Super AI
 

Luthier & Co,

First, thanks for all the hard work in getting this sim to the level it's currently at, and continuing to press on. It's nice being able to cruise around on my humble system and enjoy what the team has done thus far. However, there seem to be some outstanding issues that need addressed. For offliners like myself, it's the AI that presents an issue.

Before the latest patch, it was AI aircraft that were able to perform to the fullest with dropped landing gear, missing control surfaces, fires, large holes, leaking fluids, etc. I know I'm not the only one who's frustrated by this, especially when that heavily damaged AI is able to outmaneuver the player's undamaged and well-managed aircraft at nearly every turn. There's also the unfair boost that the AI seemed to possess. Even bombers were able to outrun & outfly a nimble fighter.

It seems that with the latest patch, the AI opponents have become increasingly superhuman while exhibiting the previous issues. Roll rates on the AI aircraft are insane. It's what I'd expect from a more modern fighter jet, but not from a WWII era prop aircraft - especially since it's seemingly impossible for the player to perform the same maneuvers without serious consequences. Other things I've noted from the AI as of the recent patch:

Problem Notes:

-Consistently climbs and/or performs multiple rolls without energy loss.
-Not subjected to blackouts.
-No evidence of overheating.
-Incredible roll rate at exceedingly high dive speeds.
-Sometimes completely unresponsive even to a long burst of gunfire into direct 6.
-Able to maneuver with dropped gear, missing surfaces, large holes, etc. as though they were undamaged. (Perhaps a case of damage model effects visibly showing, but not working in practice?)
-While aircraft fires work as advertised and damages the aircraft, the AI seems to not notice even large fires and will fight on.
-Same with billowing smoke.
-Fluids seem finite, as I've watched leaking fluids "run out". But AI aircraft are seemingly unaffected in this patch. (Watched AI engines seize up several times in earlier versions)
-Cr.42 continued to fly on after losing entire top wing surface (Old screenshot, likely first beta patch. Have not since been able to reproduce the same damage. All settings on sans CEM & had enabled icons at that time.)

Positive Notes:

-During a QMB engagement (current patch) with a Cr.42, my incendiary rounds managed to light his lower wing on fire. The pilot bailed after leveling out his aircraft.
-Same engagement, witnessed a Cr.42 maneuver too hard and stall. Spiraled 90 degrees nose-down into the channel.

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That's just what I can think of directly off the top of my head. I'm sure that others will continue the list, as will I as more things come to mind.

While I know your plates are full as it is, I hope you're working on the AI issues so that the offliners are able to fully enjoy the sim as well.

Thanks for reading.

Very much the old AI routines from IL2.

I wonder if the 109 will spiral climb to sub orbital altitude, then pull it's nose almost straight up and accelerate as well?

Since online is pretty much a non starter I have been forced to play offline much more than normal. I don't see how you guys live with those AI as your only opponents.

It's awful.

Supporting this, I've seen some truly outrageous flying by the AI, in particular the roll rate.

Agree 100 percent. The AI is on steroids. It would be great to have a slider or somthing to lower thier skill level.

There is in the FMB. I haven't actually seen too much of a difference, but I'm in the process of testing out various AI slider settings within FMB. If there's any sort of a difference, I'll be sure and share the news.

I want to believe the AI doesn't cheat. Let the devs post up a track showing a human in a Spitfire at 24,000 feet dog-fighting some 109's to put all these allegations to rest once and for all. Without air-start.

Definitely a +1...

It seems to me the damage is way under-done as far as physical effects on opponent aircraft. I can maybe understand being able to pump some extra rounds in a fuselage, but when you unload your whole arsenal on the engines and it still keeps on chugging along. Seems a bit wacky.

+1 I had an He-111 roll quicker than my Spitfire. I was just in a fight in a 109 against a Hurricane and the AI plane's flaps were deploying and retracting as quickly as the ailerons and elevator were moving. The Hurricane also seemed to have an awesome amount of thrust at certain points and leave me in the dust. And all the AI fighters do the old IL-2 barrel roll in a downward spiral.

Sounds like they did go with the IL2 ai model after all, in which case this arcade rubbish is headed for the dustbin. I got sick and tired of this absurd notion of boosting ai performance to cover deficient ai routines in the earlier versions of the series.

There really is no good reason for it, we all know and accept the ai will never be as good as a competent human pilot, which is why players turn to multiplayer when they want that level of challenge. However, single player offers a more structured environment in which to play through specific scenarios, mimicking situations that occurred at the time, which generally would not work well in multiplayer.

Moreover, the number of aircraft involved in the typical single player melee, negate many ai deficiencies through weight of numbers, and the ever changing situation in a three dimensional environment, removing any need for this asinine boosting of performance. The approach of artificially boosting performance and removing physical restrictions from the ai, results in nothing but a farce, and combat situations that never happened in reality, destroying any notion that this title can be considered a simulation of the period's air war.

Agreed. It's the same old shitty barrel rolling über AI from Il2...even more über - in regards of cheating physics. Not so good in regards of flying abilities.

I've got to agree with your very well thought out and respectful post, leadgtr81 - especially in regards to the a.i. roll rate - it really is something to behold!

I know they have a their hands full for the time being, I just really hope that it can be sorted out in the future.

I spent many hours hacking and tweaking the AI in IL2 to mixed success. (I came up with the Cert AI mod).

This reeks of the same extremely simple crap they had back then, that was almost unsalvageable. I mean, I made it different, and probably better, at least more random, but it was by no means quality AI, it was poor from the ground up.

The AI in IL2 had no CEM. It had its own simplified flight model that ignored this.
The AI in IL2 had damage models that were stronger or weaker than the player based on skill level (simple multiplier, 50% stronger on ace, 25% on veteran, IIRC).
The AI in IL2 had no concept of a cockpit, perma-wonder woman.
The AI in IL2 had no concept of clouds.
The AI in IL2 knew that you were there the instant that you came within a certain range (5kmish, IIRC)
The AI in IL2 had a number of maneuvers to call upon, but in its stock form it just did the barrel roll 95% of the time.

There were also a bunch of random unfinished pieces of AI code in there based around bomber attacks, BnZ aircraft etc. They appeared to have been discarded, or maybe from an earlier build and no longer used? I used 4.08 as my base.

Anyway, I thought I would shed some light on the old IL2 AI for those curious. I really hope that they rectified at least some of those problems.

More maneuvers are easy enough to add, not seeing in clouds is doable, adding semi-randomized successful bounces based on skill was easy enough, but if it's still using a simplified FM and has no cockpit, it will probably be mostly unsalveagable as a proper AI again.

The developers said in multiple interviews that the AI were much improved. They said the AI could no longer see through clouds, they actaully can see through clouds. Is this an oversight or an outright lie?

Instead we get the old IL2 AI. You can sneak up on them a bit better but watching them cheat is a real deal breaker for an offline exclusive player. They were pretty bad pre-patch, now they are worse. I think the devs just simply cannot do decent AI, we will have to learn to live with this.

This was my #1 complaint when I first got into '46. I have come to love the game (online and off) but when I first began to realize that the AI was "cheating" and how deeply it affected the simulation it gave me a very disappointing feeling that the sim was just... broken.

I've read around quite a bit and from some the consensus seems to be that if you can't outrun, chase down, or outmaneuver the AI aircraft, then you just don't understand CEM enough, or that they're too easy to defeat as it is so nobody should complain that they act as if they have super-powers.

I've come to realize just how great of a sim '46 is. The better I get at shooting, the more hits I score and the more aircraft I down in a given dogfight, but sometimes it can be very distracting that setting the enemy to a higher skill level often seems to be less like "Ace" and more like "Rolls More Often". Still a blast, just distracting.

The problem with giving the computer "cheap" behaviors in response to a given situation is that those behaviors become repetitive and predictable. Most of us know that when you roll up on the six of an AI aircraft and hit your convergence distance, the enemy is always going to start rolling around for dear life, sometimes followed by settling into a long slow turn (this is where they usually get shot down) or buzzing away in a straight line without overheating (this is where the wise make a simple 90 degree right turn which is apparently so infuriating to the enemy that he must immediately change his plan to escape death and return to the battle).

Given enough time I might learn to outfight the Millenium Falcon in a Spit, but I'd rather just have the AI pilots behave within the realm of reality, rather than overcoming their miracle planes by sheer skill. The AI should have to fight with all of the same aircraft and physical limitations as the player (blackouts and overheats, etc.), and there should always be the possibility of pilot error, ineptitude and lack of piloting skill (of various degrees).

So... it's frustrating to see this behavior has found it's way into CoD. It's not what any of us had hoped for, but that's the way it is. Every game has a release date, this one came (for whatever reason) at a time when not everything was as perfect as it might have been given unlimited time and resources. I'm not giving up or complaining about a game I don't even own yet (I consider it a definite purchase, but I'm waiting to see improvement), just giving my perspective. AI is a make-it-or-break-it feature, and it's one of the hardest to do right, but it can be done.

If someone was counting votes, my vote would go to making legitimate AI a priority.

Well, as they are in the middle of a crazy code optimization Marathon in no time, I'm pretty sure a lot of the tweaks have been seeing very little testing. Sure they have been doing stuff with the AI code too - and it's nothing you can write automated tests for with any precision at least. It takes beta testing so keep good reports coming about bugs and instructions about how to reproduce them!

I'm sure a lot of these bugs where not there two weeks ago ;)

After having hard time keeping in the tail of a Sunderland in my 109 I have to +1 this thread. The sunderlands and other big boys throw aerobatic moves that I haven't even seen before.

The AI at the moment is a joke. The frustrating part is that I spend most of my time with quick single player missions trying to master the CEM in combat and the new gunnery and I have to fly against these UFOs. But I guess if I can learn to down these supermen dropping real people in multiplayer will be a walk in the park.

I've had really good experiences dogfighting against Hurri's and Spits however, but I haven't really benchmarked whether they fly within the flight envelopes of their real life counterparts.

But I'm sure if the dev team can keep the same momentum and release rates that this will be addressed sooner rather than later. But indeed it seems that it'll be summer before CloD can reach it's full glory. But we'll be here waiting.. :razz:

The AI is definitely better than in IL-2. It tries to run when outnumbered or damaged, bails out when its engine is busted, and cannot see me approaching from 6 O'clock.
But it has problems of its own. Biggest complaint is that after this new patch I noticed AI hurricane having INSANE roll rate. It beats Mig-21... And in a hurricane my roll rate is pretty slow.

a bit more testing
 

So far during my little testing scenarios, I created a simple 1v1 scenario with both player aircraft and AI having to run through takeoff and converging paths.

In the first scenario, I set the AI to near total idiot level (all sliders at or just above minimum). I tested this three times.

1st Sortie - Met AI Bf109 at 3500 feet, head-on. Passed within 50 feet of him at a high rate of speed without him noticing whatsoever; continued to fly straight and level. Looped back and got on his six and stayed at convergence distance for about 10 sec. No response. Squeezed the trigger three times and witnessed a spectacular fireball followed by the AI bailing out. RTB

2nd Sortie - Met AI Bf109 at 3500 feet again, 12 o'clock low. No response. Turned around and climbed up to meet him. Got within convergence distance and lingered for a few short seconds with no response. Let my guns rip into him and once again watched the aircraft brilliantly burst into flames. Quite a show as a couple flaming pieces of wreckage fell from the stricken 109. Wish the track files would play such things back :( (Another bug for another thread)

3rd Sortie - Same deal, head-on. Still no response. Flew side by side maybe 30 feet apart, and he was completely oblivious. No response until I rammed my Hurricane into him, removing his port wing.

So far, I've concluded that setting the AI on "borderline-retarded" results only in the AI following set waypoints at the predetermined speed and altitude. Will not engage fighters, will not free hunt, or anything of the sort. Apparently at this level, the AI can't see it's own hand in front of it's face.

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More testing to follow.. though right now, I've seen that bumping up the Awareness and Visual Distance (forget the actual name of that slider) up to below-average or average levels while leaving everything else alone will result in the AI 109 being able to fly and evade fairly well, despite having the Basic and Advanced Flight sliders (as well as the others) set to minimum. Watched as he did the usual "climb up to the stratosphere" trick and maneuver as though the pilot is wearing a G-suit, and does not black out. Not very conclusive so far... but I got frustrated and went to bed after that. lol

Perhaps as one fella above me said, that it's simply much of the old 1946 coding. I do see much of the same AI bag of tricks in play here in CoD.

Hopefully the devs have this on their list as a major issue to be fixed... I would like to see the vastly improved AI that they had mentioned in the past.

bump

The AI needs urgent tweak. It is me thinks now even worse than prepatch. My AI collegues overtake me with a speed difference of at least 40-50 kmh even though I am at engine limit. The roll manouevers that the AI pulls are rediculous.

And please add to list:
- in Reality the flaps of the Spit were never used in combat as the AI does. It was only used once: during landing. Only for Seafire there had been a take-off flap position but that could have been used only once (during take-off). As soon as the flaps were retracted it only could be dropped to landing configurations. So please AI Spits should not use flaps. Also it seems that AI is not impacted by drag increase with flaps dropped. Myself in a 109 at max engine power have been overtaken by a Spit with lowered flaps. Not very realistic even with porked 109.

- in formation flight the flight leader turns like in old IL2 using almost exclusively the rudder instead of inclining the a/c. This is a minor issue but should be modified.

P.S.: Thanks though for the hard work you put in. Please keep 'em coming, the patches I mean.

I'm also doing a bit of testing with the AI at the moment. I figured out very early on (in the FMB) that unless you bump the 'vision' and awareness sliders up, the AI will happily ignore enemy planes that are in relatively close proximity.

Last night I was involved in a huge furball only to notice 12 Bf110's happily flying a few hundred metres above, ignoring all the action down below. I flew up to them and picked off three of them without even one of them taking evasive action. :confused:

I was recording the track so I went back and tried to figure out why they were so unresponsive. There was no reason...none had engaged a single enemy and all had a full load of ammo.
The AI was at the default setting as well.

Yet, on other occasions, the AI as said many times will perform maneuvers that are physically impossible.

What game are you playing? I have no problems knocking down Wellies with just the 110's MGs.

Which I for one found improved stock IL 1946 quite a bit, thank you. (I never knew that IL2 had a diffent DM according to difficulty...that explains a few things I had observed in my E.Front campaigns....what a silly thing to do!)

At least it seems as though the current version may have a few more variables that can be tweaked to give a reasonable SP game, but I suspect that we will have to wait for a modder to do it since Oleg's crew have always prioritised the demands of the MP crowd over the needs of the lowly SP user even though we all pay the same price for the game.

The other area of AI behaviour I hope will be better is what I call the Operational AI as opposed to the Combat AI - ie how AI a/c take off, form up, climb, cruise, reform after a fight, escort, descend and land. In IL2 this was extremely poor - climbing at 100% power without limit, a/c "warping" into formation, cruise speeds taking no account of a/c loadout, etc etc .....
nothing ever fixed despite repeated and constructive proposals from all sorts of people. Some of these issues could be fixed by judicious use of Lowengrin's DCG, but most, sadly, could not.

My heart tells me this time will be different, but my head says.....

I think the problem with the AI is they fly using a "keyboard". They don't fly with using an axis of any kind, they just press buttons. This explains why they turn so quickly and seem to ignore the laws of physics.

You can replicate this in your own plane by pressing the keyboard arrows and watching how you can get instant deflection on the ailerons and elevators. You would not be able to do this in real-life as you have to wait for the stick to travel to the extreme position as well as have to fight the forces of resistance.

I agree AI behaviour needs to be fixed. It is true that AI got "superpowers" in the actual version of the game. What I cannot understand yet is why the hell sometimes enemy AI pilots start flying a bit stupid way (straight, levelled and getting shot meanwhile) and the same pilot was doing unbelievable manouvers when you got his 6 three minutes before.

I do not understand it.

Maybe the developers should study the "BoB:WoV" product by Shockwave/A2A in this regard.

This is NO snotty smart remark or cheap shot at Ilya and crew.

The AI behavior of single aircraft and squadrons or groups is for me the best of all WW2 simulation AI. Of course this was not so on release by Rowan in late 2000. But the foundations were there and after much work by a talented AI coder now its very believeable and leads to a good single player experience.

+1

PS: I've never seen a barrel roll there :P

The lovely excuse of bad AI (in IL-2 series anyway) is: all people capable of writing a decent AI code are now working for the army :D

@rga: LOL

Currently offline it is definitely NO fun against AI fighters. The very instant that you get a shooting solution when tracking they start to swivel like mad. The very instant. Always.

Now I trie to work around this in doing a low yo yo in order to get at least a short burst at a higher aspect angle. Again the AI pilot knows exactly that I want to do just that and he turns around in no time just when I move my finger on the trigger.

The only possibility to get a bit of lead into them is to jump at them and make a snap shot at really high aspect angles.

To be clear: it is alright to encounter aces in the opposite plane that has so much experience that they can just turn round in time before one gets into shooting position. Alright also that even when they are shooting at a comrade that they see me coming from behind and break away.

What is insane that they can reverse their flight path quicker than a FW190 could ever and that they ALWAYS know when I want to shoot and that they ALWAYS see me, even when I come crom below or they are behind an enemy.

For me the AI issue is currenty on the top of things that I wish to be fixed. At least make it subject to the same plane and engine limitations as myself.

BTW: the AI had it been superman already before the last official patch? For me it doesn't seem so.

They are part of the program after all.

The AI know your convergance setting and know what you are aiming at and will break as soon as the computer sees a mathmatically correct firing solution.

Hence I don't fly offline except for testing.

Yep. Ace pilot tracks you in his six, ace pilot has good experience at what distance it gets dangerous for him. And ace pilot won't do you the favor of letting you pull off a non-deflection, nicely-lined-up kill shot. You get that straight out of your head right now, it won't do you any good.
If you want to get kill markings easily handed over to you, you might try going after bombers instead. Though I've heard that they are also, magically, un-downable, too :rolleyes:

P.S.: Rookie AIs still get it most of the time, judging from my 1946 experience. The *fail* percentage is just higher... well, contrary to our days, they didn't let *everyone* take off in a fighter plane back then ;)

Has anyone seen how the AI taxiis to the runways from the hangars? They zip off from a standing start like dragsters!
It's quite funny the first few times you watch it.