Weird behaviour by AI aircraft

[Foxendown]

I've taken the liberty of reporting two issues together as they both occur in the same saved game close together (timewise).

1. Two AI aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed (one Canadian Hornet and a helo-see logfile). This happens not long after the saved game starts to run .

2. BR Atlantiques (suicidally) attack a powerful SAG armed only with ASW weapons. The P-3s and Nimrods in the scenario don't do that.

I'm using 1.11 SR5 build 847. I have attached a log file as well as a saved game.

Many thanks.

Sorry just realized that saved game is too late to demonstrate Atlantiques' attack (must have accidentally overwritten it). I rescued one of the aircraft by making it RTB before it made its attack run on the Kirov. When it goes out again I will try to capture this behaviour.

[mikmykWS]

Took a look at the refueling issue. They definitely run out of fuel but they're also set to refuel from tankers which are quite some distance away. Try moving tankers in and creating some redundancies and see if the behaviors are better. You're really setting them up to crash due to distance and the number of tankers. Part of the game is to figure this stuff out. You may want to try configuring the missions to only tank from certain tankers etc using our advanced settings in the mission editor.

If you can send a save on the MPA attacks that would be great? You don't have the opportunity fire set to on correct?

Thanks!

Mike

[Foxendown]

Thanks Mike, will do as you suggest regarding refueling.

I've now attached a saved game that should reveal the ASW aircraft attacking surface ships. East of Iceland there is a Soviet SAG and three P-3s nearby. Two of them are heading for home (this was the only way I could get them to stop attacking, they ignore a course, even though they are set not to). The third one to the south, Leader 5 makes a direct attack run until it is shot down. The Nimrods don't appear to do this and I thought the P-3s were Ok too but evidently not.
r
I have these aircraft assigned to a sea control mission and I thought that would mean they would stick to attacking subs only because of their loadout. However, if I split them off into a separate ASW mission will they ignore surface ships but still overfly their "killing zones"?

If you look to the north west there are two F-15Cs which are attacking ASW helos. I watched one just keep going regardless of the number of SAMs flying at it. What's needed is a way of getting the AI pilots to assess and avoid air defence threats if you set it that way in the editor (easier said than done no doubt). The prosecution areas are great but you've got a problem when the threats are mobile.

Thanks for looking at these issues. Did you see my other post about the event editor?

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: Foxendown

Thanks Mike, will do as you suggest regarding refueling.

I've now attached a saved game that should reveal the ASW aircraft attacking surface ships. East of Iceland there is a Soviet SAG and three P-3s nearby. Two of them are heading for home (this was the only way I could get them to stop attacking, they ignore a course, even though they are set not to). The third one to the south, Leader 5 makes a direct attack run until it is shot down. The Nimrods don't appear to do this and I thought the P-3s were Ok too but evidently not.
r
I have these aircraft assigned to a sea control mission and I thought that would mean they would stick to attacking subs only because of their loadout. However, if I split them off into a separate ASW mission will they ignore surface ships but still overfly their "killing zones"?

I would have approached this patrol differently. Sea control missions investigate and attack sea and subsurface targets regardless of loadout. This is not stupid. This is so they can accomplish the other parts of their mission (Patrol missions detect, observe, id and attack) You can keep them away from SAM and other areas by either constraining them with patrol zone options and prosecution zones or adding no navigate zones.

If you look to the north west there are two F-15Cs which are attacking ASW helos. I watched one just keep going regardless of the number of SAMs flying at it. What's needed is a way of getting the AI pilots to assess and avoid air defence threats if you set it that way in the editor (easier said than done no doubt). The prosecution areas are great but you've got a problem when the threats are mobile.

[/quote]

If they see and can react quick enough they'll try and dodge the weapons and deploy decoys. In general though a no fly zone would have helped.

I understand you want the AI to just know certain things or to fix mistakes players make but its part of the game for the commander to figure some of these things out. We have provided a number of options and tools that can help but at the end of the day its up to you to choose to use them or not. We'll definitely continue to look at improving the AI where we can but remember we can't code for one case but have to for many.

Thanks for looking at these issues. Did you see my other post about the event editor?

Sure I'll comment on that in a minute.

Mike

[Foxendown]

Sea control missions investigate and attack sea and subsurface targets regardless of loadout. This is not stupid. This is so they can accomplish the other parts of their mission (Patrol missions detect, observe, id and attack) You can keep them away from SAM and other areas by either constraining them with patrol zone options and prosecution zones or adding no navigate zones.

Yes, got it, sea control missions should be used for platforms that can do both ASuW and ASW. If you use ASW-only platforms, you are effectively ordering them to attack all hostile contacts regardless of which they are.

If they see and can react quick enough they'll try and dodge the weapons and deploy decoys. In general though a no fly zone would have helped.

I'm not sure how you can use a no fly zone when the threat is moving and concealed, but I'll experiment.

I understand you want the AI to just know certain things or to fix mistakes players make but its part of the game for the commander to figure some of these things out.

No not really Mike that is near enough the opposite of what I'm suggesting. The Commander's/player's mistakes aren't really an issue. It is so easy for the player to adjust things on the fly. I'm more concerned with giving the AI as level a playing field as possible. I love figuring things out but my problem is that I can't see a way of getting AI aircraft on a non-playable side to bug out if faced with certain death from a moving air defence zone they've just discovered, on ships in this case. I have been wondering how you would go about that. The F-15Cs were on an intercept mission. I had limited the range but that didn't help because the ships were moving towards the originating airbase. As this is a mission design issue, perhaps I should now just post the scenario and throw the question open to the floor.

Thanks again for your help.

[thewood1]

If its only a scenario design issue, I think you can use ref points and Lua to keep air units away from danger zones that are mobile. I know I have done similar things before. I'll have to see if I can find the ones I did.

[thewood1]

So went back and looked and tested.

Assuming two sides, red and blue

I create both sides and populate with Unitblue1 and unitred1.
Use Red side.
Turn on God's Eye view
Add ref points that somewhat cover the SAM radius for Unitblue1
Set ref points as relative to Unitblue1
Create a no fly zone around Unitblue1's ref points
Switch back to Blue and you can start building out the rest of the scenario

Now you can fly all around without AI aircraft ever coming into a SAM envelope of Unitblue1
Of course, this is the simplest solution with no events or Lua. Once you build the relative ref points, there is all kinds of tricks you can use for the AI. You can even delete and add ref points back in using Lua on the fly. You can activate and deactivate missions using events and Lua.

All the tools are there to do the basics without touching Lua. Because I know some people on the board start yelling and gnashing teeth at the mention of a solution being Lua. If you want to get more sophisticated than a simple danger zone, you'll have the use the tools the devs went to the effort to provide and you paid for.

Caveat. I have only made this in the most simple scenario to test out exclusion zones so I might have missed a few things.

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: Foxendown

Sea control missions investigate and attack sea and subsurface targets regardless of loadout. This is not stupid. This is so they can accomplish the other parts of their mission (Patrol missions detect, observe, id and attack) You can keep them away from SAM and other areas by either constraining them with patrol zone options and prosecution zones or adding no navigate zones.

Yes, got it, sea control missions should be used for platforms that can do both ASuW and ASW. If you use ASW-only platforms, you are effectively ordering them to attack all hostile contacts regardless of which they are.

If they see and can react quick enough they'll try and dodge the weapons and deploy decoys. In general though a no fly zone would have helped.

I'm not sure how you can use a no fly zone when the threat is moving and concealed, but I'll experiment.

I understand you want the AI to just know certain things or to fix mistakes players make but its part of the game for the commander to figure some of these things out.

No not really Mike that is near enough the opposite of what I'm suggesting. The Commander's/player's mistakes aren't really an issue. It is so easy for the player to adjust things on the fly. I'm more concerned with giving the AI as level a playing field as possible. I love figuring things out but my problem is that I can't see a way of getting AI aircraft on a non-playable side to bug out if faced with certain death from a moving air defence zone they've just discovered, on ships in this case. I have been wondering how you would go about that. The F-15Cs were on an intercept mission. I had limited the range but that didn't help because the ships were moving towards the originating airbase. As this is a mission design issue, perhaps I should now just post the scenario and throw the question open to the floor.

Thanks again for your help.

You can post wherever you want. Its a threat that doesn't mean anything to anybody. Keep it up though and the dev team just won't respond to you. We really don't have to put up with stuff like that or somebody that has to give you a dig with every answer.[:-]

I would suggest just giving things a shot. We can go back and forth over what the AI should of done but at the end of the day if you don't use the tools we've provided our hands are kind of tied.

As far as pop up threats you can create zones if as a player and the AI can do it in lua.

In general though I just wouldn't have assigned torpedo armed Orion's to sea control with a sea threat but that's me.

Mike

[Foxendown]

I don't think this is very fair Mike, but I have sent you a PM.

[mikmykWS]

Didn't see anything in my box.

Thanks

Mike

[thewood1]

Pop up threats for ships shouldn't mean anything. Every ship has to start somewhere. As soon as the designer puts it in the game, they should put the SAM zone around it. Again, the tools are there. If you don't want to use them, or think its too much effort, well, then, I have to assume its not an important enough issue.

I just went in an recreated my original test. Took me all of 5 minutes for an existing scenario to do what I suggested for a simple solution. If you can't be arsed to even to investigate that or maybe ask in the right thread, well, again, maybe its not important enough.