Waypoints generation

[Pandacat]

I just would like to learn a bit more about how waypoints are generated by DCG in individual missions. For some missions, the default waypoints generated by the system are really awkard. 

[Lowengrin]

It really depends on the mission, but most involve generating an "egg" shaped path between home base and target area.

 

Naval strikes are a bit different as DCG tries to estimate where the target ship will be given the speed of the ship and the speed of the strike force.  And it even gets more goofy when DCG tries to estimate where the home carrier is on the return trip (because the further the planes go, the more less accurate the calculations are).

 

I don't really want to go into it in too much detail - most of that code was written years ago and I've forgotten the details. 

[Pandacat]

I see. The only problem for me is for some escort mission off the carriers, the initial waypoints (1-3) are set away from the direction of the target.  When the strike aircraft airborne (they usually take off after fighters), the fighters would immediate jump to escort them instead of going thru the first few waypoints.  When the package encounters enemy CAPs, the fighters would reverse course back to the initial waypoints instead of fending off the enemy.  Many of my escort missions got screwed up that way.  It seems the AI logics has going thru the waypoints as their first priority.  It may have been prolly caused by the new AI in 4.12.  But not sure.

[Lowengrin]

Interesting.  When I have some time, I'll do some testing.

[Gothkrieger]

Somewhat similar experience as well.  Not at sea but over land, 8 planes to escort or even fly the mission, I lead 4 but the AI 4 have the same mission.  Often when things go down they are nowhere to be found, sometime you hear them in the landing pattern before 1^st contact with enemy is made.  I guess I could open the mission in the mission builder and add more paths and waypoints for a flight before the mission start, just so they can hang around long enough but I don’t want to see what the enemy has in store for that mission.

[Pandacat]

I got the feeling that this issue is caused by stock AI.  I am playing stock dgen now.  It seems the problem is there.  May not have anything to do with DCG.

[Lowengrin]

I'm going to have to agree that it's more likely changes to the IA in the 4.12 patch than DCG.

[Pandacat]

Sadly, while introducing some great features for AI, DT has brought back some old AI issues such as eyes on the back of their heads, flying outside each plane's prescribed performance parameters.

[Gothkrieger]

I may be inclined to agree with Pandacat, or it just might be the Ace AI pilots that we are up against quite often, I can't be sure.

[Pandacat]

You can fire up a quick mission to test different levels of AI.  Ace AI and rookie feel about the same.  Whenever you put piper on an in-range target, it will performance some kinda of manuver to throw you off regardless of the energy state that the target is in.