New improved AI

[Indianajon]

Is it just me or has the ai been dramatically improved? The last couple of nights I've found that all of a sudden the quick mission dogfights have become much harder. The AI seem to anticipate more and change their gameplan based on what I do. They still seem to fly perfect to the point where an F5 seems to repeatedly outclimb the F14 as their energy management appears much better. At first I thought something had happened to the F14 model but looking back through Tacview it definitely seems to be a revised ai.

Thanks!!!! I mean its going to make it much harder to get a kill but it should improve my flying longterm just wished now they occasionally made a mistake.

[Mars Exulte]

They have been tweaking the AI over the last couple years. Regarding AI planes though, it's not that they ''fly perfectly'' it's that they use a different flight model that doesn't necessarily have the same restrictions yours does. The F-5 and MiG-15 are the two worst offenders, so they ''punch above their weight''.

[draconus]

12 hours ago, Indianajon said:

The last couple of nights I've found that all of a sudden the quick mission dogfights have become much harder.

Yes, I mean AI was always using alternate physics, but now their game plan for BFM have changed.

[b0bl00i]

The only difference I see is that they head straight up into the stratosphere (using magic rocket engines), stall and go down again. It's not pulling any real Gs, trying to jink, defend or anything spectacular. They eat my gun rounds no matter the skill. I'd say they have SOME way to go still. 

I had both Su27s and MIG29s zooming from straight and level flight around 350 knots 16000 feet just climb up to 50000 feet...Good luck with that in real life. My poor viper obviously couldn't compete with that.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by b0bl00i

[Snappy]

On 12/13/2021 at 9:34 PM, Indianajon said:

Is it just me or has the ai been dramatically improved? The last couple of nights I've found that all of a sudden the quick mission dogfights have become much harder. The AI seem to anticipate more and change their gameplan based on what I do. They still seem to fly perfect to the point where an F5 seems to repeatedly outclimb the F14 as their energy management appears much better. At first I thought something had happened to the F14 model but looking back through Tacview it definitely seems to be a revised ai.

Thanks!!!! I mean its going to make it much harder to get a kill but it should improve my flying longterm just wished now they occasionally made a mistake.

I don’t agree.In regards to BFM they now seem to act dumber than ever in my experience  After merging they seem to drone around in big circles , not max performing their aircraft at all or alternatively make pointless zoom climbs , which makes them even easier to kill.

In my latest testing setups I found them to be worse than before and the state before was already bad.Their only gameplan seems to be to get killed as soon as possible.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Snappy

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Indeed, their behaviour is a bit more varied now, but I wouldn't call it an improvement:

Quite often they simply fly in circles at M1.1 in a guns-only fight, then slow down dramatically, zoom up and do some post-stall shenanigans that defy the known laws of physics...

[Squiffy]

Yeah the MiG-15 is a leading offender in this regard. Looking at the SFM, it has a combined (max) lift coefficient of 1.12 or some skank in the matrix, when Mach number = 0. Or it generates lift at 0 airspeed. My brother at NASA confirmed that is impossible. So it may be required to keep the SFM from choking but man, knock it down to 0.009 or something. Give us a break!

Edited December 19, 2021 by Squiffy

[Dragon1-1]

There's a completely new FM coming for the AI, so I'd expect nothing to change in the old one until it's tossed. It's not worth fixing the bugs at this point.

[draconus]

7 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

It's not worth fixing the bugs at this point

It's always worth fixing as whole SP and PvE relies on it working. New FM may or may not come in years.

[Squiffy]

And another interesting effect while we wait... I noticed a MiG-15 actually do a rapid flip flop back and forth many times at the apex of it's zoom climb maneuver while I stalled out below him. The airframe flip flopped, front to back, about it's CG in an obvious glitch. This may be a result of some of my tweaks, maybe not. I also got the game to crash a couple times either with thrust mismatch errors in the .lua lines or corrupted mission file edits with skill levels or loudouts, or just a corrupted save. It crashed on the build routine before going into 3D. Deleted the mission and loaded a different one, worked fine.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Something to keep in mind is, that there's a lot more to AI behaviour than simply the flight model: the GFM will improve *how* AI does stuff, but it won't necessarily affect *what* they do.
It continues to annoy me to see AI MiG-21s going into the vertical defending against an F-14 (yeah good luck with that), AI MiG-23s locking up and shooting at an F-14 that's flying 15,000ft below them, etc...

[b0bl00i]

I think it's extremely annoying to have AI SU27s and MIG29s outclimb me (they continue up to 50K feet) while my Viper (clean of pylons) can't climb with them.

Please fix that behavior, it's unrealistic and spoils the fun of BFM.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

4 minutes ago, b0bl00i said:

outclimb me

Those should be fixed with the new GFM  

[LordOrion]

Actually nothing has been "improved": IA still uses its own physics and perfect situational awareness as before. It just seems to me that all IA levels behave like ACE o VETERAN levels.

I've notice this those day while doing some of the "warm-up" BFM missions I have created with the editior: I use to 100% win them but now it seems there is no way to do it unless I manage to hit the enemy with the gun during the merge pass or using a plane way better than the IA one (i.e. F/A-18 vs Mig-21)

Maybe this is just (another) bug?

Edited January 2, 2022 by LordOrion

[LordOrion]

Devs, you badly need to fix the mess you recently did with the IA cause the game is almost unplayable: "Rookie" Mig-21 outclimb and out-turn an F-16! Seriously?

[Oban]

Was the "new AFM" released during the last patch ?

[Snappy]

3 minutes ago, Oban said:

Was the "new AFM" released during the last patch ?

No. Expect a long wait until you actually see it in game for the majority of aircraft.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Snappy

[captain_dalan]

On 1/6/2022 at 12:37 AM, LordOrion said:

Devs, you badly need to fix the mess you recently did with the IA cause the game is almost unplayable: "Rookie" Mig-21 outclimb and out-turn an F-16! Seriously?

Difficulty rating should not affect plane performance, certainly not acceleration or climb rates. And MiG-21's (count the F-5's here) and especially MiG-15's always severely overperformed when controlled by the AI. This has largely to do with their flight models, that is the laws of physics they follow.  

[codenamepanzer]

Sometimes AI crashes on the ground when you are on his six at high speed and ground level, AI doesn't take shot like a human on one circle fight.

Edited January 13, 2022 by codenamepanzer

[Glide]

On the subject of improved AI, I have been testing with Skill set to Random for my AI's lately.  No observations yet, but the goal is to find out if their behaviour is at all random.  I believe, IMHO, that an AI that is surprising and clever at times, that doesn't do the same thing each mission, would be more valuable than an attempt to create the holy grail of the dynamic campaign.  A better AI would make ALL existing content (missions and campaigns) suddenly fun to play again. 

I reviewed the MOOSE framework, but I believe the correct approach is to add enough randomness to their behaviour such that the AI is at least not so predictable.  I don't know if simply setting the skill level to Random will achieve this result. 

Anyway, I would love to have a discussion on this issue. 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Glide
grammar

[draconus]

4 hours ago, Glide said:

On the subject of improved AI, I have been testing with Skill set to Random for my AI's lately.  No observations yet, but the goal is to find out if their behaviour is at all random.

Skill set to random is just a skill level randomly chosen at the mission start. It has nothing to do with the AI random behavior which needs totally different ME tricks.

[norman99]

On 1/13/2022 at 8:13 PM, Glide said:

 I believe, IMHO, that an AI that is surprising and clever at times, that doesn't do the same thing each mission, would be more valuable than an attempt to create the holy grail of the dynamic campaign.

 

Drastically improved AI is actually a prerequisite of dynamic campaign development. There's absolutely no point in having persistent force levels and units, if AI aircraft all 'bingo & eject" every second flight. Within a day there wouldn't be any aircraft left to task....

Edited January 14, 2022 by norman99

[Glide]

10 hours ago, norman99 said:

Drastically improved AI is actually be a prerequisite of dynamic campaign development.

Exactly.  All units in a combat sim share certain behaviours.  Move.  Fire and Move.  Is this one or two states?  I have not written an entire AI, but I did get a finite state machine working in python just to see how a simple, single-state AI might work.  It becomes tricky when you want them to be in two states at once.  I believe the obvious solution for this is to use queues, but I did not get that far.  If you recall The Sims, this was a clever AI that managed a queue of needs for each AI.  I don't know how much the AI tech has changed since then, but the problems remain the same. 

Review state changes and decision trees.

Look for ways to add randomness to decisions that would provide variety and seem realistic.

Take a replace-ability approach so the community can plug in their own AI "flavours", perhaps.

These might be tasks on someone's plan.

 

[captain_dalan]

On 1/13/2022 at 1:13 PM, Glide said:

On the subject of improved AI, I have been testing with Skill set to Random for my AI's lately.  No observations yet, but the goal is to find out if their behaviour is at all random.  I believe, IMHO, that an AI that is surprising and clever at times, that doesn't do the same thing each mission, would be more valuable than an attempt to create the holy grail of the dynamic campaign.  A better AI would make ALL existing content (missions and campaigns) suddenly fun to play again. 

I reviewed the MOOSE framework, but I believe the correct approach is to add enough randomness to their behaviour such that the AI is at least not so predictable.  I don't know if simply setting the skill level to Random will achieve this result. 

Anyway, I would love to have a discussion on this issue. 

 

I like the mindset behind these tests. If get enough spare time for testing, i'll try to replicate and see if i can find trends! 

[draconus]

There is little to no randomness in military so I wouldn't waste time on it. What you probably want instead is less predictable AI which would act based on many factors and that is actually being in the development.