DCS: AI and Wingman AI - Differences?

I mainly do SP…yes I’ve been meaning to try MP with you all but before VR, my skills were not so good (reference Viggen crashes).

SP requires a wingman (reference Topgun, Jester - “You never leaver your wingman.”) which requires some Wingman AI programing and use of the radio Flight and Wingman commands.

While the radio commands are pretty straight forward and work well enough, if the situation is simple, I am having an issue with ME generated AI commands to a Wingman.

My first question is, once you ad a “Player” to a flight, do any of the AI commands work?

I’ve already posted about Bombing and Attack Map Object not working well for a wingman.

Another issue I noticed is the Land to Refuel/Rearm waypoints point option. My Wingman, in a pair of M2000, landed after me at the Rearm/Refuel airfield, taxied in and promptly shut down-opened his canopy. I refueled and rearmed, taxied out and gave him a “Rejoin” radio command…so he closed his canopy and started his engine…with the red intake protectors in and boarding ladder in place. He stayed lie that for the rest of my flight. (I was thinking he was resetting his INS but it was too long for just that. There we waypoints after the Land to refuel/rearm waypoint but e just sat there, despite repeated “Rejoin” calls. So much for a wingman during the rest of the flight.

I’m starting to think that there is a Wingman AI that is only governed by the human lead’s actions and radio commands, and a all others AI that is governed by ME programing (and scripts of course).

Thoughts?

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Are these the commands that you can assign to a waypoint? If so, those go to the flight and not, specifically, the wingman. To get them to attack a target, you pretty much have to use the ‘Attack My Target’ wingman communication option in the comms menu.

Yeah I think that they do not respond to those if there is a player flight lead (or possibly even a player) in the group.

I have a feeling that he was stuck in a restart problem (ie: the AI may not have great instructions on how to ‘restart’, even if it does mirror the ‘start’ procedure for them).

This.

Thanks for the insightful response! :slightly_smiling_face:

Re Bomb and Attack Map Object:

Yes, they are waypoint “Perform Task” commands.

That said, “Attack my target” doesn’t seem to work. I get a “Negative” response. I have tried “Attack Mission target and Rejoin” and “Attack Mission target and RTB” radio commands. I’m not sure if they worked or not - they apparently did not exactly follow the Perform Task, Bombing details; Weapon - Iron Bombs, Red Qty - ALL, Max Attack Qty - 1. The one time got my wingman to attack he dropped 2 bombs (out of 7) and hit the ground away from the target area.

Based on you answers, I’ll do some more work with this. :thinking:

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I’ll say only three words concerning AI wingmen:
Don’t. Even. Bother.

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LOL!

Well I wouldn’t but with this whole COVID19 self quarantine thing…

:slightly_smiling_face:

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A follow up…I did some generic AI testing, and got some very interesting results! (OK…some mildly not-boring results)

The Bombing and Attack Map Object work as explained in the manual. The Attack Map Object seems to target the center of the object, which might not be what you want if the object is very big.

Side Note

I assume that the targeting goes to the Lat/Long or X/Y coordinates of the ground level under the object. This may produce erroneous results if attacking a tall building or a bridge. If you want to hit the top of the building, you won’t. It will hit at an angle near the base. If you want to hit the roadbed of the bridge, you won’t unless you attack from a heading roughly parallel to the length of the bridge, otherwise you may hit the water/ground under bridge. In the RW we compensate for this in the targeting process by using stereoscopic images of the target to plot out the height / z axis value.

To be semi-realistic I specified the weapon, the Rel Qty as ALL and Max Attack QTY as 1. I also checked Group Attack. With those setting, it is fairly easy to hit what you want to hit using dumb weapons (Bombs, Cluster Bombs, Rockets)

I also tested CAS and the Attack Group Option. Of some note, DCS doesn’t seem to like certain weapons for CAS. It ignored the Perform Task if I specified iron bombs. Rockets and Cluster weapons worked. Guns worked but it seemed to need a second pass before it fired.

Conclusions: For attacking static targets with AI, the bombing command seems best, even for a Map Object. For CAS strikes you probably need to do a test to see what weapons will be accepted.

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