Better Helicopter AI pilots

[Hootman9104]

Probably covered before, but the Helicopter AI pilots are atrocious. 

First, I can't lead a flight through mountains without 1 or 2 of them killing themselves in the trees. Constantly.

Second, their behaviour, speaking of the AH-64 in particular. 

Running a campaign in Liberation, as Company Commander I decided to shadow one of my AI flight of 4 doing a CAS mission, I wanted to see how they behaved, as I lose a lot of aircraft.

As soon as they encountered some MIG-23's, they immediately started behaving as if they themselves were flying fighter aircraft. They climbed to altitudes of 2,000 feet and began dogfighting, somewhat staying in a bunch but wildly flying around firing Hellfires at the MIG-23's as I circled below and watched this maniacal behavior. Eventually it seems the MIG-23's got bored and moved on, but not before they shot down one of the flight and myself.

Again, probably been covered, but the AI seems to need some work for sure. Helicopter AI shouldn't be flying into mountains, and shouldn't be climbing and engaging in dogfighting at 2-3,000 feet with enemy aircraft. When encountered they should be doing evasive maneuvers to exfil the area. Hitting the deck and using the terrain and countermeasures to survive the encounter.

In a sim that is pretty much dependent on very logical AI behavior in air operations, this is kind of nutty.

If this is something that Liberation is causing, my apologies. I'll probably need to test it in a built scenario, but I don't think Liberation has anything to do with it. I'll keep having a Company of 12 Apaches to command, and send them on missions, but I think I get know why I lose so many aircraft. It's not to ground fire, it's them putting on their Top Gun glasses and going into Maverick mode.

[NIGHTHAWK1]

I agree.   I have flown the "Apocalypse Now" mission for the UH-1 and the stupid birds keep flying into each other.  Watched one CH-47 fly into the back of another one.   Hueys fly into each other.  By the time you get to the DZ half the landing force has crashed.  We need some NOT AI (absolute idiot) to reprogram the AI for helos.   

[NeedzWD40]

There's a few tips and tricks you can do to make them less bad, but it heavily relies on scripting to lead them around by the nose. I made a thread a couple years back that got moved to the core wishlist:

 

[Hootman9104]

I figured it had been covered before. Hopefully they'll get to it.

One scenario I had to start the campaign was first flight to deploy all 12 Apaches from Incirlik to Gazientep. 3 flights of 4. I led one flight, and because taxi logic (Liberation) was boned up, I did a present position takeoff, which often fixes it as the 3 AI will most of the time just take off and join me. 1 took off, and as I circled around to check the other 2, I was just in time to see acft 3 bob, weave, and nose over into acft 4, destroying them both on the ground. Proceeding with number 2, and he crashed into the mountains on the way to Gazientep as I flew through some valleys.

Luckily the other 8 made it with their flights, but I'm sure those flights were flying right across the tops of the mountains, not using the valleys on their route.

Maybe one day....

[Hootman9104]

Noticed a few things in the latest patch:

AI helicopters. Fixed IAS speed vs. wind bug.

AI helicopters. Wheeled helicopters allow take off & landing from a parking position. "Normal" weight value was corrected.

Control hover added Ah-64 taxi improved.

AI helicopters. AIs collide with each other on vertical take off - fixed.

AI aircraft. The likelihood of the aircraft colliding with trees when going around mountain tops has been reduced.

AI aircraft. Incorrect behavior of the helicopter during landing in some cases was fixed.

AI aircraft. AI helicopters fail to engage ground targets in some cases - fixed.

Hope to get on later and check some of this in Liberation CG.

Be nice if I can actually get a flight of 4 off the ground and follow me through the mountains in trail formation without killing themselves.

I still run Liberations 8.1 because iit has the Syria "full map", and my PC can handle it. I like to start that campaign with my Company of 12 Apaches at Incirlik (as if they had arrived in C-17 or C-5 from the states) and deploying 3 flights of 4 to Gazientep to begin operations. As I noted before, getting them through the mountains ranges from Incirlik to Gazientep usually results in 2 of them crashing into each other during taxi to runway phase, and even if they survive that some or all will crash following me through the mountains...

Also on return from missions watching them just fly around in random patterns is immersion breaking. Watched one of them hover right into the operations building on the ramp at Gazientep and explode....annoying.

Fingers crossed

Edited February 24, 2024 by Hootman9104

[Hootman9104]

I created a flight of 4 in mission editor in the Syria map to check out some mountain flying, and here's my observations.

I put the flight in trail (took 1 minute as they still don't just "slide" into trail as they should, they fly around wildly before settling in), and then took then through some valleys at about 100 knots. I observed them with a variety of cams and on the map to see how they were flying. The logic seems much improved, as they seemed to follow pretty well, the only exception being they still are flying a bit too high. But it seems they were anticipating the varying climbs and descents pretty well, which is definitely an improvement. I used varying speeds, and all three performed pretty well, but the trail aircraft was having a bit of trouble and seemed to want to fly higher and a little more erratic.

What I noticed also was their logic appears to have changed in one respect, and a big one. I did some 90 degree turns and watched them in the map mode, and before they used to immediately change their heading to try to come to me, even if it mean they had to climb a mountain to do it. Now, it seems that what they are doing is FOLLOWING my flight path, and made the turns where I had made the turns. In other words, they now seem to have the logic to "follow" my flight path. Maybe it was like that before and I didn't notice it. I don't think so though, I think this behavior is new, and correct.

All 3 survived quite well overall, eventually I noticed that the #2 aircraft was gone. He never called out, and I never saw an explosion, but I have to assume somewhere he crashed into the trees. But the other 2 kept surviving, for at least an hour. 

So I'm pretty happy with taking them through and over mountain areas now with confidence that they can survive a normal flight through a valley in the mountains. They still need to come down a little closer to the ground when flying down valleys, but maybe that's asking a bit much. 

One thing of note is after a while, switching their formation around a couple of times, they seemed to lose focus, and eventually started flying around in no formation with no logic to it. When I tried to contact them, they would not respond even though I could see them.

At the end I decided to test the landing logic.  I landed and watched them with a variety of cams. Took them awhile to decide to come to me and land, the first guy came to me and went into the landing mode fairly quickly, the only thing being he decided to land in front of me facing me, instead of landing behind me facing the same directions.

And then this happened.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-OFjnznW-XuVHgo-R_ztgcRlczdUPjeY/view?usp=sharing

Maybe that's a one-off. The clip is short so I was actually able to save it as an animated gif.

Overall, not bad.