Volunteers needed, to test experimental AI tweaks

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by Muckenberg

Unfortunately, I don't know how to work with the mission editor. if you made a guide, you would be very kind. Thank you very much.

Here's the video, hopefully my mumbling is understandable but if anything is unclear feel free to ask:

Originally Posted by Pascal

Lesson well learned, if plane in sight, I dive !

Thanks for sharing

[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.

[Pascal]

March 41 - 2 spitfires hover over the sub gracefully; these planes do not appear to be armed and are easily shot down

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by Pascal

March 41 - 2 spitfires hover over the sub gracefully; these planes do not appear to be armed and are easily shot down

Thanks!

According to game files they are armed - but these light fighter types are also the worst in terms of being able to use their weapons. In my tests Spitfires crashed into sea more often than drop bombs, unfortunately.

There's also another problem with these planes - they should be extremely rare in game (please correct me it I'm wrong, but for all I know there was not a single historical case of Spitfire or Hurricane attack on U-Boat at sea), yet from what I hear SH5 players encounter them more often than dedicated anti-submarine patrol planes.

I'm not a campaign expert, so maybe there's a reason this wasn't done but as far as I'm concerned, game would benefit from drastic reduction of light fighter planes range, to the point where player would only encounter them close to harbors.

[propbeanie]

Depending upon how much of SH4 is in SH5 kapuhy, look at the AirBase cfg files for the AirGroups. In SH4, there are Small, Normal and Large Type=406 AirBase sets, and the LargeGr has a 2 Group of

[AirGroup 2]
StartDate=19401226
EndDate=19420601
Squadron1Class=USFighter
Squadron1No=9
Squadron2Class=LBSUSSearchPlane
Squadron2No=10
Squadron3Class=FBHurricaneMk1
Squadron3No=9
Squadron4Class=LBWhitley
Squadron4No=2
Squadron5Class=USHeavyBomber
Squadron5No=4
Squadron6Class=FBP40Kittyhawk
Squadron6No=4

That is 38 planes altogether, which with the game's logic is about 26 planes too many... - when the player's boat is detected in SH4, the AirBase seems to send out all-available, with a bit of an AirStrike.cfg pause between each "send". From what we saw in testing in SH4, a player boat will usually cause the game to generate seven response planes, each round of the AirStrike (whatever that is set to), and they'll show up in grouping of one, two or three airplanes usually, with each grouping on a slightly different heading. btw, SH4 (and 3) has the use of DummyBomb to "fake" the airplane into attacking, and of course, on that DummyBomb attack run, the plane gets close enough to engage with it's machineguns, so it looks like a strafing run. SH5 of course, has the script files to help with that also... - so check the cfg file of the LAB_NameAirBaseCountry set of files, and see if the Spitfire and Hurricane might not be over-represented, and probably have to large of a "radius" set for them. Also, there is no such thing as "bingo fuel" to a Silent Hunter airplane...

[Pascal]

http://www.histoire-en-questions.fr/...is-avions.html

[Pascal]

http://www.avionslegendaires.net/dos...astal-command/

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

- so check the cfg file of the LAB_NameAirBaseCountry set of files, and see if the Spitfire and Hurricane might not be over-represented, and probably have to large of a "radius" set for them.

Oh I did, back when I was working on Air Force mod. Not just Spitfires and Hurricanes, but fighters in general are over-represented both in stock SH5 and in TWoS. I also browsed through uboat.net while working on that mod and basically made a list of all documented cases of either plane damaging/sinking a U-Boat or vice versa, and I'm pretty sure many fighter planes present in SH5 never attacked a U-Boat during entire war.

Fixing this, however, requires pretty big edits to campaign air groups and is beyond scope of little AI tweak tested here.

[Mister_M]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

I also browsed through uboat.net while working on that mod and basically made a list of all documented cases of either plane damaging/sinking a U-Boat or vice versa, and I'm pretty sure many fighter planes present in SH5 never attacked a U-Boat during entire war.

I would be very interested to see this kind of list.