A.I. Damaged Plane ditching

[blitze]

Recently flying a Normandy CAP mission with my 109 squad and one of my flight was shot up in a scrap but survived.  He started to fly to meet up with the rest of the flight but then decided to head back to base.  I accompanied him to help out in case he was bounced on the way. 

 

His engine gave out 1/3rd of the way out from base and the A.I. pilot failed to try and ditch the plane in a clearing or gain height and bail.  Instead he kept flying level for as long as he could glide and then clipped trees as the plane lost altitude. 

 

I am wondering if there would be a way to have A.I in shot up planes programed to ditch or seek a closer base to land or bail when their planes are damaged.  It also now seems clear to me as to why there is quite a bit of carnage with pilots in my flight even though I don't see them being destroyed in combat.

 

Anyway - just a thought for improving A.I. and their survivability in ones flight.

[Yogiflight]

7 hours ago, blitze said:

His engine gave out 1/3rd of the way out from base and the A.I. pilot failed to try and ditch the plane in a clearing or gain height and bail.  Instead he kept flying level for as long as he could glide and then clipped trees as the plane lost altitude. 

The first mistake AI does is to always go down to the deck instead of keeping altitude, when there is no enemy around. That way they had a lot more time to react when the engine dies.

And if it is too difficult to program AI to ditch their aircraft so they survive, they should simply bail out.

And to be clear, it is not only happening to rookies. Flightleaders and even squadron commanders are not able to make a survivable crashlanding.

[[CPT]Crunch]

Some of the behaviors depend on what wound levels it sustained, even online players can't bail sometimes when there's a heavy would, your in it for the ride.

[Yogiflight]

7 hours ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

Some of the behaviors depend on what wound levels it sustained, even online players can't bail sometimes when there's a heavy would, your in it for the ride.

I had that, too, but it happens almost every time, AI squadmates' aircrafts get heavily damaged, that they become a total loss. So this can't be the only reason.

[RedeyeStorm]

16 hours ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

Some of the behaviors depend on what wound levels it sustained, even online players can't bail sometimes when there's a heavy would, your in it for the ride.

That is not it. When the AI’s plane suffers critical damage but not enough to bail they just glide straight ahead without any deviation in flight path until they hit something. Usually on our maps that is a tree. They make no attempt to land in a clearing.

[kraut1]

Yesterday I observed a damaged B25 ditching very well into the sea very close to the coast.

But the pilots did not leave the plane! Would be great if pilots would leave the plane in some way if they ditched in water.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Well, the basic issue here is the amount of effort it would take to program all these things. You'd basically need to implement (some rudimentary) form of collision detection to even know whether or not you're going to hit a tree with your current or planned glide path. Also, you need to be able to find a suitable landing area with a large enough area clear of trees into the wind and without other objects (e.g. buildings) or significant slopes, and which you can reach. Then you need to plan your approach without the assistance of an engine, which might require techniques such as skidding and/or different flap settings, speed and circuit than normal.

 

All these things by themselves are pretty complex and would take a lot of time and money to develop. Let alone everything combined. This effort then cannot be spend on other issues or content.

 

Overall, I consider it a wise decision to have AI aircraft simply glide down until they either land or hit something. It saves a lot of time and money, and in the end the issue is relatively minor since it only concerns AI aircraft that were heavily damaged anyhow, and few people are going to follow those all the way down.

[Hanu]

There are some things in ME that Mission Builder could do. There is automatic "AI Return to Base" tick (sadly no clue what amount of damage is triggering it) and OnPlaneDamaged event. You may set that value as absolute value and trigger WP home + land when you reach that damage. It should be fairly high; even 90% condition the plane is pretty well shot up.

 

In some maps, for example in Kuban, I had lot of problems with AI RTB command; they just circled the field and aborted landing endlessly as they approached from the wrong direction. OnPlaneDamaged was more reliable, but limited to flightplan you've created. Combination of these 2 could be a good solution that OnPlaneDamaged triggers early and AI RTB could trigger later and maybe divert it to nearest airfield.

 

But, yes, it is still different stuff to ditching the plane safely. Somewhat related though.

[Yogiflight]

6 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Overall, I consider it a wise decision to have AI aircraft simply glide down until they either land or hit something. It saves a lot of time and money, and in the end the issue is relatively minor since it only concerns AI aircraft that were heavily damaged anyhow, and few people are going to follow those all the way down.

Well, from my perspective, you are missing the point. In career mode you lose many pilots, because they die by crashing their damaged plane. I do understand your point, but as I posted above

On 4/11/2024 at 10:54 PM, Yogiflight said:

And if it is too difficult to program AI to ditch their aircraft so they survive, they should simply bail out.

That way you wouldn't constantly lose pilots, and in my experience it very often concerns the high ranked pilots of the squadron. It often seems to me the game wants to make the player to  squadron leader as fast as possible.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

3 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

Well, from my perspective, you are missing the point. In career mode you lose many pilots, because they die by crashing their damaged plane. I do understand your point, but as I posted above

No, I do get your point. I just don't consider it big enough of an issue to warrant taking away resources from other issues

 

3 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

It often seems to me the game wants to make the player to  squadron leader as fast as possible.

I'm a full 100% sure the player promotion rate hasn't played a role in the decision making around this issue. However, it might indeed be a fortunate side effect

[Yogiflight]

On 4/16/2024 at 10:16 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

However, it might indeed be a fortunate side effect

I don't consider this a positive side effect. You become squadron commander much too soon anyway. No need to even speed this up.

When I get squadron commander in a Bf 110 career after four weeks, there definitely is something wrong.

Anyone, who wants to get squadron commander as fast as possible, can feel free to start as squadron commander.