AI Wingmen Landing?

[Kodiak]

Hi everyone,

Sometimes my AI wingmen come in behind me and land just fine. Sometimes they just circle the field (am I not waiting long enough?). Sometimes they try to land and crash.

What's the word on AI wingmen landing. Is it random by plane type, or mod (ie: ETO vs MAW, etc) or by airfield? I don't see a keyboard command to call them in, so just wondering what the story is. I just had a blast attacking Wellingtons in my CR-32 in a MAW campaign and afterwards I was sitting in my plane back at my airfield admiring everything and then here they came, a couple in pairs and a couple of singles all landing just fine right in front of me...it was very realistic.

Inquiring minds want to know

 

[Daiwilletti]

Hi everyone,

Sometimes my AI wingmen come in behind me and land just fine. Sometimes they just circle the field (am I not waiting long enough?). Sometimes they try to land and crash.

What's the word on AI wingmen landing. Is it random by plane type, or mod (ie: ETO vs MAW, etc) or by airfield? I don't see a keyboard command to call them in, so just wondering what the story is. I just had a blast attacking Wellingtons in my CR-32 in a MAW campaign and afterwards I was sitting in my plane back at my airfield admiring everything and then here they came, a couple in pairs and a couple of singles all landing just fine right in front of me...it was very realistic.

Inquiring minds want to know

Hi Kodiak, AI wingmen are frustrating at the best of times. Factors affecting successful AI landing IMHO include the following:

1 The good ol' successful mission notification - whether campaign or scripted mission. AI won't always land unless the mission is successfully completed.
2 The "circuit" which the AI wingmen use to approach the landing strip is determined in the relevant object .xdp file for the specific airbase facility. Typical approach distance is 10000m, this is sometimes modified. Anything less than 8000 and the AI tend to pile up on each other on the final approach. The distance specified in the runway object xdp affects the time for the AI to do the circuit and come in on final approach.
3 Where you stop: DONT stop halfway along the airstrip and turn off to watch 'em land - they will get within about 500m of you and veer off, either to crash or to power on and go around the cricuit again. Just trundle down to the end of the strip. Even then the dopy *&%s still sometimes try to take evasive action from you if the strip is fairly short.
4 Aircraft inherent stability is very important to a successful landing. AI in Spitfires will crash far more on takeoff AND landing, due to narrow undercarriage and flighty handling charactersitics, compared with a Typhoon, or even better a nice slow biplane like a Gladiator.
5 skill level - I wouldn't mind betting AI with a higher skill level land better.

so you are right it is partly to do with plane characteristics, partly to do with airbase characteristics, partly to do with flight model

HTH,

Dai

 

[Kodiak]

Thanks for this info, Dai

Sounds like a couple of things I can do then. I'll make sure and go to the end of the runway when landing as I usually do turn off early. That's exactly what I did in my CR-32 last night when my wingmen landed. That little bugger wouldn't settle in and I floated forever and rolled off the end of the runway into the desert after I finally got my wheels to touch down. Then I taxied back to base...lol Also, I'll check the XDP file for the airbase I'm flying out of. I just looked at a couple of airbase XDP files and found a value called "turn=10000" and in another one it was "turn=8000" Is this "turn" value the circuit distance you are talking about?

Thanks for your help with this...

Cheers!

 

[Daiwilletti]

Thanks for this info, Dai

I just looked at a couple of airbase XDP files and found a value called "turn=10000" and in another one it was "turn=8000" Is this "turn" value the circuit distance you are talking about?

Thanks for your help with this...

Cheers!

yes, the distance specified in the unway object xdp is the distance the aircraft fly out to, before turning and making their final approach to the runway. At the end of a successful mission, once the mission successful message comes up, you can choose to close the message. You will notice all surviving wingmen will turn towards that 8,000m or 10.000m mark, and you can choose to follow them if you wish, to watch the shenanigans and mayhem as they try to land.

Because the last waypoint is usually about 3,000m away from the airbase, it means the AI seem to turn and have to fly at least another 5,000m to reach the turning point for the final approach. if you've triggered the "mission successful" message from 3km out from the other side of the airbase, then the wingmen will have to fly up to 3 + 10 thousand metres, to get to the turning point so it can take a long time for them to arrive, if you zoom straight in to land yourself!

As far as landing success itself is concerned, there have been threads on this in the past but to me it seems the aircraft Flight Model makes a big difference. As i mentioned, some aircraft seem "flighty" and easily crash on landing.

One other factor I forgot to mention in AI crashes on landing is the orientation of the airbase relative to the original ground level of the terrain. In the global layer csv file, it is optional whether to set an altitude for an airbase. Artificial "banks" get created to build up the airbase facility relative to the original terrain mesh, if a higher altutude is specified in the csv file than the original mesh. I've noticed that on approach to some airbases, the AI simply fly straight into the "bank" at the end of the runway.

I wonder if they are trying to land at the level of the original mesh, rather than the altitude specified in the csv file? Recently I removed the altitude reference from the global layer csv file, at an airbase where the AI try to fly straight into the bank. IIRC, it made a difference as the airbase facility forms at an altitude closer to the original mesh. Haven't experimented with enough of the airbases to know if removing the altitude from the csv would help AI landing success for other airbases? Presumably those who specified the altitudes in addon csvs like the one for ETO, did so for a specific purpose, so i wouldn't recommend a blanket removal of the altitude references in the csv, before understanding why they were included in the first place.

Anway Kodiak, glad to see you are developing a taste for tweaking xdp files

 

[Kodiak]

Thanks, Dai