[Les]

Thanks for the extra information Buddye.

It's yet to be seen how many members of the Cliffs Of Dover community would be interested and committed enough to put in the work required to get the AI up to the highest level. Even amongst the large amount of work done by the modders and hackers of the old IL-2 series, advancing the AI wasn't something that figured prominently IIRC, though maybe that was because the old series already had better AI than what we seem to have now in Cliffs Of Dover.

From what I can gather though, there's no way it's going to happen anyway without the co-operation of the game's developers.

It seems to me there are only two (legal) ways the AI in Cliffs Of Dover will reach the highest level of refinement possible.

One is if the developers hire some hard-working and talented individual who has access to a large crew of play-testers, and get them to work full-time for years on nothing but the Cliffs Of Dover AI.

The other is if they separate the AI source-code out and allow it to be modified at it's most base level by the modding community.

And looking at it that way, I think I know, in the long run, which way would have a greater chance of success.

I'd put my money on the group that can work on it whenever they want, however they want, just because it interests them. The group that can determine for itself, as actual end-users of the game, what exactly needs to be worked on. The group that may even have amongst it's members people as talented and capable as anyone the developers may be able to hire.

Of course, opening up a part of their game like that would be a slightly unconventional approach for a developer to take. But surely the question should at least be examined, is following convention in this instance doing what we have to do to give our sim the best chance of reaching it's fullest potential?

Ideally, what I'd like to see is the AI-modding community working in conjunction with the individual in charge of the AI development at Maddox Games. To have the modders and the developers working on the same page, with a common aim of improving the AI to an unprecedented level. What could be better for the game than to have the enthusiasts doing what only they can do, in line with the efforts of the official developers themselves?