Black Shark's AI

[harv]

Whats the AI of the Air / Ground Units like from your experience?

 

Would you say it is significantly better than in LO-MAC or FC??

 

Any particularly impressive stories regarding enemy AI? :thumbup:

[Prophet]

More of them shoot at you. :thumbup:

 

They still dont get out of the when you shoot at them though. :doh:

[Groove]

The ground AI in DCS:BS is rather basic and comparable to the one in LO:FC.

 

The team is working on a new, better AI as we speak and im sure we will see some more "human" behaviour like popping smoke and dispersing convois in the next modules, hopefully in DCS:A-10C.

[bratwurst]

The static AI is a little disappointing actually. I also feel the absence of a dynamic campaign is seriously harming this otherwise fine simulation. Missions lacks purpose. You would need a dynamic environment such as what you get in F4 to make missions more interesting.

[Prophet]

The ground AI in DCS:BS is rather basic and comparable to the one in LO:FC.

 

The team is working on a new, better AI as we speak and im sure we will see some more "human" behaviour like popping smoke and dispersing convois in the next modules, hopefully in DCS:A-10C.

 

Popping smoke and taking cover would go a very long ways!

 

Not sure how the KA-50 handles tracking targets through smoke. I know its not all that easy manually with the TOW thermal site!

[tusler]

Whats the AI of the Air / Ground Units like from your experience?

 

Would you say it is significantly better than in LO-MAC or FC??

 

Any particularly impressive stories regarding enemy AI? :thumbup:

I notice the darn soldiers with the stingers wait until you are so close you don't have a chance and poof, you turn to dust!:doh:

[sobek]

I notice the darn soldiers with the stingers wait until you are so close you don't have a chance and poof, you turn to dust!:doh:

 

Pop flares and get the hell out ;)

[MBot]

Dispersion of ground units will be a big step in my opinion. Until now ground units are strictly following their route. Dispersion will introduce for the first time they do something that is against their assigned route, indicating that they will by more "AI" (hopefully). I guess that will be just the start of better ground ops.

[McVittees]

The static AI is a little disappointing actually. I also feel the absence of a dynamic campaign is seriously harming this otherwise fine simulation. Missions lacks purpose. You would need a dynamic environment such as what you get in F4 to make missions more interesting.

 

I disagree. I'm on mission four of the Russian campaign and find the scripted radio messages and events very engrosing. It's not dynamic, but it still a lot of fun! Plenty of replayability available. It's all in the skill of the designer.

[Schutz]

We badly need some new ground AI i feel, the Ka50 is so superbly modeled and truly feels like a living machine, i wish the ground units also would display a depth of simulation, ie act like realistic living foes and not just moving targets. Ofcourse for that we need the new ground engine where units has a chance to use tactics, take cover etc.

[bratwurst]

I disagree. I'm on mission four of the Russian campaign and find the scripted radio messages and events very engrosing. It's not dynamic, but it still a lot of fun! Plenty of replayability available. It's all in the skill of the designer.

 

Define "replayability".

 

In other words it's a turkey shoot on rails, and I despise linear mainstream games.

 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy BS for what it is but you would expect a more dynamic approach in a serious sim like this. Just look at EECH or even Longbow 2 from 1997.

Edited December 19, 2008 by bratwurst

[MBot]

In other words it's a turkey shoot on rails, and I despise linear mainstream games.

 

With the possibilities the ME and the campagian system offer even in their current limited state, I would hardly call Black Shark a turkey shoot on rails. The campaign can be designed as linear, branching linear depending on mission results, random mission selected or a combination of all. The missions themselfe are can be randomizable regarding what units apear or what is going to happen. And in the end the player has the freedom, in the limits the BS world offers, how to handel a certain task.

[bratwurst]

With the possibilities the ME and the campagian system offer even in their current limited state, I would hardly call Black Shark a turkey shoot on rails. The campaign can be designed as linear, branching linear depending on mission results, random mission selected or a combination of all. The missions themselfe are can be randomizable regarding what units apear or what is going to happen. And in the end the player has the freedom, in the limits the BS world offers, how to handel a certain task.

 

So it's a turkey shoot on rails with "random elements" thrown in :thumbup:

 

I seriously belive EG should consider a more dynamic approach in the future, or they might end up with only military customers and a tiny community consisting of a few fans.

[GGTharos]

While ED strives to improve the product, you might strive to try and figure out how and why a mission DOES have a lot of purpose.

 

It allows you to recreate scenarios which military people, and by extension, you'd think the hard core simmer - would be interested in.

The purpose of an individual mission is stated within the mission itself.

[RedTiger]

While ED strives to improve the product, you might strive to try and figure out how and why a mission DOES have a lot of purpose.

 

It allows you to recreate scenarios which military people, and by extension, you'd think the hard core simmer - would be interested in.

The purpose of an individual mission is stated within the mission itself.

 

QFT. Dynamic campaigns are overrated. Vastly, I might add.

 

If dynamic campaigns are the end-all be-all, why is it that the training tools used by actual militaries lack such a feature?

 

You want to know my opinion now that I've messed around a bit with Black Shark? Dynamic campaigns are gamey. They're sacrificing accuracy for easy replayability and the feeling of hyper/fake "realism". They can be very difficult, but the difficulty may have little to do what the actual pilot/driver would experience in such a situation, or they provide you control over the action from a point of view unavailable to the pilot/driver.

 

I would take a single well-crafted mission with randomized elements over a fully dynamic campaign any day.

 

Why? Because I'd rather play a sim that replicates the way the pros train concepts and tactics vs. whatever the dynamic campaign decides a "real" war is going to be like. ;)

[MBot]

I still think the best campaigns ever were Matt's Valhalla and the stock campaign of Jane's F/A-18. Both were branched linear. Another very well done campaign in my opinion had Microprose's Gunship!, also strictly linear. While the game was quite light and had lots of problems, the battlefield atmosphere/realism/authenticity in and between the mission was simply fantastic.

 

Falcon's dynamic campaign was great, but was actually the only good dynamic campaign I have ever seen in a flightsim. I think the reason it worked for Falcon was the scope, this is mainly air-air and everything associated with an air-offensive (SEAD, Strikes etc.). Because these missions are actually quite simple in the way the battlefield is set up (basically static targets). War between mechanized armies is so much more complex, I can not see that a dynamic mission generator could set up ground forces and move them around in a believable way. Remember the CAS and BAI missions of Falcon 4, now imagine an AH-64 simulator in that engine where you would only attack those large columns of ground vehicles. Boooring :)

Edited December 19, 2008 by MBot

[RedTiger]

@MBot

 

I'll be plain about it, Falcon 4 is the only DC I've ever experienced. So my opinions are based solely on it. I'm not a huge fan of it, as you can tell. :) I normally wouldn't care to comment, but sometimes I have trouble understanding why so many people like it so much.

[xell]

I agree with you redtiger. Nowadays with limited time i enjoy flying an interesting mission with obstacle to overcome than fighting a "grand scale war". I mostly like to fly realistic stuff that does feel interesting, and since BS does contain some randomness its really great for a study sim.

 

If anything, they should release and create mission for download - create them realisticly and i might be persuaded to part with some additional money. Just to have a crafted feel for them.

 

But i guess we look for different thing. I enjoyed Janes F18s more for the same reason as MBot. And beating the missions in Lomac was challenging where you had to do some trial and error, but i didn't mind. It felt like the challenge of driving a driving sim where you was trying to understand how the track and cars interact with you.

 

So - i guess i post this just to make sure to be heard. :) But i understand why some people think its important, not me though.

[AlphaInfinity]

The AI is smart enough for me. They have shot me down countless times! :)

[harv]

Having played both F4 and BS in the last couple of hours I can say that while BS lacks dynamic ground AI, the designers seem to have done an excellent job of giving the illusion that the ground forces are trying to outsmart you.

 

The campaign in BS is dramatic, through and through - especially those streams of rockets coming at your ground troops you are supposed to be protecting!

 

Falcon 4 really does make you feel engaged in a war - its hardly 'gamey' as redtiger said (IMO) , but in F4, as in real life, drama is randomised - you make your own fun in F4.

 

That said, you can count on an exciting ride with BS.

Edited December 19, 2008 by harv

[cucu666]

Hello, guys.

I think on it, and BS is for me a learning simulator.

I love the clickable copkit, and my TiR4 give me a lot of inmersion.

To me, first I want to learn.

[RvETito]

True, there is a lot to be desired from the AI behaviour, not only how they act as single units but also how the different type of units cooperate. If we had to wait till all that is implemented in BS I'm affraid we'd had to wait quiet some time more for the release. It would be too much otherwise. You can't have all of it in a blink of an eye. This is how it is in life, no reason to be any different in flight sims.

 

Enough to say that new AI logics are on their way.

[mattpeckham]

Red Tiger's got it precisely right. Dynamic campaigns in general are hugely overrated and gamey, and not necessarily more difficult. Think of Black Shark more like Combat Mission (also lacking a dynamic campaign, or if memory serves, any sort of campaign system whatsoever).

 

CM's focus was on tactical fidelity in the ASL vein. BS's focus is on avionic and aeronautical fidelity in the military-simulation vein. Both games have a kind of asymmetric structure.

 

I'm still working my way through flight school, so no opinion to share on the ground-based unit AI, but as long as it's basically competent, I'll be happy. Half to three-quarters of the work in real life flying this sort of helo is pre-planning and more micro-strategic than tactical reactivity anyway. I'm hoping a sizable number of the missions also model the helo's priority as a battlefield surveillance and infantry/armor information relay tool.

 

I don't recall Hollis's Longbow and Longbow 2 having all that brilliant ground unit AI, though the dynamic campaign generator was pretty fancy, for all that word's worth in late 1990s context.

[Wags]

Good point Matt. To me, the biggest factor in making a good mission/campaign is creating a realistic battlefield environment that the player interacts with. To do so (particularly with CAS-focused product!), I think it important that you have ground units moving around during the mission and engaging each other (not always static or massed at a node). Additionally, we want units to conduct indirect fire missions, use secondary weapons to engage the player, and generally be able to have an entire force-on-force engagement regardless of what the player is doing where every round is accounted for. To date, I know of no dynamic system that does this. That is not to say we will not do a dynamic system that includes such features at a later time, but for now the modeling of the battlefield is more important than a "dynamic" system and this is certainly more important to our military customers. As stated before though, DCS BS is just the starting point and the AI (air/ground/sea) will continue to improve as well the supporting campaign system.

 

Thanks,

Matt

[bratwurst]

QFT. Dynamic campaigns are overrated. Vastly, I might add.

 

If dynamic campaigns are the end-all be-all, why is it that the training tools used by actual militaries lack such a feature?

 

You want to know my opinion now that I've messed around a bit with Black Shark? Dynamic campaigns are gamey. They're sacrificing accuracy for easy replayability and the feeling of hyper/fake "realism". They can be very difficult, but the difficulty may have little to do what the actual pilot/driver would experience in such a situation, or they provide you control over the action from a point of view unavailable to the pilot/driver.

 

I would take a single well-crafted mission with randomized elements over a fully dynamic campaign any day.

 

Why? Because I'd rather play a sim that replicates the way the pros train concepts and tactics vs. whatever the dynamic campaign decides a "real" war is going to be like. ;)

 

I find dynamic campaigns to be unusually underrated in this community. For example, the biggest naval sim community www.subsim.com was close to boycotting UBI's release of Silent Hunter 3 due to the lack of a dynamic campaign alone. The developers listened and the release was prosponed until a dynamic campaign was properly implemented. Needless to say, it was a huge success. Now a second title plus addons have been released by the same team and there are rumors of a third release in 2009. Without that dynamic campaign however it would have been different story.

 

Bohemia Interactive is another example. Why do you think Flashpoint and ArmA was such a huge success? BI Studios have military customers with VBS 1 and 2 but that didn't stop them from making one of the most anticipated military series on the market. The flexible A.I. capable of leading large forces dynamically in large scale battlefields is what made the "replay value" so high. You should take a closer look on ArmA "Warfare" and ArmA 2 that introduces even more strategy combined with tactical FPS.

 

Why would the military be interested in a dynamic campaign? That's absurd. Like I was saying:

"ED could end up with only military customers".

 

You are talking about fake realism and still you play simulations. Sounds like hypocrisy. You can simulate very realistic battlefield conditions within a large scale dynamic campaign. Ask the F4 community.

 

The question is. Are we to consider BS as a training tool or a game for entertainment purposes?