Problems with Jester

[Tiramisu]

I really like the F-14, so dont get me wrong, but now I really need to talk about some of Jester's failures.

 

 

• I would like to permit jester from ejecting, because I do not care if he dies in flames. Is there an option that I have missed?
  When Jester escapes from the aircraft I lose his services (plus I am not able to take his seat any more) and I lose the canopy, which kind of breaks the immersion for me. He often ejects when my aircraft got damaged and when it approaches the ground with a high sinkrate, no matter whether I manage to pull it up in the end. That can be annyoing during bomb runs for example.
  
• In dogfights Jester gives information about where the enemy is. It works great when the enemy is further away than a few miles. However, when the enemy gets close, then Jester is bombarding me with false informations. They are not always false, but even when I take into account that the enemy's position changes while Jester is talking to me, he sometimes gives me utterly wrong information.
  
• Jester is able to see even small enemy manpad IR-missiles 10 nautical miles away. Now maybe there are real life RIO's with such a godly talent, but the main problem is that Jester thinks those missiles would hit me, even when they are far away with absolutely no chance for a hit. Actually those missiles were aiming for another allied flight.
  He once even warned me of a missile at my six o clock, while it was flying in the opposite direction, so it was not a threat at all. I noticed this in the tacview replay, but during the mission Jester made me panic and let me do the wrong decision to make a hard evasive maneuver.
  

I hope my experience helps other people, who are a bit confused about Jester.

Edited April 19, 2019 by Tiramisu

[uri_ba]

Making code make human decisions is hard.

I'm sure that once the Cat has most of the bugs ironed out, HB will continue and make Jester more life like.

 

As for Jester ejecting on you, I guess that his decision tree isn't very good with dealing with "balls of steel". If he is out the window constantly for you, that means you take risks more then the average player. I had jester say goodbye only once. And it was after I broke a wing in a high G turn (wanted to see what happens) and folded the other one back (to reduce lift a-symmetry). And he punched it only when I was gear down trying to land on a road... He made the smart move....

[pacastro]

Adding one that had occurred to me a couple of times:

• Locked a target using PAL mode, and Jester tells me "Hey, that's a friendly!"... waited a few seconds doubting a little, and then Jester tells me "That's a mig28" which was the enemy I was looking for. Also happened with a Su-33.

[Tiramisu]

Adding one that had occurred to me a couple of times:

• Locked a target using PAL mode, and Jester tells me "Hey, that's a friendly!"... waited a few seconds doubting a little, and then Jester tells me "That's a mig28" which was the enemy I was looking for. Also happened with a Su-33.
  

 

Sounds interesting. I think it never happened to me, but probably Heatblur itentionally added this to simulate human failure for Jester. On the other hand I have to agree with you that Jester sometimes takes too long for IFF compared to a human RIO. In messy situations it gets worse, because he will say different kind of less important informations about other bandits until he finally tells me whether the radar locked aircraft is friend or foe.

That is why I try to check the enemy myself using the television camera (TCS), which works well on closer ranges.

 

 

Making code make human decisions is hard.

I'm sure that once the Cat has most of the bugs ironed out, HB will continue and make Jester more life like.

 

Yes, I expected to see AI problems from the very beginning, because pretty much every game/sim has this problem. I just wanted to share my experience about Jester. Maybe that helps other people or maybe HB will take a closer look at it.

Edited April 20, 2019 by Tiramisu

[Cytarabine]

I have only had Jester punch it from a plane I considered flyable (albeit heavily damaged from my own munitions at low altitude) once - the other times were moment before buying the farm so fair enough.

 

While a real human might stick with it longer (for example to get feet wet again and increase your chance of rescue) mostly I think he is ejecting at reasonable times.

[Vertigo72]

He seems to consistently eject when the plane is damaged, and heading towards the ground, even though the damage may be fairly trivial (I basically lost one engine), occurred 10 minutes ago, and the dive is completely controlled. So I do concur, it would be better if jester stuck with the plane for as long as the pilot does. Unless told otherwise. But thats not nearly as important as some of the other issues raised, I also loath his alarmism and his uselessness in a dogfight. Especially when they coincide, ive had him tell me the bandit was on my 6, and then yell about a missile launch. In reality the only bandit in my vicinity was almost in my crosshairs, and the missile launch a sam launch far away and not aimed at me.

Edited April 20, 2019 by Vertigo72

[smallberries]

Yeah, having Jester punch out on his own could have been just about the very last thing Heatblur added in an attempt to make Jester's AI mimic a real human. As it is, it is decidedly unhelpful for the game, and the kind of thing that, poorly done, is infintely worse than not done at all.

 

Please remove this feature, it will not be missed.

[elaintahra]

[r4y30n]

Yeah, having Jester punch out on his own could have been just about the very last thing Heatblur added in an attempt to make Jester's AI mimic a real human. As it is, it is decidedly unhelpful for the game, and the kind of thing that, poorly done, is infintely worse than not done at all.

 

Please remove this feature, it will not be missed.

 

 

 

Personally I’ve been trying to remind myself to have him arm for both. Never had Jester eject on me so far, even with a missing wing, but I buy into the Navy’s logic that the pilot would be too attached to the plane to bail while he still can. Yup, that’s me...

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Magot]

This will help when Heatbluer add in F-14 module extra option: AI Jester eject when player pilot is ejected = ON/OFF

This "simulation" on human behaviour destroying gameplay ..

[Tiramisu]

Adressing the following problems would make Jester much more practical to use:

 

 

• When Jester has no contacts on the radar at the moment you ask him to lock an enemy, he will disregard your order, even if a contact will occur one second later. This makes it much more unlikely for Jester to lock something up.
  So instead I would want to be able to turn on or turn off a search mode for Jester, where he constantly tries to lock up enemies while the AI search mode is on.
  
• Actually I would want to tell Jester what he has to do in general instead of micromanaging his actions. E.g. I would like to tell Jester to search for a general direction more often instead of micromanaging his radar azimuth and elevation, because that is too much workload for the pilot in stressful situations.
  
• Instead of reporting every single contact Jester should report them in one sentence, if they are located close to each other. So instead of saying
  "Bandit Bra 240 5 miles, Bandit Bra 241 5 miles, Bandit Bra 241 5 miles" he should simply say something like "Three Bandits Bra 240 5 nm".
  
• Another problem caused by the previously mentioned one is that sometimes Jester makes so many reports that he has to cue up other more important ones. He should prioritize them better. Also he should omit reports that are outdated, e.g. when he lost lock 10 seconds ago, then he should not mention it.
  

In addition there are further problems, that are not the most important ones, but they can be still annoying at times:

 

• Jester's reports for a missed missile come way to late. It would be better to omit this or make that report come earlier.
  
• There should be an option to turn off the context menu. I have tried to work with it, but it can be hard to predict the behavior of the context menu.
  
• Jester turns off my TID too often or for a very long time during combat. Maybe it happens when he uses the TV or something, but I see no useful reason why he does it. I mean sometimes he turns off my TID screen while being silent for a while doing nothing useful, telling me no useful information about the bandit he might see on his screen. Maybe someone can explain me, if there is a good reason for this, but to me it seems like Jester is not doing it very well.
  
• When I set certain things in the RIO's cockpit myself, then Jester changes it, even when it is not part of his current task. I would suggest to add an option to disable Jester's ability to override settings in the RIO cockpit made by the player unless he is forced to do it for one of his tasks.
  

Edited July 2, 2019 by Tiramisu

[Raisuli]

As for Jester ejecting on you, I guess that his decision tree isn't very good with dealing with "balls of steel".

 

 

So, the obvious question is how did an Air Force WSO end up in the back seat of a real airplane?

 

 

:music_whistling: :smartass:

[Raubritter]

Adressing the following problems would make Jester much more practical to use:

 

 

• When Jester has no contacts on the radar at the moment you ask him to lock an enemy, he will disregard your order, even if a contact will occur one second later. This makes it much more unlikely for Jester to lock something up.
  So instead I would want to be able to turn on or turn off a search mode for Jester, where he constantly tries to lock up enemies while the AI search mode is on.
  
• Actually I would want to tell Jester what he has to do in general instead of micromanaging his actions. E.g. I would like to tell Jester to search for a general direction more often instead of micromanaging his radar azimuth and elevation, because that is too much workload for the pilot in stressful situations.
  
• Instead of reporting every single contact Jester should report them in one sentence, if they are located close to each other. So instead of saying
  "Bandit Bra 240 5 miles, Bandit Bra 241 5 miles, Bandit Bra 241 5 miles" he should simply say something like "Three Bandits Bra 240 5 nm".
  
• Another problem caused by the previously mentioned one is that sometimes Jester makes so many reports that he has to cue up other more important ones. He should prioritize them better. Also he should omit reports that are outdated, e.g. when he lost lock 10 seconds ago, then he should not mention it.
  

In addition there are further problems, that are not the most important ones, but they can be still annoying at times:

 

• Jester's reports for a missed missile come way to late. It would be better to omit this or make that report come earlier.
  
• There should be an option to turn off the context menu. I have tried to work with it, but it can be hard to predict the behavior of the context menu.
  
• Jester turns off my TID too often or for a very long time during combat. Maybe it happens when he uses the TV or something, but I see no useful reason why he does it. I mean sometimes he turns off my TID screen while being silent for a while doing nothing useful, telling me no useful information about the bandit he might see on his screen. Maybe someone can explain me, if there is a good reason for this, but to me it seems like Jester is not doing it very well.
  
• When I set certain things in the RIO's cockpit myself, then Jester changes it, even when it is not part of his current task. I would suggest to add an option to disable Jester's ability to override settings in the RIO cockpit made by the player unless he is forced to do it for one of his tasks.
  

 

like :thumbup: