Been a while since I was here last

[grover1]

Hi guys,

Hope you're all doing well.

Been working on a few little projects of my own for CFS3, mostly with AI improvement and seeing if there's a way to get more ground control voices.

Yes, I'm still working on BoB, but that's on the back burner, as I want to include AI improvements with BoB.

I've made some breakthroughs, but nowhere near happy with the little improvements I've made to the AI.

So far, I've managed to make the ground fire much more accurate and I'm going to work on the airborne NPC's and go from there.

I'll keep you all updated!

Chris

[sixstrings5859]

Good to hear from you. You've been missed. Nothing is as immersive as a good AI. Would have a big impact with CFS3. Glad you are working on this. Thanks,Scott

[alcanallen]

That`s great news i have never seen a ack,ack battery down a enemy plane plenty of bursting shells but no hits,this could alter CFS3 in a big way,carry on and surprise us!

[Daiwilletti]

That`s great news i have never seen a ack,ack battery down a enemy plane plenty of bursting shells but no hits,this could alter CFS3 in a big way,carry on and surprise us!

In my knowledgebase sticky on improving AI behaviour in campaign play I explain how to improve AA by adding a parameter to the uisel file. It turns out that the Antiaircraft parameter from the missions section of the uisel file works in the campaigns section as well.

[HouseHobbit]

Good to hear from ya..

[Daiwilletti]

Hi, grover1,

I hope the tweaks I have made help in your quest to find ways to improve AI performance. It is great to hear that someone is looking into it. As mentioned in other posts, one tweak which may bear fruit is using the "aggression" parameter. it turns up in some error reports/dump files but I haven't found a clear difference when I've tried to use this parameter. IIRC there was some discussion about aggression (as opposed to skill) in old posts in the OFF forum.

If you succeed in waking up the dozy AI that would be a great thing!

In my knowledgebase sticky on improving AI behaviour in campaign play I explain how to improve AA by adding a parameter to the uisel file. It turns out that the Antiaircraft parameter from the missions section of the uisel file works in the campaigns section as well.

Erm, have actually re-read my knowledgebase post. It seems like I decided that the groundskill parameter did the trick and did not include the antiaircraft parameter in the campaign section of the uisel. I have the antiaircraft parameter in some of my installs but not others. Specifying Missionenemygroundskill and Missionfriendlygroundskill seems pretty good.

Flak becomes a serious threat and aircraft get shot down by flak when using the groundskill parameter provided in the knowledgebase post. I use a modified air spawn where enemy bombers often attack my airbase or a neighbouring airbase. With missionfriendlygrounskill maxed out to 100, a lot of the attacking bombers get shot down, especially if they adopt tactical_bomber tactics, and dive down on the airbase.

[Daiwilletti]

That`s great news i have never seen a ack,ack battery down a enemy plane plenty of bursting shells but no hits,this could alter CFS3 in a big way,carry on and surprise us!

Here is a CAP mission in my Malta 1941 campaign in MAW. The flight is only just airborne and already one of the incoming bombers is shot down by AA.

[Led Zeppelin]

ok but when it's player aircraft that is under enemy AA fire, what happen? Because it's nearly impossible for an Emil to fly over Malta in MAW or London in ETO so if the AA fire becomes even more accurate it will be a problem.

[Daiwilletti]

ok but when it's player aircraft that is under enemy AA fire, what happen? Because it's nearly impossible for an Emil to fly over Malta in MAW or London in ETO so if the AA fire becomes even more accurate it will be a problem.

Yes good question, the AI fly slow and stupid and deserve to be shot down. I tend to tweak the spawns so that the bombers are higher which is more realistic. To deal with the situation of the player aircraft, one option is to acheive a balance using the "noise" parameter for the 90mm_Flak gun xdp, the Bofors gun xdps and the 88mm_flak xdp and German 37mm and 40mm AA guns too.

In ETO, the 88mm noise parameter is set quite high, at least to 4. IIRC the 90mm_Flak is similar but if you are flying fast and reasonably high over London in an Emil and feel like the flak gets you too often, I think the noise for the 90mm_flak gun should be increased to 4.0 or more. If you are lower then look at the smaller calibre noise settings.

Noise of course means some variability in accuracy, rather than sound, in this context. It is really useful when setting differences in noise for a 50 cal hand held versus a 50 cal power turret, for example.

[mongoose]

Noise effects accuracy? IMO I don't believe flak achieved more than about 5-10% kill rate even with daytime large 8th USAAF raids. RAF BC losses to flak were never more than about 5% . Higher losses might have been associated with strafing raids.

[grover1]

Hi, grover1,

I hope the tweaks I have made help in your quest to find ways to improve AI performance. It is great to hear that someone is looking into it. As mentioned in other posts, one tweak which may bear fruit is using the "aggression" parameter. it turns up in some error reports/dump files but I haven't found a clear difference when I've tried to use this parameter. IIRC there was some discussion about aggression (as opposed to skill) in old posts in the OFF forum.

If you succeed in waking up the dozy AI that would be a great thing!



Erm, have actually re-read my knowledgebase post. It seems like I decided that the groundskill parameter did the trick and did not include the antiaircraft parameter in the campaign section of the uisel. I have the antiaircraft parameter in some of my installs but not others. Specifying Missionenemygroundskill and Missionfriendlygroundskill seems pretty good.

Flak becomes a serious threat and aircraft get shot down by flak when using the groundskill parameter provided in the knowledgebase post. I use a modified air spawn where enemy bombers often attack my airbase or a neighbouring airbase. With missionfriendlygrounskill maxed out to 100, a lot of the attacking bombers get shot down, especially if they adopt tactical_bomber tactics, and dive down on the airbase.

You make a great point, D! Modifying the campaign section of the uisel.xml and the other sections you're talking about worked well. That's the approach I'm taking for the time being, at least until I can find the time to write up a new AI for both ground and air units. The eventual goal would be to have an AI that uses tactics with respect to that year of the war. A long shot, but WOFF managed to do it. I'd also like to add in a way to "kill" AI gunners, working RADAR/night fighting equipment, and maybe find a way to make custom formations similar to WOFF.

The only thing with flak is it only amounted to maybe fifteen percent of aerial kills, at most. So, I'll have to find a way to increase accuracy by a certain percentage, just to keep it realistic.

Again, these are all long shot ideas, but it's doable.

However, there are legal issues with modifying the AI, as it's modifying the core files of the CFS3 engine. I'm not sure the legalities of it, but I'll look into it in the very near future. We've got some cold weather coming up, so that will be a great time to go over the EULA and look into loopholes.

Chris

[Daiwilletti]

I'm glad someone is finally looking at this. When the OFF team move to WWII it will all be payware.

While you are looking at the exe, it would be great if you encountered info on the following:

1 - Is there any ability to tweak "aggression" (per my last post)

2 - See if the ability to target airfields in QC mode can be transposed to campaign mode

Well thats my wish list

[grover1]

I think it's doable. I think the airfield attacks have something to do with the campaign.xml file, but I'll look into it.