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Is there a way?

dasuto247

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Is there a way to make fighters assigned to escort to actually escort bombers? They seem to break off and leave them vulnerable? Noticed when aggressiveness is set to low they tend to rejoin instead of sticking around to fight but rarely cover the bombers, heavy, or dive, torpedo etc.
 
You'll never get stellar coverage from AI escorts if you're flying the bombers. The best you can do is box your formations so that there are plenty of defensive AI guns besides and behind you as player lead. Unlike you as player, they can draw fire and return it while simultaneously maintaining formation and dropping on target. If you have a mission involving only six bombers with you as lead, you split the flight with you having two radio-controllable wingmen in fingertip or line abreast and then place the other three in an AI flight in the same formation configuration close behind your flight to cover your rear all along the same flight path. Don't leave enough gap between the split flights for a bogey to ignore the "rear guard" and slip in behind you personally. Since enemy AI fighters only engage bombers from the rear, they will have to endure the defensive fire of your rear guard to get to you as the player/leader.

Upgrade all escorts to Ace skill with High aggressiveness so they handle their business faster and rejoin quicker if possible and place them as close as possible to your bomber flights only slightly above and behind along the flight path before spawning the threats. Ace enemies are very sensitive to threats above and behind them, so they will be reluctant to close on your formations without first engaging your well placed escorts. So, for example, instead of a flight of six Oscars coming directly at your flight from the rear, four or five will nervously break and scatter into your escorts as a self defense reflex while any remaining threats stay on you and get busted up by the other bombers behind you.
 
Bearcat,

I'm glad you came into this discussion becausew I believe only 3 people in CFS2 really understand how the AI planes worked,you being 1 of them.Pen32Win is another but he's not around much anymore and Talon who has passed on. Over the years I have taken notes on what what you have all said.

Dasuto,

To be a successful mission builder you are going to have to learn what the strengths and weaknesses of the AI are.As you go along doing missions I'm sure you will learn.

It's a shame Talon never published his Mission Builder tutorial because there were a lot of things he knew about MB that no one else does. One good thing is he did explain how he did some work a rounds to make things work in missions.Some of those posts from years ago are still around in the forum.
 
Pen and Talon were both great mission builders. I've always been more like a mission tinkerer. Actually, i cut my mission building teeth in my addiction to Quick Combat, which taught me everything about AI a2a action and tactics. From that, i gained a solid handle on what to expect from AI friends and foes in full missions and learned how to use these AI strengths and weaknesses in mission building.

The conclusion i've come to is that many times in mission building we have to throw away the historical details of battles fought in order to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of the AI code and achieve the same historical outcomes, essentially re-writing the historical orders of battle. This never bothers me as long as i maintain a high level of immersion in the end.
 
Thanks for the responses. I was more looking for a way to get the AI to stick with the bombers and cover them.Always wondered why that behavior was not programmed in.I have found when set to low aggressive they tend to rejoin quicker.Found some work arounds just wondering if I missed anything.
 
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