Aircrafts logic/physics

[MR_BURNS2]

ORIGINAL: jomni

To keep a loaded airplane flying that high you usually needs to us afterburns, which is impractical for long cruises.

Are you sure about that? Didn't someone already say you need less power to fly at high altitude thus lessening the fuel burn?

He is right, you need more lift to carry more weight, at high altitudes air is thinner which means you need more speed to create a certain amount of lift. Thinner air also means less engine power which forces you to use a higher throttle setting. The Drag of your external stores also plays a role.

[BKLANDIN]

ORIGINAL: jmscho

Flying is a balancing act between gravity, drag and thrust. To get maximum range, aircraft fly quite high. Look at airliners around the world; they cruise at between 30k and 40k feet. And really, relative to the distance travelled 40k feet is not very far.

jmscho is correct. Even flight simulator fans know this. You can always ask at PPrune. The OP did talk about "energy and fuel" efficiency.

[erichswafford]

+1 on this.

For now, I've learned to pretty much shepherd most of my strike packages since, left to their own devices, they'll happily cruise at FL 400 with mid-throttle as they're going through a SAM belt.

What I typically do is manually specify a low altitude until the package gets to their IP, then I set it back to auto so the AI pilots will get into correct parameters to unload their ordnance. This doesn't solve the issue with the AI planes choosing rather leisurely throttle settings seemingly regardless of the situation, and unfortunately if you want any AI assistance (by checking "Ignore Plotted..."), you lose the ability to alter those throttle settings.

My suggestion:
A series of check-boxes where you can specific Hi-Lo-Hi, Hi-Hi-Hi, etc. profiles, as well as similar options for things like when to "dash". I'll try to mock up a screen to show you what I mean from a UI point of view. I think this would really add a lot to the game, although I have no idea how involved it would be to program.

ORIGINAL: Der Zeitgeist

The main problem in my view is that 40k feet is used as a mission altitude even in cases where it is sheer suicide tactically, like strike missions in areas with heavy SAM presence. Some planes simply don't use the capabilities they have (like NOE TFR flight) when tasked on a mission under AI control. The other problem is that they don't adjust their speed when engaged offensive in an air to ground mission, but simply fly in at a leisurely 480 knots.

Ragnar has stated that the developers intend to eventually use the flight profiles that are stored in the database for different loadouts. That might help with a lot of these problems, I think.

[miller7219]

ORIGINAL: Sunburn
AI crews seek the optimum altitude (fuel consumption wise) for their selected speed, either picked on their own (mission AI etc.) or manually dictated by the payer. If it's 40000ft, that's how high they'll go.

If you think the optimum fuel consumption happens in a different altitude for the given throttle setting, please have a word with the DB authors (Rag & Paul).

Don't bash the game because you disagree with the numbers.

Forget about fuel efficiency and all that crap. That has nothing to do with that. Any strike aircraft strolling into harms way at 40k feet is going to be a dead aircraft, unless they are utilizing state of the art stealth technology and/or have ample support allocated like SEAD/Jamming/AAW Escort aircraft. Not every mission is going to have air supremacy and/or ample support thus making ingress/egress altitude irrelevant. The whole issue here is survivability and radar detection. Strike aircraf, in many missions, are going to strive to stay below radar horizon as their "support". The mission AI has been given zero intelligence, nor does it allow the player to create a mission and "program" the AI to conduct a smart mission. This can easily be solved by adding ingress/egress options to the mission editor (among other options to allow the player to create "smart" mission). Right now the mission editor seems to launch everyone at 40k feet and away they go and away they return, the few that survive. Bottom line, Command in its current state requires manual control of strikes to have any chance at survival. Unfortunately, the manual control capability needs development itself.

I'm not crapping on the game, I'm just pointing out what many experienced naval simulation players are thinking are have already said in other threads. Just come clean and say "yeah, we know 40k feet on all missions isn't what we want and we're working on it". We respect that. Don't defend it with stuff like this please. You might get away with it on the "newbies" to the genre that don't know any better, but you aren't with the Harpoon crowd, and that's the crowd that enthusiastically ran out and paid $89 for Command on launch day.

[$trummer]

That's a little harsh, Miller7219. The devs have already admitted that the 40k default is a placeholder and that work is being done on the database to break out individual aircraft performance values as far as this is possible. It's forum members, more than the devs, who have been making goofy arguments for why, because a Sea Harrier can, theoretically, fly at 40k, it should.

[miller7219]

Yeah, probably harsh. But, what bothered me was the devs' first response was to defend something that you and I both know is hog wash. They're human and instinct is to defend their baby, and Command is their baby. I see our role as experienced naval enthusiasts to not just bug hunt, but as needed to not let human instinct derail the focus of the development. The game works, but in many ways it's a work in progress post-release. I'd rather Command have matured a bit more before release where these kind of criticisms could have been done privately, but this game's beta testing is being done publicly. I understand cash flow was needed to further the development, but when you do it that way and charge $89.99 you better be prepared for the heat! Sometimes scathing opinion is necessary to give a moment of pause to re-focus and re-prioritize. No offense intended, but don't expect me to be a yes man. None of us are doing a service to Command's future when we serve as yes men/women. In the real world respectful opinions given at the risk of disagreement is what solves problems.

[$trummer]

Fair enough. I was a little petulant myself over this (^). I'm confident that they will address it, though. Whereas it's a glaring error, the solutions are not simple, given the number of platforms in the database and the exponentially larger number of differing operational and tactical parameters. As always with a game of this kind, there will be abstractions. I will be happy with intelligent abstraction.

[erichswafford]

First of all, I hate email and forum messages. Seems like something always gets misconstrued.

I agree this 40k stuff is an issue, but I think the dev was just explaining why the aircraft behave this way (for now).

IMHO, the mission editor for airstrikes needs additional options to make it fully able to handle its...mission within CMANO. I expect these options will be forthcoming. Either that, or the AI needs tweaking so that it doesn't do dumb things like transit enemy airspace at 40k. This might be great for range/fuel economy, but all it really does is guarantee there will be more fuel onboard to incinerate the pilot!

For now, I simply launch the a/c on a Mission, then unassign them once they're at a point where I want them to go low and fast (or whatever), change their alt/speed, and conduct the attack run manually. They'll still evade and all that, but I have better control over ingress/egress. Once they're clear of the enemy defenses, I'll RTB the lot and move on to something else. It's not ideal, but it gets the job done for now.

[$trummer]

Yes, it's not ideal to have to micromanage individual air ops from an IP, as I know the devs would acknowledge. The ideal state, which I'm confident we'll get to within a year, hopefully, would be for the already excellent mission editor to allow us to fine-tune the tactical AI in advance so that appropriate altitudes and airspeeds are flown and the player can manage the scenario operationally if he wants, rather than feel obliged to intervene tactically. In my experience of PC gaming, the very best AI always demonstrates itself in situations where the player can observe AI vs. AI confrontations and watch them play out plausibly, realistically, and with a logical outcome. CMANO is not quite there yet but it's within striking distance.

[erichswafford]

If you want to see some superb AI in CMANO, check out how it performs in a dogfight between opposing flights, both AI controlled. It's awesome and a thousand times better than the stupid stuff you'd see in Harpoon. You'll see your guys intelligently using their BVR weapons, then maneuvering to get proper rear-aspect shots, meanwhile they'll evade skillfully and present an incoming missile with a high-speed crossing target. Awesome.

Yes, the "dogfighting" AI pretty much rocks. If you ask me, this is probably the hardest thing to get "right" in terms of AI, and they did it right out of the box in the 1.0 release. This is why I am supremely confident that the relatively simple task of tightening up the Strike AI will get done, and done well.

My advice to the devs is a 2 stage approach:

1) Short term: Give us more manual control over what our guys do at each waypoint in terms of alt/speed. This will act as both a stopgap solution until the AI is perfected and a way for control nuts to absolutely ensure their guys follow orders.
2) Long-term: Make the Strike/SEAD AI so good that most people can get away with just saying "Hit this target", but retain the above manual option for those who just want to be sure.