BROKEN Aircraft AI

[STKS]

Which of these issues are you aware of, and which are being resolved currently ?

1) planes move to refuel at empty tankers, even if this means chasing RTB'ing tankers until they run out of fuel.

2) planes on land strike missions that are allowed to engage opportunity targets will drop bombs on the first enemy below them rather than the assigned targets. making any type of plane with air to air missiles and air to surface weapons incapable of defending themselves.

3) ASW helicopters will move over land and deploy dipping sonar if any land is within the defined area. This makes ASW operations in coastal areas either incredibly time consuming (defining the exact path of the coast)or laughably ineffective. try sending some ASW helicopters over Norwegian fjords and watch how they cover more land than sea...

4) planes on RTB or refuel, completely ignore no navigation zones.

5) planes on RTB or refuel, periodically continue on a random bearing until they run out of fuel.

6) planes on patrol that are allowed to engage opportunity targets will get side tracked and try to engage anything with cannons. My AAW CAP's regularly fly in circles over AA because they want to shoot with guns, while ignoring legitimate targets.

7) Planes launched in groups on patrol always break into individual units, resulting in 3-4 planes wasting missiles by engaging the same target.

8) planes bingo distance will not take into account tanker patterns, why is there no way for AI to realise that on the second part of its route there is a place to refuel? This results on planes RTB'ing when they have the fuel to reach tankers within their range. Tanker operations should be a separate mission with its own properties.

9) "engage non hostile targets" means shooting neutrals and anything that's unidentified. why not have engage non friendly and engage all ?

10) there is no way to select how liberal / conservative units are with their ammunition. the ambiguity setting gives no opportunity for units to fire the bare minimum of munitions. im sick of planes wasting 2 AMRAAM's on a single tanker or similar 'easy' target

11) planes on AAW missions consider no BVR weapons to be 'Winchester'. Why carry 4 IR missiles and 2 radar missiles?! Planes set not to RTB when Winchester will engage with guns and continue to follow enemy planes when they have noting but flares and chaff.

12) planes that are RTB Winchester / bingo cannot be recalled regardless of being told to ignore plotted course when attacking.


I'm surprised most of these bugs / issues have existed past beta - let alone MONTHS of play. My enjoyment of this game has regularly been spoiled by these issues, yet I see no threads about them, maybe the matrix games / warfare sims staff are eager to delete negative threads like so many other developers forums.

P.S - why can I change the size of almost every window, with the exception of the edit mission screen ?

P.P.S - The right side of my screen is still cut off. This inst a new issue. (1920x1200)

[mikmykWS]

Thanks for posting in. Many of these have been addressed. What version of the game are you running?

Thanks!

Mike

[STKS]

I'm playing on V1.04 build 554, i believe this is the most up to date version ?

[Dimitris]

Hello,

Please follow the guidelines for submitting problem reports: tm.asp?m=3585262

Thank you.

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: STKS

I'm playing on V1.04 build 554, i believe this is the most up to date version ?

It is see next post. I'll go through each one and give you an update.

Mike

[mikmykWS]

1) planes move to refuel at empty tankers, even if this means chasing RTB'ing tankers until they run out of fuel.

Definitely being looked at with the caveat that we can't code out players doing weird stuff like putting tankers out too far etc.

2) planes on land strike missions that are allowed to engage opportunity targets will drop bombs on the first enemy below them rather than the assigned targets. making any type of plane with air to air missiles and air to surface weapons incapable of defending themselves.

The objective of this ROE setting was to allow players to hit targets they might have too on the way in. It is not on by default but the player can choose to use it. I'll add an item about the possibility of it making better choices but not sure you and ole bit brains will ever agree.

3) ASW helicopters will move over land and deploy dipping sonar if any land is within the defined area. This makes ASW operations in coastal areas either incredibly time consuming (defining the exact path of the coast)or laughably ineffective. try sending some ASW helicopters over Norwegian fjords and watch how they cover more land than sea...

Player issue big time. If your zone includes land it is not going to evaluate against that. We really can't spend millions of hours trying to code out a every possible bad decision a player could make.

4) planes on RTB or refuel, completely ignore no navigation zones.

This shouldn't happen if the plane can make the landing. If it can't we may have coded in a "screw it go through it" clause which is better than a crash. Will need to check with D on this one.

5) planes on RTB or refuel, periodically continue on a random bearing until they run out of fuel.

Definitely on this. We're still working on the why on this one and any capture you can get would help. This is not common.

6) planes on patrol that are allowed to engage opportunity targets will get side tracked and try to engage anything with cannons. My AAW CAP's regularly fly in circles over AA because they want to shoot with guns, while ignoring legitimate targets.

Need a save for this one. If you can please do post.

7) Planes launched in groups on patrol always break into individual units, resulting in 3-4 planes wasting missiles by engaging the same target.

This one is definitely something we're looking at improving as we do know there are cases this does happen.

8) planes bingo distance will not take into account tanker patterns, why is there no way for AI to realise that on the second part of its route there is a place to refuel? This results on planes RTB'ing when they have the fuel to reach tankers within their range. Tanker operations should be a separate mission with its own properties.

Tanking generally works but problems do arise when planes get more numerous and the ranges get close to the edge. We will continue to work on this to help players (and the AI) make better decisions. We do have reports on this and its relatively high up on our queue.

9) "engage non hostile targets" means shooting neutrals and anything that's unidentified. why not have engage non friendly and engage all ?

Not sure what you mean on this one. The settings was really designed for SAM sites and interceptors that you wouldn't want to have to wait to ID the target (the default behavior).

10) there is no way to select how liberal / conservative units are with their ammunition. the ambiguity setting gives no opportunity for units to fire the bare minimum of munitions. im sick of planes wasting 2 AMRAAM's on a single tanker or similar 'easy' target

We're working on better salvo logic for ships as we do think dumping the entire load is often overkill. I'm kind of ok of where we are with air to air logic though although your post comment is the strongest statement we've seen on it yet. If that consensus changes we'll definitely take a look and know Rag and D have some other ideas which will
change some of this.

11) planes on AAW missions consider no BVR weapons to be 'Winchester'. Why carry 4 IR missiles and 2 radar missiles?! Planes set not to RTB when Winchester will engage with guns and continue to follow enemy planes when they have noting but flares and chaff.

The logic is actually set against the loadout so let us know a specific one and we can make a change if its stupid. We'll test for the chaff and flare dogfighters but
first time I've heard of this.

12) planes that are RTB Winchester / bingo cannot be recalled regardless of being told to ignore plotted course when attacking.

We'll take a look at this one. Refueling should force it but Winchester may or may not be an exception.

I'm surprised most of these bugs / issues have existed past beta - let alone MONTHS of play. My enjoyment of this game has regularly been spoiled by these issues, yet I see no threads about them, maybe the matrix games / warfare sims staff are eager to delete negative threads like so many other developers forums.

Spin your wheels and be as rotten as want but I think if that were the case other players would complain etc. Unless you think they're in on it too![:)]

We're obviously not perfect but at the end of the day we're just shooting to create a good game and time for people. We do understand that is not possible for everybody particularly those out in Palookaville[:D]

P.S - why can I change the size of almost every window, with the exception of the edit mission screen ?

We didn't design it that way but can look at it if more get bothered by it.

P.P.S - The right side of my screen is still cut off. This inst a new issue. (1920x1200)

The way to address that is all over the forum. Most have done it and are happy.

Thanks!

Mike

[ComDev]

9) The behaviour you describe is exacly as designed. How do you know the contact is neutral before it has been identified? [8D]

10) We want to expand this functionality and the database has already been updated [8D] Just need to find the time to implement and test.

11) Yeah will refine the behaviour quite a bit. The database has already been partially updated to support this.

12) Can you explain this one in more detail?

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: STKS
I'm surprised most of these bugs / issues have existed past beta - let alone MONTHS of play. My enjoyment of this game has regularly been spoiled by these issues, yet I see no threads about them, maybe the matrix games / warfare sims staff are eager to delete negative threads like so many other developers forums.

I wanted to chime in on this and note a couple of points.

First, no one is deleting negative threads here. If you take a good look through the forum, that should be pretty apparent.

We do have forum rules though and that means that while we are fine with criticism, please keep it constructive. We do not allow bashing of forum users or developers and without evidence that threads are being deleted to hide issues, making that allegation comes close.

Finally, take a look at the updates that have been released free by the Command team since release. The number of improvements, fixes and changes in there are quite remarkable.

If you post constructive criticism and bug reports, these guys will respond quickly and make sure that your issues get investigated, but please keep it constructive.

Regards,

- Erik