighters spawned-in.. or activated ?

They won't follow orders if they are spawned.

 

You can influence roughly how bot fights turn out by adjusting their skill levels, load-outs, timing of meeting, altitude's.. and probably another couple of things I can't recall off the top of my head just now.

 

S!

[AEthelraedUnraed]

6 minutes ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

Are the bot fighters spawned-in.. or activated ?

They won't follow orders if they are spawned.

That's not entirely true, just that they won't follow formations. But if they're properly set up, spawned-in aircraft will follow orders.

[Zooropa_Fly]

Indeed, should have said 'formation commands'.

 

S!

[AcidBath]

Sorry on the delay on getting back to this.  I tried slowing the speed of the bomber flight and it made maybe a slight improvement but still no enemy fighter slice and dice; the 'gnat dance' is still present.  I get the feeling that Flying Circus is the crippled step brother of BoX which only gets the table scraps, if anything at all...oh well.  BTW, in my experience the FC AI consistently slices and dices unsuspecting player aircraft every time if left to their own devices.

Edited September 3, 2022 by AcidBath