I need your help, Fortress Europe Test this Saturday Night

[CptTrips]

Dear Luftwobbles,

That's a very nice little fuel factory you got there.

It'd be an awful shame if anything bad were to happen to it.

Just sayin.

 

[2Slow]

I shall be there.  However, if not allowed to be B17 mission then I shall have to leave.

[CptTrips]

I shall be there.  However, if not allowed to be B17 mission then I shall have to leave.

I believe he meant players won't populate the AI mission.  If you want to fly a 3 plane buff formation you are welcome to launch the A4 East airspawn and form your buffs up with the AI formation.  If fact, we WANT human buffs to form up the the AI.  The AI just provides the base structure the humans will form around.

See you up there!

 

[Nefarious]

I shall be there.  However, if not allowed to be B17 mission then I shall have to leave.

no one will be turned away.

[CptTrips]

It was Schweinfurt.   

Though with only 4 escorts against 21 interceptors they got closer than I thought they would. 

[Nefarious]

https://ahevents.net/index.php/event-logs

Logs are here under Fortress Europe.

AI bombers shot down 12 Luftwaffe. Not too bad.

[Slate]

  It shows the power of escorts. They kept the formation intact until the escorts were gone. Going to be a good one next week. With a full compliment of escorts it will be a different outcome. I was shot down by bombers and one escort. 

[CptTrips]

  It shows the power of escorts. They kept the formation intact until the escorts were gone. Going to be a good one next week. With a full compliment of escorts it will be a different outcome. I was shot down by bombers and one escort. 

Did you feel the AI gunnery was too easy or too hard?

 

[Alpo]

Did you feel the AI gunnery was too easy or too hard?

I think it depends on the overall mission goal.  If you are setting up a scenario where escorts are required to manage fuel, be relieved, etc., I think the bomber guns were fine.  You really did have to be cautious of your approaches.  However, the biggest concern was definitely the escorting fighters.  Once they were stripped off and/or destroyed, it really did become a bit of a turkey shoot.  It seems like it doesn't really take a lot to get a plane to fall out of formation, perhaps just a control surface loss. 

I can definitely see the potential.

Icons were a definite pain and had to be shut off on initial attack runs which made it kind of tough.

[CptTrips]

Thanks for the feedback. 

I guess the question is how close did we replicate a formation of human AH bomber pilots.  So I'd divide the issues between what would have been the same with a 36 bomber formation of humans, and which were particularly introduced by the AI.

I think it depends on the overall mission goal.  If you are setting up a scenario where escorts are required to manage fuel, be relieved, etc., I think the bomber guns were fine.  You really did have to be cautious of your approaches.  However, the biggest concern was definitely the escorting fighters.  Once they were stripped off and/or destroyed, it really did become a bit of a turkey shoot.

Did that feel different that if it had been human bombers?   The closest analog I had recent experience with was flying with Ditto and his boys in the Bavaria scenario hunting bombers in FW190D-9.   

We were definitely more concerned with escorts than the bomber gunners.  We intercepted one formation that had rolled the dice tried a run without escorts.  It was shooting fish in a barrel. 

It seems like it doesn't really take a lot to get a plane to fall out of formation, perhaps just a control surface loss. 

That might be an advantage of a human pilot.  I think the AI may not be as good as compensating for a damaged plane as well.  THere might be a variable that can be tweaked to help with that, but that may be a core limitation.  Maybe the defensive gunnery should be nudged up just a tad to compensate for th AI's inability to hold formations with damage.

Icons were a definite pain and had to be shut off on initial attack runs which made it kind of tough.

That is really an issue attacking any large formation in AH.  I had the same problem in the Bavaria scenario.  I had icons mapped to a joystick  button so I could turn them off right before I got withing guns range so I could concentrate on lining up a target.  The only thing the AI contributes here is we are just able to build larger formations of AI than we often can achieve with humans only.   But that is the whole point of what we are doing.  So this one is unavoidable but at least controllable by the attacking player.

I can definitely see the potential.

I agree.  I realize there is a lot of old school bias against it, but I think there are a lot of possibilities to enhance and augment events to achieve scales that we simply couldn't with the current player numbers.  Ideally, we would simply have 1000 human players in a scenario and no need for AI augmentation.  Until we get back up to those numbers....and if Hitech someday adds ships and vehicles there are some really interesting oppertunities.

Thanks again for helping us try it out and providing some feedback.  It's a learning process.  I can't wait to try it again with adequate escort coverage. 

 

[Devil 505]

Did you feel the AI gunnery was too easy or too hard?

 

It was very difficult to tell because I was also being shot at by the escorts and player controlled bombers.

[Spikes]

I can see how the icons would be annoying. Definitely don't have as much with the formations but I understand the issues surrounding formations.

I think the two most noticeable differences are/will be the speed at which bombers fly, and the fact that they will always stay together no matter what.

Even in scenarios, bombers cruising at 250 made it difficult for attackers to have more than 1-2 runs (especially in earlier war birds like the A8 or G6/G14). Likewise, once the escorts turned once or twice, it took them ages to get caught back up as well.

The Axis could usually count on killing a lot of bombers on their way home as they got spread out and stuff.

I could not participate in the test, but I was curious if there is any sort of delay in the AI gunning? Or more so how the targeting system works...does the bomber just attack the closest thing to it? If a plane is 400 underneath, and a second plane enters the bomber's six o'clock, does the bomber shoot at both, or does it instantly start shooting at the closer plane? These kinds of things may be frustrating to players (the instant robotic nature of it as opposed to the time it would take a human to jump gun positions and retrain the guns) but can be compensated by lowering lethality if necessary.

[Nefarious]

It was very difficult to tell because I was also being shot at by the escorts and player controlled bombers.

The mission can be loaded in a Custom Player Arena.

Simply load the Rhinland Terrain in a Custom Arena, then go to Staged Missions, the mission should be in the list of Staged Missions. Select the mission and hit load.

Now, you can switch some England fields up to Axis and launch from A4 or A6 to make it quicker to find them.

Then start the mission, it will prompt you on when or delay. After it launches, roll from A4 or A6, and have at it.

[Nefarious]

My personal experience by myself during testing was, Frontal attacks were usually not fired upon.

At the current setting of 7, I didn't survive any Stern Attacks.

[CptTrips]

I can see how the icons would be annoying. Definitely don't have as much with the formations but I understand the issues surrounding formations.

Maybe someday Hitech can add a no AI icons mode.  That would thin out the icon cloud and at the same time identify AI vs human.  If the formation was thinned out and only AI, you could switch back to normal icon mode.

I think the two most noticeable differences are/will be the speed at which bombers fly, and the fact that they will always stay together no matter what.

Happily that is totally within our control.  The scenario designers just have to figure out the sweet spot between historiality/whats fun for the defenders/whats fun for the attackers.
It's an easy tweak.

I could not participate in the test, but I was curious if there is any sort of delay in the AI gunning? Or more so how the targeting system works...does the bomber just attack the closest thing to it? If a plane is 400 underneath, and a second plane enters the bomber's six o'clock, does the bomber shoot at both, or does it instantly start shooting at the closer plane? These kinds of things may be frustrating to players (the instant robotic nature of it as opposed to the time it would take a human to jump gun positions and retrain the guns) but can be compensated by lowering lethality if necessary.

The AI defensive gunnery is largely out of my control.  The only variable I have to tweak controls the angle of the bullet dispersion cone in degrees.  The range goes from 0-15.  Zero is laser beam tight, 15 is scattershot.  The test we ran was set at 7.  You can also specify a min-max and the AI will randomly be assign an ability with that range probablistically.