Passive Defence option not working

[Stonehouse]

I recently made a wish list post for a AI option to force an AI aircraft to follow the plotted flight plan regardless of attacking aircraft but still be able to use flares and tail defense guns etc to protect itself. What I was after was a representation of where the aircraft's crew has been given the brief or has decided to hit their target at all costs and avoid manoeuvers to save themselves in order to achieve their goal.

 

Someone from the test team replied that this option was already available although they didn’t say which one. Some reading of the manual led me to the passive defence option, as per the manual:

 

"Passive defense – utilize passive and active defense measures, but no defensive maneuvering against incoming threats."

 

 

Unfortunately this option in practice doesn't seem to stop an AI aircraft from manoeuvring when an enemy aircraft gets close. Shown below is an example using a B52 and a Mig 15 with the B52 set for passive defence on its initial waypoint and no other advanced options. The role is ground attack. The B52 has a straight and level flight path plotted but always breaks to avoid the Migs attack. This seems to go against the manual's description of the passive defence option. In fact the only one that stops manoeuvring is "no reaction" but this also stops defences from working. Passive defence as it is now seems to be exactly the same as the evade options. It is 100% reproducible so far.

 

If I need to do anything else to get this to work could someone please advise or if it is actually a bug could it be logged for fixing in the future please as it seems to have been an existing option not a new one and would be really useful to have work.

 

Thanks,

Stonehouse

Edited June 21, 2016 by Stonehouse
doh forgot the pic

[BSS_Sniper]

The fact of the matter is that your aircraft isn't going to be able to continue on to hit any targets if it's shot down so its doing the only defensive maneuver it can given the attacker. You're using a Mig 15 and it's close enough for guns. There's really no passive defense for that vs a more modern fighter attacking from BVR. It's possible that you've set impossible conditions for the AI.

 

This doesn't sound like a bug, but more something along the lines of you setting things up that can't be done given the conditions. I'm assuming you're reporting this as a bug and I really don't think that it is.

Edited June 21, 2016 by BSS_Sniper

[Shahdoh]

Think bomber formations, where the strength of defense is sticking with the formation, not breaking away. Korea maybe was the starting point of breaking away from large bomber formations, but it still does an aircraft of that size no good to try and maneuver with a fighter.

[Stonehouse]

I suppose it depends on how the devs define "incoming threats" if this is just SAMs etc then it is not a bug and passive defence is working ok, I assume active defences in that case is referring to ECM. If the definition includes aircraft however then it is a bug.

 

If it is not a bug then my wish list post is actually valid as it was requesting an AI override that didn't manoeuver against aircraft and simply used passive and active defences to look after itself while maintaining it's flight plan.

 

 

<edit> ok I just tried passive defence and evade against a sam site. On passive defence the aircraft didn't alter flight plan until after it was first hit (not sure if that was due to damage or the AI avoiding further missiles) and on evade it did try to evade incoming fire as soon as the first missile began closing, including dropping stores. So Sniper you are correct and it actually is not a bug and "incoming threat" doesn't include aircraft. Guessing it probably does include aircraft launched missiles though.

 

Thread can marked as resolved. Sorry I should have tried that test first, it was just that the test team person seemed pretty definite that what I asked for in the wish list post was already available when it in fact is not.

Edited June 21, 2016 by Stonehouse