[RESOLVED] Thank God, my aircraft are flying OVER the SAM Belt!!!!

[BeirutDude]

I attached an image of one of my genius IDF F-15 pilots (the third BTW) who has flown totally out of my control, and totally uncontrollably, from the safety of the Bekaa Valley and the safety BEHIND the 14,000 foot tall Mount Hermon summit and instead taking an "Engaged Defensive" action and now have flown OVER the mountain(S), gained altitude and took a corkscrew path to the point where they are now OVER one of the thickest SAM belts in the world! This is great, because I'd hate to clutter up my airfields with returning aircraft! Because God forbid we had the ability to turn off this stupid algorithm and do something a real pilot might actually do, like hit the deck, get behind a mountain (not over it) and actually fly away from the SAMs!!!!! Just saying.

Seriously this has been an issue for years and people have burned up the Forums talking about it. Does the "Professional Version" work like this? The Navy and Air Force are OK with this?

[BeirutDude]

Well thank God he just died, as his algorithm was too stupid to live!!!!!!

[hrfepo1]

I am tagging along for the answer.

[BrianinMinnie]

What they said.

[BDukes]

Well thank God he just died, as his algorithm was too stupid to live!!!!!!

Hahahaha!

Turning defensive logic off globally is on my pregame punch list these days. Mucking up the other way is less likely to lead to Hulk smash and blood pressure medication.

Check out the streamer's vidz when this happens. What comes out of his mouth is magnifique!

chefs_kiss_2.png (136.89 KiB) Viewed 1192 times

Mike

[boogabooga]

Automatic evasion = off
(possibly) Ignore plotted course when attacking = off
Then go do what you need to do.

"CMO- it's not Google Deep Mind" To be fair, AI is difficult.

[DWReese]

Al,

I believe that Dimitris stated that the Pro version has a better working model. I don't know why it wouldn't be utilized here. As you said, this has been stated, and requested, for years. I call the maneuver "the spiral of death" because, as you said, the pilot just keeps flying closer and closer to the enemy and eventually gets killed.

If you turn of the Def Evasion, then the plane flies straight and level as if he is unaware of any danger. This isn't ideal at all.

I would REALLY like to see an improved model be included in our version as the game player can't keep micromanaging every evasive action for every plane.

[DWReese]

Al,

I believe that Dimitris stated that the Pro version has a better working model. I don't know why it wouldn't be utilized here. As you said, this has been stated, and requested, for years. I call the maneuver "the spiral of death" because, as you said, the pilot just keeps flying closer and closer to the enemy and eventually gets killed.

If you turn of the Def Evasion, then the plane flies straight and level as if he is unaware of any danger. This isn't ideal at all.

I would REALLY like to see an improved model be included in our version as the game player can't keep micromanaging every evasive action for every plane.

[Blast33]

Especially at larger scenario's, when you are working on one area, and your aircraft are turning into the SAMs at another place..

A big bummer. Prio-1 on the to-do-list if you ask me..
With all respect to the programmers of course.

[BeirutDude]

I have the upmost respect for the Devs/Programmers. On my best day I couldn't hope to replicate 1/1,000,000th of what they have done. No doubt this is the best simulation ever produced. I shouldn't have to say that when pointing out a problem!!!!! I know everyone is proud of their work and they have every right to be extremely proud. BUT This has also been a long standing issue that has had attention called to it in the Forums numerous times.

In this case (image below)...
Turning off "Ignore Track when attacking" does NOT work
Turning off "Automatic Evasion" doesn't seem to work.

I restarted the "Land of Confusion" scenario to test out turn both off. The 2 IDF F-15s in this image are...

1. Out of their SEAD Patrol/Prosecution Boxes (Way, way, way out!!!!!!!)
2. The SEAD Patrol Box Mission has a Prosecution Zone set up, which if I'm understanding it correctly should keep the aircraft within those bounds.
3. On "Engaged Offensive" and the only way, I know of, to get them to disengage is to un-assign them from their mission. If you tell them to drop contacts they just reacquire them.
4. They flying into the teeth of a SAM/IADS kill box with standoff weapons with a 60 NMI range!!!!!!

Seems to me just having a button next to the "Engaged Offensive/Defensive" section that toggles that algorithm off for a few minutes (5 minutes of game time?) would help.

[BeirutDude]

They too are dead!

[BeirutDude]

Ok so I turn off the Investigate functions and the aircraft just fly off while I was trying to save other aircraft. I have lost three aircraft so far because they are just doing their own thing!!!!!!! No setting seems to keep them in their Mission Boxes. I'll turn them back on, but they were on when the F-15s took off on their own!

[hrfepo1]

I have had similar problems, and the only solution I came up with is to pause the program and set no-fly zones.

[BeirutDude]

No fly zones! interesting idea, but you shouldn't have to do that!

Lets not discuss the uncontrollable RTBs! where aircraft in the hot zone, decide it's best to pop up to 36,000 feet to loiter home!!!!! You MIGHT, repeat MIGHT, be able to catch them and get them down to a more reasonable altitude but it might take three or so attempts to convince the AI that is really what you want to do!!!!! I just had a flight do that in the Bekaa Valley and yes it took three times to get them to drop to NAPE altitudes.

[BeirutDude]

And here it is!!!!! I set these guys with a track, after they fired their last rounds "Winchester" to hug the Earth at 1 KFT and track back into the Bekaa Valley (you know get behind the mountains. NOOOOOOOOOOOO, they thought it was better to pop up to 18.6 KFT before I got back to them to try to save their sorry ***es!!!!

Then there are the wingmen to just love to get 30, 40, 50 miles from their lead!

SeaQueen and I have had our share of disagreements but she is right in the fact that this is a tactical game and when there is too much going on it is out of it's depth. There is just too much for the player to micromanage and you have to go back to units continually to make sure they are doing what you THOUGHT you have set them to do!!!!

[BeirutDude]

AND NO...

Set them to Hug the Earth (NAPE) 1,000 ft AGL (Minimum Altitude), and went to work on some other issues. Came back to them a few seconds later and they had unchecked my settings and now are now well on their way to their 36 KFT RTB altitude. I guess that's how they burn off the other guy's SAMS?????

Sorry to be critical but these were things I noted when I was designing scenarios but was just to busy to really express them. Now that I'm just playing the game, this is just danged frustrating!!!!!!

[BeirutDude]

yeah, just lost four more aircraft to them doing stupid things like launching their HARMS at 200 ft and popping up to 12,000 feet before I could control them letting the SAMS they fired on lock on them! I'm going to take the rest of the day to do something more productive like drink heavily...

[hrfepo1]

Drink heavily! That is a great idea.

On another subject, I like your scenarios very much. Thank you, and keep them coming. You should consider setting up a website and charging for them; they are good because they make you think as an operations manager.

[Dimitris]

Hi Al

That's definitely an interesting set of examples.

If possible, can you please open a new thread for each of them, together with a suitable pre-action save, so that we can track and investigate them individually?

Looking at the first example, it looks like what you would like to see is that friendly aircraft avoid AAW bubbles (not just 2D areas; it may be perfectly safe to fly over a SHORADS ceiling, for example) when their mission does not dictate it. However, presumably you want this rule to be flexible and toggable because in many cases you do want them to step into harm's way in order to do their job.

So we are probably looking at a doctrine setting? Something like "Avoid AAW threat coverage" ?

And within it you would have a series of values:

1) "Never": This would be the default? In order to maintain backwards compatibility with existing behaviors & scenarios?

2) "As dictated by mission": So for example if the aircraft is tasked with destroying a certain SAM site, by necessity go for it. Or if it's on a supprot mission and one of the legs is inside the threat zone, go for it. Otherwise plot around it.

3) Always: No matter what you are tasked to do, always stay clear of danger. This would make sense for certain HVAs like tankers, C4ISTAR aircraft etc. But even in that case sometimes you do need a certain asset to remain in place regardless of the threat (hence the need to have this toggable).

4) Some other value?

In all cases a manual-plotted course (or strike logic-plotted course) would override this setting.

I can quickly imagine a few issues with having this logic:

1) Each individual aircraft would need to regularly re-evaluate their entire flight paths for bingo/joker considerations, both the ingress and egress routes. If you thought navigation/pathfinding is currently CPU-taxing, imagine a 100x increase. (Also: Your tankers now need to be a lot closer to the front line)

2) You have to consider the effect on carefully planned air operations. That complex strike you are putting together? Disrupted. That "wall of Eagles" you are putting up in order to sweep the air opposition? Thrown all over the place. Some players already complain when their aicraft scatter right and left because of an incoming missile; now picture the same scattering happening merely upon stepping into an estimated AAW ring.

3) How do you define the threat bubble for enemy aircraft? SAMs are fairly simple; draw the AAW max-range ring and "DO NOT STEP IN". What about the equivalent ring for an enemy aircraft? If you simply copy the SAM logic, your orbiting AWACS can be ambushed by a fast incoming fighter.
OTOH, if you counter this by saying "consider the AAW threat bubble to be 1.5x or 2x of the AAW range ring" (to give your planes enough slack to run away), you can very easily find yourself in the situation that the enemy effectively paralyzes your airforce by having just a few widely-distanced fighters in the air, and "blanketing" the theater with their AAW bubbles.

Plenty of food for thought, to be sure. Comments welcome.

[DWReese]

Dimitris,

You previously made the statement that the Pro version handles this thing differently, and that eventually you planned on implementing some/all of what the Pro version has into this. If that's the case, why couldn't "eventually" be now? Why not just merge what the Pro version has into this? I'm sure that there are many reasons why you can't do this, or don't want to do this, but it would sure seem like an easier way to accomplish the goal.

This "situation" has existed for several years. Al's examples are excellent, and they actually capture much of what goes on.

I am personally very "attached" to naval aviation, so I sort of manually try to guard/protect them as best as I can. But, since playing this game since 2014, I can honestly say that more than half of ALL of my aircraft "deaths" have occurred when the AI pilot does something that I have repeatedly told him NOT to do. That's a big number.

As others have said, it makes you want to only play small scenarios because you can't constantly be monitoring the actions of wayward AI pilots with a death wish.

Some help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Keep up the great job. This is the best piece of software in existence.