staged mission now running

[captain1ma]

just fired off staged mission, good luck and gods speed! 

[captain1ma]

restarted and running!

[captain1ma]

AI now up and running in the AVA

[jimson]

running now!

[captain1ma]

now running!

[Easyscor]

It's 8am in the UK and 5am EST (daylight savings still?).

The latest AvA AI mission should last until Noon UK time unless someone goes in and kills them all hehe. Good luck with that!

Enjoy.

[captain1ma]

staged missions now running

[Mister Fork]

staged missions now running

[Easyscor]

The current 4 hour staged mission has been restarted in the AvA.

For those who don't know, the AI planes are flying a circuit with bombers and escorts. Choose your side and plane and up to intercept the enemy. They put up a good fight that'll leave you in the tower laughing. I'm not up on all the tips for fighting them, but I'm assured you can beat them in a 1 v 2 but look out for the second pair!

[715]

Here a a few things I've noticed about the AI.  I'd say I'm just an average AH pilot and I have a terrible time with the buffs and the fighters.  I was even shot down by a group of AI Ju87s using their gunners

I have noticed that the AI fighters suffer from the very worst case of target fixation I have ever seen.  I entered a 1 v 2*AI fight and both AI stayed on the original target despite the fact that occasionally I was even closer to them than he was.  At one point I was in front of one of the AI's guns and he ignored me and flew past to get to his original target.  I was able to easily shoot down both because of their terrible target fixation.

Other things I've noticed: they seem immune to base ack and they never take collision damage despite the fact that they head-on attack a lot.  I guess because the AI is perfect all collisions must be the players fault so the player gets assigned all the damage.

[jimson]

We usually set field ack at 25% lethality. The AI bomber defensive guns are pretty deadly. We could possibly lower the lethality of all bomber defensive guns, but that would of course affect anyone flying bombers as well.

The only thing we can adjust in regard to AI behavior is the distance at which they will engage. Either 1500 or 3000 yards.

[Blooz]

Here's what I saw. I was German flying BF109G2.

The AI Yak7 is faster and climbs better than you. The 109 is supposed to be faster at all altitudes and climbs much faster at all altitudes. The Yak7 can and will run you down from half a sector away. The enemy has perfect information and perfect coordination.

The AI are prone to hitting the ground when low. If you are at treetop level and agile, the AI will plow into the ground often. I got a few proxy kills doing this.

The Friendly AI bombers don't shoot back in their own defense. The last mission I flew tight in the bomber group just to watch how they acted. They flew finger four formation which was nice. I half expected them to scatter when attacked but they stayed together. When the enemy attacked, the bombers just made nice targets. The enemy ignored me (as they should) but the friendly bombers ignore the attackers!

[jimson]

It may be that there is a bug with certain bombers not firing defensive guns, I can assure you some do and they are deadly.

[USRanger]

I'll be in there being killed by them tonight!

[715]

Another observation re AI.  I was part of a fighter Staged Mission.  We came upon the bombers / escorts as per design but every single one of the AI fighters on my side went for the escorts.  Not one followed me to attack the bombers (which were now stripped of all fighter escort).  One enemy AI fighter did trail me and continued to try to ping me from 800 out.  He finally disengaged* for no apparent reason (ran out of ammo?).

*(from about 1K back, i.e. he didn't fall behind to the 1.5K ignore distance)