Artifical Intelligence problems while flying and fragging missions
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Hey guys.
I’m having a couple of problems with fragging and flying missions in the offline campaign.I’m usually fragging some A-10C Air Interdiction sorties over enemy armour and creating an Escort flight in the package to protect them. The problem is that, sometimes, while I’m watching from the 2D Map, I can see that the A-10s either stay flying over the target for way too long after the first pass while taking fire or they simply go after other targets away from the steerpoint.
As an example, a while before I had 2 A-10s hitting enemy armor on the FLOT, and then suddenly their mission changed and they went over 30nm north of the FLOT to attack an SA-2. Had I not aborted the package they would be shot down.If that alone wasn’t bad enough, the Escort flight only seems to get to the target area and instead of staying there covering the A-10s until they go Winchester or have cleared the area, the escort simply RTBs and leaves the A-10s in the AO to fend off for themselves.
Something simillar is happening to my Wingman. I was just flying a sortie with LGBs and told him weapons free and to attack targets. He dropped 2 bombs out of 8 and decided to RTB. Although he didn’t say “I’m a dot” or “Returning to base”, he turned tail and went towards steerpoint 1. When he was about 20nm from homeplate he started asking me to allow him to engage targets out of nowhere.
Do I have to lock each ground target with the TGP and tell him to engage each one? Because I had told him to “Attack targets” (I belive it was W-7 or W-8 the command) and “Go shooter”, hoping he would drop all his bombs there before returning to base.Am I’m doing something wrong or is it normal for the AI to be so broken? The micromanaging is way too frustrating, not only I have to pay attention to everything that’s going on with my aircraft and my targets but also gotta babysit all the nuggets in the package.
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I generally give my wingmen specific targets to attack. I find they act kinda wonky if you just give them weapons free command. As for the fragging and A-10 dilemma, I’m not sure.
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The only way to really get the A10s to ‘one pass and haul ass’ is to severely limit the number of weapons they are carrying. A good example is give them two Mavericks and two cluster bombs only - this will usually see them in and out as efficiently as possible.
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AG tasks have different references. CAS vs. pre-plan CAS vs. on-call CAS (might different names in 4.33) give different results. Some can be command-redirected. Some are geographical for target area. Some are unit-specific for target. If your mission target is specific to a unit or objective then they’ll kill it and go home even if it’s surrounded by other enemy forces.
Escort all I can think is maybe the callsign of the strikers weren’t set. It’s easy to miss and doesn’t default to the correct one in manual fragging.
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Archer, you’re feeling what makes MP really more valuable than flying solo. I’m so used to AI reactions, beyond my own flight, that it stops me before hitting “commit”.
You can spot particular patterns that work, like Malc wrote. Usually, one pass strike work, especially on planned targets. Air Interdiction is more difficult to assess and guide.
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Escort all I can think is maybe the callsign of the strikers weren’t set. It’s easy to miss and doesn’t default to the correct one in manual fragging.
My OCD forces me to triple check that lol, besides, the target Steerpoints of the escort flight were the same as for the AI flight, ensuring me it was also correct.
I was thinking about fragging a HAVCAP, but I was afraid the escort would also dive with the A-10s in case they done a gun run, instead of maintaining altitude and looking for bandits.I’ll probably have to set a Barcap for X minutes depending on the playtime for the A-10s. I just wonder though, is it possible to set a playtime for CAS/AI missions?
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Archer, you’re feeling what makes MP really more valuable than flying solo.
Indeed. I just find it difficult to find people to fly with. I don’t know if most players moved to DCS or what, Veterans Gaming seems to be a ghost town (at least when I come in to check if anyone is playing). The rest seem to be at milsims.
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Indeed. I just find it difficult to find people to fly with. I don’t know if most players moved to DCS or what, Veterans Gaming seems to be a ghost town (at least when I come in to check if anyone is playing). The rest seem to be at milsims.
Did you try my signature?
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Hello Archer. I fly a lot of SP campaign missions, just ask Lorik :), For the AI missions, check the time between attack waypoints… for the Escort, use TARCAP instead… then you can set an on station time for support…
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Hello Archer. I fly a lot of SP campaign missions, just ask Lorik :), For the AI missions, check the time between attack waypoints… for the Escort, use TARCAP instead… then you can set an on station time for support…
Awesome! I joined the discord group Lorik linked, are you there as well?
And thanks for the tips, I’ll try that.I went back to the F4AF manual and indeed, TARCAP seems to make more sense. While the description for the Escort was basically protecting the friendlies UNTIL the target area, the TARCAP protects them AT the target area. Thanks!
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Another thing that I’ve found works quite nicely is to setup a BARCAP of 30 minutes (or whatever you expect the CAS playtime to be) 20nm from the target aread towards the direction you’re most likely expecting enemy flights to originate from.
All the best, Uwe
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Another thing that I’ve found works quite nicely is to setup a BARCAP of 30 minutes (or whatever you expect the CAS playtime to be) 20nm from the target aread towards the direction you’re most likely expecting enemy flights to originate from.
All the best, Uwe
is there a way to not have BARCAP emptyying their ammo on choppers on their way to their patrol area?
Also
-Tankers: How should I procede for it? Just make a single package with only 1 tanker in it patrolling for some hours, or adding one to other flight of the same package?
also, I made one with customs waypoints; it was fying straight at Fl240 but as soon as it entered turn, it plummeted to like FL200. Not really ideal when about to make contact….