AI Skill Settings

[paul_leonard]

I want to start this long post by quoting in its entirety the seminal 2012 post by Heinkill in his blog.  The post is still available here: https://bobgamehub.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-settings-in-cliffs-of-dover.html

 

Incredibly there has been little or no published work since on the AI behaviour in-game since.  Perhaps its time to see if improvements can be made without having to wait for the programmers to see what can be done in code. I will cover the AI settings that are in the mission (.mis) file and show you how to edit that file so that you can change any mission file to get the kind of AI behaviour you want, right now.

 

Without further ado, the post:

“You spend time getting a Cliffs of Dover offline mission just right, jump in the cockpit, fly into battle, and then the enemy aircraft start doing stupid barrel rolls, defying gravity or coming at you with bombers that think they are fighters. Groan. Don't despair! You can actually do something to make the experience a little better, though it has to be said the AI in Cliffs of Dover is well porked, so you will never be able to totally eradicate the sillyness. Here's a guide to make it happen less though.

 

Load your mission in the Full Mission Builder. 
Right click on the aircraft flight you want to work with, and choose PROPERTIES.

On the GROUP PROPERTIES menu you will see one for the whole flight which is called SKILL. In the dropdown list for the entire flight/group, set this to VETERAN (not ACE).
Click on the '...' (dot dot dot) button to the right of this dropdown list. This will give you a set of individual fields you can play with. These features aren't documented anywhere, so after much trial and error I will tell you how I set them to get the best results.

 

BASIC FLYING: Leave this where it is at veteran setting. I have seen no visible difference in setting it higher.

 

ADVANCED FLYING: move this back a notch or two to AVERAGE, which seems to help reduce the F16 snap roll behaviour.

 

AWARENESS: increase this 'situational awareness' slider to max. This gives the AI a chance to realise you are sneaking up behind them, and stops them suddenly flipping into level flight in the middle of a dogfight just because they can't 'see' you anymore.

 

AERIAL GUNNERY: increase to max. This eliminates the problem that on lower settings the AI pilots are crap at deflection shooting, and also burn all their ammo in long hosepipe bursts. At max setting the AI is not only a better shot, but doesn't waste ammo so badly. Beware though: this setting also affects bomb accuracy ( which is good) and bomber gunner accuracy ( which is bad). So with bombers, it is a good idea to go to the individual plane tabs in the PROPERTIES screen and set only one or two of them to gunnery max, and leave the others as veteran or average. Otherwise as a fighter you risk getting slaughtered by deadeye gunners.

 

TACTICS: I leave this at veteran. I have not been able to identify what impact this slider has, though other players believe it can also reduce barrel rolls to move this slider to the left.

 

VISION: increase to max. This increases the 'bubble' around the aircraft which allows the AI pilots to detect other aircraft. If you don't max it out, they can just fly past each other, especially if they are at different altitudes.

 

BRAVERY: Set to max. This seems to determine the damage level at which enemy aircraft will cut and run, either at the flight level (x out of x aircraft destroyed) or individual level (x% damage). The lower you set it, the more likely they will bug out. Very important for bombers because at lower settings a couple of flak hits to a couple of aircraft will send the whole raid running for home.

 

DISCIPLINE: This setting affects how likely a unit is to follow its assigned orders or attack its assigned target. For fighters, leave this at standard VETERAN setting or even AVERAGE. If you set it to max for fighters, you will get situations where fighters assigned to attack bombers, will ignore the group of fighters coming straight at them, and get slaughtered, because they have been assigned to attack bombers. Also, at higher settings it seems to affect the likelihood the WINGMAN will just stupidly follow his leader around, rather than getting into the fight. Obviously though in some mission designs, you do want your Hurricanes to go for the bombers and your Spitfires to go for the fighters, so it can be useful. But usually setting it too high, leads to fighters unrealistically ignoring enemy aircraft.

For bombers however, or dive/fighter bombers with specific ground targets, I set this to maximum. This increases the chances the bomber or dive/fighter bomber will go for the assigned ground target. At lower settings they can get 'distracted' by other targets that are near the waypoint and attack these instead.

As I mentioned, these features aren't documented and reflect only my personal experience from designing hundreds of missions. Others may have their own personal preferences, but it is at least valuable to know these options exist, and you can sharpen up some of the dumber AI behaviour!
On a final note, the skill setting is also relevant for SHIPS. If you set it to ace for warships, they are deadeye shots at maximum range, for both their large bore guns, and their AAA and you will get slaughtered flying over a minensuchboot, even in a fighter. Set warships to AVERAGE or lower.”

 

endquote.
 
The Quick Mission Builder does not allow you, the player, to set the skill levels for each AI aircraft, rather it seems to randomly assign a different skill level for each aircraft.  The skill levels correspond to the Rookie, Average, Veteran and Ace default settings available in the Full Mission Builder.  Specifically, the settings are as follows along with proposed settings that align with Heinkill’s recommendations:

Default    Basic Flying    Advanced Flying    Awareness    Aerial Gunnery    Tactics    Vision    Bravery    Discipline
Rookie            0.79                     0.26                 0.26                    0.16                 0.16        0.26       0.37            0.26
Average         0.84                     0.53                 0.53                    0.37                0.37        0.53       0.53            0.53
Veteran          1.00                      0.74                 0.84                   0.63                0.84        0.84       0.74            0.74
Ace                1.00                      0.95                 0.95                   0.84                0.84        0.95       0.89            0.89
                                
Heinkill                                
Fighter          1.00                      0.55                  1.00                    1.00                 0.85        1.00       1.00             0.55
Bomber        1.00                       0.55                 1.00                    0.55                 0.85        1.00       1.00             1.00

FTC_Rostic                                
Fighter         1.00                       0.65                 1.00                    1.00                  0.80       1.00       1.00              0.65
Bomber       1.00                       0.00                 1.00                    0.65                  0.80       1.00       1.00              1.00

 

A note on the skill sliders in the Full Mission Builder.  They look like they are set at 5% intervals.  But moving them around results in intermediate values like 0.63 or 0.74.  No idea why but I prefer to go in and edit the MIS files once I’m done and round to nearest 5.

 

Let’s take a look at each default setting:

 

The Rookie
Very low awareness and vision means he isn’t going to see you when you approach him.  The Drone. Very low advanced flying means he is not going to be able to cope with battling you or landing a damaged aircraft.  So, crash on landing.  Extremely low Aerial Gunnery means he is going to waste his ammo with poor shots.  Out of ammo, he is going to head home before you know it.  Below average Bravery means he is either not going to attack at all, but again means he is going to try and disengage at the first opportunity.  Low Discipline means anything is going to happen, maybe not what you had hoped.  What good is a Rookie for?  There were arguably a lot of them in the real Battle of Britain.  They were usually meat for more seasoned pilots but hardly sporting.  A mission builder could use this setting as a target for a bounce.  I suppose that might be fun once.

 

The Average Pilot
Not enough improvement over the Rookie.  Same bad behaviours, no visible positive behaviour.  Like the Rookie, their next waypoint marker on the in-game map will switch to the landing waypoint very quickly.  Home for tea.

 

The Veteran
This guy is getting better.  Perhaps on the border of being able to execute those annoying aerobatic snap rolls.  (Somewhere I read that Hans-Joachim Marseilles used this technique in combat, among several other innovative maneuvers and that he taught this one to many of his peers.  So maybe the original programmers attempted to emulate this… with a vengeance).  Upping Advanced Flying does make the AI pilot much more competent, and they will fight in the vertical.  Heinkill recommended a bit lower of a setting, but this might be a setting that more experimentation would benefit from.  Overall, this might be a good setting for some practice if the Ace or Heinkill settings are putting you to the test.  

 

The Ace Experten
This guy is going to put those annoying aerobatic skills to use.  Snap rolls all over the place.  All of the other skills are pretty good.  He will stay and fight, and spot you before you bounce him.  The high Discipline skill has its drawbacks though.  If this guy is your wingman, then you are fighting alone.  He will glue himself to your tail and follow you like a puppy, everywhere you go…. And that is all he will do.  He will never fire a shot at any enemy aircraft.  

 

Heinkill’s Fighter
This guy will fight well, no excessive aerobatics, see you and respond aggressively.  This setting will result in a more lethal and prolonged dogfight.  They will only break off when something else like low/no ammo or low/no fuel.  I have seen squadrons enter a dogfight, disengage, and resume following their waypoint route and attacking another adversary.  I’ve seen them disengage, then get chased by an enemy aircraft and turn back and fight instead of droning home.  I’ll have more to say on droning home below.  On the flip side, this highly aggressive fighter means it’s a duel to the death.  This was not realistic.  But this is an air combat simulator, and we play it for the air combat, so just recognize the lethality for what it is. What I have noticed is that this setting is still not a great dogfighter at low altitude, often hitting ground/water when uninjured/undamaged (how do I know this?  I use Sleepy_Fly’s Tacview utility and script and watch missions repeatedly.  See link: https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38010&highlight=tacview

 

Heinkill’s Bomber
I’m still on the fence with this one.  This setting makes Luftwaffe bombers fly like the Eight Air Force, totally unwavering until shot down out of the formation.  I must admit having watched the Battle of Britain movie too many times and seeing those Heinkel formations split up with only the slightest provocation.  That seems more realistic to me.  I’ve also read lots of non-fiction works that describe the Luftwaffe bombers aborting and jettisoning bombs when going farther was clearly suicide.  So I think there is room to increase the Advanced Flying skills setting.

 

The Aerial Gunnery setting is a bit of a kludge.  It makes the bombardier far less effective (boo!) but also does the same for the aerial gunner (yay!).  A higher Aerial Gunner setting means the aerial gunners, like the ship gunners, are ruthlessly accurate.  Then again, we should all be discouraged from the plain old #1 attack.  There is a workaround in the Full Mission Builder.  You can set the AI skills for each aircrew member, but seemingly only one aircraft at a time.  So, you can have an aircraft with a Heinkill Bomber pilot, a Heinkill Fighter bombardier, and a Rookie gunner.   In the Mission Objects Properties Box, click on the tab for say aircraft #1.  To the right of the Player checkbox there is a box labeled Crew. Click on that and another pop-up menu will appear with new tabs for Pilot, Bombardier and Gunner.  There is a drop-down list for the default Skills, or you can click on the little … box and adjust the sliders to achieve the Heinkill settings. And voila, different skills for different crew.

 

I think there is also room for some general experimentation here as a I think dive bombers (the Ju-87 and particularly the Ju-88) need some Advanced Flying skills.  

 

FTC_Rostic has recently weighed in with his settings which are slightly different from Heinkill’s.  Given my observations about the pros and cons of Heinkill’s settings, and watching missions play themselves out, I generally prefer to use FTC_Rostic’s recommendations.

 

HOW TO EDIT THE MISSION FILES DIRECTLY TO CHANGE THE AI SKILLS SETTINGS

You don’t have to tackle learning the Full Mission Builder to muck with the AI settings, you can do it directly.  Better yet, doing it directly allows you to make changes to missions you have already made in the Quick Mission Builder, even do them in bulk if you are so inclined.

 

Quick Missions you may have saved are stored in the following folder:
C:\...\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\mission\quick
Single Missions you may have changed and saved are stored in the following folder:
C:\...\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\missions\Single

 

Note that there is a Mission folder for Quick Mission files and a Missions (plural) folder for Single Mission files.

 

There are generally three types of files in these folders.  Briefing files, jpg image files, and MIS files.  We are looking for the MIS files with a file extension of “.mis”.

 

Start with launching File Explorer and navigating to the correct folder. To edit a MIS file, right click on any file with the .mis file extension.  From the pop-up menu choose Open With and you should see Notepad as one of the text editor choices.  Choose Notepad and open the file.  There are a bunch of sections from [PARTS], [MAIN], [Globalwind_#], [splines], [AirGroups] and then what we are looking for are the parameters for each AirGroup.  For each AirGroup you will see one or more lines starting with Skill#.  The numbers for each aircraft skill correspond to the numbers in our table above, except that 1.00 is displayed as 1.  If you only see a line starting with Skill then that means the AI settings will be applied to all aircraft in the AirGroup.

 

Let’s say we want all the AI aircraft to be set with Heinkill’s Fighter setting.  Then replace all of the Skill# lines with one line Skill. For fun, we are also going to make all of the aircraft DISPLAY 100% wear and tear.

 

For example we can edit this flight of six Hurricanes:

 

Before:
[BoB_RAF_F_302_PL_Early.01]
  Flight0 C F G U N B
  Class Aircraft.HurricaneMkI
  CallSign 15
  Fuel 70
  Weapons 1
  Skill0 0.84 0.53 0.53 0.37 0.37 0.53 0.53 0.53
  Skill1 0.84 0.53 0.53 0.37 0.37 0.53 0.53 0.53
  Skill2 0.79 0.26 0.26 0.16 0.16 0.26 0.37 0.26
  Skill3 1 0.74 0.84 0.63 0.84 0.84 0.74 0.74
  Skill4 0.84 0.53 0.53 0.37 0.37 0.53 0.53 0.53
  Skill5 0.79 0.26 0.26 0.16 0.16 0.26 0.37 0.26
  Aging0 37
  Aging2 73
  Aging5 100
  Briefing 2

 

After:
[BoB_RAF_F_302_PL_Early.01]
  Flight0 C F G U N B
  Class Aircraft.HurricaneMkI
  CallSign 15
  Fuel 70
  Weapons 1
  Skill 1 0.65 1 1 0.80 1 1 0.65
  Aging 100
  Briefing 2
 
Repeat for any more AirGroups.  Save and go back and load the newly saved mission from the game menus and you should be flying against a very different AI opponent.

 

For the more advanced player, if you wanted to manage the aircrew skills, you could ADD the following lines to that AirGroup section: Pilot/Bombardier/Gunner so the Gunnery Skill is 0 for pilot, 1 for Bombardier and say 0.50 for Gunner.  I do think you will have to do sets of this for each aircraft.

  Person0_0 0 1 0.00 1 0.00 0.80 1 1 1
  Person0_1 1 1 0.00 1 1 0.80 1 1 1
  Person0_2 2 1 0.00 1 0.50 0.80 1 1 1

 

If you want to do this kind of thing for a whole bunch of missions then you will have to acquire the freeware, yes freeware, Notepad++. This software really deserves the ++ moniker.  It is as easy to use as Notepad, just a bit more intimidating the first time you load it as there a many more options.  But with this program you can open many files at once, SEARCH for a specific string like “0.84 0.53 0.53 0.37 0.37 0.53 0.53 0.53” and REPLACE it with say “1 0.65 1 1 0.80 1 1 0.65” for ALL OPEN DOCUMENTS.  Repeat for each of the other default strings and in a few minutes, you will have upgraded the AI in all your saved missions!  Simply then choose the SAVE ALL option and then the CLOSE ALL option, and you’re done.

 

More on Drones
There remains one more case where your AI aircraft will drone home.  During any mission eventually the Return to Base algorithm will kick in.  When that happens, the AI will skip all remaining intermediate waypoints and head for the Landing waypoint.  It’s been a common assumption, because it was in the original manual, that the Landing waypoint should be 500m and 300kph.  So… when the AI aircraft bugs out, it takes the Landing waypoint info and trundles off at 500m doing 300kph.  Sitting duck.  I have not completely assessed the limits of the Landing algorithm, but I can get an Me-109 to land from 1000m at 450kph (more than that and it will likely crash or overshoot the runway).  But bugging out at 450kph looks a lot more realistic than 300kph, and harder to catch.

 

While you are in mucking about in the MIS file, a few lines below where you were, you will see a waypoint section with a line that will look something like this:

LANDING 224947.79 229018.35 500.00 300.00 /Formation VIC3 /Spacing NEAR

 

The long numbers are the latitude/longitude of the airfield, the 500.00 is clearly the landing altitude and the 300.00 is the landing speed. As you can also see, there are options, at least for this example, for the formation that your squadron will take at landing.  I haven’t explored this one enough yet, but that “/Spacing NEAR” option seems suspiciously like the cause of a lot of those complaints about wingmen augering into the ground around you while you land.

 

Change the line to:
LANDING 224947.79 229018.35 500.00 400.00
And we might have killed two birds with one stone.

 

Weird Formation Behaviour
I see the AI do some weird things while flying in formation with me, climbing and looping around me.  Some of that is due to the poor settings we have already covered, some of it I’m convinced is the result of my flying behaviour, especially when I am the flight lead.  

A mission designer sets waypoints for the AI to travel, and things they are to do at, or between the waypoints.  The most common one being Normal Flight.  Parameters for Normal Flight include Altitude (metres) and Airspeed (Indicated Air Speed, not True Speed, in kph).  This is like setting speed control in your car.  The AI wants to fly at say 2000m at 300kph IAS.  So, they will fly that specific altitude and speed… unless they are following you.  If you slow down, depending on your Discipline setting, they will need to slow down to stay behind you.  Although the AI seems to know how to adjust throttle to maintain steady flight (I’ve watched it do so while on autopilot), They have no idea how to cope with you, the flight lead.  So, they start doing climbs and rolls and maybe loops to bleed speed to stay behind you.  All I can say, is pay attention to the mission briefing and if it tells you what to do regarding altitude and speed, do it.  Otherwise, well, enjoy the show.

 

Bombers exhibit the same behaviour in many cases after they drop their bombs.  There are many cases where the RTB routine kicks in and they jump to the Landing waypoint setting.  In any event, they will start exhibiting the crazy and violent maneuvers to try and reconcile their current typically much higher position in the air, to where the Landing waypoint wants them, like now.  In most cases, the AI tries to achieve the next waypoints altitude and speed as quickly as possible after passing the last waypoint.  Now they are trying to rapidly lose altitude and possible speed (there is a difference between IAS and TAS that means 300kph at 5000m is a very different speed than 300kph at 500m).  The improved Heinkill Bomber settings do not completely cure this behaviour, so more work to do here.

 

I hope the above enables many of you to make changes to your single player missions now, without having to wait for enhancements to the Quick Mission Builder, or programming changes to the core game.  It’s a shame that Heinkill’s initial work was not built upon significantly in the intervening years.  There has never been any documentation available on the AI, and I suspect that if there was, it was lost.  There has been recent work done to address the old AI Skills settings and move them closer to Heinkill’s/FTC_Rostic’s settings for all of the existing Team Fusion single player quick , single and campaign missions.  They should become available once the VR/Visual Update is released.  

 

As a community we may wish to take the opportunity to define what any new default AI skill settings should be.  I think there is a place for the different skill settings, but there will have to be a lot of experimenting to make them ideal.
 

[paul_leonard]

So at the request of Dagwoodyt, I have created a set of 1v1 missions comparing the different AI settings and how they behave.  I took the 3v3 mission (included with my AI settings) that I explained how to quickly create in this thread:

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/91279-tutorial-how-to-build-a-better-quick-mission-in-the-full-mission-builder-in-eight-easy-steps/#comment-1350713

 

and cut it back to a 1v1.  The only difference between each of the 1v1 missions is the AI setting.  You fly as the Spitfire against a Me-109 E-4.  I have included a default setting Rookie (so sad, and drone mode as he runs away because he is a chickens**t) to Average (he zoom climbs at the merge [for those of you old enough, the Zero's in Dynamix's Aces of the Pacific]), the Veteran (meh), the Ace (e'sta okay), to my custom settings above (the only Me-109 that can consistently shoot down you, the Spitfire (with the same AI settings, on autopilot).  Once he kills you, he doesn't just head home, he has enough Discipline to go back and finish all of the mission waypoints, because hey, he's a bad**s. But... after he consistently shoots you down he flies back to Calais-Marck and lands on the short runway and crashes at too high a landing speed.  I didn't say everything was perfect (runway choice is not an AI function, it is a wind direction function set by me the mission designer.  Fixable.).

 

The thing is the Quick mission builder provides you with a semi-random set of aircraft to fly against based on the default AI settings.  So very often you the player are flying against a Rookie.  Hence the drone mode.  Most of the time you are combating chicken through meh.

 

Fly them and tell me what you think.

 

 

 

MyFirstFMB - 1v1.zip

Oops.  Here is a BoB only compatible version as well.

MyFirstFMB - 1v1 - BoB Only Compatible.zip

[Blitzen]

( Originally posted over at ATAG:)

I gave the two 3x3 missions a try last night. One as a Spitfire pilot the the other as a 109 Flieger. I think after this very brief test that I believe AI behavior to be better- so success ,BUT I have to say tryin to catch a 109 on the run is damn difficult if not impossible, and except in turning contest ( which AI did not succumb to the 109 seems to hold all the cards ( esp the Bf-109F4! .) I might add that it has been my personal obversation that the worst AI behavior seems to occur in the twins, esp the Blenheims.They scatter a fly around like crazed crows. Its simply unbelievable and I mean unbelievable. German bombers aren't quite so bad, but weird flight behavior even affects planes like the Sutherland as well.

[paul_leonard]

Thanks for investing the time.  When you say the E-4's were difficult to catch, was that on the run back to base?  If yes, that is one of my goals of eliminating the slow drone mode.

 

The Blenheim's are like herding cats.  I can design this behaviour mostly out.  The most common cause is that there are often three waypoints designed into a mission.  Start at altitude, bomb at altitude and land at 500m/300kph.  The way waypoints work is that the AI aircraft attempts to get to the next waypoint altitude/speed as quickly as possible after the last waypoint.  So if say you had the bombing waypoint at 2500m and 300kph, then the Blenheim wants to get down to 500m as quickly as possible.  But at 300kph it is already at the maximum speed defined by the Landing waypoint.  Losing altitude increases speed but if it is already at the next waypoint speed then it can't accelerate.  So instead they start doing all kinds of crazy antics to scrub altitude while maintaining same speed (think of waypoint speeds as like old fixed speed cruise control where you had to slam on the brakes as you approached a slower vehicle).  Worse, the bloody plane is trying to execute a 180 degree turn in formation.  So collision avoidance routines start kicking in.  See where I'm going.  

 

I can massage a lot of this out by creating follow on waypoints at similar altitude to bomb run (maybe even just a titch higher) allowing for the formation to get turned and headed home without incident.  Then I can set a waypoint to slow them down to say 200kph.  Then set a series of interpolated waypoints where the AI Blenheim's will execute a series of gradual altitude drops, usually not more than about 400-500m at a time, slowly building speed back to 300kph.  There is actually a routine in the FMB that allows for any number of interpolating waypoints with the click of a button.  Handy.

 

So, this doesn't fix any AI issue per se, but it does allow me to manage the AI and get it to at least cooperate with me, and not scare the bejesus out of you.  This is also why I keep harping about so many of the community's AI behaviour frustrations are based on mission design.  Certainly by no means all, but some, and possibly some of the most egregious.

[Dagwoodyt]

5 hours ago, Blitzen said:

I think after this very brief test that I believe AI behavior to be better- so success ,BUT I have to say tryin to catch a 109 on the run is damn difficult if not impossible, and except in turning contest ( which AI did not succumb to the 109 seems to hold all the cards ( esp the Bf-109F4! .)

I cannot keep pace with the 109E4 when flying the Spitfire 1A 100 octane. Once the 109 decides to leave Dodge at 500m/450kph. Unless damaged, does not seem like the AI's performance degrades over time whereas my Spitfire cannot seem to reach higher boost levels as pursuit time passes. If that is indeed what is happening there needs to be a way to make everyone aware. In this mission I am struggling to keep Spitfire's airspeed at 270mph once the AI disengages:

 

Spit 1A v 109E4No Tracer 08182025.zip  Note: my error here is that the Spitfire is a 1A, but not the 100 octane. That's why the boost cutout wasn't working. In the 100 octane version it is indeed possible to catch an E4.😉

 

Spit 1A 100 Oct v 109E4No Tracer 08192025.zip

Edited August 19 by Dagwoodyt
error

[Mistralfred901]

In 1v1 in a Spitfire, I can't keep up with the 109 climbing at high speed. If I follow it, it keeps climbing! I have to stop following it by changing course, and then the 109 turns back towards me to attack me, and then climbs again, etc...
The battles are better with multiple aircraft. I did one with 3 Spitfires vs. 2 Bf-109s using paul_leonard's settings, and I have to admit it's better!

Edited August 19 by Mistralfred901

[Blitzen]

To answer your first question: Yes the109's were outward bound.

As to my observation observing bomber ( and yes occasionally fighter,) formations :I've noticed most of these erratic formation breaking maneuvers during my attacks on their 6 o'clock positions. Sometimes they do keep in some sort formation, but often they completely forget whatever they learned in flight school...( I'll bet there are some very severe air sickness cases in those aircraft, but I do have to say they have some talented gunners who can really shoot in an upside down diving tight turn...)

Below - one that didn't get away...

Edited August 19 by Blitzen

[paul_leonard]

On 8/19/2025 at 1:34 PM, Mistralfred901 said:

In 1v1 in a Spitfire, I can't keep up with the 109 climbing at high speed. If I follow it, it keeps climbing! I have to stop following it by changing course, and then the 109 turns back towards me to attack me, and then climbs again, etc...
The battles are better with multiple aircraft. I did one with 3 Spitfires vs. 2 Bf-109s using paul_leonard's settings, and I have to admit it's better!

Music to my ears!  Without getting into the performance tables, my understanding is that the Me-109 could basically outclimb and out dive the Spitfire and it was an ongoing debate about whether one or the other had the better turn performance.  The 1v1 really does expose the worst of the AI's flaws.  More aircraft all flying AI except for you the single player, makes for a very different experience.  There the experience can be more marred, in my opinion, by the player being easily able to observe oddball behaviours.  I believe these settings help curb those tendencies and then enhance your experience.  

 

Please keep testing with what I provided.  I'm also happy to create custom missions for the community to help refine.

[Blitzen]

5 minutes ago, paul_leonard said:

Music to my ears!  Without getting into the performance tables, my understanding is that the Me-109 could basically outclimb and out dive the Spitfire and it was an ongoing debate about whether one or the other had the better turn performance.  The 1v1 really does expose the worst of the AI's flaws.  More aircraft all flying AI except for you the single player, makes for a very different experience.  There the experience can be more marred, in my opinion, by the player being easily able to observe oddball behaviours.  I believe these settings help curb those tendencies and then enhance your experience.  

 

Please keep testing with what I provided.  I'm also happy to create custom missions for the community to help refine.

It sure seems so esp in the last test mission posted...

[paul_leonard]

On 8/19/2025 at 1:25 PM, Dagwoodyt said:

I cannot keep pace with the 109E4 when flying the Spitfire 1A 100 octane. Once the 109 decides to leave Dodge at 500m/450kph. Unless damaged, does not seem like the AI's performance degrades over time whereas my Spitfire cannot seem to reach higher boost levels as pursuit time passes. If that is indeed what is happening there needs to be a way to make everyone aware. In this mission I am struggling to keep Spitfire's airspeed at 270mph once the AI disengages:

 

Spit 1A v 109E4No Tracer 08182025.zip  Note: my error here is that the Spitfire is a 1A, but not the 100 octane. That's why the boost cutout wasn't working. In the 100 octane version it is indeed possible to catch an E4.😉

 

Spit 1A 100 Oct v 109E4No Tracer 08192025.zip 1012 B · 0 downloads

Good news.  I will check out your mission tonight.  I do want to emphasize that setting the speed higher doesn't cure the drone behaviour, it just masks it in a way that doesn't make it obvious, and thus feels different.  I'm still testing for the maximum speed I can have AI aircraft land at, and not have them crash when they overrun the runway, which they can do.  It would be equally frustrating for a player to invest time themselves heading back to base and finding the airfield littered with crashed, and crashing, aircraft.  

 

In other missions I am building have seen many instances where aircraft heading back across the Channel (presumably in drone mode) have had enemy aircraft catch them and fire upon them.  Then with these AI settings will turn and defend themselves.  What I want to do it maybe take your mission and add a trigger point that spawns say another Spitfire along the route home, after they have disengaged the first time.  Will the Me-109 respond? I'm starting to think there is another variable controlling the RTB routine, and that that might be triggered if the AI can no longer see you, ie the Awareness and Vision setting limits are reached.  While I have those set to 1 (so arguably the largest visual bubble), the existing default settings are much lower for Rookie, Average and maybe even Veteran in the current build of the sim.

On 8/19/2025 at 2:07 PM, Blitzen said:

To answer your first question: Yes the109's were outward bound.

As to my observation observing bomber ( and yes occasionally fighter,) formations :I've noticed most of these erratic formation breaking maneuvers during my attacks on their 6 o'clock positions. Sometimes they do keep in some sort formation, but often they completely forget whatever they learned in flight school...( I'll bet there are some very severe air sickness cases in those aircraft, but I do have to say they have some talented gunners who can really shoot in an upside down diving tight turn...)

Below - one that didn't get away...

 

 

 

If possible, could you post a mission here that you readily observe the problem.  Then I can try and tweak it by using the Bomber settings, which emphasize Basic Flying and suppress entirely advanced flying.

 

Your pictures are interesting showing a Me-110 vs a Blenheim, because in some ways the Blenheim and Me-110 are not so different in roles, except the way they came at it.  The Me-110 started as a fighter and then had modification to make it a fighter-bomber.  The Blenheim started as a bomber and had conversions to make it a fighter.  So the Blenheim is capable of flying in such a way to be either/or, depending on circumstance, but again the default skill settings don't account for that.

Edited August 20 by paul_leonard

[paul_leonard]

Fun side note... well at least for me.  I've been trying to figure out how to make a He115 with no defensive operating weapons.  Dagwoodyt's mission above has specific rounds for tracers.  So I went and looked at what he had set up and found out that there is an option for the default weapon set of the Spitfire to be "Empty"!  Which equals in the mission file "Weapons 0".  Excellent.  Thank you leading me in this direction.

 

So why do I want no weapons?  Because there are several historical shoot downs where the RAF went after the Seenotdienst Air Sea Rescue Service set up by the Luftwaffe.  It was kind of controversial, although specifically authorized by Churchill. and I have created such missions.  Now I know how to ensure that the Luftwaffe SAR aircraft do not shoot back.  Icky but cool.