Autopilot and AI

[LukeFF]

On 8/5/2026 at 1:42 PM, Valis said:

When ordering flight to return to base, my wingman always declares 'Low on fuel'.

Here's a quick compilation...

Attached is the .gen for the F-80

Wingman 'Low Fuel call' Gen File.rar 1.53 kB · 2 downloads

Do you happen to still have the .mission file? It's missing from your file attachment. Thanks!

[Valis]

13 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

Do you happen to still have the .mission file? It's missing from your file attachment. Thanks!

I just downloaded it (rar file) and it's inside.

I'll do another just in case.

F-51 Wingman Low Fuel Gen File.rar

Edited August 7 by Valis

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Valis said:

I just downloaded it (rar file) and it's inside.

I'll do another just in case.

F-51 Wingman Low Fuel Gen File.rar 1.5 kB · 0 downloads

Yes, we need the file with the .mis file extension, thanks. 🙂 

[Valis]

57 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

Yes, we need the file with the .mis file extension, thanks.

Did a search and there's nothing in the entire game folder with a .mis extension. Where should I be looking?

e: I've attached a mission saved from the Task Editor, although it happens during the career, too.

F-80 Group Flight - Wingman Low Fuel Call.rar

Edited August 7 by Valis

[actrade]

This is 100% repeatable in career mode. Give the entire group RTB and invariably they start reporting low on fuel.

[F86jkrM15]

On 8/5/2026 at 11:07 AM, LukeFF said:

Do you happen to have the mission file for this? It's usually the _gen.mission file. 

Here is a mission where it happened again.  Also, after bailing out, my parachute is invisible.

_gen.7z

[jamie.troy11]

AI fighter pursued me 175 miles back to my airfield despite losing visual contact

During the final MiG-15bis qualification mission, I completed the combat objective and began the return flight to my home airfield.

During the mission I personally destroyed three aircraft two F-80-s and one B-29, while the rest of my flight destroyed the remaining B-29s required for the mission objective. The game displayed Mission Objective Complete, so at this point all that remained was returning to base and landing.

On the return journey I initially noticed a lone F-86 approximately 8 miles behind me, i had no ammunition left so I increased throttle to 100% throttle at around 23,000 ft and began extending away from him.

I eventually opened the separation to approximately 10–12 miles. At that point I had completely lost visual contact with the F-86 and its indicator was no longer visible. From my perspective, I had successfully disengaged, and I expected the F-86 to eventually abandon the pursuit.

However, much later, while descending toward my home airfield, I checked behind me and discovered what appeared to be the same lone F-86 still following me, several miles above and behind.

The F-86 had apparently continued pursuing me for virtually the entire return flight despite the enormous separation and loss of visual contact. The pursuit ultimately covered approximately 175–200 miles, taking this lone F-86 deep into enemy territory and directly to my home airfield.

Once I slowed down and committed to the landing approach, the F-86 finally caught me and made an attack. With no ammunition remaining, I couldn't engage him even if I had wanted to. I attempted evasive manoeuvres, but at landing speeds there was very little I could do.

The F-86 hit my MiG, setting the aircraft on fire. I then lost hydraulic control immediately before touchdown and ended up making a very rough crash landing. My pilot survived, although he appeared to be unconscious afterward. Thankfully, the game still registered the qualification mission as successfully completed.

This meant an otherwise completely successful qualification mission was almost lost at the final hurdle. The combat objective had been completed, I had no ammunition remaining, I had successfully extended away from the remaining enemy aircraft and had completely lost visual contact with it. Despite all of that, the AI apparently continued tracking me almost the entire way back to my airfield and attacked specifically when I had slowed down to land.

Had the crash landing resulted in a mission failure, I would have had to repeat the entire qualification despite having already completed its objective, because of an AI aircraft that seemingly never abandoned its pursuit.

I'm not suggesting that an F-86 initially pursuing a retreating MiG is unrealistic. My concern is the extreme length and persistence of the pursuit after such a large separation had developed and visual contact had apparently been broken.

It makes me wonder whether AI fighters currently have appropriate disengagement criteria, or whether once they acquire an aircraft as a target they can continue tracking it regardless of distance, loss of visual contact, separation from their formation, ammunition/fuel considerations, enemy territory or proximity to an enemy airbase.

Is this intended behaviour, or could there be an issue with AI pursuit/disengagement logic?

I didnt save the track so i could attach it here unfortunately even though i wish i did because the crash landing was kinda awesome.

 

[KINGNIKSON]

There is an issue with the AI landing approach in career mode. Noticed this in the F-86. After completing the objective and heading for our home base, about 1-3km before reaching the base all off the reaming AI pilots enter a shallow dive straight into the ground. All AI aircraft and pilots lost. For the first few missions it all worked fine (we were starting at base K13 facing south, 180 degree turn after takeoff), but then suddenly we were starting heading north( no turn required). Don't know if there is any correlation between that, but i think this is were the bug started. So now after completing any mission I lose all my Teammates to the ground.

[LuftManu]

4 minutes ago, KINGNIKSON said:

There is an issue with the AI landing approach in career mode. Noticed this in the F-86. After completing the objective and heading for our home base, about 1-3km before reaching the base all off the reaming AI pilots enter a shallow dive straight into the ground. All AI aircraft and pilots lost. For the first few missions it all worked fine (we were starting at base K13 facing south, 180 degree turn after takeoff), but then suddenly we were starting heading north( no turn required). Don't know if there is any correlation between that, but i think this is were the bug started. So now after completing any mission I lose all my Teammates to the ground.

Hi! Please share the _gen mission with a report so the team can look at it! 🙂

Thanks 

[Remontti]

Oh man. AI and formation flying has some serious issues.

In my Career my wingmen have tendency to collide with each other when circling an area or during turns. We attacked a flight of 6 IL-10s. The IL-10 tried to keep formation while approaching target and 4 out 6 collided with each other.

 

In Campaign my wingman just crashed to me while I was trying look where we are by making gentle turns. Getting rammed by wingmen when you are close to target area is pretty frustrating. 

 

I hope this is on top of the do-list.

[YoYo]

One issue related to issuing commands to your wing.

When you give a command related to RTB, e.g. after a completed mission, your wingman, instead of confirming it, absolutely every time says:

"Im running of fuel".

It's like he wanted to get away with it. 

Please correct this because this answer looks quite strange every time (even if the mission lasts 15 minutes).

Example (he one says Low of fuel right away):

Edited August 13 by YoYo

[jamie.troy11]

trying to do the la-11 final exam but my friendly aircraft seem to run out of ammo and retreat to base without shooting down any enemy aircraft leaving me to fend for myslef against 8 enemy aircraft and i end up getting slaughtered.

[ComputerJones]

The AI nose-diving out of nowhere happens to me 9/10 times I fly a mission in career. I'm just feeding F-86s to this bug constantly. I just watched it happen while doing circuits of the field, waiting for everyone to land. The first one made it on the ground and despawned. Then after a couple circuits, ALL of the remaining AI pilots in my squadron, nearly simultaneously, decided to dive and/or eject (one of them just went in with it). I watched each one hit the ground within 2 minutes of each other, for no discernible reason (we had plenty of fuel, were circling the field at at least 1100' MSL, weather was fine).

I had to compress the file to suit the upload limit, but attached is the _gen.Mission file.

_gen.7z

[pr0x]

I still see a lot of wingman crashes without any reasonable explanation. I've attached the gen.mission file of one such incident: At 1:45 and onwards my first wingman is doing a basic strafing run, but never pulls up. 

wingmanstrafecrash145.zip

[ComputerJones]

Does anybody have a tip on how to deal with the AI when landing? My strategy up til now has been to just fly the pattern all the way to final, and when the AI tower clears me to land, the flight usually FINALLY breaks off and flies their own pattern.

The AI tower will call to tell you to continue approach early on, and your pilot will respond in kind, while also telling everyone to break and land separately, but the AI will still follow you around the pattern in formation, which is pretty tense at a field like K-41 Chungju surrounded on 3 sides with steep terrain. Still, I've managed not to lose anybody to the approach until last night.

Last night, I had an 8-ship formation out for a dam busting, lost 2 to terrain at the dam (of course they'd dive 90 degrees into a valley wall, it's what the AI does). While on approach to Chungju, I was doing the usual thing of flying around the field, getting set up on final, and waiting for the all important "Red 1 cleared to land" voice line that usually finally signals the AI to break off. Within the span of like 2 minutes, I lost the rest of white squadron to a midair with each other, and then when I'm about 700 feet off the deck, my wingman slides up underneath me, pitching me forward straight into the ground.

[YoYo]

I'd like to point out the AI's formation-keeping behavior in my career. I've already had two situations where the AIs collided with each other. This happened after takeoff, but already at a certain altitude (600-1600 feet), while the player was climbing. The AIs tend to accelerate and decelerate, and start flying sideways when you're climbing at the recommended speed (this happened to me in my career as an F-51D pilot). They don't maintain formation accurately, even though it's not the minimum speed (170-190 mph during climb). Of course, this creates further consequences related to resupply, hospitalization, or even the death of the AI pilot.

[Mark_Krieger]

On 8/17/2026 at 7:33 PM, ComputerJones said:

Does anybody have a tip on how to deal with the AI when landing? My strategy up til now has been to just fly the pattern all the way to final, and when the AI tower clears me to land, the flight usually FINALLY breaks off and flies their own pattern.

The AI tower will call to tell you to continue approach early on, and your pilot will respond in kind, while also telling everyone to break and land separately, but the AI will still follow you around the pattern in formation, which is pretty tense at a field like K-41 Chungju surrounded on 3 sides with steep terrain. Still, I've managed not to lose anybody to the approach until last night.

Last night, I had an 8-ship formation out for a dam busting, lost 2 to terrain at the dam (of course they'd dive 90 degrees into a valley wall, it's what the AI does). While on approach to Chungju, I was doing the usual thing of flying around the field, getting set up on final, and waiting for the all important "Red 1 cleared to land" voice line that usually finally signals the AI to break off. Within the span of like 2 minutes, I lost the rest of white squadron to a midair with each other, and then when I'm about 700 feet off the deck, my wingman slides up underneath me, pitching me forward straight into the ground.

I have the same problem, so about 15km to the airfield I order my flight to return to base, Because they have a lot of dangerous behaviour when I lower my speed if I don't doo that. The problem is that then there's a lot of noise on the radio, because every one of them contacts separatelly with ATC and number two has the bug that he says he is low on fuel.

[Redeye]

Alternatively you can use the order to patrol (not behind my pc but I believe the third command from below in the ‘order’ tree. This will make them orbit at the location you give the command and stay out of your hair. Haven’t observed any crashes (yet). 
 

Although in most cases the AI breaks of to land (activating nav lights) aflyer reaching the last threshold waypoint, only then do I go for the landing pattern. Haven’t had issues that way although sometimes they do not break off (I believe when some flight members are way behind you which can happen when you initiate ‘fast travel’ and a flight member is several km away they are still that many km away after fast travel). I then issue that patrol command. As soon as I get landing permission on final the AI then start their own landing cycle.

Edited yesterday at 02:49 PM by Redeye

[ComputerJones]

I have actually been doing both those things: RTB order near the field and/or orbit order also near the field and it's still not a 100% success rate, sometimes they just end up sticking to you either way. Honestly makes career mode very harrying right now, I hate having a wildly successful mission end with me losing a couple wings for no good reason. Or the fact that every approach is an edge-of-the-seat affair as I watch helplessly as my squadron frequently buzzes my canopy.

One slightly more reliable trick I randomly stumbled on is to overfly the field a couple grand over the pattern altitude. I was returning to base after a routine patrol (literally no enemy appeared, kinda cool) with a 7/8th layer at 800' when the approach call came through, and everyone broke off and flipped on their nav lights. So I'm going to keep doing that but it also means that I generally will end up flying the pattern until the whole squad is wheels down. I'm fine with that, it's good practice til they can do something about the AI logic.