Oi! get off my target Colin!

[GreyBadger]

Hi All

 

I've been having a look at the mission editor, just for fun and to set myself up with simple missions for takeoff, waypoint and landing practice and using the various ordinance.

 

For flavour I populated my missions with a few AI assets (if that's the right word.) The odd fuel truck trundling around here, a flight of Apache Helicopters buzzing overhead there and it has struck me that the air units seem to take the orders I give them, more as a suggestion of what they might like to do "if" they fancied it. :lol:

 

I wondered if the AI has an overriding set of rules that it follows over anything you might ask it to do.

 

So for example I had asked one F16 to fly fairly low, but when I watched it on the play back it seemed to be struggling to do it. Sinking pretty low but then bobbing back up as though it wanted deep down to do what I asked, but was fighting some overriding drive not to. At one point in the flight I effectively asked it to buzz the tower, with a pass only 100ft above where I was sitting in the parking area at Batumi (sp?). This it just outright refused, passing in the end at about 600ft.

 

Actually this same F16 (Let's call him Colin.) defied me later on as well when I adapted my way point mission to include two enemy helicopters at various points during the route, for a little drone A-A practice.

 

When Colin soon after takeoff came across the first of these helis and despite my not having armed him with any external ordinance, he shot it down with his cannon! "Oi! That was my target Colin!"

 

That heli I had asked to travel up and down the map, but the other one I just wanted to hover. I was asking the poor fella to just sit there and smile until I showed up to put a missile up his tail pipe. But what actually happened was that he said "I'm not just hovering around here! I'm off for a brewski" and with no orders from me he just set off and I never actually saw him during my flight.

 

As I say it's all just for fun really and in fact I'm just going to change the enemy positions so they've both got something set to do and it's all well away from any allied forces on the map. But I was kind of interested in what criteria the aircraft used over and above your own orders. :pilotfly:

 

All the best

Badger

Edited February 1, 2015 by GreyBadger

[Belgeode]

LOL. Ok that was absolutely hilarious. Thank you for this lovely story.

 

Yeah the AI in this can be a little snarky. It does seem to take on a life of its own, despite your best efforts to program it.

 

For Colin, you could possibly set his option > ROE as WEAPON HOLD for the waypoints before the hovering helo, and then if you want him to shoot down the second one, at the wp closest to it, set him back to WEAPON FREE. It's a toggle, so you only have to set it on once, and off once, if needed. I find the rules of engagement a great way to muzzle would be show stealers, because in this game the AI will actively hunt for targets with a slingshot if they are halfway across Russia.

 

 

As for getting them to stay "down in the weeds with their hair on fire", When you set their flight path (and I am assuming you set altitude at 100ft, make sure speed is high enough that it does not stall out (close to supersonic, anyone?). I have found if I am going too slow, my AI wingmen start to develop a severe case of angle of attack that makes me think they are going to fall out of the sky any second.

 

I recently made a mission where I had 3 Su-33s fly over my flight on the Admiral Kuznetsov at low altitude. It seemed to work best when I set the speed somewhere about 500-700 kph, and altitude right around 100 ft. I gotta say, that was pretty impressive. (It's up on youtube somewhere). How I managed it was I had their SP behind the carrier, flight path going directly over (slightly left because, echelon right formation), and set the waypoint ahead of the carrier to exactly the same altitude and speed as the one behind.

 

Hovering is a neat trick. To get my helos to effectively hover I need to create the waypoint for them, give them the task "ORBIT" and set the speed to about 1. Altitude of course would be whatever altitude they are currently at.

 

If you want them to hover forever, tell them their STOP CONDITION for said hover is when USER FLAG [1] is true... but never make a trigger to set it to true. It's not like they are going to survive the mission anyway.

 

You might also want to set their option- REACTION TO THREAT to NO REACTION, or they are going to engage their fight or flight instincts.

 

I hope this helps. A lot of what you wrote about, I found out the hard way too. Isn't AI fun?!

Edited February 1, 2015 by Belgeode

[GreyBadger]

Thanks for the reply Belgeode. I wanted to see that carrier flyby you mentioned, so I went in search of your channel.

 

I made an educated guess of which to choose from your list of DCS vids, but ended up watching the wrong one. ("Su 33 Flanker-D Carrier Ops") The right ingredients, but no flyby. :) But I tell you what.. I say it was the "wrong" one but crikey there was nothing wrong with that. What an excellent video! You sir have my subscription and I'll be coming back to see the rest. :)

 

Anyway where were we?..Ah yes, your advice..

 

Thanks again for that, I'll give at least a couple of those suggestion a try asap. (couple of them were above my pay grade currently.)

 

I see what you mean about the AI hunting targets "halfway across Russia". Before reading this I had changed the location of the targets so they were a good distance away from anybody else's routes and I set out to hunt me some heli's.

 

I'd asked ATC for permission to start up and the engines were spooling, when suddenly I hear Colin.. "Engaging Bogey". What? Whose bogey? My Bogey? For goodness sake man get your own Bogey can't ya?!!

 

Somehow he managed on the most outward part of his route, to catch a glimpse of one of my target Havocs (I think they're Havocs. I can't remember.) and he aimed to get him some of that action!

 

"Get off my target you pointy nosed bast!" I waited painfully for the engines to spool up so that I could set off. So far there'd been no "Splash Bandit" announcement, so perhaps all was not yet lost.

 

As time went on and still no announcement came, I began to assume that maybe my kill stealing nemesis had lost the target and was on his way home. But the trouble was that I wasn't finding it either.

 

I'm colour blind and I find it very difficult to spot and keep track of targets in this (or any other for that matter) sim and although technically in the metagame I knew where the bugger was patrolling up and down at 50knts and how high he was. I just couldn't find him.

 

I was at sea heading for the coast and he must have been camouflaged against the land because suddenly I was passing him on my port side. Seriously if Maverick and Goose had been in that Helicopter... they'd have been laughing and giving me the bird!

 

No way this fella was escaping me though! Your Badger didn't buy this Trackir thingy so he could keep looking straight ahead. Stabbing the 6 key to switch to a-a mode I banked hard to the left all the while keeping an eye on my prey. You are mine buddy!

 

Suddenly cannon fire and an explosion! "Splash Bandit". "COLIN YOU SON OF A B****!!!!!!!"

 

I swear to you Belgeode I am not embellishing this. It happened exactly as described.

 

My first reaction was right that's it then, I have to take his flight out of the mission. But now I'll try to follow your advice and change his engagement parameters. I didn't see an option to do it before, but I'm sure I was just missing the obvious.

 

Badger Out.

Edited February 1, 2015 by GreyBadger

[Belgeode]

Oh, sorry I should have mentioned. The video in question is "The Defectors". In the first five minutes you should see not one but three carrier flybys.

 

 

Hahahahah. OMG... Yeah you definitely have to make Colin a bit more docile somehow. I appreciate a combat pilot who really gets into his work, but remind him there is no I in team! LOL

 

Btw thanks so much for the subscription! I've got two more videos going up sometime today and tomorrow.

Edited February 2, 2015 by Belgeode

[Belgeode]

Btw Badger, I think you should list that video. It is funny stuff.