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Jet
Jan-20-2012, 16:07
Just was thinking that the AI bombers in the current mission are not numerous enough for those of us that want to fight at altitudes above 10k feet. Ground objectives are fine for those that want to do them but they offer nothing for those of us who want a more realistic BoB experience. Is there anyway to make groups of AI bombers an objective? So many bomber groups lost= mission success/failure type of thing. I have no desire to hover around ground objectives and engage countless 109's where they are strongest against my Spitfire. Bomber escort and defense is what the BoB was all about for the most part and it is seriously lacking as it now stands. Just my two cents.

ATAG_Snapper
Jan-20-2012, 17:37
Agree 100%.

Not sure it can be done this way at present. Further to your idea, it'd also be great if Blue side could get credit, such as Objective Accomplished, if an AI Blue bomber formation successfully dropped bombs on target -- say a minimum of 3 bombers out of a formation of 7. This would encourage more Axis fighters to fly escort at high altitude to pounce on the intercepting Red fighters. I've already had numerous encounters with single or duo 109's at 14,000+ feet while trying to pick off a Dornier or 88. It ain't easy! Makes me realize that a straight in approach at 6 o'clock is suicide!

Hopefully Bliss or Watchman will jump in here with their thoughts. I know their hands are tied at present with coding issues, but hopefully when The Big Fix (my term) comes in, solid ideas such as yours can and will be implemented.

Good input.

ATAG_Knuckles
Jan-20-2012, 18:12
Somehow it seems any A.I. is just target practice. I agree, make em worth something !


Knucks

ATAG_Bliss
Jan-20-2012, 19:05
Sorry guys, but this really isn't possible right now and I'll explain:

What we have in-game is a few triggers to play around with. We have a trigger to spawn a group (ground/air/naval). We also have a trigger to perform an action on destroyed for either a group or in a sense "ground" objects. We trigger objectives by assigning a value to these destroyed triggers. Say you have 4 objectives for Blue. (So objA=1, objB=2, objC=3, objD=4) With this we can use 1+2+3+4=10. So with this we can say once the scripts have seen 10 points for Blue or 6 points for Red, the script knows that the triggers have all fired and therefore the objectives are complete. If a certain amount of time has run without Blue=10 or Red=6 then a draw/tie is triggered.

So now you're thinking we could simply add points using a trigger for an AI group trigger. And we could, but the problem is we must destroy planes when they've landed. (If we didn't have a despawn script in place the runways would be littered with abandoned planes. So assigning any sort of value to an AI plane just lengthens the amount of time before they will be destroyed, say after they've landed, by the despawn script. So making them an objective, will always cause the trigger to fire regardless if a human player has shot them down or not, because they will get destroyed by the despawn script anyways, thus firing the trigger and adding the value assigned to them by doing nothing at all!

Sadly, the AI air-groups are the only real groups we have that we can assign multiple units to. (meaning you want a group of 30 or a group of 2, it would be all called out in one simple group in the FMB and could have a trigger attached to it). There are no groups for static ships at all, and there is no grouping for an AI ship as well. The game only allows 1 AI ship at a time in a group, unlike old IL2. So what we're left with is assigning individual AI ships for an objective to fire an individual trigger per ship (what a waste) or we're left with ground groups (moving AI ground targets that could be grouped). But any sort of AI ground group that has attachments / trailers / cargo while working fine loading the mission through the FMB, completely lose all their cargo / trailers when loaded through the dedi server.

So in a sense, what we have for objectives is really all we can use until they allow us to do more with it.

Jet
Jan-20-2012, 19:34
Well thats that then, for now. Any chance we can still get some more AI bomber groups put into the current mission so the eagles have something to do? Before you could jump into the server and wait for the next bomber inbound/outbound message then fly escort/intercept and there was almost always a couple of defending bandits around to make it more interesting. Now you can destroy the AI bomber flights almost at leisure since no one cares to defend them anymore. I flew around the channel today at 15k feet for an hour with no enemy contact whatsoever in a server with 40 people. Compared to previous iterations of the mission the current one gives me no incentive to play at all until the miracle patch comes through. Not ATAGs fault at all, and I know you are doing the best with a broken piece of software so lets just hope that patch comes sooner rather than later!

ATAG_Snapper
Jan-21-2012, 08:47
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Bliss. This sim has such huge potential that hopefully can be better addressed when the devs work their magic.