Cliffs of Dover

[clod65]

@paul_leonard

End of Combat engagement confirmed by ammo depletion:-

https://youtu.be/fNe-x8fy3mc

 

If I'm not mistaken, the first attempt combat where 109 crashed went for about 40 plus minutes

1.13 start 4.25 end

every 20 seconds at 16x speed is 5 minutes in normal time, I show at the end of the video the 109 had no ammo, by jumping

in cockpit (alt f1)

Edited December 27, 2025 by clod65

[clod65]

I can confirm that if you set the tactics skill bar level to 5 notches and above it breaks the ai, i.e 5 minutes is the combat duration.

4 notches and below on slider the combat lasts until ammo runs out:-

In mis file 0.16 is 4 notches.

Skill 1 1 1 1 0.16 1 1 1

Edited December 27, 2025 by clod65

[paul_leonard]

8 hours ago, clod65 said:

I can confirm that if you set the tactics skill bar level to 5 notches and above it breaks the ai, i.e 5 minutes is the combat duration.

4 notches and below on slider the combat lasts until ammo runs out:-

In mis file 0.16 is 4 notches.

Skill 1 1 1 1 0.16 1 1 1

ALL HAIL CLOD65!!!!!! 

YOU HAVE CRACKED THE NUT GOOD SIR!

That was really smart how you used the non-gun Sukhoi as bait for the Me-109.  I have run a whole bunch of variations and combinations of your above mission and can confirm that on a mission with Everything at 100 and Tactics as high as 21, the autopilot Me-109 flew for over an hour eventually shooting down all of the bait aircraft, fuel was down to 100 litres and cannon to 19 rounds and machine guns empty, before heading home to Querqueville.  I say heading home because I added a landing waypoint to your base mission as I wanted to watch on the mini-map when the focused waypoint moved from 1 to the landing waypoint.  I use Tacview so I am able to pinpoint the moment the subject aircraft turns for home.  And I need a home waypoint for my Battle of Britain missions, as do practically all missions.  In any event, it is clear that suppressing the Tactics slider (it almost feels like it is working in reverse?) extends combat time significantly and eliminates the drone behaviour... well at least for a long period of time.  

There is also a clear interaction between the Tactics slider and the Discipline slider.  If I begin the reduce Discipline slider down from 100, the combat time will shorten again.  When trying it at Tactics 21 and Discipline 80, the combat time before breakout to landing dropped to 10 minutes.  This is an important area to also explore, because when Discipline is at 100, wingman behaviour is impaired in that they will do nothing but follow you, the flight leader, around... never defending and in fact just acting like the non-lead guys in the Red Arrows... pretty and tight formations and all but that is it for participation in a dogfight/furball.  So more to explore here.

I think the next step is the attract the attention of the eagle eyes in the group... DagwoodyT and Mysticpuma and FTC_Rostic and well... any others who want to participate in solving an age old itch.  We need to see if suppressing the Tactics slider changes the air combat experience in a discernable way.  

WAY TO GO!

For the record, I ran all of the tests above on a current development version of the sim, so Clod65's observations apply to existing versions of the game.

Edited December 27, 2025 by paul_leonard

[clod65]

@paul_leonard

Thank you. you are the man.

You mentioned:-

it almost feels like it is working in reverse?

I was thinking the exact same thing

my goal was to increase combat time for dogfighting.

i'm really glad the tactics slider got around the 5 minute combat limitation.

Edited December 28, 2025 by clod65

[clod65]

This is going off topic, but when I went through each 222 lines in core.dll, changing 2c 01 00 00 to 84 03 00 00 ,I found two lines that i changed gave me some funky results

line eae50 and 14d480. eae50 changed colors of the planes and 14d480 made the  channel chequered screenshot not attached.

eae50, 84 03 all planes were jet black, 84 20 sukhois were bluish and 109 yellow:-

 

[clod65]

ah what da heck might as well attach it

 

[clod65]

Just testing the sliders again, the main one is definitely tactics slider which set more than 4 marks from the left causes ai plane to disengage at 5 minutes.

There is also another difference the boom and zoom from the Me109 happens closer to you from 4 marks on tactics slider.

If you set the tactics slider to full right, The Me109 travels further away before turning around

and coming back at ya. So it's a compromise. 

Edited December 28, 2025 by clod65

[Avimimus]

Please be aware:

This forum is not to be used to promote or criticise products by other developers or other publishers.

Forum Guidelines, including rules 20 and 21 will be enforced regardless of who is developing the products in question.

[paul_leonard]

6 hours ago, Avimimus said:

Please be aware:

This forum is not to be used to promote or criticise products by other developers or other publishers.

Forum Guidelines, including rules 20 and 21 will be enforced regardless of who is developing the products in question.

Can you please advise in this case which was the potential offending post? I looked back and wasn't sure which it might be.

Thanks

Paul

Edited December 28, 2025 by paul_leonard

[paul_leonard]

Now back to the AI work clod65 has been doing.  I've spent the better part of today indoors avoiding an ice storm, so lots of time to test and refine clod65's observations.  As noted above clod65 seems to have cracked the timer nut.  But I also noted that other sliders not being at 100 could also impact the timer.  Today I ran about 100 test missions to see how I could maintain a long game play but adjust the Advanced Flying and Discipline figures downward in order to avoid some unwanted potential behaviours. Incredibly some missions went well over an hour before disengagement.  Here is what I have been able to figure out as my potential new default skill setting for fighters with the old default settings in brackets, also the number that needs to be in the .mis file (see farther below):

Basic Flying = 100 (100) = 1

Advanced Flying = 90 (65) = 0.90

Awareness = 100 (100) = 1

Aerial Gunnery = 100 (100) = 1

Tactics = 20 (80) = 0.20

Vision = 100 (100) = 1

Bravery = 100 (100) = 1

Discipline = 93 (65) = 0.93

The above settings have to be pasted into the .mis file as the sliders are more analog than digital and will not give you the correct outcome.  The line in clod65's mission file posted above that need to be edited (Notepad or better Notepad++) is the Skill line bolder below.

[BoB_LW_JG54_III.02]
  Flight1  11
  Class Aircraft.Bf-109E-1
  Formation DIAMOND
  CallSign 30
  Fuel 100
  Weapons 1 1
  Skill 1 0.90 1 1 0.2 1 1 0.93
  Aging 100

That one line makes the difference between a 5 minute clock and a 30-40 minute clock.  

A few more observations. 

Any Tactics number greater than 0.20 results in a 5 minute clock.

A Discipline <0.93 results in a 10 minute clock (still better than 5 minutes) while >= 0.93 results in 20-60 minutes or low ammo/fuel limitation.  The issue here is that a high Discipline also seems to have a negative effect on wingmen, as they no longer will act to protect you, only act to follow you around like a puppy.  So more user testing to see whether 0.93 is too high and leaves us with old AI behavioural issues still to deal with.

Advanced Flying also needs some more exploration.  I saw a 60 minute combat with AF=65 (the old default) but more consistently 10-15 minutes when AF<0.90 (and TA=0.20 & DI=0.93) .  AF>=0.90 more consistently 30+ minutes.  The issue here is a high AF is thought to lead to some of the oddball behaviour like unrealistic roll rates and such.

In any event, an amazing day for me to see an old problem perhaps addressed... without the need for coding.  My next step will be to create some combat missions and see how this works.  

I will also be cross-posting this on the Discord and ATAG forums.

Thanks again clod65 for your great work. 

 

[Veteran66]

news:

https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39123&p=403067#post403067

 

 

[TXZCJSP]

good job

[clod65]

8 hours ago, paul_leonard said:

Now back to the AI work clod65 has been doing.  I've spent the better part of today indoors avoiding an ice storm, so lots of time to test and refine clod65's observations.  As noted above clod65 seems to have cracked the timer nut.  But I also noted that other sliders not being at 100 could also impact the timer.  Today I ran about 100 test missions to see how I could maintain a long game play but adjust the Advanced Flying and Discipline figures downward in order to avoid some unwanted potential behaviours. Incredibly some missions went well over an hour before disengagement.  Here is what I have been able to figure out as my potential new default skill setting for fighters with the old default settings in brackets, also the number that needs to be in the .mis file (see farther below):

Basic Flying = 100 (100) = 1

Advanced Flying = 90 (65) = 0.90

Awareness = 100 (100) = 1

Aerial Gunnery = 100 (100) = 1

Tactics = 20 (80) = 0.20

Vision = 100 (100) = 1

Bravery = 100 (100) = 1

Discipline = 93 (65) = 0.93

The above settings have to be pasted into the .mis file as the sliders are more analog than digital and will not give you the correct outcome.  The line in clod65's mission file posted above that need to be edited (Notepad or better Notepad++) is the Skill line bolder below.

[BoB_LW_JG54_III.02]
  Flight1  11
  Class Aircraft.Bf-109E-1
  Formation DIAMOND
  CallSign 30
  Fuel 100
  Weapons 1 1
  Skill 1 0.90 1 1 0.2 1 1 0.93
  Aging 100

That one line makes the difference between a 5 minute clock and a 30-40 minute clock.  

A few more observations. 

Any Tactics number greater than 0.20 results in a 5 minute clock.

A Discipline <0.93 results in a 10 minute clock (still better than 5 minutes) while >= 0.93 results in 20-60 minutes or low ammo/fuel limitation.  The issue here is that a high Discipline also seems to have a negative effect on wingmen, as they no longer will act to protect you, only act to follow you around like a puppy.  So more user testing to see whether 0.93 is too high and leaves us with old AI behavioural issues still to deal with.

Advanced Flying also needs some more exploration.  I saw a 60 minute combat with AF=65 (the old default) but more consistently 10-15 minutes when AF<0.90 (and TA=0.20 & DI=0.93) .  AF>=0.90 more consistently 30+ minutes.  The issue here is a high AF is thought to lead to some of the oddball behaviour like unrealistic roll rates and such.

In any event, an amazing day for me to see an old problem perhaps addressed... without the need for coding.  My next step will be to create some combat missions and see how this works.  

I will also be cross-posting this on the Discord and ATAG forums.

Thanks again clod65 for your great work. 

 

Hi Paul

Great work from you too. I will use your skill settings in my .mis file.

You have been my main drive to keep going. I spent days with hex editor on most of the files and it

was extremely taxing and I thought of giving up, but I kept at it. In the midst of doing that I tried other things, searching keywords etc, different ways of tackling the issue with the combat ceasing at 5 minutes, the main thing that came to me while testing was an "Air null maneuverer error" would pop up every time I ran the sim.

I even put that error in chat gpt to give me ideas and it mentioned it knew about this and it did break the ai. But you know that chat gpt should be taken with a grain of salt.

The error was a hint to try the skill slider, which I hadn't tried, so that's the direction I went.

I realized going through with hex editor wasn’t going to cut it, but I did mention it was a long shot.

I also realized designing a game of this magnitude with all the variables would not have been easy for Oleg and the team. 6 years was it in development that there compared to games that have been in development a lot longer than that and they managed to pull off something remarkable, this is of course my opinion on the matter.

 

Dominic

 

[Mysticpuma]

TFS end of year update.

Reading through it, V6 looks like it will come late 2027. Sadly, Soto is a good guy, scraping around to try and find anything to build hope, but if this is all they have to show for an entire year I guess it shows how ludicrous December 2024 was as a release date for V6......🥴

[Avimimus]

10 hours ago, paul_leonard said:

Can you please advise in this case which was the potential offending post? I looked back and wasn't sure which it might be.

Thanks

Paul

There is a post that I hid which contained several pages of screenshots from a forum that is not this forum.

[Mysticpuma]

All the images released with the update.

Edited December 29, 2025 by LukeFF

[Leifr]

42 minutes ago, Mysticpuma said:

TFS end of year update.

---SNIP---

Team Fusion Simulations

Righto, sure. 😆

[Mysticpuma]

58 minutes ago, Mysticpuma said:

Aircraft for TF 6.0/6.5

 

Active in production:

- Typhoon Mk IA/IB (complete and in game).

- Fw 190A-1/A-2/A-3 (externals complete awaiting import, cockpit WIP).

- B-17E (external complete awaiting import, cockpits WIP).

- Morane MS.406 AI (externals complete, awaiting import).

- Lancaster B.I (3D model complete and external textures complete, awaiting LODs and damage textures for import).

- P-51A (externals and cockpit WIP).

- Ju 88A-4 and C-6 (addition of new MG81 weapons and other details as well as cockpit textures).

- Spitfire Mk IX (assigned, modifying earlier Spitfire marks into new version).

- Spitfire Mk Vc (assigned, modifying earlier Spitfire marks into new version).

 

Awaiting assignment:

- Beaufighter Mk VI

- Bf 109 G-2

- Bf 110 F series

- Wellington III

- Swordfish Mk I AI

 

Update from December 2024:

Aircraft for TF 6.0/6.5

Active in production:

- Typhoon Mk IA/IB (complete and in game).
- Fw 190A-1/A-2/A-3 (externals complete awaiting import, cockpit WIP).
- B-17E (external complete awaiting import, cockpits WIP).
- Morane MS.406 AI (externals complete, awaiting import).

- Lancaster B.I (3D model, external textures, cockpit WIP).
- P-51A (externals and cockpit WIP, two modelers working simultaneously).
- Spitfire Mk IX (externals have begun).
- Ju 88A and C (externals and cockpit have begun).
- Spitfire Mk Vc (adaptation of Spitfire Vb is WIP).
- Swordfish Mk I AI (externals WIP).

Awaiting assignment:
- Beaufighter Mk VI (minor changes to existing Mk I required with additional ordinance)
- Bf 109 G-2 (adapting from F-4, cockpit and external)
- Bf110F series (adapting from C model, cockpit and external)
- Wellington III (adapting from Wellington I, cockpit and external)

 

 

It would appear in a year.....not much has changed?

40 minutes ago, Mysticpuma said:

Finally, without any context, this image of a Spitfire looks like the model has been copied and pasted onto a background. It obviously isn't flying.

[Avimimus]

13 minutes ago, Mysticpuma said:

It would appear in a year.....not much has changed?

If you only look at aircraft - the pace of change appears slow - due to the death of the senior developer who managed the 3d team, training 3d modellers, and the import process.

If one looks at other areas (VR, missions, maps) there has been substantial progress.

In my opinion - it is unreasonable to expect a small team to have multiple redundant positions, so smaller project will be more likely to suffer from developers or team leaders passing away. The ability to find someone who can do all of the quality control, training, and importing for the entire project isn't going to be that easy. I'd also be surprised if working on a fifteen year old game engine makes it any easier.

 

13 minutes ago, Mysticpuma said:

Finally, without any context, this image of a Spitfire looks like the model has been copied and pasted onto a background. It obviously isn't flying.

Well, it obviously isn't on the ground. I'm not sure what you are suggesting here?

[Mysticpuma]

4 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

sting here?

Screengrab of model pasted onto the background of a game shot (so not as 'in game' as represented)

Edited December 29, 2025 by Mysticpuma

[Catch]

Spits are a dime a dozen. But the hedges and the ship are looking good. Finally, some progress.

[Avimimus]

16 minutes ago, Mysticpuma said:

Screengrab of model pasted onto the background of a game shot (so not as 'in game' as represented)

I think you need to load up the game, pick free-fly (the channel version), then slow time to 1/8th speed before hitting pause... you'll get an identical image (except without the clouds).

IMHO, it could be that the model isn't completely imported (hence the lack of spinning prop), but it could also be that the game was just paused while in slow motion (as the prop animations are turned off by the game engine in that case).

The (lighting etc.) is just how the game engine looks. It is important to remember that this game was in development when most gamers had 512 mb videocards, and 1 GB was considered high end. It can't be expected to look exactly the same as game engines which were developed at a time when 6-8 GB is considered normal, and 12 GB is high end... so I'd suggest spending a bit more time in the game itself as a reminder of what state-of-the-art used to be... and that games developed 15 years ago inherently looked a bit less natural.

[Mysticpuma]

It still has the best fire and smoke effects on an aircraft in any Sim I have seen...even now. I loaded it up every day this week.

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Mysticpuma said:

All the images released with the update.

Please don't post entire dev update posts like this. One or two images is fine, but other than that, just a link.

2 hours ago, Mysticpuma said:

TFS end of year update.

Reading through it, V6 looks like it will come late 2027. Sadly, Soto is a good guy, scraping around to try and find anything to build hope, but if this is all they have to show for an entire year I guess it shows how ludicrous December 2024 was as a release date for V6......

Same here, just post a link to their news. This forum here is not an avenue for full-length news updates from other titles.

[Veteran66]

 

this screenshot show the new cloud reflections