IL-2 Great Battles HO!

[KodiakJac]

A while back a change was made in the AI to almost always make a head-on attack against an enemy fighter rather than any kind of merge maneuver to gain a position of advantage on an adversary like it used to do.

 

There is lots of gun camera footage from WWII, but very little showing head-on attacks.  And from what I've read, I've never seen reference to fighter pilots being taught to fly straight into an enemy aircraft's guns in a jousting match.  This head-on attack behavior in IL-2 Great Battles seems unrealistic.  Why was this done?

 

Edited February 1 by KodiakJac

[Avimimus]

At least one P-47 unit had a commander who taught his pilots to always attempt a head-on attack.

 

Head on attacks were also standard Luftwaffe tactics when attacking enemy bombers later in the war.

 

So those are at least two instances where entire units were attempting to go head-on. I'm sure additional examples could be turned up.

 

P.S. Head on attacks are not trained by the USAF today due to the increased risk of collision in training and the fact that a head on attack presumably increases the likelihood of an opponent also getting a head on firing position - however, training was a lot looser during the world wars.

[KodiakJac]

@Avimimus

 

Yeah, it would be ok if they could add head-on attacks 10% to 20% of the time in fighter vs. fighter, or something like that.  It would add more variety to the AI logic.  But all the time is too much.  I would rather go back to how it was 🙂 

[Avimimus]

5 hours ago, KodiakJac said:

@Avimimus

 

Yeah, it would be ok if they could add head-on attacks 10% to 20% of the time in fighter vs. fighter, or something like that.  It would add more variety to the AI logic.  But all the time is too much.  I would rather go back to how it was 🙂 

 

That is the issue. The AI is pretty monolithic... it'd be great if it was more modular with different tactics used by different pilots and in different eras... rather than just having different overall skill settings.

[Jaegermeister]

Johnnie Johnson forbid his RAF pilots from ever turning away from a head on attack as he considered it more dangerous than going straight through, so obviously it was an issue.

 

The AI attack routine varies widely depending on how far away the attack is triggered. If it is more than 4000 meters away, they will circle around, split up and try to set up and come straight at you. If you are closer to the enemy aircraft, they will split up and try going vertical, drag and bag or various other maneuvers. I’m not sure if you are referring to career mission templates, but the AI certainly doesn’t attack head on all the time in my experience.

[BlitzPig_EL]

It's the sniper like accuracy of the later 109 AIs in head ons that I find obnoxious.   One shot kills with Mk108s with high closing rates and the smallest target aspect are beyond belief.  If I set the AI to a lower skill setting it's better, but then they are just sitting ducks the rest of the time.  Gunnery skill has to be independently selectable from flying skill. 

[KodiakJac]

When did 1C add head-on attacks?  It was just a year or two ago.  I was going to read the release notes again.  I remember reading about it, but I can't find it now.

[Dragon1-1]

19 hours ago, Avimimus said:

P.S. Head on attacks are not trained by the USAF today due to the increased risk of collision in training and the fact that a head on attack presumably increases the likelihood of an opponent also getting a head on firing position - however, training was a lot looser during the world wars.

Worth noting, modern training is usually done with missiles. As such there's not much to train for head on shots, since with missiles you don't have to point your nose precisely at the enemy, it's a matter of pressing a button before the merge. It's a good idea to assume the missile will miss (especially since kinematics in a head on shot are lousy), because you'll still be doing what you need to be doing if it actually does. What they don't train for, and in fact Pete Bonanni recommended against doing in most circumstances, is a head on guns shot. Because you're too unlikely to hit, too likely to hit the enemy with your airplane, and unless you're planning to blow through or you're sure the enemy plans to (two cases in which it's OK to go for guns on a head on pass), you'll soon have a far better way to make use of your rather limited ammo.

 

In WWII, it was guns or nothing, and closure rates were much lower than in jet age, so attacking from the front gave you more time to line up the shot, fire, and then get out of the way. Back then, head on attacks, especially against larger targets, were used quite often. They were the only really effective and survivable way to go against Allied bombers, and against fighters they had their benefits too - you'll either hit the engine or the cockpit, even armored glass is not very good for looking (or aiming) through if it has a bullet hole in it.

[KodiakJac]

Ok, so most fighter vs. fighter fights during WWII were head-on jousting matches.  Both aircraft would make a head-on pass at each other, then turn and do it again and again until one shot down the other.  The best tactic was to be shot at while shooting.  That is why most fighter vs. fighter gun cam footage from WWII is that of head-on attacks.

 

I didn't know that.

[Avimimus]

22 hours ago, KodiakJac said:

Ok, so most fighter vs. fighter fights during WWII were head-on jousting matches.  Both aircraft would make a head-on pass at each other, then turn and do it again and again until one shot down the other.  The best tactic was to be shot at while shooting.  That is why most fighter vs. fighter gun cam footage from WWII is that of head-on attacks.

 

I didn't know that.

 

Historically I gather that most pilots who were shot down were unaware of their attacker (until it was too late).

 

For example, out of the fighter-vs-fighter kills mentioned in Irving Farmer Kennedy's biography, at two were against opponents who were unaware (if I recall correctly). A third involved a circling fight with multiple head on passes. This was the only vividly described dogfight that I recall from the book.

 

I'm also reminded of a quote from one of the famous Lend Lease interviews with Soviet pilots - where the pilot essentially said that the fighting was so dense one didn't really have situational awareness sufficient for tactical manoeuvres... the quote was essentially 'if you found an enemy in your sights, you fired' and he said it was largely luck that you weren't in someone else's sights. I think this is a more realistic depiction of a lot of combat than whatever we're imagining.

 

If you see an enemy who doesn't see you, you get the jump on them, fire and then bug out. If you see an enemy near your gunsight, you fire regardless of whether they are flying away from you or towards you.

[Trooper117]

Anyone who would willingly go head on at a BF 110 would need to have their head examined...

[ZPA_Malan]

Yeah agreed, this AI behavior is obnoxious. I started playing in fall 2023 and the AI still swerved away from head on attacks at a certain distance at first, it seemed like a reasonable survival instinct after firing a burst. There was an update maybe early last year? with a note something to the effect of 'changed AI to not swerve when attacking player head-on" and since then they consistently press home kamikaze attacks aimed directly at my face. Often I drop them first or dodge, but i still get destroyed more often by this suicide pact than being shot down the normal way. It was better when they swerved, don't get what the point of this change was supposed to be.  I get turning into an attack is often best, but the AI should prioritize getting on my tail over ramming me head-on.

[Dragon1-1]

2 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

Anyone who would willingly go head on at a BF 110 would need to have their head examined...

The problem with Il-2 AI is that it has perfect SA, sneak attacks are pretty much impossible. They always react with proper defensive maneuvers, and not, say, by freezing up, flying into the ground, trying to run away or bail the moment an MG bullet pokes the first hole in the wing. Actual WWII pilots were not, for most part, comparable to modern trained professionals schooled in tactics, physics and engineering. IRL, not every pilot would know even to watch his six, and most would not do that particularly often, as evidenced by the predominance of sneak attacks IRL. The AI seems to be programmed with good flying and fighting practices in mind, but in WWII, failing to follow those practices was not an uncommon occurrence (but frequently a lethal one). Those who didn't make it, or those whose career went along the lines of "flew boring patrols, never saw any Krauts, managed not to crash, happy I'm alive" didn't usually write books.

 

On 1/26/2025 at 9:24 PM, KodiakJac said:

I didn't know that.

The vast majority of fighter kills in WWII were sneak attacks, and that's what you're seeing on the guncams. The target didn't know there was someone lining up on him until holes started appearing in his wings. This generally doesn't happen in Il-2. Also note, a head on attack happens extremely quickly, and WWII-era guncams had rather low FPS, and image quality was poor, too. The head on passes likely weren't caught very well. I don't know just how much of the footage is preserved, but I suspect only the "best bits" actually survived.

Edited January 27 by Dragon1-1

[spreckair]

2 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

The problem with Il-2 AI is that it has perfect SA, sneak attacks are pretty much impossible. They always react with proper defensive maneuvers, and not, say, by freezing up, flying into the ground, trying to run away or bail the moment an MG bullet pokes the first hole in the wing.

Not always.  I fly single-player career, and there have been numerous times when I approached AI from low 6, after a long pursuit, and hit them without them evading ahead of time.  I don't know how this is programmed, and it would be interesting to hear from the developers on how this is coded.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Much depends on the skill level that the person building the mission has selected for the AI.

[357th_KW]

There are a variety of other tricks you can use in the mission editor to create the illusion of limited SA, but it requires a lot of work.  Essentially you'd take your AI in question, and make about 5-10 copies of it, with a variety of different orders and proximity triggers to drive different reactions - sometimes they'd see you immediately, sometimes they'd let you bounce them, and everything in between.  And then randomly spawn a different one every time so you get different results.  It's really unfortunate that some degree of this isn't just baked into the AI, seeing as the code is all there.

[Avimimus]

10 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

The problem with Il-2 AI is that it has perfect SA, sneak attacks are pretty much impossible.

 

This has been my theory for a while. The reason why people were obsessed with their difficulty spotting other aircraft wasn't that the ability to see a plane in the sim was that much worse than real life, but it was because the AI is far too fast to acquire an opponent, and never loses track of the opponent after acquiring it.

 

P.S. Of course, there may be some validity to those debates, in the sense that the human eyeball is much high resolution than a monitor - but if you factor in things like the impacts of canopy glass, the difference may not always be so great - and I suspect most of the debate came from the AI being so much better.

[Avimimus]

10 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Actual WWII pilots were not, for most part, comparable to modern trained professionals schooled in tactics, physics and engineering. IRL, not every pilot would know even to watch his six, and most would not do that particularly often, as evidenced by the predominance of sneak attacks IRL.

 

One should also consider the effects of pilot fatigue. Long flights (more physically stressful than sitting at a monitor), flying every day, or in some cases multiple times per day, often led to reduced mental clarity and situational awareness.

 

We also need to consider that pilots were often training in different areas than they were flying combat operations in - so navigation was a very real issue. Even for those of us who aren't flying with the minimap, we still often have years of experience flying in the same area. Imagine if your first flight in a new module was a combat flight and you had to find your way home or you ended up having to crash-land (possibly in enemy territory)... that is a distraction we don't have.

[Dragon1-1]

On 1/28/2025 at 2:06 AM, spreckair said:

Not always.  I fly single-player career, and there have been numerous times when I approached AI from low 6, after a long pursuit, and hit them without them evading ahead of time.  I don't know how this is programmed, and it would be interesting to hear from the developers on how this is coded.

Their LOS may be restricted by airframe, but the classic boom and zoom bushwhack out of the sun is not doable, they'll always spot you diving on them. This is despite similar maneuvers being commonplace in WWII. 

On 1/28/2025 at 10:40 AM, Avimimus said:

One should also consider the effects of pilot fatigue. Long flights (more physically stressful than sitting at a monitor), flying every day, or in some cases multiple times per day, often led to reduced mental clarity and situational awareness.

Definitely, and that's another thing we don't usually see with modern fighter jocks. These days, if you don't get in a fight, flying a fighter takes much less physical effort than in WWII, and the extended planning and briefing with that is now commonly done often means that pilots would seldom fly more than once per day, except on rare occasions. While things can get hectic in actual war, most modern pilots don't get pushed nearly as hard as WWII ones were. 

[CzechTexan]

I've read many accounts on the Eastern Front where there were head-on attacks.  Russian fighters were more fearless and seem to have attempted more head-ons compared to the Germans. 

Although, the Germans did it too, especially in early-to-mid-war dogfights, since their opponents were not as skilled at flying or shooting.

I think later in the war they tried to avoid it.

 

Since this sim is East-Front-Heavy, I suppose the devs are trying to replicate more of the Russian-German style of fighting; not the more cautious Western front style.

[KodiakJac]

Let's vote on it!  

 

Do You Like The New Head-on Attack Behavior?

 

 

[KodiakJac]

In my poll thread above @Stonehouse offered his AI Gunnery Mod as a possible solution for more varied AI behavior including fewer head-on attacks.  I've been using it for about a week now, and it's a gem!  Anyone looking for more realistic AI behavior in dogfights should consider giving it a try.  My personal opinion is that it offers better AI behavior than both the "before head-on attacks were added" and the "after head-on attacks were added" eras.

 

The AI Gunnery Mod simply adds more varied AI ninja dogfight moves, including more varied merge maneuvers.  You will still see some head-on attacks, but far fewer of them, which makes them more interesting as you never know when to expect them.  Stonehouse said he is just enabling pre-existing combat maneuvers that are already in IL-2 Great Battles but were never used by 1C.

 

Stonehouse's AI Gunnery Mod...

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/78388-ai-gunnery-mod/

 

Cheers! 

 

Edited February 16 by KodiakJac