[TEC] Some aircraft AI tests/questions

[gap]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

That's true, on the other hand "strafe & perform acrobatic stunts" is not a tactic I've heard of as well

Just lol

The Ubi guys must have drawn their virtual pilots from the Orlik Aerobatic Team

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Besides, looking at this movie for example:

[...]

is for planes like Liberator (maybe Catalina as well) attack profile used looks more like fast, low level horizontal approach (of course, these might be just shots staged for propaganda purposes and actual approach might have been more vertical).

In my previous post I was talking in general but I don't think aircraft of the size and structure of a Liberator or a Catalina could safely perform a dive bombing attack. Looking at this list I would say that, with very few exceptions, all the dedicated dive bombers of WWII were more similar to a fighter or heavy fighter than to a medium or heavy bomber

Originally Posted by kapuhy

I thought of this and it could be a viable solution (was experimenting with creating a retro-rocket launcher for MAD armed planes, and sure enough you can set a "gun" like this).

Oh, cool we had the same idea! By the way we already have retro bomb models in game. If you look at historic pictures, they were very similar or identical to Squid projectiles.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Speaking of IRAI files - in Airplane.aix, there's this fragment:

strategy PlaneNavigate(Plane)
{
precond
{
(Plane:HasTorpedoes() or Plane:HasBombs() or Plane:HasCannons()) and Ship:GetContactDepth() > -8.5
}
strategies
{
BombCourse,
TorpedoCourse,
CannonCourse,
AirToAirCombat
}
}

If I understand correctly, it sets conditions for a plane that must be met in order for it to navigate (fly towards?) detected target:

a) plane must have means to attack (bombs, torpedoes, guns)
b) contact must be at no more than 8.5 meters depth

I wonder what would happen if we set this to 20.0 for example... but to test this, I would have to know how to make edits to .aix file affect the game (just changing it doesn't seem to do anything - maybe it is overwritten by something or requires rerunning file patcher to work?)

I don't think so. Aix files are plain ascii files, not hardcoded patch is required to "enable" their tweaks (IRAI itself is a proof of that). As sar as I can say, the code they contain is Python or a Python-like language. It is possible that some other script overrides the line that you are editing, but any tweak you do should immediately take effect (after reloading the game indeed).

[Jeff-Groves]

That file is the only one that contains -8.5 in the scripts folder of IRAI