Is friendly AI nerfed?

[Talon1-1]

Track attached.

Whenever I fly with friendly AI, they consistently do the dumbest things in a BVR fight - fly in straight towards an incoming missile, make extremely inadequate defense maneuvers and consistently shoot off two missiles and immediately gets shot down. In this track, friendly AI is handicapped with less missiles and lower speed - normal that they all get shot down, but in flights where friendly AI aren't handicapped, they also never survive.

Meanwhile, enemy AI flies in, reacts so aggressively and perform some bat<profanity> insane manuevers, dodge a hail of missiles coming in all after completely massacring my friendlies. While it's not absolute, this is more often than not the case.

The absolute absurdity of JF-17s in the initial engagement of this track combined with the utter stupidity of my friendlies is astounding. Keep in mind that in this mission the JF-17s were at the "trained" level and the F-16s were turned up to "ace". During their evasive maneuvers, the JF-17s regularly pull 7Gs with fuel tanks strapped on. Cool - fighter planes can and do pull 7Gs in a fight, but what about the friendly AI? 

Then there's the exchange between the AI F-15 and J-11. The most evasive maneuver friendlies ever do is hit the notch. Then when the missile comes for them, the consistency of the evasive actions they take aren't in any way comparable with the enemy AI.

It's not so much a problem of whether or not friendly AI do high G maneuvers to escape missiles nor is it limited to one or two over or under performing aircarft. Blue AI does evade and can sometimes do equally break neck maneuvering. But the rate and consistency at which they do it feels noticeably lower than enemy aircraft - so much so that it's essentially an RNG toss up for how well your wingman will perform today on a given mission. It could also be a problem of blue aircraft vs red aircraft too. 

You could fly the exact mission and the first time your team gets wiped while trading with the enemy and you barely scratch by a win, but the second time your entire team gets wiped while the enemy team's much higher evasion consistency means they escape all the missiles your friendlies lob at them. This also necessarily means that you are either limited to small engagements that are more or less completely incapable of utilizing tactics, large engagements with zero expectation for consistency, or turning enemy air into dumb targets just so you can replicate the effect of having consistent engagements to predicate further mission events upon. 

Tacview-20251024-172951-DCS.txt.acmi

Edited Saturday at 04:13 AM by Talon1-1

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

You’ll want to add a track, if you’d like ED to have a look at this.

[Talon1-1]

Ill re-fly the mission again and add a track.

[Talon1-1]

In the two inability to hit anything tracks, Blue AI seemingly refuses to pick up literally anything in front of them. Set to ACE level and max range shot and refuses to shoot.

Same problem in the little bit better track - F-16s charging into a mob of fighters but apparently can't pick up jack <profanity>

You can also see how much enemy AI defends, then you can see the kind of idiocy with which blue AI defends missiles with.

Complete inability to hit anything.trk Complete inability to hit anything2.trk F-16s for whater reason refuses to pick up incoming fighters.trk

Edited Saturday at 10:52 PM by Talon1-1

[ruxtmp]

The AI has been terrible since day 1. I dont think ED is capable of fixing improving it at this point. Friendly AI is probably made to be extra dumb so you as the player have a bigger challenge. Also it seems like in single player the enemy AI always prioritizes targeting the real player instead of the AI.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

One of the first lessons you learn in DCS: don’t get too attached to your wingmen