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Post by StuB on Oct 26, 2020 12:22:24 GMT -5
While testing the RFN Crusader weapons functionality, I decided to also try adding three FSCAI wingmen. Since the RFN crusader is pretty complex, I am trying to use an MPAI F-8E model instead.....but the only thing that FSCAI spawns is the RFN model. The WINGS.CFG entries I created are: Model=F8E,Pos=0,Title=MiG-17F Fresco C NVAF2535 Model=F8E,Pos=1,Title=MPAI_F-8E_Dry_DB_VMF-235_10_1966 Model=F8E,Pos=2,Title=MPAI_F-8E_Dry_DB_VMF-235_8_1966 Model=F8E,Pos=3,Title=MPAI_F-8E_Dry_DB_VMF-235_6_1966 EDIT: Never mind..... I had a typo in the RFN Crusaders aircraft.cfg  I created a test mission in CCP and had them attack some AAA positions at Tchepone, Laos. Each wingman appeared to make multiple passes and I don't know if they all just crashed or if they were hit by AAA.... but all three were lost. The one that I was able to watch, just seemed to slowly fly into the ground at the end of a pass. Is there a way for them to transmit that they have been hit/damaged and are either still in the fight, ejecting or returning to base? |
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Post by Dutch Owen on Oct 27, 2020 14:09:13 GMT -5
I have observed some AI aircraft that get low to the ground crash into it by failing to compensate for a hard bank and losing altitude until they hit. That may have been what happened.
On the other hand Tchepone is AAA hell, so they may have been partly or even all shot down.
Various fixes have been applied, and have improved the situation, but it's not been totally fixed yet. It appears with some aircraft and not others and is related to their FDE. I have not looked at the Crusader as an AI yet.
Wingmen are supposed to tell you if they are hit and disabled, or hit and had to eject.
Dutch
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Post by StuB on Oct 27, 2020 16:57:38 GMT -5
I have observed some AI aircraft that get low to the ground crash into it by failing to compensate for a hard bank and losing altitude until they hit. That may have been what happened. On the other hand Tchepone is AAA hell, so they may have been partly or even all shot down. Various fixes have been applied, and have improved the situation, but it's not been totally fixed yet. It appears with some aircraft and not others and is related to their FDE. I have not looked at the Crusader as an AI yet. Wingmen are supposed to tell you if they are hit and disabled, or hit and had to eject. Dutch I like to use the Tchepone area for testing because it's close enough to Khe Sanh that O-1's, O-2's, OV-1's and OV-10's can get there without taking forever and it's also not too far from Da Nang so the fast movers can get there pretty quick as well. The version of Tchepone that's in the FSX@War SEA theater is based on a declassified AAA threat map that I found that's from around the 1969 timeframe..... and not so good for testing. It's way too hot! Instead, I prefer to use a saved CCP mission instead. I don't load FSX@War at all. The CCP targets consist of eleven ZU-23 emplacements on the southern ridge line and an eight vehicle convoy that starts northeast of Tchepone and travels east on Rt 9 for about 25 Km. The trucks are difficult to find but, unlike the FSX@War version, the AAA isn't so thick that you can't make multiple passes. |
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Post by StuB on Oct 27, 2020 17:58:46 GMT -5
I flew the test mission again and this time it looks like all three wingmen never pulled out from their initial dive into their targets.
The wingmen were MPAI F-8E's, each armed with four LAU-33 ZUNI pods (to match my RFN Crusader loadout).
The AI were configured for FSCAI via a new F8E entry I created in VEHICLES.CFG:
F-8E,F8E,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,FB,LAU33-4,M39A-4,APQ153
The LAU-33 dual ZUNI pods were configured via a new entry I added to the WEAPONS.CFG:
LAU33-4 ,290 ,ROCKET ,G ,0000 ,0000 ,99999 ,00,00,2 ,8 , 2, 0, 180,0900, 75,60 ,0,015,0000,0,AAW_ROCKET,, LAU-33 Rocket Pod Quad
The AI flight behavior enroute to the target area (from Da Nang) was not all that good.
Often, they were extremely far out of position and the only way to get them to close it up was to change the formation.
After that, sometimes they would get into their correct positions....but after a few minutes they would start drifting out of formation again.
I don't know what can be done about the poor flying performance, but I think the ability to issue flight commands such as "close up" (i.e. have each wingman move closer by half of their current distance from the flight leader)and "kick out" (i.e. have each wingman move away by twice of their current distance from the flight leader) would be very helpful. A reply of "roger" from the AI would be nice too.
Another thing would be helpful (especially when trying to figure out if any wingmen have been downed) would be the ability to call out "flight, check in" and get a reply from each AI wingman (i.e. "two", "three, "four").
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Post by StuB on Oct 30, 2020 0:45:03 GMT -5
Any ideas on what might be causing different aircraft models to show up when spawned in the air versus the ground?
When I spawn the wingmen while in flight, the correct MPAI Crusader models appear. When I spawn the wingmen while on the ground, FSCAI just seems to clone my airplane (i.e. instead of the dedicated AI airplanes the models that appear are the non-AI RFN Crusader).
My WINGS.CFG is set to this:
Model=F8E,Pos=0,Title=MiG-17F Fresco C NVAF2535
Model=F8E,Pos=1,Title=MPAI_F-8E_Bomb_LAU-33_DB_VMF-235_10_1966
Model=F8E,Pos=2,Title=MPAI_F-8E_Bomb_LAU-33_DB_VMF-235_8_1966
Model=F8E,Pos=3,Title=MPAI_F-8E_Bomb_LAU-33_DB_VMF-235_6_1966
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Post by xpel on Oct 30, 2020 3:48:33 GMT -5
Don't use the same atc_model name for both user and AI wingmen (ie, F8E). Try to see if this works...
This may also improve the AIs behaviour during attack (not formation flying though).
Also check that AI titles at Wings.cfg are correct of course...
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Post by Dutch Owen on Oct 30, 2020 11:02:17 GMT -5
As we have found, there are often problems when trying to use complex models designed to be flown vs. planes designed specifically for AI use. The AI-only usually work much better as AI wingmen.
We know the formation flying is horrible...it will be made better.
Dutch
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Post by StuB on Oct 30, 2020 12:19:30 GMT -5
It looks like the issue was caused by two things. First, there was a typo in my RFN crusader aircraft.cfg and second, after seeing a message from FSCAI when i was trying to add an adversary opponent, I found that there was no F8E entry in my vehicles.cfg file. So, now I'm happy to report that the correct AI models show up when I am on the ground.
Unfortunately, even though the correct models now appear while on the ground, they just sit in their parking space until they are given a "re-join formation" command.... which I can only do after I have taken off.
Once I issued the command, they all appeared to start moving out of their parking spaces by about a couple of meters or so....but then they each started rolling and fliping around.....and crashed.
While continuing my climb-out from Da Nang, I disbanded the formation and started a new one and they all joined up with me in the air just fine. They still fly in a fairly undisciplined manner though.
Regarding using the same atc_model name for both user and AI wingmen.... to me at least, the way it seems to work is that the Model= entry needs to be the one for the airplane you are flying. The Title= entry is whatever the Title= entry is in the aircraft.cfg of the AI plane you want to have as your wingman. When I have tried it any other way, I do not get the correct AI to spawn ...either on the ground or in the air.
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Post by StuB on Oct 30, 2020 13:31:47 GMT -5
As we have found, there are often problems when trying to use complex models designed to be flown vs. planes designed specifically for AI use. The AI-only usually work much better as AI wingmen. We know the formation flying is horrible...it will be made better. Dutch In this case, I am using dedicated AI as my wingmen. Here is a link to the AI I am using. drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vQ3fWTGLVLvDHFPPnTXQBnbOm6hgl1TH?usp=sharingI had to edit them a little bit in order to get them to work with FSCAI the way I want them to. One thing that I wish was a little easier is changing the AI configurations from Air to Ground to Air to Air. Swapping out different Wings.cfg files is a little bit cumbersome. |
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Post by StuB on Oct 30, 2020 13:47:33 GMT -5
By the way Dutch, I haven't figured out how it works, but whenever there are other AI flight in the vicinity of my Tchepone targets..... they do not hesitate to attack them.
My wingmen and I were inbound to target at one point when all of a sudden a flight of Phantoms started attacking the targets with ADM-65's.
I have to say, it was a surprise to me and pretty cool to watch!
That being said, it would be nice to be able to call them off the targets just like can be done with the wingmen.
Conversely, it would be nice to be able to call out "Any aircraft in the vicinity, attack target..." at some point so we can fly FAC missions.
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Post by Dutch Owen on Oct 31, 2020 21:53:12 GMT -5
Those F4's must have been time travellers from the 80s to be carrying those Mavericks!
But seriously, that does point out a flaw in the "one size fits all" aircraft definitions in FSCAI. A workaround would be to copy the generic F4 aircraft definition, named it something like "F4D" and then delete the AGM-65s from it. There are other more elegant solutions such as dropping weapons based on date of introduction but that's too complex to get into at this point.
How FSCAI assigns SimObjects to teams is a bit mysterious but is based entirely on the Team configuration file for a particular era. Mostly, it assigns air bases to a team and any aircraft near that airbase gets assigned to that team; or, alternatively, teams can be assigned to model codes. So, "F4" would be the Allied Team.
When team members see an enemy and they have appropriate weapons they will attack them. Thus if your AI routing in your sim happens to have a flight of F4s fly over enemy units, and the F4s have ground attack weapons, they will attack. We don't have much of a concept of ROE right now outside of the missions scripts, but we need one.
Dutch
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Post by StuB on Nov 1, 2020 16:37:45 GMT -5
Those F4's must have been time travellers from the 80s to be carrying those Mavericks! But seriously, that does point out a flaw in the "one size fits all" aircraft definitions in FSCAI. A workaround would be to copy the generic F4 aircraft definition, named it something like "F4D" and then delete the AGM-65s from it. There are other more elegant solutions such as dropping weapons based on date of introduction but that's too complex to get into at this point. How FSCAI assigns SimObjects to teams is a bit mysterious but is based entirely on the Team configuration file for a particular era. Mostly, it assigns air bases to a team and any aircraft near that airbase gets assigned to that team; or, alternatively, teams can be assigned to model codes. So, "F4" would be the Allied Team. When team members see an enemy and they have appropriate weapons they will attack them. Thus if your AI routing in your sim happens to have a flight of F4s fly over enemy units, and the F4s have ground attack weapons, they will attack. We don't have much of a concept of ROE right now outside of the missions scripts, but we need one. Dutch Here is how I have defined the F-8E Crusaders in the vehicles.cfg file so far: F-8E,F8E,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,F,AIM9B-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153 F-8EMG,F8EMG,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,F,AIM9B-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153 F-8ERG,F8ERG,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,FB,LAU33-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153 F-8EBR,F8EBR,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,FB,MK81-6,LAU33-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153 F-8EBM,F8EBM,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,FB,MK81-6,AIM9B-2,MK12M0-4,APQ153 The parts after F8E specify the weapons available to the aircraft... i.e. F8EMG has missiles and guns....F8ERG has rockets and guns... F8EBR has bombs and rockets... F8EBM has bombs and missiles. Missiles are all air to air, since the Crusader never carried AGM's operationally. If I add the crusaders to the allied side in the teams_vietnam.cfg file the same way, would that ensure that they are automatically added to the correct team? |
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Post by Dutch Owen on Nov 1, 2020 17:46:07 GMT -5
[/quote]
Missiles are all air to air, since the Crusader never carried AGM's operationally.
If I add the crusaders to the allied side in the teams_vietnam.cfg file the same way, would that ensure that they are automatically added to the correct team?
[/quote]
That would be the way I would do it.
Dutch
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Post by StuB on Nov 2, 2020 15:03:07 GMT -5
Missiles are all air to air, since the Crusader never carried AGM's operationally. If I add the crusaders to the allied side in the teams_vietnam.cfg file the same way, would that ensure that they are automatically added to the correct team? [/quote] That would be the way I would do it. Dutch [/quote] OK, good to know I'm on the right track  So, I'm guessing I should also add each one of these F8E names into the Combat.cfg file, yes? |
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Post by xpel on Nov 3, 2020 1:16:54 GMT -5
Have you made same number of copy AI folders in SimObjects/Aircrafts, with edited Aircraft.cfgs with new titles and the new atc_model names ?...
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