Immersion and gameplay breaking NPC spawns in career depending on player's position

[DRosa]

Yesterday I was playing my career in Moscow, in a sortie ground troops cover. First attempt a big furball formed in the mission zone, I started chasing an enemy(while its AI went into a infinite loop and just turned to the left, forgetting how to move the stick), when my friends started to cross a few meters from me 90 degrees up. After 3 times this happened, I decided not to break the chase to see where it was going, and the result was obvious, I died in a collision with a friend who came 90 degrees below me.

 

Given the frustration and revolt over what happened, I restarted the mission but did not follow my flight, I set it to 8x, climbed as much as I could and went straight towards the objective. In the first attempt, I realized that there was already another friendly squadron in the objective before we arrived, but now, as I was ahead of my comrades, and I didn't have to worry about keeping myself in formation, I took care of the map more. I found it strange that the other friends weren't getting there at any time, when out of nowhere, 8 icons of friendly planes appeared in the middle of the objective's detection zone. Half amazed, I closed the map and went to observe them, not only did they appear out of nowhere, but they also appeared at my same altitude (I was about 2000 meters above the position that I entered the objective in the first attempt). That wasn't enough, I was waiting for the enemies to appear, and out of nowhere, they appeared the same way as the other friends. 2000 meters above where my original squadron was. There was no other, for that reason they had an energy advantage and simply tore everyone up.

 

Aside from the obvious immersion-breaking factor, it's rather frustrating that this mechanic works this way.

Edit: Another gameplay breaking factor in the mechanic: 

These spawns occur at relatively close distances, which made me understand why I didn't see enemies in the direction they appeared before they spawned

 

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by DRosa
+ info

[Noisemaker]

Mission file, bug report in the bugs sub-forum. 

[DRosa]

2 minutes ago, Noisemaker said:

Mission file, bug report in the bugs sub-forum. 

1. Where in the game folder are mission files of the career?

 

2. Doesnt seem to be a bug

 

[JG27_Steini]

16 minutes ago, DRosa said:

Yesterday I was playing my career in Moscow, in a sortie ground troops cover. First attempt a big furball formed in the mission zone, I started chasing an enemy(while its AI went into a infinite loop and just turned to the left, forgetting how to move the stick), when my friends started to cross a few meters from me 90 degrees up. After 3 times this happened, I decided not to break the chase to see where it was going, and the result was obvious, I died in a collision with a friend who came 90 degrees below me.

 

Given the frustration and revolt over what happened, I restarted the mission but did not follow my flight, I set it to 8x, climbed as much as I could and went straight towards the objective. In the first attempt, I realized that there was already another friendly squadron in the objective before we arrived, but now, as I was ahead of my comrades, and I didn't have to worry about keeping myself in formation, I took care of the map more. I found it strange that the other friends weren't getting there at any time, when out of nowhere, 8 icons of friendly planes appeared in the middle of the objective's detection zone. Half amazed, I closed the map and went to observe them, not only did they appear out of nowhere, but they also appeared at my same altitude (I was about 2000 meters above the position that I entered the objective in the first attempt). That wasn't enough, I was waiting for the enemies to appear, and out of nowhere, they appeared the same way as the other friends. 2000 meters above where my original squadron was. There was no other, for that reason they had an energy advantage and simply tore everyone up.

 

Aside from the obvious immersion-breaking factor, it's rather frustrating that this mechanic works this way.

Edit: Another gameplay breaking factor in the mechanic: 

These spawns occur at relatively close distances, which made me understand why I didn't see enemies in the direction they appeared before they spawned

 

 

 

This is the mission design. Some missions type have this. At a given time the enemy shows up with 8+ fighters and a wild furball develops. It is always the same dump happening, escpecially in the moscow campaign it showed up every 4-5 day of missions.

Edited December 27, 2022 by JG27_Steini

[LukeFF]

5 minutes ago, DRosa said:

1. Where in the game folder are mission files of the career?

 

2. Doesnt seem to be a bug

 

 

/data/missions, _gen.mission. It's overwritten every time a new mission is generated, so you gotta be sure you snag it before starting a new one.

[Noisemaker]

9 minutes ago, DRosa said:

1. Where in the game folder are mission files of the career?

 

2. Doesnt seem to be a bug

 

Yeah, it's an issue with the mission design, which as I understand it is somewhat automated, and semi-frequently spits out these kinds of missions.  The latest gen.mission file you'll find in data/missions.  If you've played a mission since, that will have been overwritten, so if you get something like this, you unfortunately have to either exit or tab out of the game to grab the mission file and copy it somewhere else (A convenient IL-2 Bugs folder perhaps?)

 

8 minutes ago, JG27_Steini said:

 

This is the mission design. Some missions type have this. At a given time the enemy shows up with 8+ fighters and a wild furball develops. It is always the same dump happening, escpecially in the moscow campaign it showed up every 4-5 day of missions. 

Yep, it's mission design, which is somewhat automated from my understanding, but tunable from the devs.  It's worthwhile reporting these missions, as I have in the past, as the result has been a slow, steady improvement, and far fewer of the insane Kobayashi Maru missions.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Noisemaker
typos

[DRosa]

@Noisemaker, @LukeFF

 

All files related to this mission posted here:

 

[Aleksander55]

This is common in most missions, I've seen it discussed already and it's a known mission 'feature'. I don't like it either, especially with clear skyes it's easy to see the artificial spawning of enemy flights.

 

Another problem are enemy flights that home in on the player or the player's squad anywhere on the map. This is bad especially in ground attack missions as it destroys a good feature in this mission:

 

If the player flies at low altitude, about 100 meters, and doesn't cross over enemy ground units or quickly gets away after crossing them, interceptors without this 'Awacs guidance' will have a good chance of not seeing them. I loved this when I discovered it by repeating the same mission at different altitudes and ingress points. At least I'm not the only one that's blind when looking down at the ground, it seems that AI also have this problem coded into them.

 

The trouble is that most times these spawned interceptors will have this magic guidance, so even flying low since take off and taking a completely round about route to the target won't do any difference, they'll always home in on the player.

 

I wish that at least in ground attack missions these 'awacs guided' interceptors would be completely absent. It's 'ok' for air superiority missions where german radar could explain it, but for ground attack missions they should be completely removed in favor of interceptors that are scrambled to the general last know position of the player but subject to AI's limitations in spotting us.

[JG27_Steini]

On 12/27/2022 at 10:08 PM, Noisemaker said:

Yeah, it's an issue with the mission design, which as I understand it is somewhat automated, and semi-frequently spits out these kinds of missions.  The latest gen.mission file you'll find in data/missions.  If you've played a mission since, that will have been overwritten, so if you get something like this, you unfortunately have to either exit or tab out of the game to grab the mission file and copy it somewhere else (A convenient IL-2 Bugs folder perhaps?)

 

Yep, it's mission design, which is somewhat automated from my understanding, but tunable from the devs.  It's worthwhile reporting these missions, as I have in the past, as the result has been a slow, steady improvement, and far fewer of the insane Kobayashi Maru missions.

 

Sometimes i have the feeling that none of the developer even fly their own campaigns. If i had the ability to improve the campaign, i would. I only know ViKs as a hardcore simmer and he was working and mission designs later.