Plane turret gunner AI

[RossMarBow]

I liked the old AI a lot more than the new AI.

However current complaints in multiplayer seem to focus on the 410 gunner being overpowered. While it is generally accepted that every other gunner is useless. 

Theirs also complaints about the gunners on certain planes not being in a state of constant readiness. Which could be fixed by adding a command to man stations.

And I believe theirs's a lot of unvoiced complaints from people who stopped playing when gunners stopped being effective. 

Is it possible to bring back the old gunner AI.

I ask this because the old gunners could actually hit things

If the old AI was brought back the effectiveness could be reduced by:
 - increasing their susceptibility to G forces 
 - stopping them firing if over a certain amount of G's
 - changing their firing pattern so they fire short bursts instead of holding down the trigger while missing
 - allowing their level to be set similar to how AAA currently works in the mission builder 
 - ultimately the majority of complaints about turrets in multiplayer could be resolved by either providing and/or adjusting a time to target value that controls how fast a gunner actually starts shooting at the target with any accuracy (ground AAA could also benefit from this value being adjustable)

 

I think this is an easily overlooked part of the game but is critical in maintaining immersion.
Also, the game is called IL-2 and IL-2s have turrets so turrets should be more than just an afterthought. 
 

[CountZero]

Why 410 is seam op is it has 2x 13mm guns that if hit will end your sortie, its same how Pe-2 was wrongly considered having op gunners. Problem like with 410 was its realativly fast airplane where enemy players would sit on it 6 and expect to servive 12.7mm guns shooting at it... and then devs lisened to thouse lazy hartmans and fkd up gunners for all of us to that point we dont have player bombers in MP any more... 

And then at same time lazy hartmans wont B-17 in game to shoot at, but devs see no one is playing with bombers, so why waist code on airplane no one will buy...

Lets make gunners even more useless, so we can sit on bombers 6 and not get hit... why ppl dont play with bombers ? why devs dont make bombers ? ah who knows, as long i have no risk attacking anything with rear gunner its all ok lol now we need to pork 410 so players dont use that thing also, and we can just sit on its 6 and dont think when attacking it...

Edited November 1, 2022 by CountZero

[Charon]

I think the problem isn't just the AI. The guns themselves are barely functional:

 

- They overheat far too easily. The Bf 109G-2 can dump it's entire 1000 rounds of 7.92 in one long continuous burst  of 500/gun without ever overheating or jamming. Meanwhile, the dorsal MG 15 on a He 111 will overheat after only 250125 rounds and start jamming shortly thereafter. All of the defensive guns are like this. This despite the MG 15 having an open bolt (which should provide better cooling), a lower rate of fire (1050 vs 1200), sticking out into the slipstream instead of being stuffed above a hot engine, and needing a reload (which should give it a little time to cool). The MG 15 has all of the advantages, and yet it's the only one that will overheat.

 

- Once they start overheating, they all jam very readily. What's the mechanism that causes the jam? Is this pure video-game logic?

 

Here's someone running 700 rounds through a M249 (until the barrel glows red!) with no stoppages at all.

 

- Once they start overheating, the dispersion gets huge. I tested with the UB, which has a reflector gunsight and it seems to be about 20-30 mils once hot -- on par with a shotgun.

  - Normal dispersion for tripod mounted machine guns seems to be about 1-2 mils, based on this data...  (https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/p9z2xe/origin_of_the_bren_is_too_accurate_trope/) No word on the dispersion of a hot barrel, but I can't imagine it's 15 times higher.

 

In general, this seems a bit like the engine timer problem. They've fudged it to force the player to shoot sparingly and conserve barrel life... as if that matters when there is a fighter at dead 6. And they've calibrated it so that even the most brain-dead fighter pilot doesn't get shot down too often.

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2022 by Charon

[Charon]

Just what does my gunner think he's shooting at all the way over there?

[Charon]

Having now run a lot of Bf 109F-4 (avg) vs Pe-2s86 vet escape quick missions (with +500m altitude to the 109), some observations:

 

It seems like the gunners start with absolutely wild shots. Like 5 degrees off, just spraying bullets around.

 

It seems like later bursts get iteratively more accurate, until by the 3rd or 4th burst they're vaguely on targets. However the rapid overheating means that by the time they've remembered how to aim, their gun starts scattering rounds everywhere like a shotgun. Or maybe it's not overheating but their aim is just consistently bad, I can't tell.

 

Either way, I think both of these need to be fixed. Machine guns shouldn't turn into shotguns after five seconds of firing, and gunners should start at least vaguely in the vicinity of the target. If I'm correct that they're using some sort of convergent iterative method to aim, starting them about two steps ahead of where they start now seems about right. This is an easy, easy shot at a target coming straight in, with no obstructions -- they shouldn't have trouble hitting this.

[Charon]

Here's another good machine gun torture test. 746 rounds before the first temperature related stoppage (the failures in belts 1-2 were likely due to the belt getting twisted; belts 3-6 fed flawlessly).

 

At 6m31s: "I can't say I experienced much deviation while shooting" -- i.e. no shotgun effect.

 

At 7m03s, he notes that the belts seem to have been dragged through the varnish melting off the burning handguard; this stoppage was probably not directly caused by overheating, but rather the molten varnish getting in the operating mechanism and gumming it up. This is interesting but not a failure mode we should expect in game.

[Stonehouse]

So, there is logic in the AI turret gunner such that they can open fire at 3x normal range if their ammo situation allows it. I theorise that this is to offset the lack of real defensive formations for bombers. This is just a theory on my part.

 

During my time working on the AI Gunnery mod I found that there are several things at play that creates issues. 

• AI fighter pilots are defined as snipers and stock ace pilots open fire and hit accurately from 800m. Novices open fire at 400m by comparison albeit less accurately.
• Turrets have an effective range of about 650m. Therefore, without real formations and the allowance to open fire at a modified range (typically at the start of an engagement with fighters due to the ammo condition) they get massacred by the fighters without firing a shot. When trying to include bombers in the mod I experimented turning off the ability to fire at 3x the normal range. Without fail it was a turkey shoot, even with the modifications I made to AI fighter pilots that flipped around the open fire range such that aces open fire at 400m and novices open fire at 800m. Bombers were dispatched with little or no damage to fighters regardless of the bomber crew skill. So I believe the issue is bigger than just bomber gunners and it is a general AI issue.
• There is one overall skill for the bomber. Obvious issues due to this.
• Fighters don't really have a different attack profile for bombers and while higher skill AI pilots will try slashing and head on attacks on the whole AI will attack from the rear quarter of the bomber.  
• G limits for gunners did not change in stock. They were and are 5G. I did a rebalance of the mod post 5.002 and cut this back to 3G as well as increasing the effect on accuracy of G forces. Note that reducing the G limit on firing and increasing the impact of G forces on accuracy actually makes AI bombers more vulnerable as AI bombers don't generally hold formation and will maneuver under fire.
• There is a single bot file used regardless of weapon/ammo situation/type of position. So only one control for burst length. As part of the rebalance I split the firing positions by ammo supply - not the best measure admittedly but better than nothing and still allows the mod to be manageable for maintainability. So, more ammo at the turret position allows longer bursts. Less ammo means shorter bursts. Some positions have very limited ammo. Doing this meant I had to completely rejig the gunner accuracy side as generally there was less volume of fire per sec coming from the bomber...........remembering AI bombers don't fight as a formation..........it is not an easy balancing act, especially when you consider you need to get reasonable results from 4 different skill levels on both sides of the equation. eg Novice bombers vs ace fighters, ace bombers v's novice fighters and all the other flavours. Better, more realistic fighter AI (in terms of attacks on bombers) which, in an ideal world, would evolve during the war eg the Luftwaffe did not always do head on attacks, they adopted this tactic against B17s over time and real bomber formations (even with the limited number allowed in IL2 BOX) would allow the bomber gunner AI to be less a matter of game balance and more a matter of realism in my opinion.

 

I haven't checked the weapon files for turret guns that much as I made the assumption that they are as accurate as the devs have info for. Generally as you would expect 90% of the accuracy stuff is in the AI bot definition. I do know however that there is overheat and dispersion values in the weapon definitions. 

 

PS - Please do try the mod and see if it improves things. Even though I built it for offline and co-ops it'd be interesting to hear how it goes on a PVP/PVE server. 

Edited December 12, 2022 by Stonehouse
typos

[Charon]

I made a mistake in my first post in this thread. The MG15 saddle mags hold only 75 rounds total, not 150 as I thought, so my numbers above were off by a factor of 2: the MG 15 overheats after only 125 rounds, even while it's cousin, the MG17 can fire off a 500 round burst without any complaint. Why the huge discrepancy?