Act Of Aggression Reboot Mods

[Ahmend Studioz]

Basedon Halfoat's work here Fewer icons & slight AI gunnery change - Mods - IL-2 Sturmovik Forum (il2sturmovik.com) I've been mucking about with the AI aircraft text files. Specifically, I used what Halfoat did as a base and expanded it to cover all the fighter/heavy fighter aircraft to change the ranges the different skill levels engage at. Halfoat's premise was that the original values are such that the Novices begin to fire only at close range and Aces begin to fire at long range (but very accurately) and this seemed backwards to what you read in biographies and general references. ie Novice pilots tended to misjudge range and open fire too far away and break off too soon scared of collision, aces fire at close range and kill with short bursts efficiently.

I did some investigation on the accuracy of bomber gunners which might be useful to others. See pdf AI gunner info and IL2 gunner error spreadsheet. Assuming I haven't cocked things up it seems like generally the relative velocity differential between the gunner and attacking aircraft is the biggest factor in inducing error in the gunners aim. I used this info to make a custom version of the BlindGunners mod as it helped me tweak values. Note that attacking from dead astern with little G loading (attacker not jinking) with little relative velocity difference is as expected not a good idea if you look at the errors at range.

// coefficient of conversion of the speed difference of the object on which the turret and targets stand, in the aiming plane, to the error angles

//comment: setting this from 0.2 to 0.08 seemed to have quite an impact on accuracy

//high value: speed difference causes high inaccuracy

//low value: gunner will always be a sniper and has perfect lead to target

So, following on from Halfoat I played around with the values testing things in AQMB and altered the AI text files to use these values below. The min is the range the AI stops firing, and the max is the max range they will start to fire at. At present these are as below:

Using these values, you will see Novices spray and pray, and Aces tend to hold fire and shoot short bursts that kill things. Other skills are in between. This definitely does make a difference and getting bounced by an Ace is usually lethal and you often don't know what hit you. Get attacked by a novice and you might get peppered a little but unless you are unlucky you are still in the fight. Remember that there is usually a rate of closure involved. So, an ace will be quite close by the time of the end of their short burst. Only difference to Halfoat's work at this point is that I use slightly different values and expanded things to cover all the fighter type a/c.

The other parameter I came across and theorized about was "HitRateToDodge". Stock values are Novice = 2 ranging up to Ace = 5. I do not know but at this time believe it is the number of hits received before jinking/breaking off an attack. I think it is meant to be related to morale and tenacity. A novice will take a couple of hits and dodge, but an Ace will persevere until taking 5 hits. Tests in AQMB seem to confirm this theory.

24 Feb 2024 - AI Gunnery mod updated to match 5.202, added new aircraft. Added 2nd pilot position for Li2 and CG4A - note that I don't own these aircraft and was done via guesstimation and testing by a friend who does own these aircraft. So they may not be quite as polished as for the aircraft I own.

17 Feb 2024 - AI Gunnery mod updated for WW2 so that the 3x normal range concept is no longer used with gunners. Gunners will now fire out to their weapon range per their skill based situational awareness. This required a complete rebalance of gunner skill-based errors and responsiveness. Some weapons had their burst length updated to better suit their ammo supply. Fighters had their skill based max open fire range altered as a result of the gunner changes to arrive at a reasonably balanced fighter v bomber situation without altering the fighter v fighter situation as best I could. Novices now open fire at 600m, normal 550m, high 500m and ace 480m. Situational awareness values were also altered a little to fit the new environment. Increased the height advantage normal, high and ace fighters will try to gain before attacking bombers. I tried very hard to alter the fighter side of the mod as little as possible. I expect feedback will probably drive further tweaking and refinement. Please note that you will find bombers much better at defense now and you should use real life tactics - beam attacks, attacking with altitude difference, head on attacks, going for the out of position bomber etc. Novice AI tend to get punished quite strongly by their insistence on co-alt 6 o'clock slow overtake attacks. Don't copy them. WW1 side wasn't changed.

13 Jan 2024 - AI Gunnery mod updated with new aircraft, WW2 gunners rebalanced after 5.102 changes, Bf110E2 in stock does not have any restrictions on the gunners aim to represent the tail assembly blocking the field of fire. The Bf110G2 does. Believing that this is an oversight in the E2's case I have copied the G2s restrictions to the E2 as I feel the two versions of the aircraft are very close in terms of the turret layout and weapon mount position and the tail plane construction. WW1 both fighters and gunners rebalanced - this was fairly extensive. I ended up allowing aces to fire from further out at the same range as high and lots of gunner tweaks to get something workable. Fe2b reclassified as a fighter (stock = light bomber). Now includes the 2nd pilot position and credit for the initial concept and work on the A20 navigator position and Mosquito navigator position should go to Murleen. Murleen intended these positions to be able to fire flares and use binoculars, but I haven't been able to get this aspect completely sorted out. Some positions (eg Mossi) are a bit quirky, and you may find that the pilot 3d shape is not always visible. This seems to be due to the 3d shape of the 2nd pilot/nav clipping the pilot 3d shape. I have tried a few of these positions in MP using a friend as a guinea pig and they seem to work ok although again some have quirks. Aircraft covered are Ju52, C47, A20, Mosquito, Ju88c6.

2 Dec 2023 - AI Gunnery mod: Add custom Fe2B front gunner bot. Slightly tweak rear WW1 gunners to improve their accuracy. No WW2 related changes. Note that there is a known issue with the Fe2b gunner in that if the gunner is killed a new gunner will spawn and begin to fire. This is a game bug relating to the two separate guns (and therefore two gunner bots) for the same position and is not caused by this mod. Essentially, you have to kill both bots to silence the Fe2b guns. The bug has been reported to the dev team.

22 Sept 2023 - AI Gunnery mod: Add Albatross DII, Nieuport 17 and Li2. Move the npc crew of flyables into this mod from AI Gunnery despawn delay for better demarkation in the mods. Remove Ju88 fwd and lower turret definition as 5.106 fixed the bot missing the 1944 uniform. AI Gunnery despawn delay mod: Some bot definitions moved from this mod to AI Gunnery.

7 April 2023 - AI Gunnery mod: resync to game files. Hotfix 5.101b altered some priority type values for WW1 aircraft and the fuel consumption rate for Spitfire XIV and XIVe. AI Gunnery despawn delay mod: Resync to games files. Bug fix to Pe2 bot definition in hotfix.

30 March 2023 - AI Gunnery mod: resync to game files, include Spitfire XIVe, update to cater for Pe2 crew changes. Ju88 fwd and bttm gunner 1944 version still not in stock so I left these in the mod. AI Gunnery despawn delay mod: Resync to game files. update to cater for Pe2 crew changes.

22 December 2022 - AI Gunnery mod: Added Sopwith Snipe, removed Ju88 top turret (31 Oct addition) as it now includes a 1944 gunner model. Oddly fwd and bot gunner still not fixed so left those in the mod. AI Gunnery despawn delay mod: Removed a temp folder I had accidentally left in, but existing users do not need to download again as it was only small and didn't impact anything.

28 November 2022 - Added an optional mod that delays despawn on death of AI pilots to 2 mins in line with AI gunners and other crew. It is cosmetic only in that you will no longer see the dead pilot despawn after 15 secs leaving the cockpit empty and instead they will despawn after 2 mins in line with the gunner behaviour. I believe this adds to immersion and is likely a nice addition for people creating videos etc. It has no effect on the actual gunnery of the AI pilots and gunners.

08 September 2022 - Updates due to 5.001 patch. Vulnerable gunners' portion of the mod no longer required as stock life values have been reduced to levels lower than the vulnerable gunner's mod. Due to this I returned the turret life values to stock meaning I could completely retire the vulnerable gunner's mod.

From the tests that I've conducted in QMB, Ace-level AI are more accurate and less "trigger happy" but there might be an over-correction somewhere in the values as they seem less aggressive and hardly ever attempt deflection shots

There are values which might be to do with angle off shooting. In Halfoat's thread I did mention them as it seems that angle off shooting becomes less prevalent as you go from novice to ace. Halfoat theorised that:

"However I assumed there was a hidden calculation or process that meant snap shots just don't succeed much at all. Therefore all the greater angle off shots are essentially considered wasteful for ALL skill levels. So ace skill in game comes from better flying parameters narrow angles off rather than shooting skill in a deflection sense."

In other words Halfoat's idea was that aces were more likely to wait until they got a good shot with little angle off and get a kill through superior maneuvering (there is definite differences in between the skills in flying ability). Novices would go for impossible crossing shots and miss.

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