AI Climb Profiles

[MBot]

AI currently follows flight plans in a way that it climbs (and descends) at a rate to reach the set altitude of the next waypoint when it reaches the next waypoint, at the set ground speed for the next waypoint. So if we have WP1 (alt 1000m, speed 500 kph) and then 200 km away WP2 (alt 10000m, speed 900 kph), the AI will climb 9000m over the course of 200 km between WP1 and WP2 at a constant ground speed of 900 kph.

While this can be a useful profile in certain situation, depending on the distance between waypoints, altitude difference and speed, it can also lead to various problems:

-If the climb angle is too steep or the climb speed too slow, the AI can get stuck in an almost stall like situation where it will drag along in full afterburner and deplete its mission fuel already during the departure form the airfield.

-If the climb speed is set too high, the AI will us excessive after burner trying to match it. This also can lead to early depletion of the fuel needed for the mission.

This gets even more complicated as optimal climb angle/speed changes with altitude. For a climb from ground level to 10000 m at a uniform ground seed (as set by WP2) may be impossible.

In practice this leads to endless trial-and-error when creating AI sorties during mission making. Basically you have to run every mission and observe every single AI flight throughout their entire sortie to find possible problems with climb profiles. If such problems are found, you have to make adjustments and re-test to see if it is better. This is extremely time consuming.

I therefore propose that the climb profile can be selected for each waypoint:

-Continuous (as it is now)

-Optimal Military (fly at military power, adjust climb angle to stay at optimal climb speed, when reaching target altitude, continue at set altitude and set speed to next WP).

-Optimal Afterburner (same as above but with afterburner)