Unresponsive wingmen when the player is in command during pilot career.

[Aleksander55]

I have here 2 examples of this happening as of the latest update. This happens frequently enough that in select missions I put myself at the end of the flight so that they respond better to threats.

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Hl2Jb-oeABie4fA3_935stDsPkg3Qq5S

 

The 'career-zombie-wingmen' mission was an easy one, only 4 enemy fighters at the end of a cover mission,  where I hoped they would attack to bolster their statistics. They stayed up high.

 

The 'career-2ros82hits-noshootdown-zombiewingmen' mission was a dangerous bomber intercept where 6 of my flight of 9 died. The 'dummy the flight leader' move happened:

 

It seems that they are responding well to my repeated attack commands, it seems they are agressive.

 

But then many of them enter zombie state right in the middle of enemy fighters.

 

It seems zombie state happens mostly when the player gives AI an altitude advantadge over the enemy. They stay up high at low engine power doing nothing.

 

Sometimes it seems that repeating attack commands only 'reset' their 'aquiring targets and then attacking' routines and they have to start their very slow agressive state all over again. But I really have no idea.

 

I repeat what I've read elsewhere: They stay in zombie state when there are many enemies around in a furious fight for your life situation, but if the friendly side happens to get the upper hand suddenly they turn on and they all go for the same fighter the player is after, a risk to player indeed.

 

The tracks are there for anyone to see. (This is the 1st time I use google drive, warn me if it's not working)

[IckyATLAS]

This is true when the planes are in an attack zone or have waypoints in "Medium" Priority.

Medium priority means attack only if you are attacked.

If they are high and the enemy does not directly attack them then they stay in zombie state. Priority must then be set to "Low".

In that case the planes will attack any enemy around them even if they are not attacked.

When designing a mission, the correct use of the Priority parameter is very important.

To me AI commands do not really change the priorities, but I do not know well how the command are implemented so I never consider the use of these commands by the player when designing a mission.

 

One thing that could be useful is to have the priority parameter to be changed dynamically during the mission with the Behavior MCU.

Then the Behavior MCU would be linked to a waypoint or to an Attack Area command to change its priority.

Edited September 11, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[Aleksander55]

10 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

This is true when the planes are in an attack zone or have waypoints in "Medium" Priority.

Medium priority means attack only if you are attacked.

If they are high and the enemy does not directly attack them then they stay in zombie state. Priority must then be set to "Low".

In that case the planes will attack any enemy around them even if they are not attacked.

When designing a mission, the correct use of the Priority parameter is very important.

To me AI commands do not really change the priorities, but I do not know well how the command are implemented so I never consider the use of these commands by the player when designing a mission.

 

One thing that could be useful is to have the priority parameter to be changed dynamically during the mission with the Behavior MCU.

Then the Behavior MCU would be linked to a waypoint or to an Attack Area command to change its priority.

I don't understand the inner workings as you explained but thanks for the answer. It happens often enough, I'd say it's the rule, the exception is when the wingmen act as I hope they will. I hope this gets looked at by the devs.

 

2 observations I forgot to add to the original post:

 

The first mission, the one with the 4 109Es with the bomb racks, they appeared after the end of the cover mission ('objective completed', 'go back to base'), as we are outbound I keep checking the ground spotter's 'radar' circle and turned back when I saw the enemy flight. Maybe this affects their behavior.

 

In the 2nd mission, the bomber intercept, I wonder if they turned 'off' the moment I hit the bomber and the 'mission completed' message appeared.

 

 

There's also this:

 

'THEYLEFTMEAFTERMISSIONCOMPLETEcareer-17-Evgeny Nikonorov', its in the same folder:

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Hl2Jb-oeABie4fA3_935stDsPkg3Qq5S

 

Another cover mission, as we are dogfighting the 'mission complete' message appears and they just go away in the middle of many enemy fighters, leaving me alone with 2 109Fs and one 110.

 

I think I was not in command in this career, so I couldn't even try to command them.

 

They come back a little later, towards the end of the fight. But yeah, they robotically obey the 'script' with no consideration to present situation.

 

This track is from a few updates ago, I don't know if it works with present version as it happened with Il-2 1946.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Aleksander55

[Aleksander55]

Unfortunately I have to say that for single player users the AI in this sim is very limited and broken. Way too many things can go wrong in any kind of mission. Here's another example:

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Hl2Jb-oeABie4fA3_935stDsPkg3Qq5S

 

'RoboticWingmen.rar' still in the same folder is a simple ground cover mission. I always put mysself at the end of the flight in these missions so that there's no risk that my wingmen will turn into zombie state if enemies attack.

 

However this situation may happen:

 

As we are approaching the circle of ground spotters limit of detection, I notice that an enemy force is coming straight for us.

 

 

We are somewhere in that elipse I drew, and I knew what was about to happen: Either my flight would not react to them until the interceptors got very close with almost perfect firing solutions/tactical advantadge or they got lucky and manage to get to the ground support waypoint first.

 

As the enemy gets very close, we are at the limit of the ground spotter's circle, I turn on the navigation lights and break away from my flight. I don't know if the lights make any difference, but the idea is to aggro most of them on me to give my friendly drones enough time to get to the waypoint and finally turn on.

 

It mostly works, althought 2 or 3 of my flight also break off before the waypoint to fight.

 

This also happened before: even when we are already inside the ground spotter's circle my flight still acts in this way. There may already be 2 or 3 enemy flights that they supposedly would be getting information about, but they still ignore them until they get to the waypoint.

 

I'm sorry for the language, but this ridiculous. Incredibly frustrating and immersion killing.

 

Besides this, many other things are extremely frustrating with the limited and broken AI:

 

If I try to heighten the survival chances of my AI in Intercept Bombers or Attackers missions, by giving them more altitute or telling them to wait for me above a friendly Air Defence strongoint, or any other kind of simple tactics possible with the extremely limited radio commands, the percentage of chance of them not reacting at all to the enemy when I flee back to them dragging the escort behind me is very high.

 

Basically, trying to do anything other than letting them fly their waypoints almost always means they will not react to enemy presence. And even then, if I put myself at the end of the flight, a situation like this can happen.

 

I think I maybe know why an AI commanded wing waits until the enemy is right on top of them to react in this case:

 

Maybe it's because before this adjustment they were breaking off from escort missions to go hunt down enemies far away? This happened with me in the more complex quick missions, my fighter escort in bombing missions would break away to fight far away enemies.

 

Also, in intercept bombers/attackers quickmissions, the mission director would spawn dogfights before we got to the bombers/attackers and my squad would break off to go after them even if I told them repeatedly to 'cover me' or 'come back to the mission'.

 

Maybe an adjustment was made and this overcorrection happened. That's just guesstimation of course. But as it is right now, they wait until the enemy is guaranteed to have complete positioning advantadge before they react.

[Aleksander55]

It just happened again, same mission over same city. This time things worked better with the help of friendlies already patrolling nearby who reacted. These patrolling friendlies also fail to react many times. Sometimes everything on a mission is very 'player directed', seems everything gets aggroed on the player and their flight or is dependent on their presence.

 

'RoboticWingmen2' in the same folder.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Hl2Jb-oeABie4fA3_935stDsPkg3Qq5S