Autopilot and AI

[LukeFF]

Please post any issues about the autopilot and AI here. Please note this topic is strictly for bug reports. Any off-topic banter will be removed at our discretion. Thank you! 

[MDzmitry]

If I had to ask for just one thing to do with AI, that would be getting rid of their, pardon, throttle masturbation. 

It looks plain bad, and in certain cases (*cough* Spitfire *cough*) results in the most idiotic losses of both aircraft and pilots (if the engine ceases above enemy lines).

If that's impossible, just please force them to stop at 50% for 0,5-1 second each time they go from 100 to 0 or the other way.

UPD: here's another track of recon interception when 2/3 bots ruined their engines due to excessive throttle manipulation. The time mark is around 0:40 for both, they achieved it almost simultaneously.

Edited December 8, 2025 by MDzmitry

[cmbishop]

Hello,
While completing a mission in career mode, I noticed that in the British fighter career missions ‘Free Hunt’, the behaviour of my wingmen was particularly strange. It seems that the allied AI seeks to attack anti-aircraft positions at the foot of observation balloons by not following the planned flight path. During this mission, in which I was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, my wingmen landed behind enemy lines without being damaged?!
I am attaching the mission files.
When will we see at least some improvement in the AI in Flying Circus?...

Mission FC British Fighter.zip

[DunkzG]

When playing as Squadron Commander and returning to base, the mechanics for your AI wingmen to land at the end of a career mode mission need looking at

Firstly, often they follow you around as you circle the airfield rather than breaking off to land individually, the only way to seemingly trigger them to break off and land individually is either:
(i) make a fake pass low over the threshold of the runway at speed (so that the AI doesnt crash for going too slow) to trigger the control tower to give you permission to land, then when you don't actually land it seems to trick your AI wingmen to think you have landed so they do then break off and land individually - seems to be the safest route, albeit not very realistic

(ii) order the wingmen to return to base (using commander orders via the tilda key) - this makes them break off from you and prepare to enter circuit over the airfield for landing - BUT they have a habit of crashing into each other! Have noticed this a couple of times recently playing Bodenplatte career, first with P38s then with ME 410s.  Super Frustrating and immersion breaking!

Wondering if this issue can be looked at and patched properly?  I know its been around a long time.  When control tower gives you permission to land and game chat says "break off and land individually" they should do just that and not collide!

Attaching files from the Me410 example, it happens right at the end of the track.  At 02:30 aircraft MM pulls up and wipes itself out and 2 others!

Link to mission files for Me410 example: AI landing crash

[peterk1]

I have noticed that a lot of the Career Mode Escort type missions (Attacker Escort, Transport Escort) have suddenly become broken when they worked properly before. I would say it started happening maybe 2 months ago.

In these missions, the player's squadron is typically expected to escort another flight while they do something, then escort the transports/attackers back to their home field and then the players squadron is supposed to return home.

Lately though after the transports/attackers land or arrive at their base, the player's squadron will start landing at the transports/attackers airfields instead of returning to their own home base.

It can be quite annoying, potentially leaving the player to do a long return to base alone.

I don't have a track file (I rarely record because it kills the FPS too much), but I may be able to send a mission file if desired. I haven't played the next mission in my career yet.

Now that I think of it, this might make more sense in the Missions/Career thread since it's not really about flight AI.

[LukeFF]

Yes, if you have the mission file, please upload it. That's the most direct way to help our team fix any issues.

[peterk1]

10 hours ago, LukeFF said:

Yes, if you have the mission file, please upload it. That's the most direct way to help our team fix any issues.

This should show the problem.

The mission briefing says that this is a transport escort and I was expecting a flight to the target and then probably the transports to drop parachutes, turn around and go back. The text description seemed to say that this would happen. There did not seem to be a late waypoint at the transport's airfield though, so I wasn't sure.

I was the squadron leader along with 3 other AI planes as the escort.

After we arrived at the destination after a long flight, the transports began landing. After 1-2 transports landed, I received a "successful mission" message and the next waypoint became active signalling that the game wanted the players squadron to start returning home.

The other 3 planes in the squad however refused to fly back and refused all commands to get in formation. They kept circling the airfield that the transports were landing at.

After 20-30 minutes of circling to let all of the transports land (there were 7 of them out of an original 9), the other 3 planes in my squadron still refused to fly back and they also started landing at the same airfield as the escorted tranports.

I flew back 160 km to our home airfield by myself.

This happens on most escort missions - transport and attacker. The player's squadron tries to land at the same field that the escorted planes land at.

_gen.Mission.zip

Edited January 23 by peterk1

[AcesDarthBubu]

1 hour ago, peterk1 said:

This should show the problem.

The mission briefing says that this is a transport escort and I was expecting a flight to the target and then probably the transports to drop parachutes, turn around and go back. The text description seemed to say that this would happen. There did not seem to be a late waypoint at the transport's airfield though, so I wasn't sure.

I was the squadron leader along with 3 other AI planes as the escort.

After we arrived at the destination after a long flight, the transports began landing. After 1-2 transports landed, I received a "successful mission" message and the next waypoint became active signalling that the game wanted the players squadron to start returning home.

The other 3 planes in the squad however refused to fly back and refused all commands to get in formation. They kept circling the airfield that the transports were landing at.

After 20-30 minutes of circling to let all of the transports land (there were 7 of them out of an original 9), the other 3 planes in my squadron still refused to fly back and they also started landing at the same airfield as the escorts.

I flew back 160 km to our home airfield by myself.

This happens on most escort missions - transport and attacker. The player's squadron tries to land at the same field that the escorted planes land at.

_gen.Mission.zip 1.97 MB · 0 downloads

Did you reached the egress waypoint for the escort duty to end? I had this issue when either I play PWCG where AI lands nearest airfield instead of home base or I missed the waypoints since I am the flight leader. Might be as simple as that and not an AI issue.

[peterk1]

1 hour ago, AcesDarthBubu said:

Did you reached the egress waypoint for the escort duty to end? I had this issue when either I play PWCG where AI lands nearest airfield instead of home base or I missed the waypoints since I am the flight leader. Might be as simple as that and not an AI issue.

Yeah. I hit all the waypoints and fuel is not an issue so it's not an emergency landing situation. I never used to see this behavior before and now it's consistently doing this.

Usually it's not important because the transport/attacker home field is close to our home field but in the example I just sent over it seems that they're 170km apart, so it's obvious.

[LukeFF]

Thanks, I'll forward this.

[peterk1]

Just one more example of the Escort Misssion bug which I saw tonight.

At first it was looking like everything was OK, but then it happened again.

Transport Escort mission. Player squadron rendezvous with 9 Li-2 at waypoint 1.

Short flight to waypoint 2 together. Li-2s drop supplies by parachute.

Long flight to transport airfield at Waypoint 3.

Receive Mission Successful and return To Base messages.

Attempt to get my squadron to get into V formation. No response. I returned to Waypoint 3 to try to see what they were doing. Refused to follow orders. They were just circling the airfield.

I flew to waypoints 4+5 and landed on my own. Li-2s were still landing at their field when I ended the mission. I didn't wait for them all to land because it would probably have taken 90 minutes for 9 landings, but it looked like my AI squadmates were waiting to land at Waypoint 3 after the transports.

_genMission2.zip

[peterk1]

Just going to throw this out as well. As far as I can tell, this a new/bug behavior that also started happening about 2 months ago. I see it happening quite a bit.

There are some strange AI radio callouts happening where the squadron/flight callsigns appear to be mixed up.

Example: Last night I was flying a Cover River Crossing mission. On takeoff I made a note that the tower was using the callsign Rook for my flight. Soon after takeoff, I receive a radio call coming from a pilot in Rook that instructed "Engage Enemy Planes". I didn't recognize the name of the pilot who made that call out and there weren't enemy planes anywhere nearby, so I called up the scenario info screen to double check if he was on my flight and he was not.

So it appears there was another "Rook" flight somewhere on the map? 

I can maybe get a save file that shows the behavior fairly easily (bad radio call early in the flight). I'll check later tonight.

=====

Reproduced and saved the file.

o Player's flight is Rook

o About 5 minutes into the mission when the player is close to  Waypoint 2, a radio message comes in from "Alexis Loveikin" also from Rook. That name is not part of the player's flight and the instruction doesn't make sense for the player. So that's some other plane somewhere that the player doesn't know about using the wrong call sign.

I've seen this in many mission types.

Wondering if maybe this is somehow linked to the previous bug I posted where the player's squadmates want to land at the bomber's airfield rather than going home with the player on escort missions? It's looking like there's some confusion in places about planes not knowing what group they belong to.

 

 

genMission3.zip

Edited February 2 by peterk1

[AcesDarthBubu]

Often wondering why in base game mode, my AI flight lead or flight member tends to veer off somewhere suddenly, without calling out any enemy which seems weird.

There seems to be a solution by Kraut1, which I've been playing around with.  The MCU trigger seems to be a set of triggers check that allow AI to call out enemies etc, which helps so much in giving situation awareness to the player (especially SP). I am wondering why something similar can't be implemented in the base game? Is it because it's taking up too much CPU cycle time to do such checks or it just wasn't something looked deeper into at?

Can the dev do something on this ?

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/91434-audio-warnings-by-ai-wingmen-during-air-combat-w-rugerusgb-groupsmission-pack-v01/