Volunteers needed, to test experimental AI tweaks

[GrenSo]

Sorry kapuhy but hadn't had the time on the weekend to check and test your AI script and report my experiences and observations.

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by GrenSo

Sorry kapuhy but hadn't had the time on the weekend to check and test your AI script and report my experiences and observations.

No problem GrenSo, it can wait for better time

[Muckenberg]

Good day
Thank you very much for the guide to the mission editor.
My observations for now. I was attacked by two Spitfires and I deliberately did not dive and shoot the Flak. The planes only shot at me with machine guns and did not drop bombs. And I let them fly repeatedly. Unfortunately, an escort ship was approaching, so I managed to shoot them down and had to sink.
I was spotted by an Anson patrol plane and again I didn't sink at the start of the attack.and ordered full throttle and zigzagging. If I zigzagged the plane still attacked only through the machine gun. When I finally sank the plane started to fly away. Anson spotted me again and attacked again. now I wasn't meandering anymore and the plane dropped the bombs and I have to say, not bad. I'm undamaged, but the bombs didn't land badly at all. Then the plane took off.
I'll still be hanging around England and reporting back.

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by Muckenberg

Good day
Thank you very much for the guide to the mission editor.
My observations for now. I was attacked by two Spitfires and I deliberately did not dive and shoot the Flak. The planes only shot at me with machine guns and did not drop bombs. And I let them fly repeatedly. Unfortunately, an escort ship was approaching, so I managed to shoot them down and had to sink.
I was spotted by an Anson patrol plane and again I didn't sink at the start of the attack.and ordered full throttle and zigzagging. If I zigzagged the plane still attacked only through the machine gun. When I finally sank the plane started to fly away. Anson spotted me again and attacked again. now I wasn't meandering anymore and the plane dropped the bombs and I have to say, not bad. I'm undamaged, but the bombs didn't land badly at all. Then the plane took off.
I'll still be hanging around England and reporting back.

Thanks I didn't make a test with Spitfire yet, will add this to my list. Plane characteristics (speed, stall speed, turn radius etc.) might play a part in why planes do or don't drop bombs. This, and zigzagging - from what you write it might also cause planes to get stuck in a dry run loop.

[Muckenberg]

Hello. Today I was attacked by two Hurricanes, I was still sailing straight but I put full speed. one aircraft behaved by circling the submarine, machine-gunning the submarine and dropping a bomb on the third pass. Fortunately, not exactly. It continued to circle the submarine and then fell into the sea.
The second plane after the first joint pass continued as we were used to with TWoS and turned it around only at a distance of several kilometers (maybe) It did not drop the bomb and only attacked with weapons.
I loaded the saved position with Anson once more and now I wasn't zigzagging, just full speed. The plane circled me twice and then dropped the bomb. And exactly. He sunk me.

[Pascal]

It's strange to see some planes crashing into the sea by themselves - well, it's obviously quite unrealistic and it should be possible to simply remove this action from the script (beginner pilot removed)

[kapuhy]

Hi Muckenberg, thanks for the report. Hopefully I'll get some free time during next weekend to try to experiment with plane characteristics and see how they come into play. For now thing to look into: spitfires, zigzagging, and crashing into sea.

As for second Hurricane continuing, that's a but weird - it should only behave this way if it's out of bombs...

Originally Posted by Pascal

It's strange to see some planes crashing into the sea by themselves - well, it's obviously quite unrealistic and it should be possible to simply remove this action from the script (beginner pilot removed)

If only it was so simple... avoiding crashing into water is done by following block of code:

strategy AvoidImpact(Plane)
{
precond
{
Plane:StrafingTooClose()
}
action
{
Plane:AvoidWaterImpact();
}
}

Simple, right? Problem is, we don't know how exactly StrafingTooClose() and AvoidWaterImpact() work. Their code is inside sim.act file which we can't read. So we can only experiment with adding some extra conditions for these functions - but not modify functions themselves.

Edit: only way I was able to eliminate crashing into water completely, was by switching ALL planes to "level bomber" mode and adjusting their minimum height so that they just pass high over target trying to carpet bomb it. With this approach, however, they were so inaccurate they might as well be removed from game to save some fps.