small AI improvment auto (!) AAA barrage-fire / panic fire

[twistking]

I am aware that there is the possibility to script AAA barrage fire with pre-selected zones to simulate AAA just blindly saturating the sky.
This however only works for "Baghdad" type scenarios. It's also tedious to set up in the ME.
We would need a simple "Auto Barrage" option (Force On, Off, Auto/Panic (default)), where the unit automatically targets a volume of sky in front of enemy aircrafts. Since it's targeting a volume, it would not actually need to detect the target itself. This would allow AAA to at least fire in the genral direction of enemy aircraft during nighttime. Auto Barrage "Force On" would make the unit always use this mode, maybe to simulate untrained crew, or a certain doctrine, "Off" would disable this AI routine and "Auto/Panic" would make the unit use barrage, if enemies are very near, but detection levels are too low to engage the aircraft directly.

[upyr1]

The AAA ai needs to be improved overall. Right now the gunners are terminators calculating the lead flawlessly. 

The barrage fire and panic fire should also depend on the ai setting as well.

[Exorcet]

On 5/24/2023 at 3:06 PM, twistking said:

I am aware that there is the possibility to script AAA barrage fire with pre-selected zones to simulate AAA just blindly saturating the sky.
This however only works for "Baghdad" type scenarios. It's also tedious to set up in the ME.

Yes, while I appreciate the addition, it was added in such a way to make it painful to work with. It needs to be setup for each group individually, and even if you use copy and paste, everyone just shoots at one point which is not that convincing.

ED has mentioned things like suppression fire for ground units. Whenever this is added something similar is needed for AAA where they can be set to blanket the sky in a simple, non tedious way.

 

On 5/24/2023 at 3:06 PM, twistking said:

where the unit automatically targets a volume of sky in front of enemy aircrafts. Since it's targeting a volume, it would not actually need to detect the target itself

Well, if it's leading it does need to know where the aircraft is and where it's going. Blind targeting would just fire around the last known or suspected location, if it's not going to involve knowledge of the aircraft.

[twistking]

33 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

The AAA ai needs to be improved overall. Right now the gunners are terminators calculating the lead flawlessly. 

The barrage fire and panic fire should also depend on the ai setting as well.

I agree. I see my suggestion as more of an interim solution, because it is easier to implement than a complete rewrite and it would leave some of the difficult tweaking to the mission creator. A completely rewritten AAA logic would be even better than my suggestion...

21 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

Well, if it's leading it does need to know where the aircraft is and where it's going. Blind targeting would just fire around the last known or suspected location, if it's not going to involve knowledge of the aircraft.

I had in mind that IRL gun crews might get rough vectors of aircraft via radio and then saturate a part of the sky in that general direction. It would still be a big area. Think about the current, manual barrage implementation with the difference that those areas are not preset by the mission creator, but would dynamically shift to roughly cover areas of expected aircraft. I think it could be done that the AI would get the vector by "cheating" (without actual detection), but then the fire solution would be created with intentional error to simulate the guestimate nature of the solution. Also positions would only update every 30sec or so and it would still saturate an area, not a single point.
I wanted to come up with a simple idea that could be easily bolted on the current "lackluster" AI routines without needing a rewrite, so i looked at the "painful indeed" current barrage function and thought: How could one make that better without starting from scratch?! On paper the current barrage function is great, but it's only real usable for cinematics as it is now...

Edited May 25, 2023 by twistking

[upyr1]

15 hours ago, twistking said:

I agree. I see my suggestion as more of an interim solution, because it is easier to implement than a complete rewrite and it would leave some of the difficult tweaking to the mission creator. A completely rewritten AAA logic would be even better than my suggestion...

16 hours ago, Exorcet said:

 

You have to take steps to get there,