Let's talk "realism"...

[shagrat]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb Tank50us:

 

And that's before we get into the weapons. How about proper anti-aircraft missile fusing? Or detection of a laser by LGBs? Or how about adding assets that are sorely needed like AT troops, more ships, more logistical options for air land and sea, as well as playable logistics options. There is far more in DCS that is needed and yet to be implemented without worrying about something as silly as a zoom feature.

Yeah, but this doesn't help the PvP dogfight crowd with eliminating supposed advantages for the respective adversary.

 

For me personally the AI in general and the ground AI in particular is currently the most important part to improve and get more realistic, as it affects nearly every aspect of DCS missions, from start up and take off, air combat and ground attack, the modeling of a living environment in the air and on the ground, to flying on the AIs wing and landing...

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by shagrat

[Paladin1cd]

I just want to say. Operation Bolo wasn't it? Hey guys we've never strapped this ECM pod to a phantom but that jackwagon Olds wants it done so we have to do it day after tomorrow. No we don't have wiring we have to manufacture it, chief's already on it. 

 

Let us have to start shooting a crap ton of Harms at a crap ton of radars all doing point defense (I know, I know not realistic but that's MP missions for ya) with as many Tors as a region has much less a country from bases less than 100 miles away so we don't need fuel and see how fast some squadron figures a way to snake harnesses through the F16's wings to launch HARMS or whatever. 

 

I'm in the limit things in the editor. If you dont want it ya aint gotta fly with it. That's realisim for everyone, because the cartoon liveries are breaking my immersion.  

[Barra1]

Seriously, if you want to talk about realism, I think the greatest shortcoming in the game at the moment is the so-called artificial intelligence. Simply put, any realistic mission you can create in the mission editor will be ruined by idiotic AI. Everything from flying around oblivious to threats, crashing into the ground, unable to take off from carriers calling out contacts over and over and over again, wingmen unable to attack your target. Simply put, Eagle Dynamics have bigger fish to fry than this at the moment.

[Killshot0597]

4 hours ago, Barra1 said:

Everything from flying around oblivious to threats

Mitigated by correct usage of "Reaction to Threat" setting.

 

4 hours ago, Barra1 said:

crashing into the ground

In my personal experience, the only time I've seen AI crash into the ground was if they were damaged, out of fuel or was busy dodging a missile and a mountain happened to be in front of them. The latter is pretty rare, one would think that a human pilot might make such a mistake. There is a reason "Maneuver Kill" term was coined.

 

4 hours ago, Barra1 said:

unable to take off from carriers

This is a bug at the moment and I believe is already known to the devs and being worked on afaik.

 

 

4 hours ago, Barra1 said:

contacts over and over and over again

This again is dependent on settings 

 

4 hours ago, Barra1 said:

wingmen unable to attack your target

From experience you need to command your wingman to engage the bandits, if you don't he will shoot back at any bandits that fire first.

 

 

4 hours ago, Barra1 said:

wingmen unable to attack your target

Now for this I don't know, depends on what you mean by target?

It seems a lot of what you said stems from lack of knowledge of how the mission editor works. Granted I do have to say a lot of the default AI settings make them seem dumber than they can potentially be. With the right settings, you can definitely improve on them from the default. That being said, the AI do have a lot of short comings. They do not respect the BVR timeline as an example. I would love to see the AI improved but poor AI is a sickness of a lot of simulators, it's just incredibly challenging to build an AI that is smart and not require a NASA super computer to run. Simply put (and this is true for a lot of other Sims like Arma) good AI requires very powerful computers. This is to hope that maybe the Vulkan API can help facilitate that.

[Barra1]

Some of these issues I identified were in dynamic campaigns not of my creation and quite frankly, telling units to search and engage targets at a waypoint with weapons free should enable them to attack targets. I've used the editor in both ARMA3 and DCS World and it seems AI in DCS World have no ability to use sensors to find the enemy nor do they seem to be able to get visuals. In the ARMA3 editor, if you put two enemy units in the same vicinity they will engage each other without the use of three or four different waypoint instructions. In DCS World I have locked up air to air targets and had my wingman tell me he can't engage. I've been using DCS World since its inception and I don't claim to be an expert with the mission editor but on the whole the AI in this game has deteriorated badly. 

[Killshot0597]

6 hours ago, Barra1 said:

AI in DCS World have no ability to use sensors to find the enemy nor do they seem to be able to get visuals

If Search then Engage or Search then Engage in Zone was used. They do use their sensors, the skill level you set them to affects their detection range and reaction time. Time of day also affects this for older aircraft too. 

For example, in missions I've built, I have a patrol of F-18s on Veteran skill set with a race track orbit with a search then engage set to a distance of 80nm. With an AWACs present F-18s respond to a threat (Su-33) at about 60Nm away. Meanwhile, I set up an F-5 patrol with a search then engage with a skill of Trainee set to a distance of 60nm with no AWACs support and on a moonless night. My group, once fully fenced in with lights turned off, was able to get within 20Nm of the F-5s and fire Amraams and they never knew we were there until our amraams went pitbull on them. 

Long story short AI do make use of sensors, and datalink too.
 

 

8 hours ago, Barra1 said:

AI in this game has deteriorated badly

I'll have to disagree on this in the sense that the AI is deteriorating, they've been improving. Over a year ago, ED improved the AI to now crank after firing a Fox 1 or Fox 3. To cite an example, a lot of the issues with the AI is the default settings given to them. Which I do agree need to change as the default settings are what makes them as brain dead as a lot of people claim it to be. With the right settings and the correct set-up you can create a very competent AI for PVE.

I would love improvements to the AI, to this day they still commit with suicidal intent in a BVR engagement. They still do not know how to skate and always Banzai instead. I'd love to see the day the AI can actually competently hold their own against people in BVR.

[Barra1]

39 minutes ago, KIllshot0597 said:

If Search then Engage or Search then Engage in Zone was used. They do use their sensors, the skill level you set them to affects their detection range and reaction time. Time of day also affects this for older aircraft too. 

For example, in missions I've built, I have a patrol of F-18s on Veteran skill set with a race track orbit with a search then engage set to a distance of 80nm. With an AWACs present F-18s respond to a threat (Su-33) at about 60Nm away. Meanwhile, I set up an F-5 patrol with a search then engage with a skill of Trainee set to a distance of 60nm with no AWACs support and on a moonless night. My group, once fully fenced in with lights turned off, was able to get within 20Nm of the F-5s and fire Amraams and they never knew we were there until our amraams went pitbull on them. 

Long story short AI do make use of sensors, and datalink too.
 

 

I'll have to disagree on this in the sense that the AI is deteriorating, they've been improving. Over a year ago, ED improved the AI to now crank after firing a Fox 1 or Fox 3. To cite an example, a lot of the issues with the AI is the default settings given to them. Which I do agree need to change as the default settings are what makes them as brain dead as a lot of people claim it to be. With the right settings and the correct set-up you can create a very competent AI for PVE.

I would love improvements to the AI, to this day they still commit with suicidal intent in a BVR engagement. They still do not know how to skate and always Banzai instead. I'd love to see the day the AI can actually competently hold their own against people in BVR.

Can I ask when you set up a mission for AI to attack ground targets, can they generally strike their target?  I'm having all sorts of problems getting SU-25s to engage ground forces. They have the search and destroy command and ROE is weapons free at the target area but they will not use rockets to engage.

[Lace]

I had a list which I posted a while back, but many of the issues I had raised have now been addressed or are in the process of being addressed.

 

Weather - visually a huge improvement now, but turbulence especially in and around CB should be implemented, as should dynamic weather systems, with options to deteriorate or improve as desired. (I'm sure it will be).

ATC - Desperately in need of overhaul, and currently in progress too.  SC comms adds immersion even if not 100% accurate (apparently).

A/D environment - More vehicles, marshalling personnel, armourers, maintainers, etc.  Again SC has shown us what we can expect on land based A/D soon (I hope).

AI/UFO FM physics - Always improving I guess, and a lot down to the mission designer to correctly set up (as mentioned above).

Dynamic campaign - I don't want to feel like I'm in a movie, I want to feel like I'm fighting a war.  I don't want a storyline, I want a strategic objective.  Tied in with this...

Logistics - Realistic warehouse stocks, and interruptible logistic supply chains.  Better make sure that C-17 full of JDAMs makes it though or you'll be dropping iron bombs for the next few days. - Likewise spares and realistic repair times for campaign missions.

More AI air, land and sea units - If you want realistic scenarios then we need a much broader selection of units - another one which is in process, but seems glacially slow.

 

Other stuff in which is being worked on and will help include the thermal modelling/FLIR implementation, weapon blast effect, ground unit reaction to effective enemy fire, etc.

[Killshot0597]

10 hours ago, Barra1 said:

Can I ask when you set up a mission for AI to attack ground targets, can they generally strike their target?  I'm having all sorts of problems getting SU-25s to engage ground forces. They have the search and destroy command and ROE is weapons free at the target area but they will not use rockets to engage.

Hard to say, but I'm going to make a guess based on what I see a lot of people do (or don't do in this case). If there are AAA in the area of any nearby SAMs, the Su-25s might not want to engage those targets as their "Reaction to Threat" setting will prevent them from fulfilling the mission until it is safe enough. Try setting the "Reaction to Threat" to "Evade" this will make the AI Su-25s swallow some brave pills and make an attempt at an attack despite SAMs and AAA.

This is yet another example of the mission editor being unintuitive, in a lot of cases. You'd need to run the mission and observe how the AI behave, change some settings and see if something works. This is how I learned to control the AI, through trial and error as well as reading the manual (which covers the mission editor very thoroughly) I'm now able to build a mission and expect the AI to do what I want. 

As a side note, a lot of ground attack taskings are often hindered by the default "Reaction to Threat" setting. By default it is "Allow Abort Mission", which in effect makes the AI give up if the area is too hot. I recommend setting them to Evade.

Another thing, for ground attack if you set something to Search then Engage the AI will pass through the waypoint and if it doesn't detect anything (IE too dark, no radar emissions) then the AI will just fly over the target area and then follow their waypoints to RTB. So if you want them to linger and engage targets as they are detected, have them orbit the area for a given amount of time. Alternatively if you want to have more fine control of the AI, just use Engage Group under Perform Task (which gives them omnipotent vision of their target no matter where they are). You'll need to place the waypoint a good distance away from the target you are assigning, like say about 20-30Nm away. This should give them enough of a run up to do a proper attack. Otherwise if you place the waypoint too close. They'll reach the target waypoint, realize they are too close and awkwardly fly away to set up a proper attack.

The mission editor is very daunting, it's unintuitive in a lot of places and misleading everywhere else. Unless you read the manual, gives you a better grasp of how to set things up.

[Barra1]

I’ll give that a try. Thanks for the heads up.