AI vs AI Kill ratio

[Storebror]

One thing we shouldn't forget is that AI is comparably "stupid" when it comes to draw conclusions based on the facts they know.
Human players can utilize their experience from previous sorties and can adopt promising options even in uncertain or unknown situations.
AI can't do any of this.
AI has a simple tree/branch decision scheme, sometimes leading to rather stupid moves.
In that regards, letting AI "cheat" in another regime to compensate this lack of experience might be a valid decision to some degree.

Best regards - Mike

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by Storebror

One thing we shouldn't forget is that AI is comparably "stupid" when it comes to draw conclusions based on the facts they know.

It would be intriguing to know what are the ‘facts’ they know.

1. There seems to be a 'visibility' range for contacts. Whether it’s general or depending on AI skill is unclear to me. It’s also unclear under what conditions combat AI kicks in and takes command over from the mission script (or gives the command back).
2. Once a contact is within this range, the AI has no problems to identify it as friend or foe. In this respect the AI always flies ‘with icons on’.
3. How many contacts the AI tracks simultaneously is unclear. It’s also unclear whether and how this depends on skill and/or other factors (apart from blocked LoS). Anyway, the data of all contacts are theoretically available to the AI, even if some of them are disregarded.
4. The AI has exact knowledge of contact position (vector and distance), perhaps with some inaccuracy margin to reflect skill.
5. The AI has a very good knowledge of target travel (direction and speed), probably with an inaccuracy margin to reflect skill. (This ‘knowledge’ is a prerequisite for gunnery, particularly for deflection shots.)
6. The AI seems to be aware of the general type of the target aircraft. There are different attack schemes against fighters and bombers. The differentiation is probably based, in some simplified way, on the types listed in post #46.
7. The AI is aware of the terrain (but not the objects!) it is flying over.

All this is just guessing, of course, and probably far not complete, but brainstorming could be made more effective if we knew the cruel 'facts' about the AI.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Storebror

One thing we shouldn't forget is that AI is comparably "stupid" when it comes to draw conclusions based on the facts they know.
Human players can utilize their experience from previous sorties and can adopt promising options even in uncertain or unknown situations.
AI can't do any of this.
AI has a simple tree/branch decision scheme, sometimes leading to rather stupid moves.
In that regards, letting AI "cheat" in another regime to compensate this lack of experience might be a valid decision to some degree.

Best regards - Mike

Experience is not needed to have an option to disengage - besides the obvious out of ammo/fuel low option. A script can decide if numerical superiority has gone, a script can decide if positional advantage has gone, and a script can track losses, a script can count friendly planes in sight and so on.
Experience is neither needed to obey your commander. Which current AI does not and most times not at all. I have the experience, and if I tell them we do the mission my way they should not question it -if all goes south, I will have to face the music, not them.

Experience is not needed to shoot semi-accurately at nearly non moving targets, at least if you have been through flight school (possibly with the exception where pilots were needed fast and anyone half capable of making a landing stick was allowed to fly(e. g. Germany end 44).

And you don't need experience to set a limit for maximum contacts to be able to track. Script can do that. Trow in some parameters, as distance to enemy, current LoS, movement across or away/towards, time in LoS, etc and it will be better than all-seeing, and if done decent maybe will let us forget for a few moments we are battling ones and zeroes.

[dimlee]

Ones and zeroes they are but they never stop to surprise us mighty humans.
I like to meet AI online where their skill levels are unknown to me. Sometimes when I relax too much and expect another easy kill... I'm punished by that mysterious super sharp sniper gunner who sends his bullet right into my cockpit from 1000m. I consider that as a "compensation" mentioned by Storebror and continue to enjoy the game.

[Storebror]

Right dimlee.
We've lately adopted the 4.13 AI into the good old Ultrapack 3 which we run on our SAS Gameserver (where we're sporting COOP missions mostly, with lots of AI) and it turned the game into something completely new, where we yet have to figure out all the new moves AI has learned.

majorfailure has a lot of good points there.
What I'm trying to say is that regardless of it's superduper abilities in terms of situational awareness, AI already now sucks bad in many other elements of the fight.
Let me give you a few examples:

• When AI is outnumbering human players and can keep the fight going, they do a really great job (with 4.13 AI code) to help each other, distribute their planes across human opponents etc., all fine, but...
• When AI is outnumbering human players but a single human player has the fastest plane in the set and can run away from the fight, if he's managing the distance to AI planes (keep it at slightly above 1km, never separate further than 1.5km from the closest opponent), he can group up all AI planes behind him in a big swarm and drag them away to a point of choice on the map, then run away and leave them there, completely confused.
• When human players are outnumbering AI and AI planes have no option to climb and run away, AI sucks big times in defending their lifes. They will do a couple of weird maneouvres but this will stop quite soon, so all a human player has to do is stay on an AI's six for half a minute and wait for it to go straight - it will keep going straight, even if you start shooting parts off the plane, until you finally kill it.
• Outnumbered AI will immediately stop helping each other, instead they'll all fight a fight on their own.
• AI bombers don't try to stay in formation when being attacked - when you hit one, he will bounce out, even if he could stay in as well.

This is why I'd suggest not only to think about how and where AI uses superior powers at the moment and how to tone them down, but also how and where AI currently lacks desireable abilities and how to improve them.
Because if we'd just tone down AI's situational awareness, this would have to be compensated elsewhere, and with AI's current abilities the only compensation available would be to give the superpowered AI flightmodel even more super powers of to make the snipers even more sniper like.

I don't think anyone would want AI to become more stupid and more deadly by surprise.

Best regards - Mike

[sniperton]

@Storebror
What your examples describe can be summarized as 'bad leadership', and an inexperienced or inept human squadron leader would make the same wrong decisions (allowing to be lured away instead of disengaging and regrouping, or issuing 'each on his own' instead of 'together to the Walhalla').

[dimlee]

Regarding AI bombers.

Some observations - since I resumed my online adventures couple of years ago.
- B-17, B-25, He 111, SB hold formations quite well. Slightly damaged bomber still stays in. Quite a task to break a formation without large calibre cannons.
- Blenheims and Beauforts keep well in pairs, but not in a group of 3 or 4.
- B-25 formation of 4 can be broken (occasionally) by flying through it without firing a single shot. Leader turns left, wingmen turns right, etc. Yet to see the same with other types.
- I have not seen AI bomber aerobatics for long time.
(But I see it offline, B-29 and TB-3 are most notorious).

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Storebror

I don't think anyone would want AI to become more stupid and more deadly by surprise.

Best regards - Mike

That's exactly what I would like to see, for rookies(maybe average too). Better shooting -especially against targets that do little to no evading -including ground targets. Less SA, target fixation is a typical rookie move IMHO - at least I did that a lot. Veteran and above to me are more convincing, superb SA, mean shooting, but not entirely invincible, and now they sometimes miss the "ridiculous" 90 degree shots, maybe as much as I do.

But still - I don't see why giving the AI an ability to disengage would weaken them and then they need strengthening in another department?

And to add to your stupid AI collection - try attacking a flight as lone wolf, do it as flight leader, they are all over you in seconds. Do it as second in a flight and you can usually pick off one or two planes before reaction is initiated.

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

But still - I don't see why giving the AI an ability to disengage would weaken them and then they need strengthening in another department?

I’m with you, but there’s a dilemma. Aerial battles are now more decisive (and more arcade-like) than in RL were, there are more kills for the winner and higher losses for the underdog. This is fine for dogfights and coops, as we all want immediate action, and since we don’t risk our lives, we prefer a bloody massacre to an enemy who ‘cowardly’ disengages as soon as the odds are against him.

Teaching the AI to disengage and to evade combat would involve longer sessions with less action and more advantage-seeking intermissions. I’m personally for it, but it’s a matter of gaming preferences. Perhaps better shooting at non-evading targets would compensate for the more evasive AI and re-establish the sort of balance as we have now.

On the other hand, it’s unpredictable how all this would affect single-player campaigns where mostly the AI is fighting the AI. My point is that what might be desirable against human opponents could easily lead to stalemates in AI-AI encounters and would possibly break many single-player missions and campaigns designed and playtested with the non-evasive AI we have at present.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by sniperton

I’m with you, but there’s a dilemma. Aerial battles are now more decisive (and more arcade-like) than in RL were, there are more kills for the winner and higher losses for the underdog. This is fine for dogfights and coops, as we all want immediate action, and since we don’t risk our lives, we prefer a bloody massacre to an enemy who ‘cowardly’ disengages as soon as the odds are against him.

Teaching the AI to disengage and to evade combat would involve longer sessions with less action and more advantage-seeking intermissions. I’m personally for it, but it’s a matter of gaming preferences. Perhaps better shooting at non-evading targets would compensate for the more evasive AI and re-establish the sort of balance as we have now.

On the other hand, it’s unpredictable how all this would affect single-player campaigns where mostly the AI is fighting the AI. My point is that what might be desirable against human opponents could easily lead to stalemates in AI-AI encounters and would possibly break many single-player missions and campaigns designed and playtested with the non-evasive AI we have at present.

Solution: Make it a difficulty switch to have evasive AI. And no I wouldn't mind if battles would not end in slaughter on a regular basis. Getting home with only a few kills then would be more rewarding. And imagine what a feat it would be to get home with 10+ kills in one sortie, which now in certain planes is rather the usual case.