For the wishlist: Jester A2A tweaks

[IronMike]

2 hours ago, Noctrach said:

In principle I like this direction, but isn't it little bit too much wishful thinking?

The problems I encounter using Jester revolve squarely around those aspects that you'd normally be talking about with your human RIO: target sorting in complex environments. Hence the focus on two items:

1. Next target functionality
2. Ability to "micro-manage" scan granularity.

Imagine the following scenarios:

1. Multiple bogeys but limited, scattered bandits.
2. Multiple bandits of different type (two-ship MiG-31 at 50k for 50 but singleton F-5 at 40k for 30)
3. Two-ship of solo F-14 pilots trying to sort any 2vX encounter.

Jester would need a significant level of heuristic decisionmaking to correctly identify what's expected. In these cases there would not even be any other option than going STT and severely diminishing situational awareness.

Hence, Next Target would solve all three of these. Managing this through narrowing the scan width and bars would at least help you isolate to make Jester's decision-making significantly less complex (and therefore less error-prone, as well as easier to implement?).

I don't see this being fixed any other way, because not even a human RIO would be able to infer what do to in these situations without having a pre-briefed gameplan or some in-flight chatter. Conversely, once a human is briefed on the ROE and threat environment, these scenarios become extremely trivial.

While I agree that the RIO drives the intercept and the pilot flies the intercept, Jester cannot be briefed on any situation that slightly deviates from the norm, so he'll need a little help from us.

 

These are things we are very much contemplating. But first we need to see how clever we can get JESTER. And there is lots of space above.

As for an intercept, what makes you think a pilot has any say in these things? With a good RIO, he has little to none. It is the RIO who does all of that and just says stuff to the pilot like "30 degress left" "come right", etc... or the pilot already flies accordingly. But there is not really a discussion from what the pilot would like to choose... That said, ofc JESTER will never reach a conscious level of that sort, and hence the player will always have to have some sort of input.

[captain_dalan]

20 hours ago, IronMike said:

As a general (quick) reply to some of the inputs here, for which I thank you all:

 1. - many of you seem to like RIO tasks a lot: why not be the RIO more often? This would both a) sooth your craving and b) help with the situation of "a human RIO is difficult to find"
2. - he often gets judged under specific circumstances that a) are not the best outlook for a single Tomcat and b) not exactly what he was developed for - think: "me alone against 50 guys," etc... Even with a human RIO in some of the feedback I have seen (not necessarily in this thread), turning around would have been the better option, or in even other words: sometimes expectations are too high.
3. - next launch is difficult, and we are currently split on whether we want to offer it or not.
4. - we do not want you to micromanage him. in that sense our improvements will go away from that, not pile on top of it.
5. - what we see after the LANTIRN release, is that folks want to dictate JESTER too much, he is often more clever than what folks credit him for
 

1. First thing first, to get this right out of the way, that is just wishful thinking for many of us. I fly seldom and in erratic time intervals. When i do fly and it's not SP, it's usually with one of two other guys, that just don't want to fly the F-14 for whatever reason (it's their reason, so i'm not going into why), they are Viper drivers. On occasion i fly with 3 other mates (but never more then 3 of us at the time), one of them is again, a VIper driver, and the other 2, FC3 drivers. You see mate, i can only be RIO in SP at times. We are all middle aged people with obligations on all fronts. We are lucky if get a MP session twice a month. 

2. Now, the crux of the matter. For me, the greatest current issue with Jester doesn't come from lone-wolf-ing mate. In fact, 3 times out of 4, a good pre-joust setup, both in SP and MP is enough to solve most Jester limitations. My problems arise from flying in a group. Essentially every session i find myself in a situation where me and a human wingman perform an intercept in a 2 V UNK scenario. These generally turn out to be 2 V 2 or 2 V 3. What we would like to do most of the time, is sanitize the airspace in such a way, that one of us would engage the left bandit, while the other would engage the right one, and even more often, one would engage the closer one while the other the trailer. As an F-14 driver, i would be the logical choice to engage the farther target. I can't. My WCS always prioritizes the closest target. I can't chose to engage the higher or the lower target. I am always constrained with what the radar choses. And my wingman has to go for the other one. However, that other one, is less then optimal. Vipers and Eagles don't have our sticks. Finally, we can't sort left or right. Once the WCS builds its track, it will center the cone on it's primary target/group and again, my wingman has no choice but to always go for the other, even when this is not required or desired. Don't get me wrong, is the F-14 unplayable as a result? Heck no. Even if you guys don't do anything to improve the situation, the F-14 is good enough as is, as far as RIO AI is. But it does limit tactical use severely, because i don't think that Jester can communicate and coordinate with other planes, no matter how clever he is. Certainly nor with humans, and very likely not with other AI. In SP, i can direct the other AI to attack specific targets, but in MP, not so much and not without a cost. And the most direct and straight-forward solution would be:

3. This. This solves all conundrums and solves many of the hiccups other people are having. No matter how clever he is, Jester just can't know what's going on on radio. By radio here of course, i mean player radio, SRS or Discord or whatever. I could see him receiving info from comms menu while i delegate the AI wingman/men, but speech recognition? That's just wishful thinking again. 

4. On this topic, i would LOVE for a backseater to tell me go right, or drop nose, or guide me to an intercept. But that's just too much to expect. Even if doable, i don't think it's fair to have such expectations from Jester. On the other hand, if i look at a portion of the sky, a portion Jester can see a well, and i see contrails there, why shouldn't i be able to say to Jester, point the radar there? Or point the TCS there? And if out of bounds for either, then i don't have issues with the dreaded UNABLE! 

5. What the LANTIRN did however, was showed us just that. He can point a sensor in a desired direction. He can make small adjustments left or right, high or low. That is often just what we need. For sanitizing and for engagement. If i can scan just forward and left, that leaves forward and right for the wingman. Same goes for all of the above gripes. 

Well, enough of my rant. Sorry for the long post, i'm not around here as much as i'd like to be, so things i like to talk about, tend to pile up 

Cheers and keep up the good work! 

[IronMike]

Guys, I don't think you quite understand how next launch works. Next launch button sets the currently hooked tws track as number one, regardless if it's in the sequence, or where in the sequence it is... It is not a "cycle through priorities button". Which means, the button alone will not help you in these situations.

Thus, we think already a couple steps further. In fact we expect even more from JESTER. Yes, we are thinking of having him run intercepts. Or, how would a dialogue with him sound? Or say, a more senseful clustering of what you want to do "Let's focus on the furthest guys", or "let's keep our focus to starboard/ port", "let us keep searching for the low guys", a more pro-active sanitation of the sky, etc. etc... Him continuing to search for a bandit you may have lost. Adjusting the radar elevation to your focus on his own and so much more.

By dialogue I mean stuff like having a low guy and a high guy, for example and JESTER on his own would go "are we going for the high or the low guy?" and you get an option to reply, etc... However, dialogue is the furthest away wish of ours currently. We will first expand on the lessons learned during LANTIRN.

It is not that we do not understand what you lack and need, or haven't experienced it ourselves. But we think we can do even better than add more micromanagement nonsense. We learned a lot during LANTIRN, as you say yourself: he is capable of much more than what we credit him for. He is also capable of more interaction, and also exchange. Sounds crazy? Well, we are crazy. That said, I do not want to promise anything yet, because limitations will arise, and we will see just how far we can take it. But trust me, we will find solutions that will do you even better than having you painfully go through micromanagement steps. Make him even more interactive, even more understanding. Even more like a real RIO. Until then, even if we wanted to, next launch would not be a solution, as explained above, hence we are currently on the fence of implementing it. It would need another micromanagement step "hook this or that target" in between etc. So how to implement that, is something we need to ponder. It is not that we do not want to give an option to sort. We do. But we need to find a better solution for it than what has been proposed here.

Edited November 26, 2021 by IronMike

[Spurts]

3 hours ago, captain_dalan said:

1. First thing first, to get this right out of the way, that is just wishful thinking for many of us. I fly seldom and in erratic time intervals. When i do fly and it's not SP, it's usually with one of two other guys, that just don't want to fly the F-14 for whatever reason (it's their reason, so i'm not going into why), they are Viper drivers. On occasion i fly with 3 other mates (but never more then 3 of us at the time), one of them is again, a VIper driver, and the other 2, FC3 drivers. You see mate, i can only be RIO in SP at times. We are all middle aged people with obligations on all fronts. We are lucky if get a MP session twice a month. 

I sympathize with this so much.  

I was gifted the Tomcat by a close friend who wanted a human RIO or an occasional wingman.  In the end he had too little time to fly and found he did not like flying the Tomcat that much.  He prefers the Hornet.  Having spent time in the backseat I know what I want Jester to do, I can visualize the buttons, switches, and screens I want him to be working with.  While I came to LOVE flying the Tomcat (it is my favorite gunfighting machine in the game) I long for a reliable multi-crew experience in it, and I became a better pilot than all my friends who have the module.

Captain Dalan, you are one of the few sticks I have seen who I would feel comfortable driving the pointy end for me.  If the stars aligned and our middle aged people with obligations schedules allowed I would RIO for you any time.  Random people on MP servers, not so much.

[IronMike]

20 minutes ago, Spurts said:

Random people on MP servers, not so much.

It starts exactly there, though. Jump on the 104th during a busy evening. In time, you will find those who a regulars and reliable pilots. But you gotta give em a chance.

[gnomechild]

8 hours ago, IronMike said:

JESTER will never reach a conscious level

I for one am very disappointed to see Heatblur give up on developing a sentient AI for my backseat

[Hardcard]

On 11/24/2021 at 8:08 PM, draconus said:

@Hardcard

That you prefer single seater is not fixable though.

There are no players willing to do RIO 99% of the time, I can't join the RIO seat without a human pilot either, so I'm stuck with Jester whether I like it or not.
This isn't something I choose, it's simply how things are.

[ustio]

@IronMike Do you have any plans to decrease jester's IFF time on radar contacts and fix the bug where he sometimes calls a friendly a hostile? 

 

also it would be great if you guys can sort the "choose specific target" option instead of trying to figure it out with the jester wheel with range and azimuth. Maybe like a mini cursor.

 

that's just my only grudge at the moment, the rest I can live with

Edited November 26, 2021 by ustio

[Hardcard]

@IronMike

Just to be clear, the main reason I'm asking for more micromanagement is because Jester, as it is now, needs babysitting. 

I'd love to be able to just focus on piloting, knowing that I have a competent AI RIO who seldom lets me down (or gets me killed), but this is not the case with Jester atm. 

I'm all for Jester being more competent, so if that's what you guys at HB are aiming for, by all means, go for it.  

 

Here's a list of urgent stuff Jester needs to learn, imho:

- Sort bandits using common sense (ask the pilot to pick the targets if needed).
For example, if there's a hot bandit right ahead, close, and another one way in the back and to the side, don't ever prioritize the latter until the former is sorted.
Another example, if you have two bandits at the same distance and bearing, but one is low and beaming / cold and the other is high and hot, prioritize the latter (or at least ask the pilot to choose)

- Use narrower sweeps when the bandit's BRA is known. For instance, keeping the 40º + 8 bar setting in RWS when we already have BRA / DL contact (given by AWACS, GCI, etc.) is dumb and sometimes results in Jester not being able to find the bandit in time (TWS isn't an option when bandits are notching or just out of PAL range)

- Disable the MLC filter when the bandit notches and tell the pilot to drop below the bandit accordingly.
In the server I normally play, notching is a given, we can't afford Jester not knowing how to deal with notching bandits  

- Change the aspect settings (nose, beam, tail) as bandits maneuver

- IFF properly and don't miss any IFF calls

- Use Pulse / Pulse Doppler search modes when we know there's a bandit ahead but we can't pick it up in RWS or TWS

 

I'm pretty sure I've missed some other stuff that has made me wish to pull a Goose on Jester sometimes 

 

As for the "why don't you do RIO if you want it so badly" attitude, the short answer is that I can't do RIO 99% of the time, so that's definitely not a solution. 

Edited November 26, 2021 by Hardcard

[Spurts]

On 11/25/2021 at 10:26 PM, IronMike said:

It starts exactly there, though. Jump on the 104th during a busy evening. In time, you will find those who a regulars and reliable pilots. But you gotta give em a chance.

Yeah, you're right.  I'll give them a look. 

 

Edit: alas, the 104th only showed up with a Syria Map which I don't own.

Edited November 27, 2021 by Spurts

[captain_dalan]

On 11/26/2021 at 2:27 AM, IronMike said:

Guys, I don't think you quite understand how next launch works. Next launch button sets the currently hooked tws track as number one, regardless if it's in the sequence, or where in the sequence it is... It is not a "cycle through priorities button". Which means, the button alone will not help you in these situations.
 

 

That would have been my next question.... 

On 11/26/2021 at 4:04 AM, Spurts said:

 

Captain Dalan, you are one of the few sticks I have seen who I would feel comfortable driving the pointy end for me.  If the stars aligned and our middle aged people with obligations schedules allowed I would RIO for you any time.  Random people on MP servers, not so much.

Thanks mate, i appreciate it. I'll drop you a line the next time i plan to dedicate some free time to DCS. Cheers!

[Home Fries]

My only real pet peeve with Jester is that he won't train the radar elevation to where the datalink indicates the target's altitude.  With the coarse elevation adjustment being infeasible, I find myself having to climb or dive to get Jester to pick up the target.  This often puts me into situations I don't want to be (e.g. within a SHORAD bubble).  My Christmas wish is for Jester to read the target altitude from the datalink (either the 10k gross number or the precise altitude with the target bugged) and train the radar elevation to match the sweet spot for target acquisition.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Home Fries
grammar,clarity

[Whistler_RIO]

22 hours ago, Home Fries said:

My only real pet peeve with Jester is that he won't train the radar elevation to where the datalink indicates the target's altitude.  With the coarse elevation adjustment being infeasible, I find myself having to climb or dive to get Jester to pick up the target.  This often puts me into situations I don't want to be (e.g. within a SHORAD bubble).  My Christmas wish is for Jester to read the target altitude from the datalink (either the 10k gross number or the precise altitude with the target bugged) and train the radar elevation to match the sweet spot for target acquisition.

 

Yes HomeFries gets it! and also awareness of datalinks designation of friendly!  i mean ,even sometimes, Jester will sort friendlies, and sit in TWS-Auto mode on those friendlies while hostiles are also on the TID and being ignored!  theres almost no way to work with that except to deviate your plane to manage the azimuth and force jester to reset!

One other note,  people need to get more friendly to unknown RIO.  im a squadron RIO, and definitely know what im doing in there, and yet everytime i request on a pub server, im declined!  wheres the sense in that?  at least wait until i tell you i dont know what im doing before you decide that! 

Im a solid tomcat pilot but i only fly RIO in my squadron because its the only time i can actually do that role in MP!  i can play pilot all by myself with ease!

thank god and HB for the recent upgrades to Iceman that apparently nobody was smart enough to request. this really helped us to be able to do SP practice as a RIO!  such a huge upgrade. thanks guys!

[Sandman1330]

Ya know what would be REALLY cool, and next level?

If I'm 2 ship, or 4 ship, with other Tomcats - Let's start with other player flown aircraft, but maybe AI could eventually do it to - what if Jester took control of the fight? He coordinates with the RIOs of the other aircraft on sorting, target priority, etc.

It could start out simple - you've got a 2 ship, you're on the left, he states "sort left/right" and automatically takes the left, and Jester in the other aircraft takes the right. They could also ensure you're both not targeting the same aircraft.

I don't know if this is in the realm of the possible given DCS limitations, but wouldn't that be cool? Multiple Jesters coordinating with each other (as they would IRL)...

Edited December 28, 2021 by Sandman1330

[Panny]

Posting this from another thread:

Hi there,

Can we add a Jester function to disable him using the TCS? When you get an STT lock he kind of goes insane with it, and within a BVR timeline I lose things like target aspect/bearing or altitude, or just the vector of the contact that I would really like to see. 

I think it's a fair trade off, since I would lose the ability for Jester to VID when I have it disabled.

 

Cheers!

[USA_Recon]

On 11/15/2021 at 6:36 AM, Noctrach said:

Yeap, a lot of players also simply don't know how the backseater position works even in basic form. The act of interpreting a readout on the DDD (your main instrument) already contains enough intricacies to dedicate an entire machine learning project to. Capturing this in Jester is entirely unreasonable. At the end of the day, no matter how sophisticated he is, Jester isn't a RIO. He's a smart interface providing us access to a selection of backseat functionality. He's pretty good at that.

However, right now he is unnecessarily increasing single pilot workload in combat.

While I'd love to add a billion other elements to this enhancement request, the core of it is simply to provide quick access to the tools most critical for target discrimination in combat.

In my mind there's only three things important to attain this goal:

1. The ability to designate a TWS track for next launch
2. Maximize control over radar elevation, azimuth and scan volume parameters
3. Do the above with as few interactions as possible

Even in this list I only consider TWS designation and antenna elevation to truly be problems that need to be solved for release. Anything else I'd consider a bonus.

this sums it up well for me - I’ve heard this quite a bit is there any word from HB ?

 

thanks

[NightFlier]

Bringing this up and making it simple:  After a bandit trashes our missile, I noticed that Jester just stops doing his duty. He knows the bandit is now low and cold or flanking but he just drop the search.
I found the bandit turning hot at 15-10 nm lower than me and Jester was doing nothing even if the bandit started to descend at 20 nm when the Phoenix went pitbull.
I tried to tell Jester to scan low or scan low-middle to find him but it takes precious seconds to open the wheel at that stage. We need a smarter Jester for close in situations.

Sanitizing the airspace far from the threats is ok, we have time to tell Jester what we want but after the first launch and a short skate, there's no time to open the wheel and start playing with options while manoeuvring...

Edited September 23, 2022 by NightFlier

[draconus]

22 minutes ago, NightFlier said:

I found the bandit turning hot at 15-10 nm lower than me and Jester was doing nothing even if the bandit started to descend at 20 nm when the Phoenix went pitbull.

That close is already ACM and pilot should take the radar with PAL. Unless you know what you're doing and have decent SA - then use whatever info you have: DL data or AWACS calls to tell Jester search specific altitude at distance. But remember your radar cone is very slim in these ranges. Jester does not stop his job - he never searches actively the airspace.

Don't use middle-low and low settings - they are 16 and 40 degrees down respectively afair with huge gaps inbetween - basically useless.

[NightFlier]

1 ora fa, draconus ha scritto:

That close is already ACM and pilot should take the radar with PAL. Unless you know what you're doing and have decent SA - then use whatever info you have: DL data or AWACS calls to tell Jester search specific altitude at distance. But remember your radar cone is very slim in these ranges. Jester does not stop his job - he never searches actively the airspace.

Don't use middle-low and low settings - they are 16 and 40 degrees down respectively afair with huge gaps inbetween - basically useless.

He turned hot at 10-15 but I was flying to it since 20nm and PAL is max 15 nm. Jester should keep searching and scanning at that distance and not relax and eat a burger instead.

I'm always conducting this tests without DL as that's the worst case scenario. Furthermore, we should be able to locate the bandit without DL at that distance.

Cita

Don't use middle-low and low settings - they are 16 and 40 degrees down respectively afair with huge gaps inbetween - basically useless

I noticed!

Edited September 23, 2022 by NightFlier

[IronMike]

On 9/23/2022 at 1:33 PM, NightFlier said:

He turned hot at 10-15 but I was flying to it since 20nm and PAL is max 15 nm. Jester should keep searching and scanning at that distance and not relax and eat a burger instead.

I'm always conducting this tests without DL as that's the worst case scenario. Furthermore, we should be able to locate the bandit without DL at that distance.

I noticed!

 

Jester is not capable of searching on his own. For now.

[draconus]

6 hours ago, IronMike said:

For now.

[a1133620002]

not directly related to A2A but I would suggest to let player being able to manually putting numbers for Nav and radio. I fly with other players in a virtual squad which we often needs to dial in grid or radio freq, and with so many number, it's just painful to use head movement to dial all those number. I think numpad should be working with the jester menu in this case!

[RustBelt]

Yea a Number Pad override would be nice.

[Spurts]

isn't that already an option?  

[a1133620002]

7 hours ago, Spurts said:

isn't that already an option?  

I have set the number from keypad 1 to 8, but 9 and 0 is not able to set because the wheel's position is changing in different page. I just assume that there will be a simpler design solution to it.