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AI Enhancement Testing - Need Everyone's Help!

Edit the pilotattributes.xml Instead

@ PatP, at what sort of range do you think the fighter pilot should not be able to identify the aircraft? I.e. at what range should the bogey label show?

@remcoc, I don't know the exact relationship between the pilotattributes file and the pilotconstants file. If I were to have a guess, I'd say that AI pilots (whether in campaign or mission) spawn with a random allocation of skill points distributed across the parameters affecting air skill (generally those parameters in the pilotattributes file). However, for missions the specified formations spawn with specified skill levels (if the mission creator chooses to define a skill level). So these pilots are more tightly controlled, and it would be relatively easy to control their visionrange by tweaking the pilot's attributes and the constants files.

Under pilotconstants, three levels of skill are specified - trained, competent and expert (can't remember actually the second label). I think these correspond to the QC settings in the uisel file, where the skill level is expressed as 1,2, or 3. However the Mission skill settings under the uisel file are for some reason expressed as numbers up to 100 and I'm not sure how this interrelates to the allocation of skill points to attributes when an AI pilot spawns. - Actually on thinking about it, in the pilotconstants file, the numbers are 50 for trained, 75 for competent, and 100 for expert (from memory I don't have the files before me). So this probably explains the numbers for missionenemyskill etc in the uisel.xml.

How to limit vision? One track would be to put in a limited range for vision in the pilotattributes.xml. This would save a lot of mucking around with the pilotconstants.xml. This might be easier to test?
 
I always assumed that the pilotatributes.xml had to do with the default values of a new pilot when starting a campaign, could be wrong though.

I think AI pilots are assigned random attribute values that likely correlate somehow with the skill level they are assigned. What I did in the lines above was to zero out the modifying values so that all pilots would just use the base set for testing purposes. A little more variation could be added back in later. At this point the mod effects AI vision and player label and radar ranges equally for every single aircraft. Variation between individual aircraft is added in the modifiers section of those lines.

Reducing the vision range means aircraft will have to be closer together before they engage, which can have the effect of preventing engagements where they would have happened before as the aircraft no longer pass close enough. This could effect some missions.

Great links Clive, very informative! It would seem from that that the stock ranges are too far out. As far as I can tell, the vision ranges are the same day and night. A separate file would need to be made specifically for night ops with greatly reduced ranges. I plan on doing this once we get it figured out better.

Has anyone copied the lines I posted earlier in the thread to their pilot constants.xml? I've been using it and have liked it pretty well, but I'd be interested to hear from others what they think about it.

Daniel
 
Daniel, do you have a test mission that you're checking the mods on or is it in QC?
Also, can you send or post your latest pilot files too please.
 
gecko said:
I always assumed that the pilotatributes.xml had to do with the default values of a new pilot when starting a campaign, could be wrong though.
Click to expand...

Hi Gecko, you could well be right. I wish there was an SDK around all this. However it should be a thing that can be sorted out with some testing. I'm on some meds at the moment that make my judgement somewhat suspect, which is why I haven't thus far made much progress.

gecko said:
I think AI pilots are assigned random attribute values that likely correlate somehow with the skill level they are assigned.
Click to expand...

yes that sounds reasonable. For example for skill level 3 I would have thought that provides AIpilots with 100 skill points which are somehow allocated across the vision, gtolerance and health parameters. that figure of 100 is described in the pilotconstants file. However, after looking at AI pilots in campaign mode, 100 points does not go far and does not create an Expert, or Ace, pilot. They must start with a baseline. That is why I am guessing that the pilotattributes.xml provides a baseline for AIpilots to work from? In a mission, their additional skill is provided by Skill="3" parameter, and in a campaign, skill accumulates according to the formulae in the pilotconstants file.

Its great to have this thread as it will hopefully give us some public knowledgebase. I'm sure we are going over ground that has been covered by the OFF team, but I don't know if they would see their knowledge as proprietary?

:salute:
 
Pat Pattle said:
Daniel, do you have a test mission that you're checking the mods on or is it in QC?
Also, can you send or post your latest pilot files too please.
Click to expand...

Hi Gecko,

I seccond that. If you could provide us with a copy of the pilotfile I could give it a try.

Remco C
 
Sorry guys, meant to do that earlier but I never got around to it. I'll get it up tonight.
 
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