Enemy AI Targetting only the player

[Deicide]

I've noticed this is still an issue. I just flew a sortie in Normandy and had 8 FW190's all focus on me only. Meanwhile my teammates did knock out 2 (because the enemy AI was in a train behind me) but still every single enemy AI focused on me only. They seemed hell bent on only me to the point making 300mph nearly straight dives on me from 2000-3000ftft and barely pulling up in time. I've watched them completely ignore my friendly AI as soon as I got close to focus purely on me. I wasn't even the leader on the flight, I was number 3.

[TacticalOni]

I've had this happen a few times myself, I can corroborate the congo line behaviour. 
Even better when they do what the AI always does and blast away until you as the pilot die or your aircraft is on fire. 

[NN_Elanion]

@ Deicide: I noticed this same problem in training against AI (quick mission).

[depapier]

This is still an issue.

[FlynHarbs]

Well into a "pilot career" in the P-47 Normandy campaign. This is a CONSTANT issue and it's a very irritating issue. All enemy AI lining up to shoot you down and you only. Friendly AI tries to help but it gets overwhelming... Frustrating.  

[Knarley-Bob]

Has been for a long,long.......long time.

[Deicide]

On 2/23/2023 at 5:55 PM, Knarley-Bob said:

Has been for a long,long.......long time.

I doubt they'll fix it honestly at this point. Game is dead in my opinion. Between broken promises to broken campaigns to broken ai. Game is broke and doesn't look like a fix will ever come

[Knarley-Bob]

Yup, then the testers laugh at you for bringing it up, what's THAT tell you?

I started playing in 2019, same thing since then...................................... "WELCOME ABOARD"

6 hours ago, Deicide said:

I doubt they'll fix it honestly at this point. Game is dead in my opinion. Between broken promises to broken campaigns to broken ai. Game is broke and doesn't look like a fix will ever come

 

[TG-55Panthercules]

On 1/3/2023 at 12:37 PM, NN_Elanion said:

@ Deicide: I noticed this same problem in training against AI (quick mission).

 

I wonder if there's something different going on between WWII and WWI in this regard?  I haven't flown any WWII missions in quite a while, but I've been flying a lot of WWI missions in QMB over the last month or two while testing and tweaking my VR settings and showing off Flying Circus to one of my sons, and I'm not seeing any trace of this behavior in the FC AI I've encountered.  My typical mission setup has the player and one AI buddy on one side, flying against 3 enemy AI planes (random skill levels).  I've flown for and against both sides in probably a couple of dozen such QMB missions during this period, and in pretty much every mission the 3 AI enemies split their attention between me and my AI buddy, giving me (or my son) the chance to go save our AI buddy from the AI enemies chasing them after disposing of the enemy(ies) coming after us.  Maybe the scripting of the enemies in career mode is different - can't test that theory since the WWI career mode isn't here yet, but in QMB at least things seem pretty reasonable in WWI missions so far.

[kraut1]

Since spring 2022 I am flying very often missions created with EMG by Vander without having this problem or only in very few occasions.

So I suppose it is caused in first line by mission design. During the last 2 weeks I flew ca. 10 HS129 ground attack EMG missions, my 4 plane flight (I was flying as wingman no.4) was attacked frequently by fighters and suffered sometimes heavy losses, but they never attacked only me and I had always a chance to escape by flying at low level.

(most dangerous for me was to crash into the ground target because I was always to focused to hit the target)

 

[fogpipe]

So from what i have been reading the devs consider il2 a pretty much finished product. Ai attacking only the human guided craft to the exclusion of all else was still a problem the last time i played the game (about a week ago).

 

I have been buying il2 as the segments were published, but im not buying Normandy (or any other 1c title) until this is fixed.

Is Il2 development finished? Is this problem likely to ever be addressed?

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

On 4/6/2023 at 1:04 PM, fogpipe said:

So from what i have been reading the devs consider il2 a pretty much finished product. Ai attacking only the human guided craft to the exclusion of all else was still a problem the last time i played the game (about a week ago).

 

I have been buying il2 as the segments were published, but im not buying Normandy (or any other 1c title) until this is fixed.

Is Il2 development finished? Is this problem likely to ever be addressed?

I don't know how it is in career, but in QMB they do attack other AI planes, no only the player plane.

[fogpipe]

On 4/8/2023 at 8:20 AM, 1PL-Husar-1Esk said:

I don't know how it is in career, but in QMB they do attack other AI planes, no only the player plane.

Thats my experience too.

What i think makes the difference is that in QMB there are so few planes that the ai is coded per plane and the action happens quickly enough so that the eight or so aircraft break into pairs or small groups.

In career mode, because of the increased number of planes in the air, it looks like the ai is coded per flight or per wing, so that if you are the human player that entire flight or wing chasing only you is code wise, one ai unit.

If my theory is correct, this is just inexcusably lazy given the amount of computer resources available on the average gaming computer lately. Even without multi-threading, Il2 and its dev team should be able to do better than this.

Anyway, i plan on buying Normandy when this is addressed.

Edited April 10, 2023 by fogpipe
Speling

[LukeFF]

31 minutes ago, fogpipe said:

If my theory is correct

 

It's not even close to being correct, so let's please stay away from accusations of laziness. ?

[AEthelraedUnraed]

9 hours ago, fogpipe said:

What i think makes the difference is that in QMB there are so few planes that the ai is coded per plane and the action happens quickly enough so that the eight or so aircraft break into pairs or small groups.

In career mode, because of the increased number of planes in the air, it looks like the ai is coded per flight or per wing, so that if you are the human player that entire flight or wing chasing only you is code wise, one ai unit.

As Luke says, your theory is very, very far from being correct.

 

If the whole enemy flight attacks the player, there are basically three possibilities:

- The player does something different than the AI allies, e.g. fly well ahead of them, that makes the enemy see him as a priority target.

- The AI is in fact ordered by the mission logic to attack the player. This would be faulty mission logic for most situations, in which case you should file a bug report in the proper section of the forum (including mission files and some info about which date/squadron/mission type).

- The player just got unlucky. There's always a chance things like this happen, and I'm sure it must've happened in real life too*. Especially for time periods/countries where radio communication wasn't very well developed.

 

* Using basic maths, the probability that all four planes in an uncoordinated enemy flight target the player can be calculated as (1/4)^4 = 0.39% chance. Not a lot, but can't be completely disregarded. Similarly, the chance three aircraft target the player equals 4.7%, the chance 2 target the player 21% and the chance one aircraft targets the player 42%, leaving a 1/3-ish chance the player isn't targeted at all. Most importantly, *if* the player is attacked, there's an almost 40% chance it's attacked by more than one aircraft! This may make it appear like the player is somehow singled out by the AI, while in fact it still adheres to normal statistics.

[fogpipe]

3 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

As Luke says, your theory is very, very far from being correct.

 

If the whole enemy flight attacks the player, there are basically three possibilities:

- The player does something different than the AI allies, e.g. fly well ahead of them, that makes the enemy see him as a priority target.

- The AI is in fact ordered by the mission logic to attack the player. This would be faulty mission logic for most situations, in which case you should file a bug report in the proper section of the forum (including mission files and some info about which date/squadron/mission type).

 

 

Theres no point in reporting it, its a common complaint and has been since Il2 1946.

 

The common fanboy response of "the game is perfect you are doing it wrong is just ridiculous. They fly right past my wingmen and head straight for me. I understand loyalty, but honestly thats just laughably sterotypical.

 

I have nothing to say about "unlucky" any response would be as fact free as the assertion.

 

Bottom line, they get more of my money when they fix it.

[LukeFF]

9 minutes ago, fogpipe said:

The common fanboy response of "the game is perfect you are doing it wrong is just ridiculous. They fly right past my wingmen and head straight for me. I understand loyalty, but honestly thats just laughably sterotypical.

 

Knock it off with the name-calling, or the topic will be locked.

[Yogiflight]

5 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

- The player does something different than the AI allies, e.g. fly well ahead of them, that makes the enemy see him as a priority target.

From my experience, this is the main reason, why enemy AI often attack the player. There are two points in it, the first being, a lonely aircraft is an easier target than enemy aircrafts flying in a group, and second, the AI tends to attack the same enemy aircraft as their squadmates, instead of looking for a different target. What helped me a lot, when I had the experience of always being attacked first was, never flying directly at the enemy fighters, but moving a bit left or right and climb, so my squadmates are closer to the enemy and get attacked first. Where I still get attacked out of my flight is in ground attack missions, as I often don't fly with my squadmates after the first attack and therefore are the easy lonely target, compared to the group of three aircrafts of my squadmates flying together.

 

5 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

- The AI is in fact ordered by the mission logic to attack the player

I still experience this from time to time, that an enemy fighter picks me out of the middle of my flight, but it has become very rarely after the developers adressed this issue some time ago. But sometimes I really see a fighter coming and know exactly, he has one order, attack me and ignore eveyone else. I take it with some humor as it has become an absolute exception.

[Ghost666]

@Yogiflight Have to agree with you, I find the same. Would give you an up vote but I am all out.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 hour ago, fogpipe said:

Theres no point in reporting it, its a common complaint and has been since Il2 1946.

 

The common fanboy response of "the game is perfect you are doing it wrong is just ridiculous. They fly right past my wingmen and head straight for me. I understand loyalty, but honestly thats just laughably sterotypical.

But I'm not saying that the game is perfect and you're doing it wrong, am I? In fact, for the second option, I explicitly state that it would be "faulty mission logic".

 

Auto-generated missions are built by combining numerous templates out of a humongous amount of options. The Devs simply do not have the time to double-check every single template for if it may result in the player being singled-out if combined with other templates. Like Yogiflight, I *think* they addressed a lot of these instances already a while ago. But naturally they may have missed one or two cases here and there. That's why it is necessary to report it along with the generated mission file in the proper forum - that way, the Devs can see what the exact problem is in the generated mission file, and in which template(s) this issue may have been caused. I hope you agree that that's a much better solution than having the Devs manually check each and every (combination of) mission template(s) for the metaphorical needle in the haystack.

 

By the way, 1946 is a completely separate game from a completely different team. It has completely separate AI and mission logic. If similar complaints occured there as well, this points to the issue having a psychological/perceptional aspect rather than being an AI issue that was somehow inherited from IL2 1946 by IL2 GB, as IL2 GB simply did not inherit anything from 1946.

 

2 hours ago, fogpipe said:

I have nothing to say about "unlucky" any response would be as fact free as the assertion.

The assertion is pure mathematics. You can calculate it yourself. I don't quite see how mathematics could possibly be construed as "fact free" since mathematics is the only science that's solely based on pure facts, and where it is in fact possible to prove with absolute, full-100% certainty that the numbers I mentioned are correct.