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Dealing with AI quirks


jureidinim

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Hi all,

I've been having fun designing and playing missions in the editor. I've learnt to deal with some AI quirks, but there are two that can really throw a mission off and I'm hoping someone can maybe tell me how best to curtail these.

 

My latest mission has the player (leading a flight of SU-27's) escorting a flight of

four SU-25's.

Just past waypoint one, a friendly SEAD flight is triggered for takepff to go ahead of us and remove SAMs at the target area. Player group of SU-27's and the SU25's loiter at waypoint 2 until we get the all clear from the SEAD flight.

Taking off just before the SEAD flight is a two-ship CAP flight of MIG 31's which should orbit near the base they departed from.

 

...and here is where it can go weird.

 

The MIG31 CAP will decide that it wants to attack the enemy AWACS and its escort which is located well over 100 miles away. They will even overfly the target SAM sites in full burner, bravely dodging missiles in their focused attempt to down that AWACS (impressively, one MIG31 did get through on one occasion, killing the AWACS and its two FA-18C escorts)..

 

Meanwhile, the flight which is tasked as SEAD could spend forever flying towards that same SAM site, turning around once locked up, and if i'm unlucky, may just drop payload... Eventually though, one of the group members may get his act together and attack the SAM... but still after a lot of jinking back and forth and repeated passes.

 

So.. is there any way to RELIABLY:

1) keep CAP flights on a shorter leash? Escort flights have an option to set what range to engage, but CAP doesn't.

2) Have SEAD flight be bit more aggressive? I know you have to give them time to line up so i set the waypoints with a good distance from target, but even so, the constant back and forth can have you pulling your hair out...

 

On a related note, has the devs ever mentioned that some of these "quirks" would be cleaned up? (others like AWACS spamming messages come to mind).

 

Thanks

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A situation I am quite familiar with... Those pesky AI that never do what you want them to do, either they are too brave (foolhardy) or too cowardly.

 

For the CAP flight:

 

I suggest setting their ROE (under options) to RETURN FIRE. By default they are set to WEAPON FREE which means if you are over Batumi and there is an AWACS over say Tblisi... they will go for it! Return fire will do just that, allow them ONLY to engage, if something engages them first (air to air related, unless they happen to have air to ground munitions on board).

 

What I usually do is set their ROE at the SP in their flight plan, then change it IF NEEDED at a specific waypoint. If I want them to not attack at all at certain flyover points, I will set them to WEAPON HOLD.

 

 

For the SEAD flight:

 

What is hampering them is their Reaction to threat. By default it is set to ALLOW ABORT MISSION... which imho is kinda stupid. Basically when that is set that way, it means that the first person who locks up on them with an IGLA, will cause them to dump their load and RTB... and that is best case scenario.

 

Set their Reaction To Threat (under options) to PASSIVE DEFENSE (if you want them to use Chaff and Flares) or NO REACTION, if you want them to go into total badass-this-base-will-die mode and ignore all threats.

 

 

Here's a bonus... for AWACS spamming... set them to radio silent (also in options) till they get to their specific orbit waypoint. It won't stop them from calling out EVERY single threat airborne during their time on station, but it will shut them up when they have to tell you about that enemy AWACS in Tblisi, after THEY THEMSELVES just took off from Sukhumi.

 

 

Hope this helps. These are some of the things I used to fix those issues. Some love from ED to fix these "quirks" would be nice. Maybe after DCS 2.0

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]



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Avoid using default tasks. If you want extra control over behavior I highly recommend replacing any of default tasking with either "Search and Engage" or "Search and Engage in Zone". With both of those options you can limit where the AI will engage targets at and you can have control over the types of targets they engage.

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Avoid using default tasks.

This need to be encased in Platinum and put on the cover of the mission builder's Bible. The default tasks simply do not work for any kind of complex mission. They are just too simple. Setting an aircraft to CAP is basically telling it to attack anything that is not friendly. If it somehow finds out that there is an enemy Cessna 3000 miles away, it will attack that Cessna.

 

I would not use them outside of very simple missions, such as setting up a 1 v 1 fight.

 

To actually get proper behavior out of the AI, you need to assign waypoint tasks or triggered tasks. As Grimes suggests, the Search and Engage tasks are standard for mission building. SaE in Zone lets you place a circle that the AI will search for targets in. Enemies outside the circle are ignored. You can place multiple circles, but the AI will always prioritize one circle over another I believe. Regular SaE lets you set a range that the units will search for enemies at. The search zone extends from their waypoint path to the specified range on either side. Basically use this for creating non-circular search zones.

 

For the SEAD flight, you might not be giving them proper weapons to attack the specific SAM they are up against.

Awaiting: DCS F-15C

Win 10 i5-9600KF 4.6 GHz 64 GB RAM RTX2080Ti 11GB -- Win 7 64 i5-6600K 3.6 GHz 32 GB RAM GTX970 4GB -- A-10C, F-5E, Su-27, F-15C, F-14B, F-16C missions in User Files

 

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Ian;2348630']Is there a way to do the same with ground units' date=' that is tell a ground unit group to only attack a specific subset of enemies?[/quote']

 

Aside for toggling ROE for the attacker and invisibility for the target, no there is no fine control. Ground AI make a decision to attack based on whether or not they have a weapon that can engage a target and are in range.

The right man in the wrong place makes all the difference in the world.

Current Projects:  Grayflag ServerScripting Wiki

Useful Links: Mission Scripting Tools MIST-(GitHub) MIST-(Thread)

 SLMOD, Wiki wishlist, Mission Editing Wiki!, Mission Building Forum

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To actually get proper behavior out of the AI, you need to assign waypoint tasks or triggered tasks. As Grimes suggests, the Search and Engage tasks are standard for mission building. SaE in Zone lets you place a circle that the AI will search for targets in. Enemies outside the circle are ignored. You can place multiple circles, but the AI will always prioritize one circle over another I believe. Regular SaE lets you set a range that the units will search for enemies at. The search zone extends from their waypoint path to the specified range on either side. Basically use this for creating non-circular search zones.

 

 

This was what i was planning to do next.

 

I made the ROE adjustment (to only engage if fired upon) and now the CAP seems very passive - but I guess thats because unless they are fired upon DIRECTLY, they won't engage even if the enemy flies close to them but are chasing someone else.

I'll set up the zones for the CAP flight and use that instead.

 

The ROE change to Passive (remove ABORT) for the SEAD flight was all I needed. Now they hit faster (usually in one pass).

 

 

 

Just a quick question - I never really used the AI PUSH/SET tasks before... so let me know if this thinking would work....

1) If on my CAP I have the ROE as "engage only if fired upon" (set from first waypoint)

2) In one of trigger events for that flight i add an ROE of "Weapons Free"

3) In my trigger list i set something like "Once (enemy flight in zone) > AI Push task (ROE=Weapons free)

 

Would that have the effect of:

- CAP flight engages no one unless fired upon

- when enemy flight enters ZONE, the CAP goes full offense.

 

thanks

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